Category: Review

The new ‘COVID 19 Normal’

I’ve just spent the last half hour writing a rant. I’m relatively sure no one wants to know about what’s irritating me right now, so I’ve closed off that post and sent it to the draft bin.

One day, when I’m not so angry, I might being it out again and temper the language. I’m sure there have been days when you’ve been so annoyed at the stupidity of people that you too would want to vent your anger.

Neither the time or the place.

The point is, I have an awful feeling the world is going to hell. It never used to be like this. Life was normal once. You know, we were all battling along the majority of us hovering just above or just below the poverty line, but mostly above.

The Government sailed along making stupid decisions like it always does, increasing our incredulity in either the government or the opposition, because it seemed to me all they did was blame each other when something went wrong.

Coronavirus withstanding, the status quo is almost the same as before it hit, only there are a lot more people hovering below the poverty line, and as governments, reportedly looking after their people in a crisis, start throwing money around like it’s water.

I can’t complain, they threw some water at me and I drank it. I’m still alive becaise of the decisions the current ruling party has made over the course of the pandemic in this country, so I can’t complain. That is left to the opposition party who, for the first few months were silent, but now, have decided to question everything the government has done, or criticiser it for what it hasn;t done.

To me, no one is perfect, and it is a pandemic and none of us alive (except for a very few who wethered the Spanish Flu pandemnic) have any iidea what it’s like to live in such times. We are weathering it, we have lost relatively few people in the fisrt wave, and a lot more in the second.

That the second wave could have been prevented is moot. It happened. We have learned from it. I hope. Foolish mistakes are always accompanied by catastrophic results, and in the eventual wash up someone will be blamed. We live in a world where blame is essential to make ourselves feel better. I’m bot sure anyone will feel better about anything this time.

But, we’re not out of the woods. There is still a whole lot of scope for us to catestrophically fail again, because this virus is insidious, and a killer, and not just to those we know it will kill. We don;t know enough about it yet to know whether any vaccine will give lasting protection, or just a few weeks, like it seems to this who have had it and recovered.

They can get it again. Given the damage it does to some of the survivors, it’s like if it didn’t kill you the first time, maybe it will the second time around. Who’s compiling the results so far from those who’ve survived, or from those who have died? What underlying causes are the worst, who should be protected, and are vaccines being tested on vulnerable groups?

What will happen to those who are given a so-called vaccine in six, twelve or eighteen months time? How long have we been testing the current batch of vaccines, a month, two at most?

I worry that being in that vulnerable group, irrespective of vaccines tested or untested, that I’m between a rock and a hard place. Whoever came up with this coronavirus, whether manmade or from wildlife, certainly knew their stuff, because it seems to be it’s incurable, like the common cold, only with a lot more deadly effect.

I had a cold, I thought it was the virus, but no, it was just a cold. It was bad and I’m still recovering from the effects. Colds, as we all know, can kill. So can influenza. Neither of these have been eradicated, but can be vaccinated against, but you can still get it. This is the nature of such viruses.

So, we now live in a new world, a COVID 19 world where we are going to have to change everything we do, and apply a new level of care, and, unfortunately, suspicion, because the moment there’s a chink in the armour, the results will be catastrophic.

They’re are beginning to call it a ‘COVID 19 normal’ down here.

Limited or no overseas travel, limited interstate travel, a new level of public hygiene, with new laws and regulations? Pre COVIS we thought we were free, but that was just an illusion. Now, we’re still free, but the lines between right and wrong, once blurred are very, very clear.

Will this, eventually, be the fate of the whole world?

There’s more time for TV

Being confined to home because of COVID not only gives me, and a lot of others more time to write, it also enables us to explore a few more leisure options to fill in the time.

After all, we can hardly just keep writing endlessly.

Well, perhaps some of us could.

At first I decided I would do some virtual travelling, you know, go to places I would never go in person, like South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, South America, you know the sort of places I mean, the ones where you can’t get travel insurance cover, or not without mortgaging your home.

