REALITY SHOWS: of artifice, botoxed babes and voices that could cut glass.

 

Illustration courtesy of Gary Brookins politicalcartoons.com

All right, I know there are people out there who like reality television shows.  Good luck to them for having something on their sets to watch when there isn't a good comedy or drama scheduled.  I'm not one of them but I'm still fascinated by their appeal.

I first heard of reality television or its precursor, the infomercial, just over twenty years ago when I was holidaying with my mother in Port Douglas in Queensland.  This was a rare treat as we had never had a mother/daughter holiday before.  I was still reasonably attractive at that time, even a little 'glam', and my appearance drew the attention of a married couple who were sitting around the hotel pool one day.  We exchanged greetings and started chatting.  It turned out that they had something to do with producing shows for television, I can't quite remember in what capacity, and asked me if I'd heard of infomercials.  I had not and they went on to explain that these were a long form of advertising in the form of entertainment.  They said a lot more than that and more succinctly but that's the gist of it.  They went on to say that they thought that I'd make a good presenter on such a show.

Well most people would have said something sensible in response to this that might have landed them a job.  Not me, no.  I remember thinking to myself 'how ghastly' about the notion of such a show and, although I don't remember my exact reply, I'm sure it wasn't as enthusiastic as it should have been and they did not follow up with an offer of employment.  If I'd had a brain in my head at the time, I should have gushed about the idea.  I had, after all, been a model for things such as hotel brochures, newspaper advertisements and the like when I lived in Hong Kong.  I'd also appeared in television advertisements  when I moved to Perth.  Deep down, however, I did not like the idea of advertising as entertainment but I confess to being disappointed at the couple ignoring my disinterest and not offering some work.

For some years after that I waited for infomercials to make their appearance on television.  It took a while and I can't remember now which Australian made version of such a show came first that would fit the infomercial category, but I think it would be The Block.  I have to confess to never having watched it, but because it promotes the use of hardware and like materials I figure that it rates as an infomercial.  Even if it doesn't mention a product's brand name, it undoubtedly encourages people to renovate, which in turn sends them to their local hardware store.

The type of shows that followed it were not in any way what could be described as infomercials and I haven't heard that word again since the nineties.  Survivor and Big Brother followed and they weren't trying to sell anything.  In my mind the only thing these shows helped to sell were advertising slots for the stations that showed them.  What they also accomplished was to help television stations comply with the percentage of Australian content they were obliged to broadcast.

I can understand if you criticize me for writing about shows I haven't actually watched but I have watched as much of them as I could stand in the beginning except for Big Brother.  The commercials for Big Brother alone were enough to turn my stomach.  I was simply appalled such dross could make it to our screens and some of it was morally questionable to even the most open minds.  I've watched commercials for the most recent Big Brother and it seems to have lost the seedier aspect of the show but I'm still not going to watch it.

Most shows of this type now fall under the heading of reality television.  Shows such as Masterchef, Dancing with the Stars, Big Brother and Survivor fall into this category along with The Bachelor, Australia's Got Talent and The Voice.  The Block and Better Homes and Gardens probably would be considered what the couple in Port Douglas had in mind when they were planning to make infomercials.  While they are not classed as reality television but as lifestyle programs, to my mind the difference between the two is semantic.  Here is the blurb on one website for Better Homes and Gardens:

"With a total audience reach of over six million, Better Homes and Gardens is the country’s original and most successful multi-platform brand, combining a TV show, power-house print magazine, thriving digital and social platforms and dedicated e-commerce vertical, bhgshop.com.au."

So this is a show that is both entertaining and designed to sell products while the talent, survival and peeping Tom style shows such as Big Brother and The Bachelor are there solely for entertainment.  Well, some people's entertainment.  Okay I'm being derisive again but I do know plenty of people love these shows.  My son, his wife and mother-in-law do, at least Survivor and Masterchef.  A friend of mine in Sydney, with whom I was staying for a week, also made me sit through days of Australian Idol when it first aired.  I did have the privilege of watching Guy Sebastian win it.  I didn't mind it too much as Sebastian has a stunning voice and I was plugging for him to win.  I think I even voted but that was the end of my Australian Idol watching days when I returned to the safety of my reality show free watching home.

