Today I had to go and pick up our washing from the laundry.

I thought there had been some mistake on the receipt.

(It was only a weeks washing)

We had all our clothes washed, ironed, folded and wrapped in plastic.

I checked the receipt with the young lass at the laundry and apparently it was correct, it was…..

$1.50

By the way we are holidaying in Bali!

I felt bad as upon arrival I was wearing a new shirt and I asked the girl to iron it for me which she did straight way (I was meeting my wife for dinner and trying to impress!), she refused payment to the point of following me out the store with the extra money I had given her for ironing my shirt…. it was 0.20 cents!  I had to leave it on the counter and run away.

I ran for two reasons.  I felt bad that all our laundry for a week had been done for $1.50 and bad that I ever….. read that ever….. complained about……. well just about anything.

THE FEDERAL BUDGET came out today and I read about it on Adelaide Now after I picked up my laundry.  I saw the figures being quoted about what we were spending, what people were getting and what people were missing out on.

I saw we are cutting our aid to Indonesia.  Why!  Well not because the laundry costs are too high!

I love my blog and love that it is about me (remember it is ALL about me!) but I keep finding that we are disappointing me.  Yes, we the people, and yes, we, me!

I am writing more and more about how I am disappointed in…… well, humanity!

Our Federal Budget is not really about anything.  It is about Child Care being $100 dollars an hour for working Mums and unemployment for our kids being their fault.  It is about old men (who are not really that old) getting their laundry done and not knowing who does it let alone how much it costs.  It is about the maintenance of a 5 million dollars house (why would you ‘need’ that) and people dying on our roads due to lack of maintenance.

It is about millions of dollars when 15 thousand rupiah will get a weeks washing done.

It is about knowing your future by the friends you keep.

Tomorrow I am going to dump lunch at the lodge and have a nasi goering with the laundry girl…. my shout!

I was driving interstate with my wife the other day and we both have a tendancy to chat on our trips together – actually it is one of the best parts.

We both only commented the other day that we are ‘good’ at going away on holidays and as we drive or fly further away we experience what my old mate Des used to describe as he would drive away on holidays with our mate Puck –  “It’s all back there mate, I can feel it all dropping away.”

Often during these trips (and my wife advises me just as regularly in day to day life) I have a tendency to talk a lot and tell stories.  Now the art of story telling, for men anyway, is that the general theme of the story must remain the same but the details are what we would describe as ‘flexible.’  Of course with all stories they are modifiable to any particular audiences, from your children to your grandmothers’ knitting group.

So we were travelling and my wife started to tell a story.  She immediately go into the detail and background.  Our story telling is often like that old Ronny Corbett skit where he would sit in a lounge chair tell a joke but, go off on so many tangents that telling one simple joke would take about 15 minutes – I suppose a lot like my blog posts!  So my wife started to get all animated about this story and I started to recount to her all the details of the story and what it meant to her.  Yes, it was one of those stories she had told me 10 or maybe 20 times before and I think I am at the stage where at a pinch I could retell it and you’d think it happened to me – come to think of it I may have already actually done that.

My wife didn’t seem at all disappointed that I knew the story or that she had told me a dozen times.  She did point out that I actually retell stories to her much more than she does to me but she is nice enough not to point it out to me until I suddenly look over at her and say “I’ve told you this before haven’t I?”

It was then that we had a chat about our story telling and why we do it.  In fact why do we all like stories so much.  If you don’t think that’s true, think about the times you get together with old mates and start talking about the ‘glory days’ – often everybody is animated and it is probably hard to get a word in edgeways.

My wife said to me that it was the telling of the story that gave you back the feelings of the memory.  Of course she was right (aren’t our wives always!).

I do tell stories because I like to entertain people and make them laugh if I can.  But, I also tell stories for me.  They are usually moments in my life which were high on emotion, adventure, drama, danger, even love; or the best of all laughter.  By telling the stories we get to have that moment again.

Of course I am talking about ‘good’ moments not perhaps the ones that haunt us (or people we know) through PTSD or stress – those stories I think and hope will fade and remain in the past.  As Master Bra’Tac said to Teal’c (Sorry these are characters from a science fiction TV series called Stargate – I love science fiction stories!)

“Draw from your past, but do not let your past draw from you”

So, I think I’ll keep telling stories – I will draw from my past and hopefully re-live those moments that have made me who I am; of course modified for appropriate humour and embellished for maximum entertainment.  I still intend to be an interested grandfather, but there is nothing wrong with being interesting as well.

