Here's the True Story of my Casio G Shock Watch. I expect some folk from Melton will be derisive and negative, as is expected, as they don't get out so much, but it is a true story. My wife and daughter and I flew down from Cairns to Melbourne 7 years ago to check out RMIT as daughter wished to do a 3 year degree in Advanced Sound Engineering and Digital Journalism, or something like that. I'd pretty well retired from work, being old. (So, she said YES to the course of studies and we tabulated that it would cost us, as she is a foreign student designation, around $40,000 each year for 3 years..and it did. So, we sold up the Cairns unit and all moved here, and rented, paid for her education, and she went to RMIT and did really well, and I went back to work to help pay for her future.) Her education actually shifted us from the Middle Class in Cairns to the Working Class in Melbourne...less pay, longer hours, everything far more expensive. Our Cairns 3 bedroom apartment with pool and lift and tropical gardens and gated etc, when sold, would buy a small one bedroom unit here. That's Melbourne. Anyway, when we flew down to check out RMIT and Melbourne, I bought a Casio G Shock Watch at Melbourne Airport for about $230. With it I got a 30 page instruction book, and thought, well, I'll just absorb all that. Well, I didn't absorb all that at all. It became an issue when the clocks changed for Day Light Saving and, for the life of me, and studying all the info, I couldn't do it. I took it to 3 watch repairers in Melbourne, and they couldn't change the time back one hour. This is true. In frustration, after finding it after I'd thrown it into the bin, I packed the watch in a small box and posted it to Mr Casio in Japan (Yes, there is a real Mr Casio) with a note saying..."Please, Mr Casio, keep this watch, I don't want it back. I don't want any money. I'd just like you to remember that it's important to design a watch, in future, that makes it easy to adjust the time on the watch, for your future business. I like the watch but I don't want it back." That was that. So, unexpectedly, for me, Mr Casio sent the watch to his Casio Excellence Team in Kyoto and they set the watch on the time it should be for MELBOURNE at that time of year, and then they sent it back to me by secure registered post. Nice people. It came back with a new glass watch face as this had been scratched. I still have it, and twice a year I'm frustrated that no one can change the time on it (except the Kyoto experts). I no longer try watch repairers or experts in Melbourne. Bunch of idiots, I reckon, much like me. I work in mental health in the area of psychology and addiction, and, one time, when interviewing a very dysphoric young man plunging into deep addled drug induced psychosis, I asked "Hey, can you change the time on a Casio watch?" Well, he replied "Yes, I can. Its easy" and he did! Unfortunately we couldn't keep him in the clinic under any health order for very long, so he went home, better than he came in, and my watch-fixer was, alas, lost to me. Eventually, I bought another simpler watch, an analogue Citizen Divers Watch that's quite simple, to use when the Casio can't be adjusted to suit the changes of time. So, that's the real story about my Casio watch, and, as the time changed happened just a few days ago, it is now, once again, this time, keeping the right time again. I love it! Anyway, as it all turned out, with her good RMIT credentials (one of the three Australian Universities that China reckons is actually any good), daughter is a managing executive now of an advertising company in Shanghai, and is zooming off to Scotland soon to do taste testing of Malt Whiskeys to advertise on her Shanghai based TV show. I love her. I'm actually still working with the drug addled and psychotic folk here, at 69, and so there is some angst to the whole story, but, over all, life has been a good story, and, overall the Casio is a good watch to keep.

Australia: Well, we are investing $380 million billion in American submarines, and we'll get one or two with a flag on it, in thirty years time, but they'll stay in the American fleet, controlled by the US Admiralty, so we have to know we'll agree with them about everything in 30 years time, about ....yes...everything. We are getting these weaponised submarines to wage war on China, our best and biggest trading partner. What? Who would do that? We gave $500 million to The Ukraine, the most corrupt and despised country in Europe. 30%, we know, gets eventually to the military war effort, the rest is subsumed by the Ukraine corrupt government and elite, and the weapons/goods sent to bizarre military regimes in Africa 70% of our gift. Poof! Thanks Australia! We have immense homelessness and poor treatment for old folks, a dodgy economy based upon coal, and are falling behind the First World Nations in every way, and we have a very dodgy future...and yet we are so proud to just throw the positive future away. No wonder the Australian Jesus wept! Remember the Dodgy Brothers Car Sales Consultants? They're still in control, and doin' dodgy deals with our money, & our kids futures.