That lasted about a day. Seeing the pyramids online was not the same as being there, getting the sand blown in your face, or the tour bus being hijacked, and you spend the next three months in a dark, hot, hell hole while the kidnappers negotiate with governments that refuse to negotiate with terrorists.

So far, I’m not filling in my time very well.

There’s weeds to be pulled, lawns to be cut, shrubs and trees to be pruned, painting to be done, you know, all of those chores that you put off until tomorrow, knowing tomorrow will never come.

Don’t ask me to explain that.

So, we’re left with television.

Firstly there was a series called Yellowstone, a western in a modern setting, three series worth. Yes, we watched all of them, no, didn’t like the swearing, or Beth Dutton, Rip was channelling the Duke, and Keven Kostner, well his stint in Dances with Wolves stood him in good stead.

Geez though, how much trouble can one ranch attract? Indians, speculators, developers, and an international airport? To be honest, at times it spiralled out of control, but for sheer entertainment value, it was slightly better than I thought it might be. As for Jamie, how could one person be so complicated?

Then there was another series, Away. OK, this was about as far fetched as a premise could get, and the characters, as diverse, and sometimes as obtuse as any I’ve seen thrown together for over eight months. Thank god we didn’t have to suffer eight months of it.

IT was good, I guess, with people being the way they are, and I’d espected in the confines of that small space for so long, they might have killed each other off one at a time, like in Lord of the Flies, but no such luck.

My favourite? The Russian. He might have been blind but he was interesting. Just would have liked a few subtitles for us non Ghana, Chinese, Russian, Indian people.

As for White House Farm, I’m still trying to work out who killed them all, because if definitely wasn’t the daughter. It had to be the indifferent son, or at his behest. Full marks to the dogged detective, who, the last time I saw him, he was a rather improbable Hercules. Funny how your impression of a performance goes back to one you’ve seen him before.

Which is another of our viewing interests, watching a show and trying to work out where we’ve seen the actors before. Some are familiar, and seem to be in everything, others rarely seen, or remembered. I hope this is not a sign of their acting talent, or more to the point, lack of it.

At the moment we are in the middle of Young Wallender. For those who may have seen Branagh in the Wallender series would remember this as being the most stultifying of series, filmed bleakly in a bleak country with bleak characters, and bleak crimes.

Fortunately the Young Wallender series is not as bleak, but it has dark undertones. Some might call this gritty. There;s four more to go so it can only get better.

Like jumping off a ten storey building, it’s so far so good…

There are so many things I haven’t done

Does it really matter, you ask?

Perhaps not, but now seems to be an appropriate time, past the age of 65, to take stock.

We have achieved a lot in the last 15 or so years once the children had grown up and could look after themselves.

Unlike a lot of more modern couples who are doing the traveling in their 20’s and 30’s then having children, we chose to do it the other way around.

To me, it seemed easier to deal with teenagers when we were in our 40’s rather than our 60’s.  With the benefit of hindsight, I can truthfully say we were right.

We were older and wiser when we traveled and more aware of the dangers around us, sometimes overlooked or ignored by a youthful devil may care attitude.

But, in saying that ….

No, I don’t think I’ll be getting to see Mt Kilimanjaro, observing the wild animals in the Serengeti, climbing Mt Everest, or seeing the ancient pyramids.

Which is a sad state of affairs given the world has changed so much in recent years and has pretty much ruled out going to a lot of places, and in particular, the middle east, and because of COVID 19, just about everywhere else.

But, if it is ever possible before I die, I still want to go to the Greek Islands, and, Santorini is at the top of my travel bucket list.

We’ve been to London.  We’ve been to Paris and Euro Disney.  We’ve been to Rome and seen the ancient ruins.  We’ve been to Vienna, Schonbrunn Palace, and, particularly for us, a visit to Swarovski crystal world, near Innsbruck, we’ve been to Salzburg, and been on the Sound of Music tour.

