A year service in the RAAF

We are every excited.Our youngest grandson is continuing family tradition.
He was accepted, after fierce competition, for a year in the RAAF, under a new trial program the Australian armed forces have instituted for high school graduates.
What the national statistics are I do not know, but here in Qld one in every twenty-three appliances passed the tests.

The chosen youngsters are already in camp undergoing a 5 weeks basic military training.
By the end of this training they will be stationed, few months at a time, in a couple of other camps where they will be introduced to some aspects of their chosen force, and will undertake courses leading to officer ranking.
At the end of the year they will be able to choose if they want to stay in the forces or return to civil life.

The importance of this program, from our family point of view, cannot be underestimated. We feel that most of today’s youngsters are missing out on the normal difficulties, adversities and challenges, which bring to self-fulfilment and self-worthiness.

It is true that there are those who look for and find challenges, but these are in a minority.
We see the disturbing growing phenomenon of needless vandalism, over indulgence in alcohol, and even worse, the use of drug as well as suicide, which comes, in many cases, out of boredom.
We see young and beautiful human specimens who lack a good reason for living; and it hurts.

I do not by any stretch of the imagination think that the armed forces are the answer to every ill in society, but it is a step in the right direction. The feedbacks we are receiving are very positive; our grandson loves the challenges he is facing and the friendships he has already made.

I am well aware that a lot depends on the individual, and that may be, not all of them will make it. BUT, and it is a BIG BUT - these youngsters are getting the chance, and a jumping-board that will kick start them into self awareness and realization that life has something to offer, something to look forwards to.

I cannot but applaud the Australian government and its Forces for instituting this wonderful program.

