A few disassociated rambles.

A few observations I wanted to put forward with no real context.

On Australian Infrastructure

Australia's headline exports seem to be resources, agriculture, tourism and education. It's been an open secret that international education is a proxy for skilled migration. So two of these seem to hinge on Australian quality of life.

So why don't we spend more on infrastructure?

On cheap imported goods from China (and India, SE Asia, South America etc.)

We complain about cheap manufacturing jobs travelling overseas to places with substandard quality. I suspect it's quite unfair actually. The economic theory is that the country that is the best at doing something will end up doing a lot of it.

It's clear that in rich countries such as Australia, wages are high enough that it would be impractical to compete on cost (unless there was some kind of niche, but niches quickly get filled nowadays!).

So the system is set up so that the poor people get the jobs. What's wrong with that? (Also, it helps that Australia has a substantial safety net for unemployed workers, and also is providing a lot of raw material to said poorer countries, so that helps complete the cycle a bit.)

On Paul Keating's arrogance

Those of you with long memories might recall the 1991 Australian recession. Our then Treasurer and later Prime Minister, Paul Keating, with trademark brashness and arrogence, referred to it as "the recession we had to have". He then proceeded to come bitterly close to losing the next election.

Having said that, we actually haven't had a recession since. We escaped the Asian Economic Crisis in the late '90s, and missed a technical recession in the Global Financial Crisis in '08/09. (We call it global, but it's really led by the Western nations in Europe and North America.)

So our last recession is the one we had to have. Maybe Keating was right.

But then again, who knows what else tomorrow will bring?

The death of blogs

It's a bit sad how blogs all of a sudden are all a bit uncool. The long-form communication tool has gone away, replaced by the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
It's been a long trend, casualisation of communications such as email (those funny address lines you learn put on the upper right of snail-mail letters seem so quaint nowadays). What I worry about is how it will affect the way we think.
I believe the quick, cliche-driven mass communication that has been forced on us by the social media forces us to think like tabloid subeditors, sacrificing deep and informed opinion into something that looks good in 140 characters or less.
Don't get me wrong, there is still a place for the art of compressed thought, I have a Twitter account myself and use it reasonably often. It its truly an art getting within that limit. But to live a life where all thoughts subconsciously get compressed into some short status update strikes me a little restrictive, like trying to volunteer not to use the letter E on a sentence filled with then
Well, I guess I've had some responsibility for this slide, having not posted anything I on the blog for a while. But hey, you gotta start somewhere!

Seat of Power

Finished reading Hugh Mackay's "What Makes Us Tick?" Very interesting book, recommended reading for anyone who is interested in why we (and the people around us) do the things we do. I'm not going to do a full review of the book right at this moment, but there was one section which I found interesting.

One of Hugh's ten "things that drive us" is the desire for My Place. Not necessarily a home, it could be a favourite couch, a park bench, or the sense of power in the driver's seat of a car.

Ding!

That was where I connected. Maybe it's just one of my many quirks, but one of my favourite time-wasting pastimes when I'm all alone, with nothing to do (i.e. working away from home!) is driving aimlessly around the Australian countryside. I'm not even actually going anywhere. Today I drove the 1.5 hours to Newcastle and back. Oh, and I had a pie.

Now I have a sore back from sitting in a car seat for hours on end.

Wake up!

So, the old "I haven't been blogging for a long time" blog post. Just so you guys know, I'm now in Taree, NSW, about 3 hours' drive north of Sydney, on another water project. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that anywhere north of Sydney and south of Brisbane has enormous natural beauty and would heartily recommend a visit to anyone who's in earshot.

Anyway, why restart now? One because Brian pestered me to last Saturday when we met up over Eugene's wedding. Two, because I'm bored. Three, because I'm doing my tax and trying to resolve to manage my records better and I'm trying to record everything.

Things I want to put on the record:

• Macaroni and pasta sauce make a great, easy, energy filled meal. As a rare food-hater, this is ideal, along with high-fibre breakfast cereal.
  
• NSW drivers seem to have it in for Victorian number plates. I'm driving a different car every couple of weeks (thanks, company!) and driving through Sydney with Victorian number plates gets a lot more stares than NSW number plates. (Racists.)
  
• The Internet is slow here! I've got on Virgin Mobile Australia's 3G network at my apartment in Old Bar. I don't think it's to do with the phone-to-base-station link, I think I'm just far enough from civilisation to get decent speeds.
  
• Compiling tax returns is painful. Here's hoping the government delivers on their tick-and-flick tax returns they promised at the last election.
  
• Talking about elections, I'm currently living in Rob Oakshott's electorate. But you can't blame me for the hung parliament - I didn't vote here!
  

And there you go. That's enough of a scattergun range of topics for a welcome-back post.

Saying goodbye

There is an unbelievable rush of emotion when I see the spirit disconnected from the body; when the mind disappears from the brain.

I have sat through funerals with a philosophical, serene, settled mindset. But when I see the open casket, the body that will never again contain the person, the face that no longer houses a soul, I can't help but cry.

117 on the road toll

Sorry to hear this morning that Samuel, a 17 year old international student who attends our church, died today from injuries from a hit-and-run incident last Saturday.

He was doing nothing more than waiting for a bus.

It might be easy to get angry at the driver, but we know that doesn't get us anywhere.

Just a reminder that life is short.

[This is a post I wrote on 11 May 2009. Since then, our church has farewelled Alice at the age of 27. It doesn't get much easier.]

Bible translations

I've read through the Bible in NIV before, and I'm working through it in the ESV version.

Here's the passage of 1 Samuel 25:2-3 in the two translations.

A certain man in Maon, who had property there at Carmel, was very wealthy. He
had a thousand goats and three thousand sheep, which he was shearing in Carmel.
His name was Nabal and his wife's name was Abigail. She was an intelligent and
beautiful woman, but her husband, a Calebite, was surly and mean in his
dealings. (NIV)

And there was a man in Maon whose business was in Carmel. The man was very rich; he had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats. He was shearing his sheep in Carmel. Now the name of the man was Nabal, and the name of his wife Abigail.
The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved;
he was a Calebite. (ESV)

I love this snippet for totally non-religious reasons.

First, it's wonderfully modern in that the bloke is a slobby idiot and the wife is the quiet brains behind the partnership.

Second, the ESV shows how wonderfully politically incorrect this passage was. Of course he was harsh and badly behaved, he was a Calebite!