We’ve been to Florence and loved it, we’ve been to Venice and loved that too, and we’ve spent a few days in the heart of Tuscany, and want to go back for longer, much longer.

In fact, that’s the second item on the travel bucket list.

We’ve also been to Singapore and Hong Kong, at first out of necessity as an airline stopover, but then we went back to see the city and tourist, and non-tourist attractions.

I will not forget staying at the Hong Kong Conrad hotel as a Diamond Hhonors member.  Oh, the memories.

We’ve also stayed on the French Riviera, in a timeshare apartment in Antibes where every morning when out back you had a view of the shimmering Mediterranean if the sun was out.

Nice, Cannes, Monte Carlo, the billionaire’s yachts in Antibes harbor, Monte Carlo and ‘that’ casino, taking the same drive along the coast as Grace Kelly did in To Catch a Thief, and feeling like James Bond arriving for a new adventure, minus the half-million-dollar sports car.

But, now, crashing back to earth with a very hard thump ….

Travel in the future is looking difficult for both of us, not only financially but from a health aspect.  We are both not as sprightly as we used to be.

Yet given the restraints and if it is at all possible, aside from the Greek Islands and Tuscany, the next items on the list are:

Germany, visiting both Berlin, from a cold war aspect, the Brandenburg gate springs to mind, and Munich at the time of the Octoberfest.  As a beer drinker that is also high on the bucket list.

Scotland, more so since we’ve started watching Outlander, and besides being a beer drinker, I am also partial to a good Single Malt, the Whiskey trail.

Ireland, because my wife’s previous name was Murphy and at some point, in the long distant past some relatives emigrated to Australia, and she would like to visit the country of her forebears.

But with the current state of the world, our health issues, and that all-important requisite money, or the lack of it, perhaps it’s time to visit other parts of our own country.

Perhaps it’s time to do a culinary trip, particularly down south.  It’s practical and achievable and safe.

And it’s a big country.

Have you ever…

Started to write a post, get so far, and another theme or idea slips in, and demands to be written first?

I’m on this nostalgia kick, simply because when I turned on the TV to catch up with the latest COVID news, it was on a channel that shows old movies.

In case you don’t realize it, I love old movies, not just those from Hollywood, but also from Britain.

What was on?

An American in Paris.

Well, it had to be one of my favorites, even though I’m not a great fan of Gene Kelly, the sheer majesty of the music more than makes up for the story in between.

Could it be said, then, this was from the golden years of Hollywood? Such bright and cheerful movies such as Singing in the Rain, and An American in Paris, perhaps exemplify the Hollywood musical.

Years before, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were the quintessential musical stars, followed by the likes of Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin, and later Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. A couple of musicals, in particular, comes to mind, firstly the Wizard of Oz and then High Society.

Moving forward to more modern times, several stand out in the1960s, My Fair Lady and Sound of Music. By this time theatergoers were dining on the superb talents of Rogers and Hammerstein, and Learner and Lowe. Of the former, musicals such as Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I were on my list of favorites.

Even later still in the 1970s, there is Funny Girl, and Hello Dolly, which has a connection to the past with its director, none other than, yes, Gene Kelly.

But it seems once the 60s had passed the notion of the Hollywood blockbuster musical had gone, and we were left with clip shows like That’s Entertainment, put together while Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire were still alive. WE still had the film versions of the stage plays, but the lustre had, somehow, gone.

Perhaps it will return, who knows, after all, everything old is usually new again, it just takes time to go full circle.

Let’s talk history

What happened yesterday is history, but that’s not necessarily how we view what is history and what isn’t.

Similarly what is and what isn’t history is usually decided on by academics, because history texts that are used in schools are not written by ‘the man in the street’ authors. They’re usually university types who specialise in a particular field, or specialise section of history.

Even then one doubts that what is written is not a consensus of a panel.

So, when we talk about re-writing history, that takes a very brave bunch of people who want to buck the norm.