Last day off tomorrow. I feel I should go out there, into the Melton Community, to voluntarily help the sick and the lame. Crikey, there's a lot of lame out there.

I expect the next five years will roll out much like this: The war for Ukraine will continue for 2 more years until the US President is replaced by a US Republican President. Then the USA will pull the plug on Ukraine and start business again with Mr Putin. Until then, energy prices will skyrocket and most western Nations will go into Recession, especially the UK and Germany and France. It will be a deep recession. Governments will collapse. Australia will enter recession in about September this year, jobs will be lost and the country will stagger along for about 4 years after that, unable to really fund pensions or health or education at all, but, we will fund American submarines, without actually getting any. China will not invade anyone, but will just take their real place as an important world power that, unlike our American and UK friends, doesn't actually make war on anyone. Why? Because they don't mean anyone any harm, and are way smarter than all that. Its just about trade. China will continue to trade well. No one will be able to interfere with that. That's a good thing.

Well, I do tend to like Labor Governments as they do bring with them social progress and rights and good long term improvements overall for Australians whereas the Conservative Governments don't do that at all. That's not what they do. But this AUKUS abortion of giving the USA 360$ billion to put a few Australian flags on US submarines in their fleet, is just that. An abortion of an idea. Throwing away a fortune and our sovereignty. A big fortune, not a little bit, but a big, giant fortune... It's just so big and so bad for all of us. We could well have made good use of that $360 billion dollars and without having to establish essential nuclear waste sites in our country. I'm sure that'll go down well. Its such a bad idea and on such a grand scale, it's really... its just... I can't speak... the rank stupidity... and a Labor Government. My God, where was the thinking? Human Reason...where was that? World Class Idiots.

Ukraine and Human Reason

Remember Human Reason?
I think the best response to Russia invading Ukraine would have been not to supply Ukraine with weapons but to suggest to the Ukraine that they pay their gas bill to Russia. 20 years of extremely cheap, by any standards, OIL and GAS is a hell of a lot NOT to pay for.
Would have saved a lot of misery for everyone.
Just being reasonable.

Melbourne Botanical Gardens

The Melbourne Botanical Gardens are astoundingly beautiful.

They were designed by some German Count quite awhile ago, & yes, that's 'Count'...(Thank you).

And he did a damn good job with the layout and the pathways and all the remarkable plants. It's huge. It's a paradise. It's like God like.

I used to think that the world's great jungles should be organised like very good golf courses, with beautiful access and easy walking, and maybe a club and a ball, and along the perimeters would be wonderland nature. But I think I'd prefer Wild Nature to be more like a well organised German Botanical Garden.

I wished to take some cutting shears and a Coles bag with me, but respect and personal integrity got in the way and stymied my predatory carnal-like plant acquisition ambitions.

We walked around for a few hours and had something to eat. Then sat in the traffic for a couple of hours on the way home, talking about how well the Chinese MG (Morris Garages) car brand has done here in recent years.

MG, & 'Haval' (Great Wall Motors: 'Havana') have actually done well and are now selling like KIAs and Hyundais used to. Good quality. Not expensive. They found their shining path. they found the right... recipe.

After a bright coolish Summertime day afoot in Melbourne, it was obviously cold and bleak and raining when we got home, and I rushed out to compare the Melbourne Botanical Gardens with our backyard.

True, the Botanical Gardens are still somewhat bigger...and involve no bright red concrete, but I think the Botanical Gardens could still learn a bit from our succinct Zen-Roman Wang-Fitzpatrick Design paradigms and synchronous yet non-repeating rhythmicities... or, um ...what do you call those things? Mum used to call them 'recipes'...Facebook and Amazon and GPS and Robodebt etc are totally dependent on them...ah, I forgot what they're called. Very important things, anyway.

Ah! That's it! Algorithm! Mum's algorithm for Baked Lamb with roast potatoes, peas, even beans sometimes...or a sponge cake...etc. A recipe! Well done, ageing brain, and Well Done, Mum!!

Anyway, back to work for the next 3 days so a bit of a flirtation with reality ahead, I guess... or just a different recipe for the days.