advice of 65 year old mental health nurse to patients of various ages... well, the human condition never changes. when you get to a certain age you are wise to choose what you wish to change about yourself, if anything at all, rather than listening to the world. you are fine as you are anyway. for young people, well, attend to what is most important to your own development as a being. you have to work out what that is, for you. the great thing about not committing suicide, or of having silly failed attempts, is that, generically, as we age, especially beyond 50, is that we get happier. this is the story of humanity. there is nothing wrong with being happier. there is nothing wrong with doing the hard yards. that's what we all have always done. at the same time, respect those who choose to go. if you study grief, well, suicide matters in the heart and mind of those who remain after you for a year or so, then they will just grieve for you the same as if a car accident or a cancer took you from us. that's the truth of it. that's all we can do. respect.

Nauru: Mental Health for Refugees seeking refuge in Australia, refugees who have been locked up for 5 years: One psychiatrist who can't speak English, no translator. One Mental Health Nurse who can speak English. That's it. Keep up the good work, dear sister Nurse.

TRUE TIME SAGA Today I have achieved the hitherto impossible and reset the time on my Casio G Shock watch to daylight saving time. This only took 3 hours of effort...last time it took about 40 hours of failed effort. I have a long history with the watch, buying it at Melbourne Airport a few years ago, en route home to Cairns, reading the 40 pages of instructions, and setting it up. Then, when we moved to Victoria, and when daylight saving came along, I couldn't change the hands by one hour no matter how many hours I spent trying. I took it to 2 watch shops and they couldn't do it either, so I posted it back to Japan, to Mr Cashio, who owns Casio, saying 'look, I don't want this watch anymore. I dont want a refund. I just am sick of it. Please think about what you make." Anyway, a nice letter from Casio Japan, and the time adjusted watch came back to me, with the usual 40 page booklet...so I have persisted with the watch. Last night, tooling around with it for a few hours, brought the watch up to current local time, although it is now 5 minutes fast and has 3 alarms that I have no control over....but that's good. That's fine. I can live with that. I can live 5 minutes into the future.

I think there is benefit in the notion of immigrants being required to live in provincial areas of Australia for, say, 5 years, as a condition of their journey to citizenship. What has to come with it is major infrastructure programs to develop the provinces at the same time. This would work. Take, for example, Tasmania, a big island with hardly anyone on it, and those who are there are giants, have two heads, and with a skill set that can only cut down trees...this would be a grand place to re-develop and make actually sustainable with migration and big money for infrastructure. This would work. A multi-cultural Tasmania. Give it ten years with a big focus on social and structural development, and they'd have a higher living standard and more diversity than anyone or anywhere else in the country. They may even choose to secede...and that, all in all, would be a good thing for Tasmanians.

Nauru: The concern I have with the Australian Government, and with particular luminaries like Scott Morrison and Peter, the bald guy, Dutton, is that they are proud of their achievement in locking up genuine refugees on remote off shore islands around Australia because this deliberate cruelty is a solution to the problem. We pay these Ministers a lot of money to be fairly bright and to work things out, generally, without cruelty as the best way forward for the country, and yet they remain proud of their policy of cruelty rather than having another notion about how to do things properly, legally, and compassionately. These are not bright nor hard working nor hard thinking politicians. These are cruel and racist men. These are little men and they make us a little and cruel people. The refugees, going crazy for years on these remote islands, deserve normal lives, as do we. The weak link in the paradigm is our government of little and proud racist men. We deserve better governance.

From my palliative care end of life days over 30 years of noticing: the folks who had the most pleasant deaths were: Hare Krishna folk Catholic Alcoholic folk, usually men Moslems. and then the rest... Those who had the most horrible painful deaths were Evangelical Christians Mahayana Buddhists Vegans and then the rest... Interestingly, Hare Krishna and Vegans have the same diet, so I'd suggest that the meaning of life, at the end of life, in terms of rank human life suffering, has more to do with something other than diet.

Tibetan Liberation Front: What did the Chinese ever do for us? "Well, roads, bridges, trains, houses, jobs, education, a future for the kids, heat in winter, scholarships to world universities, peace, food, a future for non-religious kids, they stop the kids from setting themselves on fire, and we are not serfs anymore, and not slaves to a theocratic dynasty that locks up boys with celibate holy men instead of getting an education."