Sorry, that there are no graphics or pictures with this post, but I am away on holidays and I left it all back there, it just all dropped away!

My wife and I are going to Indonesian classes.

Yes, it is a very mid life crisis thing to learn a new language but, it is better than learning and instrument (everyone has to listen to you practice) and it is most definitely better than buying a sports car!

We are doing it at the Adelaide WEA and our instructor is a wonderful Indonesian man called Budi.  (There’s a great little video about him coming and living in Australia at YouTube)

He not only teaches us the language but teaches us about the culture, his culture, and where sometimes we just don’t quite line up.  I did a foundation course with Budi before setting off on this year long course.  One of the things that stuck in my head about the difference in culture was that he said he rarely told his children or relatives, including his Mum and Dad that he loved them.  He most certainly didn’t do it every time he said goodbye or at the end of every phone call.  He said he didn’t need to because they knew he loved them and they knew because of the way he treated them, respected them and behaved as a man respecting their values and the values of the family.

In our last lesson we were learning about terms of address, similar to our Sir, Madam, Mister and Miss etc.  The must common term we were using as a sign of respect was ‘Anda’ which was probably best equated to English as Mr/Mrs/Sir/Madam.   We were also learning about telling people about ourselves where we would use the word ‘saya’ meaning ‘I’.

Someone in the class asked Budi about the capitalisation of the words, does Anda always have a capital ‘A’ and does saya always have a lower case ‘s’ as that is how Budi had been writing it on the whiteboard.  He explained it like this:

“In Australia “I” is always in capitals as the centre of the Universe is I or me – in Indonesian culture the priority is the other person,  Anda,  or You.  So in Indonesia saya (I / Me) has a small ‘s’ and is always secondary to Anda (You) which has a capital ‘A’.

There was some nervous laughter in the class, but there was also a bit of a realisation that ‘I’ is the predominant focus, the capitalised word, in our culture.

I wonder how my day would go if I just, even for one day, decided that everyone else in MY word was more important than me;  that I would stop telling everyone I loved them and show them instead, that I would stop being the centre of the Universe.

I think we can all remember the ‘Fire Drills’ we had a school – do they still have them?

And if you are working in any modern office where everyone is allergic to risk (other than in board meetings where they talk about risking other peoples money) and every month or so there is an ‘evacuation practice’ in case of an emergency in the future.  Gotta love the volunteer Office Fire Warden – you know who they are, they also run the social club and coffee fund (and organise the cake and morning teas for birthdays – kill me!)

Also, there would be few among us who don’t know where the exits are on a plane and how to put on a life jacket – which always troubles me that we are supplied with and instructed how to put on a life jacket in a plane – wouldn’t a parachute be a better idea?

So, we all know how to evacuate and what to do in a fire.

It’s also a bit of a truism that we all have a little plan in our heads what we would grab.  I think most of us would get the kids first, then the pets and then the photo albums (or now days the hard drive with all the digital photos on it).

Why?

The reason I am asking is that we spend all of our lives working our guts out, working long hours, saving, going into debt, to get all the luxuries in our life – yet, we grab the photo albums.

Shouldn’t we grab the new flat screen TV, the iPad, the Thermomix and the Dyson Vacuum?  We must grab them because, they are the things that we have been working for: they are the things we have been missing our family time for, they are the things we have worked overtime for, they are the things we missed our kids concert for, theya re the thing that cause the reasons we didn’t visit Mum and Dad, theya re the things that we tell ourselves are important to make us happy.

But, no, we grab the photo albums!!!

So, what is wrong with this picture (no pun intended on the photo albums reference).

What is wrong, is it perhaps takes a fire for us to realise what we are really working for; what we would leave behind, what we would take, what we are working for.

We’d leave the albums for the pets.
We’d leave the pets for the kids.
We’d stay ourselves to save the kids.

Sometimes after fires we see on the news people standing around the ashes of their homes crying.  What are they crying for?  Their plasma TVs, their photo albums or just the plain fact that they are alive.

I have decided that if my house catches fire, or if that plane goes down (other than wishing my life jacket was a parachute!) I am not going to worry about what I have to take with me.  What I have to grab at the last minute, or what is most important to me.  They are all just things – the stuff of real value I already have with me, everyday.

Perhaps we should all have a personal ‘fire drill’ and work out an evacuation plan to decide what are the important things worth saving – perhaps it really is ourselves, our kids, our Mum and Dad – okay, we’ll take the cat I hate as well.

Before any evacuation find yourself on the map and work out which way to go.

The fire hasn’t started yet – it might only be a little spark.  It is now – you are still here.