Our history, that which was taught when I went to school,. about our own country, Australia, started in 1770. Some brave soul tried to say it began earlier than that, before Captain Cook and the British arrived, out up a flag pole, and declared it belonged to Britain, like in 1606 when the Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the Cape York peninsula, only it wasn’t called that then.

And he might have been as surprised as Captain Cook that there were people here to observe their arrival. Yes, people had been living in this country for tens of thousands of years before the Europeans arrived.

But that was not what we were taught. No, Captain Cook, 1770, the a fleet of ships in 1788, and off we run as a new country, and a dumping ground for Britain’s convicts. Our history starts there, and then meanders through time, dividing the country up into states, having famous explorers like Burke and Wills, and Blaxland, Wentworth, and Lawson, Hume and Hovell.

And we commemorate all these people and those who were in charge over the years, with names of states, cities, rivers, mountains, everything under the sun. You’ve only got to glance at the list of hundreds of these forefathers and explorers to see just how many places in this country were named after them.

No heed was taken of what they may have been called before because no one really understood the languages of the first people who lived here. And they never seem to rate as a matter of study for us children back then.

Now, as people have begun to realise our history goes way, way back, and that there should be a nod to those inhabitants, they are considering re-writing some of our history to incorporate these people. And change the names of places to their original. A famous instance of recent renaming is of Ayers Rock, now called Uluru.

Even then, Australian History didn’t rate very highly, and I have to say, as a child at school 50 odd years ago, I learned more about the British Empire/Commonwealth, and about the English kings and queens, than we did about our own Governor Generals, Prime Ministers and State Premiers.

Could I tell you the name of our first Prime Minister? No. I can say when Australia became Australia, yes. 1901. Can I tell you the first King of England? Yes, William the Conqueror in 1066. There were kings before that but they only ruled of parts of England.

But over the years since I have read the odd book of Australian History but for some reason it never quite seems as colourful or as interesting as that of England or Scotland, or even some of the European countries.

Now, since I’ve been reading about what’s happening in the United States I have begin to take an interest in American history, and it, too, seems to suffer the same problems we have with ours, a bunch of academics decided what it was, and what it would not include, and then there is this thing called the 1619 project.

Wow, that seems to have stirred up a hornet’s nest.

Can’t wait to see what happens next.

In the days before COVID 19: It’s market day…

We come from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and moved to Queensland about 32 years ago, leaving behind a large chuck of our family. For a while it was a good excuse for them to come up and stay in sunny Queenland, and others, we would make two or three trips back to Melbourne every year.

And, being AFL football fans of the club Hawthorn, those visits were more likely to be during winter, co-inciding with games our team were playing in.

Then, after about 20 years, when the whole city seemed to have changed, and not necessarily for the better, we started rediscovering places we used to go to as children, for the purpose of showing them to our grandchildren.

This is one of those occasions, written after a visit before COVID stopped tourism and interstate travel dead in its tracks.

…

These donuts are whole with jam injected into them and are delicious.  You cannot stop at one, which is why you get five.

There are like the donuts I used to get from the Dandenong market when I was a child.  Back then, nearly 60 years ago, I used to go every Tuesday to get fruit and vegetables, and sometimes clothes, because there were other stalls selling useful household items.

Back then we used to get donuts, and for a long time, I had never managed to get back when the market was open to relive those childhood memories.

This trip we do.

The Dandenong Market had changed considerably since the last time I remember it.  The building where my eldest son used to play basketball has been turned over to meat, fish, and food stalls.

It has spread to be about ten times the size it used to be, making it seem like a difficult task to find the donut van, but we entered by the right entrance and there it was.

And the donuts?

They were exactly as I remembered.

While we’re in the area we also make a trip to the Springvale market.  When I lived in Victoria there was no such market, this had only been around since the immigrant Vietnamese have made their home in Springvale, and in places, it reminds you of similar markets in Singapore, Hong Kong, or China.

