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A thorn between two roses
We're back into our daily routine of walking across the bridge into the village and back, and since this is Saturday, we dropped by at the markets where I picked up a well-thumbed copy of "A Year in...
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Man on his Island
Tom Neale, husking a coconut in front of his shack.Photo by James Rockefeller, from his book, "Man On His Island"to view some clippings from the Pacific Islands Monthly, click here For many years I...
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Klimmen en dalen
Depending on whether I was the auditor or the to-be-audited, I had one of two prints hanging on my office wall wherever I went: Kipling's poem "I Keep Six Honest Serving Men" or M.C. Escher's...
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Rest in Peace, Tony Finsterer!
* 24.3.1929 - ✝ 24.9.1998 It all happened back in 1991 - or was it 1992? An acquaintance from the HARMONIE German Club in Canberra told me about his tax problems, and being a former tax agent I...
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Plant bougainvilleas while the sun shines
The best time to plant trees was thirty years ago. I'd all forgotten about the inspiring wisdom of this old Chinese proverb - although I did plant a few liquid ambers which I can now sit under - and...
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Give me a red plastic chair and I feel at home anywhere
Whether it's pulling a plow or feeding a cow or grubbing out an old treestump, give me a red plastic chair and I feel at home anywhere. Of course, the meaning of this is lost on those who were not...
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Moving wallpaper
Do we really use television — and so many other "benefits" and "tools" of our technological age — or does it use us? Jerry Mander speaks the unspeakable and asks the unaskable in his remarkable...
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Banda, The Dark Forgotten Trail
This documentary premiered on July 31 2017, to coincide with the 350th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Breda, as part of which a coconut-fringed speck on the map, the island of Run, was...
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How accountants see the world
Click here to enlarge images In response to my article "The Die Was Cast", a kind soul who remembered me from my short residency at the PWD Mess in Rabaul in New Guinea emailed and gave me the...
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Reflections
In choosing ways of living I have always been an impulse buyer which has sometimes led to buyer's remorse but also to many there-but-for-the-grace-of-God moments as I look at people around me as well...
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I have never heard it put so plain and simple
Many Muslims today are not happy! They're not happy in Gaza They're not happy in Egypt They're not happy in Libya They're not happy in Morocco They're not happy in Iran They're not happy in Iraq...
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Bleed Them Dry Until They Die
The retirement villages are ripping off retirees. As a former resident said, "It's a financial trap. It's a financial sinkhole. Once you're in, it's very hard to get out." Retirement villages are...
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The Great Courses
Imagine my amazement when I found a whole big box of DVDs and textbooks of "The Great Courses" in one of my favourite op-shops, with the vast majority still in their shrink-wrapped plastic covers....
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PV = P * [(1 - (1 + r)^-n) / r]
Every time I hear some of those well-to-do age pensioners thump the table and yell out, "It's my money; I paid my taxes!", I feel like saying, "PV = P * [(1 - (1 + r)^-n) / r]" and show them this...
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Thoughts to end the month on
This makes for rivetting reading - click here. Published in 1986, things are a lot, lot, lot worse today. Another month gone! Old accountant's habits never die and, more out of curiosity than...
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The Trouble with Islam
Irshad Manji calls herself a Muslim Refusenik. 'That doesn't mean I refuse to be a Muslim,' she writes. 'It simply means I refuse to join an army of automatons in the name of Allah.' These...
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How to live under a Labor government
Back in 1981 during my first attempt at domesticity in Townsville, I had a retired neighbour who confided in me that, after a lifetime of earning lots of money in mining, he had buried it all in...
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Death of a Princess
Read the book online at www,archive.org When I first came to this country, I couldn't understand the people because of my lack of English. These days I can't understand the people because of their...
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You made me do it; I didn't want to do it
Everybody claims to be a patsy these days, but not a Patsy Cline: "I played the poker machines until I was broke. I didn't want to do it; they should've stopped me do it.""I maxed out my credit...
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Made in Australia
Take heart! We're still making things in this country; not cars, not computers, not even tooth-picks, but watering cans! What we're going to fill them with, given the deplorable state of our...
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The inimitable Stephen Fry
I've always suffered from insomnia. At one time, my insomnia was so bad, I couldn't even sleep during working hours. Luckily, these days I have ABC Radio National to listen to during those dark and...
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The "Black Box" of my life
When we were young, we could remember our short life in its entirety. As we get older, our memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches. It's a bit like the black box that aeroplanes carry to...
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This one is on the house!
Thanks to ABC Radio National's program "Big Ideas", you don't have to dress up and go down to the Park Hyatt Hotel in Melbourne and pay a minimum $250 but can listen to Sir Niall Ferguson from the...
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The art of listening
Listening to audiobooks is in some way a throwback to our ancestral past when we would sit around the campfire listening to our elders tell stories of their own lives or the lives of those who came...
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Against all odds, Trump is back?
I've taken the liberty of adding a question mark at the end of this video's title. I hope I will be right in my scepticism because to me a second Trump term would be unthinkable (and not only because...
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