Renate
http://www.promisedland-renate.com

Home coming

It all started when I asked my son for my list of ‘Favourites’ ‘I have no keys to enter your home’ he said ‘You have’ I replied. ‘Dad took them and did not return them.’ He wrote. ‘Dad says he returned them’ ‘But I don’t have them’ ‘Gerry, he says he has no keys and I need my list...' Gerry packs a set for him and mails it out express. He gets the keys. ‘The keys don’t fit.’ He says. We are surprised, but what can we do? We send him our second set. He gets into the house and I get my list. The time has come to return home, and we are left with a single key, which may or may not work. It does, and we sigh with relief. We connect the water the electricity, the dishwasher… but the dishwasher is already connected … funny… did we forget to disconnect it? Not likely… and what are those mouldy dishes doing in it? We wonder… We lift the shutters – three are stuck. Gerry sighs; he hates this job; but it is his and he has to do it. We look for keys to unlock the windows that are still locked. Our son and co opened some to air the house. They also dusted and swept floors, AND, you would not believe it, the fridge is full with foods we like, and it is beautifully arranged. We smack our lips and lift the phone to thank our daughter in law, but the phone is dead. It’s not reconnected as yet. We resort to the mobile – the mobile is empty. We recharge and dial the number, ‘You have only $5.90 left, add more money ‘ a voice tells me. ;It’s okay, but give us a break, we just arrived…' We cannot find the keys to the windows. We click the remote to open the car door. The remote decided to quit. We use the key. Gerry reconnects the car’s battery- the battery is empty. We call our on road insurance. They come with new battery; and we buy it. We drive to our son’s place. It’s 2 minutes away from us. They say they don’t have any of our keys, but there is a heap of keys we can look through. We do. We find some, but none for the windows. We used to have a big bunch of them, as well as some spare keys for the car and another remote, but there are none. Gerry buys new locks and replaces every one of them. We get a new remote for the car. It has very high-pitched sounds, and printed instruction too small to read. Some doorknobs decided to fall off continuously. We take the opportunity, and Gerry changes them all with handles. Poor Gerry, he does it all without saying a word, but I know he rather do something else. I put my computer on. A female voice is telling me something repeatedly, but I cannot decipher it. I call Gerry, ‘What is she saying?’ ‘It’s something about the CPU I think.’ O’ yes. The CPU. It decided to quit as well. We need a new computer. But before we look into that, we need to reconnect our phone and the Internet. That should take just a minute or two. Right? Wrong. The phone company signs us on an electronic voice activated contract. We cannot read the fine print on it, but it’s okay; we need the phone and the choice is, in any event, much of a muchness. ‘It’ll take a day to connect’ they say, and we have no problems with that. We ask for Internet connection and sign another electronic voice activated contract. ‘Would you like ‘cable’? A voice asks. ‘It’s more reliable’ Would we like ‘Cable’? We would love cable. We didn’t know we could get it in our area. They must have put it in… ‘It will cost you $60.00 for the technician to come and set it up. You must have a technician. He will come within ten day.' 'Why ten days?' We ask. 'Overseas you get it within a couple of days.' '‘This is not overseas, this is Australia.’ we are told… A couple of days pass and there is no phone. We phone with our mobile, press all the required buttons, and after about tem minutes, we are asked to sign an electronic contact. I object, ‘I did it already.’ I say. ‘O’ you did?’ ‘Yes. I did.’ ‘Okay, All will be fine.’ Another day passes, and it’s not fine.Gerry phones again on the mobile. This time he goes direct to ‘sales’. There is never any problem in getting through to ‘sales’. ‘Sales’ tells him we have been assigned a wrong number; No wonder we can’t use the phone... In the meantime we order a new computer with all the jazz I want, and I ask to have my old hard transferred into it. It will take a week to get it, but never mind. We don’t have a phone or the Internet, so we can wait for this one as well. We get the computer, but there are several things wrong with it, and it goes back and forth and back and forth till it’s right. Ten days are gone and no technician. We phone and press all the required buttons again. The man says, ‘I‘ll book it for you’ ‘Was it not booked before?’ I get no reply... ‘and it will take another two weeks before we get connected.’ I object, but I can do nothing about it. We try to complain, but they have closed ranks. Three weeks pass. The technician phones, ‘I am at 27 O’Conner Street, but you are not there!’ No wonder we are not there. We do not live at that address. We give him the correct address and he says, ‘Phone the company and ask them to make a new order with the correct address and give you the number, so I’ll have it when I arrive.’ ‘Will do’ I say. I phone the company. Press all the buttons as required and explain the problem. ‘The computers are down and we can do nothing for you. We expect them to be down for most of the day.’ The technician arrives. I tell him, ‘their computers are down and they can do nothing about it.' He says, ‘Sorry I can’t do a thing without a new order.You will have to arrange for a new time’ I phone every couple of hours.Press all the buttons.The computers are down.Nothing can be done… It’s 4.30pm the computers are back on line.Someone obliges me and transfers me to ‘activation’. I get the wrong connection. I put the receiver down, redial and press all the required buttons, ‘Can you transfer me to activation please?’ 'Why do you want ‘Activation’?’ ‘I was told to go there’ I hear a chuckle… I get to Activation.The man tells me, ‘I can see you asked for cable’ ‘Yes I did’ ‘There is no cable in your area, that’s why the technician got the wrong address.’ ‘I was offered cable’…. ‘I can arrange ADSL for you.No problems there.’ ‘How long will that take?’ ‘A week to ten days” ‘I can’t wait another week. I have no Internet for three weeks already.’ I say ‘If you go to one of our shops you can arrange everything there and be connected in two to three days.' We get to the shop five minute before it closes.We fill in all the papers and sign at the bottom. ‘How long will it take to get connect?’ 'It will take about a week to ten days…’ I got the computer working okay, but the printer refuses to connect. It’s too old. Never mind. Will need a new one. We get a combination one Gerry fell in love with.It’s a printer/scanner/ phone / fax / answering machine/ you name it…it even makes you breakfast – really? … AND, it comes with a university course attached… Don’t laugh… Now I need to reinstall all my programs and get all my material back into my semi new computer: Docs, photos, paintings and writings etc AND, it’s a good opportunity to get them reorganized. I didn’t organize any for years, and, mind you, I’m still at it… Our telly is snowing badly. We can’t see a thing. Not that there is something to see, but one does like to click the remote. Good finger exercise and very relaxing… We buy a new telly. Delivery in three to four days. We can pick the date. We do. In the meantime, we call the antenna man. He fixes it. The old TV comes to life. Now we have a spare one… Our son says, 'I’ll have this one and give you our old one. It’s smaller and you can find a place for it.' We put his old one in a corner of the dinning room, as we don’t know what to do with it. One telly is more than enough for the two of us. The new one is beautiful. Love the clear larger screen. However, the programs are the same.What a shame…Gerry sits on the coach clicking the remote; I stand there with some snacks, ‘Gerry, Did you spill something? The floor is wet.’ ‘No. Nothing was spilled.’ I shrug my shoulders and sit down. A day passes. Gerry is in the family room and it’s raining indoors. He lift his head – the ceiling is wet and sagging… I meet a neighbour, ‘Welcome home. Did you have good vacation?’ ‘What vacation?Can’t remember any.’ ‘How do you enjoying being back home?’ ' Don’t know; I didn’t have the time to think about it as yet….' The festive season is here and I wish you all the best for the coming twelve months. Enjoy every day of your life, so that you can make up for days like these. Renate Artist, poet and the Author of From the Promised Land to the Lucky Country http://www.promisedland-renate.com