It was a fascinating half-hour of wandering around almost feeling like you are somewhere in South East Asia.

With markets like these who would really need a supermarket?  And a bonus?  The street food.

I never thought it would be so difficult…

To get a decent cup of coffee.

Yes, something as simple as that.

We all have our favourite places, ours is a coffee franchise called Zaraffas. It has a giraffe as its logo, and an African motif to remind us of something, perhaps that they make good coffee, or the coffee comes from Africa.

Problem is, it’s been going downhill. It’s happened before, and I suspect it’s all in the name of making more money, and not being interested in the customer’s desire for a good cup of coffee.

It started out as being the best compared to a lot of other places, like Coffee Club, like Starbucks, and others. I never liked Starbucks, and my hate affair began in New York, and spread back home. Their coffee is far to weak for a double shot. Perhaps only in China does Starbucks shine, or the fact it was the only coffee franchise we could believe was safe.

But, back to Zaraffas, recently the coffee has been getting weaker, which for a double shot, is odd. You might put it down to the fact staff turnover was high, and some were still learning to be baristas, but then, the people we used to rely on made the coffee, and it was still weak.

A double shot went to a triple shot. Slight improvement, but it gradually got worse. There’s only two excuses, they changed coffee beans to a cheaper brand, or they’re not putting as much coffee in the strainer. That, I learned, when looking up the making of coffee, can be critical. It needs to be tamped down tightly to get a good brew.

So, we went elsewhere, a place called Merlo. It’s cheaper, but the results are completely different. A double shot is a true double shot, it tastes better, much better. Different beans.

There’s another place just around the corner, that had organic coffee. More expensive, but you can really taste the difference.

I’m sad, but we don’t go to our usual place unless it’s on the way home. Life’s too short to be compromising, especially where coffee is concerned.

And, just as a matter of interest, while in New York for a week, I went to the same coffee shop every morning, and never got the same cup of coffee for each of the days. A double shot, latte with two sugars had so many different connotations, by the third day, it became a game, until I realised they didn’t make coffee the same as we have in Australia. There they just push a button.

Perhaps that’s part of the coffee drinkers adventure there, you never know what you’re going to get. In the end, I settled for the brewed coffee and vanilla milk in the hotel’s breakfast bar.

Is it possible we can make a better world?

I’m not sure what started me off in pondering this almost imponderable question.

It was probably the endless bombardment of political advertising, leeching out of every form of media, and reaching saturation point.

Yes, down here in Australia, we have federal elections, where one of the two major parties are hoping to be in control, and all of the minor parties are hoping they will be in control.

You see, here, you don’t have to have a majority in the lower house, called the Representatives, you need to have the numbers in the upper house, called the Senate.

And the Senate is where the cunning voters make it so that no major party can go berserk and introduce a whole lot of policies that benefit one group or the other.  Sort of like sticking up for the rich, and keep the poor in their place, or sticking up for the poor and taxing the rich, who, apparently, don’t pay their fair share of tax.  That gem of information comes from one of the parties.  As if any of us didn’t know that to be the case anyway.

Only that doesn’t work out so well, because the leader of the splinter party gets a whole lot of stuff for his electorate, and we, the rest of the people, get shafted.

As for me, I’m sitting on the poverty line, neither rich nor poor enough for either party to help.  Me and about 65 per cent of the rest of the population.  We used to have a middle class, but tax and bad political management have slowly eroded the middle classes so that most are now living hand to mouth at best.

No one can afford to save, and when we do, the interest, what little of it there is, is taxed, so, no incentive to save.  Both parents have to work if they want to have any sort of life, and more so if they have children.  Childminding costs are horrendous, Medicare fees are equally so if you want to have adequate medical care, and the thought of owning one car, let alone two which is a necessity for families, costs a small fortune when you take into account buying the car, upkeep, petrol, and the governments grab for registration.  They say it’s for road maintenance, but let’s not talk about roads, but the maintenance of two Boeing 737’s just to ferry politicians around.

And instead of telling us what they intend to do to make our lives easier, the ads are about dredging up the opposite party’s previous mistakes.  We already know what they are, what we want to know is what they intend to do to fix all the problems.

Sorry, just being a grump.  I know my one person rant doesn’t matter one fig, but I had to get it out of my system.

I also have begun to believe my one vote doesn’t really matter much in the greater scheme of things but if I could just influence another 500,000 to vote with me, wow, think of what we could do.

Maybe I should run for parliament, or not.  I don’t think I could survive the evenings in the parliamentary bar, the free lunches, or being chauffeur driven.   And flying first class everywhere, I just might get used to it, and the retirement fund, that’s just too much money to think about.

I’ll just stick to being the poor, cynical voter that I am.

Is one vote worth anything these days?

Here’s another interesting question that seems to have been forgotten in the election.

The value of one vote.

Let’s forget about the 50 million or so so-called possible illegal postal ballots, and concentrate on just one.

Your vote.

Has any election of any candidate ever depended on one vote? Well, perhaps not, but I’m willing to bet that there have been occasions where the separation between winner and loser has been about 20 or so.

After a dozen legal challengers and recounts.

But…

The point here is, that one vote, your vote, could have been one of those 20. Or just one.

This year seems to be the year where one vote will make a difference.

Just think! That divine right given to you, that one vote, could change the very fabric of what happens in the future.

How often has it been where one person has changed the course of history, sometimes not for the better, but by and large, they have. I know, where we are, my one vote got the right man elected, and he has given us better roads, better sporting facilities to keep kids off the streets, better bus services.

We have learned not to expect miracles, but sometimes, after casting that one vote, miracles are possible. And what was more miraculous was that none of the candidates stooped to trashing the other.

We got policies, we got promises, and we got action.

Can politics get any messier?

Perhaps a question we should be asking is whether there are still any laws that cover libel or slander. I often mistake one for the other, whether oral or written.

But…

Shouldn’t someone wheel out the legal cart during elections, and put the brakes on some of the stuff being said about candidates?

And after it’s said, the media takes great joy in repeating the remarks, in as large a typeface as they can, perhaps proclaiming the Editor’s bias towards one party or the other.

I’m guessing that journalism standards have dropped to such a low point that even I could qualify to write for a news outlet, and that’s saying something.

My problem, I suspect, is that I have integrity, so I’d be the last person they’d hire.

Equally, I’m guessing, it’s these libellous and slanderous statements that make the best headlines, and, as they say in the circulation department, the trashier it is, the more papers they sell, or whatever it is that brings in revenue.

They’ll tell you that people don’t want the truth. The truth is too depressing, so they tend not to look under the covers and journalists are more interested in writing about whatever is contentious. The Police are a likely target for one side. Protesters (sorry, so-called communist agitators) is a target for the other.

Whatever happened to ‘no one will get left behind’?

It seemed to me to be a very good slogan at the time of the 2016 election. I bet a lot of people thought, hey, it’s about time we all got on the train, not just some of us.

What happened? Did the train leave, and we all failed to get to the station on time?

But you know what’s worst of all – it’s only going to get worse.

70 odd days to go and we are no doubt going to find out every horrible detail about all of the candidates that are up for election.

It’s not about the good they might do, or the policies the country’s crying out for, or the fact they might be decent, honest, family people. Forget that, that doesn’t sell papers, it’s the dirty laundry we want to hear about, about them, their family, anyone who can be trashed in a public forum without any filter.

Is it possible not to cast a vote, simply because you hate the lot of them?

Is there a middle line, an independent, someone who has no axe to grind, someone who doesn’t spew hate with every word they utter?

Or would it perhaps a better idea is to vote for ‘none of the above’, even if you have to write that on the ballot yourself and tick that box.

‘None of the above”…

Now, where have I heard that before?