Animal stories

We have arrived home, after travelling from one end of the world to the other, to find our electronic world in disarray. Most our instruments, including my computer, said their last good bye, and we are still in the process of getting it all sorted out. It has taken us three days to get our phone reconnected and it will take another week to get our broadband going, if we are lucky. So today’s posting comes to you through my son’s computer. Thank you Gill, for letting me use your facility. *** Tara, our three quarter, short hair Alsatian dog has gone off her rockers, barking her head off; disturbing our sleep. ‘Shut up Tara’ we shout, but Tara doesn’t listen. Her bark fierce and persistent and we are persistent in requiring her to stop; but nothing helps. Come morning, we enter our clinic building which is adjacent to our home via a joint carport, and lo and behold – we had a burglar on the premises! However, nothing was stolen. On the contrary, we gained some goods! You would not believe it; the thief came through the window, left his tools - and ran out through the front door… Tara, made him think again… We call the police and two of them come, dressed like T.V. detectives: long coats, hats and sunglasses. They write a report, take the burglar’s tools with them and say, More than checking for fingerprints, there is little we can do. We’ll return the tools to you once we finish with them; if not claimed. We never see the tools again, neither the police, and are wondering: were the tools ever claimed? … *** We have three elongated tomatoes growing on our one and only lonely tomato plant, and we are looking forward to using them in our salad once fully ripen. However, an uninvited visitor thinks differently, and is having them right now. As I look out the kitchen window I see one of these tomatoes on the lawn, with a third eaten away. The cut is neat and clean. “Gerry,” I say, “who can this one be? And why leave so much behind?” We wait a day, and the second third is eaten with a neat and clean cut. On the third, it‘s all gone. As no waste occurred, we are happy to leave the two other tomatoes on the vine and see what comes next. The following days bring the same pattern, and within six days the other two tomatoes are gone. In the meantime, our visitor feels secure enough to come to our glass door and look inside and, it is a lizard: A lovely young one of about 60cm long of which less than half is body and the rest - tail. It has a diamond shaped head and ordinary lizard colours. After a couple of more visits and no more tomatoes in sight, our lizard left us for redder pastures… *** Our W.A Women – pilots’ club has a visitor who lives on a farm in West South Africa, and I am hosting her for the day. As we talk, she tells me the following story: “Next to my farm,” she says, “a road crew is putting down a military type role-out wire road. Day after day, the crew rolls out the road, and every morning - the road is gone without a trace. After few days and getting sick of it, they decide to ambush the area.” “And what do you think has happened? Can you guess”? She asks me with a knowing smile on her face. I shrug my shoulders and shake my head, “I have no idea,” I reply “Well, Hiding behind the trees they see a group of elephants watching them work. When the day’s work is done, and they are gone, the elephants come out of their hiding, roll up the road and carry it away. Come morning, the elephants return, watching from their hiding place looking to see the people’s reaction… …and, who says animals have no sense of humour?… *** Did you ever see a pink dolphin? This dolphin is an albino. Isn’t it beautiful? If you want to read more about it, here is the link – http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/pinkdolphin.asp *** If you have some similar animal stories, do share them with me. Once I have another bunch of them, I will post them. Renate Artist, poet and the Author of ‘From the Promised Land to the lucky Country”

Crows

We live in a tourist area named “The City of the Gold Coast”, which is about 1000km north of Sydney along the Pacific shore, in the state of QLD.Like most Australians, we have a private home with a garden around it.

Prior to development the area was a ‘fill’ area, for unwanted building materials and other wastes, which made it an ideal home for crows.

Although urbanized for years already, the crows are still here and we still wake up each morning to the sad sound of their good morning greetings.

Our crows are black as black can be, and fairly large; more like ravens I suppose. In contrast to European crows, they don’t jump, but walk, and they love eating fruit.

We have some passionfruit vines on the side fence, in an area that is separated from the back lawn by a corrugated metal fence. From time to time, empty passionfruit shells appear on that lawn with only a single piercing on them.

For months we wondered how come they are there, and who is the culprit. We thought, may be it’s the large fruit bats we have who eat the lycee off our tree; so we hung some old CDs on the vines to twinkle in the night with the street lights to keep them away; but with no results. The empty shells continued to turn up on the back lawn!

One day we caught them. The crows, I mean. Here they were, sneaking very very quietly, picking the fruit off the vine, and taking it to the back lawn, poking them with their beaks, and sucking the juicy fruit out!

What are we to do? We had no idea, so we succumbed. We decided that nature is getting its way, and all we have to do is to be quicker than the crows in getting the fruit onto our dining table.

In Israel, we are staying in an area, which is also a tourist area. Here, along the Mediterranean Sea, they have the most beautiful promenade you can imagine.

And here, the local crows make sure to spoil the promenade with their most unhygienic eating habits.

Every morning, when we are out for our morning walk, we see them emptying the cover-less rubbish bins from all their previous night leftovers, feasting to their heart content and leaving an unbelievable mess around.

These crows are very different in looks and in behaviour. They are not just black. Their wing, tail and head are black but their body is faun to light brown. Some of them have also a black bib in the front.

They also do not just walk or just hop.They do both; walking and hoping. They walk when they have time to enjoy their surrounds, hop when they are in a hurry, and before a flight lift off.You can see them walk, then, start hoping, then, comes the lift off.

Crows have, for some reason, got an eerie attitude developed towards them throughout the ages. I think it is because of their sad crying type of voice. However, when you bother to look at them and observe them, they are a very beautiful bird with a deep and rich colour and a lovely shape.

Renate

Artist, poet & the Author of

From the Promised Land to the Lucky Country

http://www.promisedland-renate.com/

Rain at last

Rain! We have rain at long last and everyone is ecstatic. It is the second day already and it does not seem as if it’s going to stop. Who knows, perhaps we will even get some floods as well? If we do, all this water will unfortunately be lost, as we have no dams where the floods usually occur. However, we hope that the dames we do have –will get some of the water.

In the meantime, the plants are celebrating. They have lifted their heads and leaves have turned to green. Our farmers are celebrating as well, as many of them were already at the verge of bankruptcy, and fruit and vegetable price were going to hit the roof!

All in all, excellent news for all concern.

Renate
Artist, poet & the Author of
 From the Promised Land to the Lucky Country  

http://www.promisedland-renate.com/

Drought - Australia

Hi to all,

Firstly, I would like to thank all of you for reading my blog. I have noticed that several of you are living in Japan - The land of the Rising Sun - and I hope you are enjoying what you read. Please do not hesitate to comment, as I love you to participate.

Australia is at the moment experiencing its 6^th drought year, and our farmers are having a hard time.The land is as dry as can be and water restrictions are everywhere. However, much of the difficulties come, from what I can see, from bad water management that goes back to the time white man first landed in this vast land.

White man has brought with it animals and agriculture foreign to this land, cleared the land of its trees, and instituted monoculture agriculture of annual crops.These inturn, produced vast areas of extended dessert, like the dustbowls of the USA, and in some salt levels rose to render the land unusable.

With much of the crops going to other lands, Australia has/is in fact, exporting much of its water and, there has been little attention given to harnessing water resources.In the area we living in, for example, there are quite often heavy dark clouds hanging overhead, but there is no cloud seeding; and in years where floods are abound, with farm animal up to their necks in water, there are no dams to collect that abundance.

Drought - Australia

In marginal land
no rain in site
the ground is cracked
like shattered glass

Salt has risen
no plant in sight
cattle and sheep
just wander about

They wonder perhaps
a blade of grass -
will stand up right
or semblance of wet
will denote a site

We uprooted the trees
lay waste the terrain
we destroyed all life
in this our land

© Renate 6.4.06

Renate
Artist, poet & the Author of
 From the Promised Land to the Lucky Country  

http://www.promisedland-renate.com/

The Promised Land & The Gold Coast

Joan’s comment on the subject of ‘what does "The Promised Land” mean to you’ gives a very personal slant to it:

Are you happy where you live?

Are you satisfied with your life, the way it goes?

Joan seems to have found her place, and it is in the Australian City of the Gold Coast.

The City of the Gold Coast, where I live as well, is about 1000km north of Sydney & about 80 km from Brisbane. It is built along the Pacific shores and covers about 57 km of some of the most beautiful white sand beaches in the world. Naturally, it has become a tourist destination to many who love the ocean, the surfing, the bright sum and the not too hot a climate.

The variety in the landscape which is flat, undulating, or hilly with lots of national parks, give us places to visit and picnic and more.

In the last few years the city has developed culturally as well, and the local activities in this field and in the spots are very wide.

The city has about half a million permanent residents, and is one of the fastest growing cities in Australia. Most of us live in private homes built along artificial channels.

With the large number of visitors, we have at all time over a million people here and some of the infrastructure is far from satisfactory, mainly in the supply of water. We have therefore, the last few years, water restriction which is getting more and more severe.

Renate Artist, poet & the Author of

From the Promised Land to the Lucky Country