If anyone thinks reality shows aren't scripted, think again.  In my taxi driving days a few years ago I drove a couple early in the morning to the airport.  They had to be on the Big Brother set down south and they worked on the sets as I recall.  At the time the shows were live at Dreamworld but before the people who actually appeared on the show arrived and it went public, the couple informed me that other people rehearsed the scripted scenes.  So much for the reality component of the show.

When I watch advertisements for The Bachelor, The Voice or even Beauty and the Geek what I mostly catch sight of is people on the show feigning extraordinary surprise with their mouths wide open and their hands up to their cheeks at the antics of fellow contestants on the show.  With The Voice it is even more ridiculous as highly paid celebrity judges jump from their seats, arms akimbo in admiration at a contestant's talent.  It is so obviously over the top and designed for the audience that it is an insult to the intelligence.  Added to this, while some contestants may have admirable voices, they all seem to choose songs that push their volume to the limit and make them sound like a cat mating.  What happened to a bit of mellow crooning?  Do they have to flex their vocal chords to breaking point to prove they've got what it takes?  It is these feigned emotional responses and formulaic method of presenting songs that puts me right off watching the shows even if I ever toyed briefly with the idea of doing so.

I have recently seen advertisements, way too often I might add, for the latest series of The Bachelor.  In one I saw the bachelor sucking on the lips of three different women who were vying for his affection and that was in the one advertisement.  It just seemed unhygienic and how can people on these shows actually show natural emotion after they're placed in the ideal position, the lighting set up and then the cameras start to roll?  It's so fake it's mind boggling but apparently I'm a cynic.  Or perhaps viewers get a laugh out of it.  I suppose that makes it entertainment.

On a final note, and this applies probably only to me, I have a problem with the 'strine (Australian vernacular for those who don't know the expression) accent of some of the people on these shows.  I am Australian and, I believe, no snob.  I just hate the accent and hadn't heard a strong one until I met my future husband, his family and friends.  I must have lived in a pretty isolated community.  His family and friends assumed I was snooty, which I wasn't, but my voice apparently cast me as such.  It's a common Australian attitude I've discovered that the more roundly spoken are considered snobs.  It's known as the tall poppy syndrome and I can tell you that it's enough to make you a snob because you are judged when you are not, in fact, judging.

I do believe, though, that I have become a voice snob.  Before the seventies the Australian accent wasn't really heard on our televisions.  Our newsreaders were roundly spoken and enunciated clearly.  Then along came Bob Hawke and the Labor government after decades of a Liberal and more elitist government.  Bob Hawke did many great things but his voice sounded like a saw hacking through metal.  Bob promoted and financially supported the Arts and Australian television and cinema.  Also great, but there was a catch.  It had to reflect real Australia.  Unfortunately and for a time, it only tended to reflect what was then termed the working classes and most of them spoke with the heavy 'strine accent.

The Australian film industry at last had some money to churn out films that they tried to sell internationally but they had little success at first because the Australian accent and colloquialisms were too strong for the international moviegoers to understand.  Besides the actors talked too fast.  How to fix this problem?  The film makers then reverted to making period films set when Australia was younger and spoke with a more British accent.  Such gems as Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Man From Snowy River were the product of this and our films began to sell overseas.

How do I know this?  I studied Australian Film and Television as part of my Media and Communication degree.  There was even a period called the Ocker Period in Australian films, ocker being another term for the Australian accent.  These were the films made with the Australian vernacular that flopped.

Okay, that was a long side track.  The point I was going to make before going on it was that I hear too much of this vernacular on our reality shows.  Pretty women with botoxed foreheads, plumped up lips, tattooed eyebrows and voices that could cut glass.  Yes, I know other Australians probably couldn't care less but it makes me wince.  Have you noticed how many well known Australian actors have become internationally famous?  Yes there's Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and many others but when they appear in films in the USA or the UK they take on the accent of the country in which the film is set.  Only occasionally does our accent pop its head up and when it does, it can be quite appealing but not when everyone in the film has it.  Only Paul Hogan got away with it in Crocodile Dundee but that was because the whole film revolved around a very lovable Australian larrikin and his 'strine was part of the story.

Don't judge me too harshly.  I'm immensely proud of what Australia has achieved in its television and film industry.  I'm just terribly sad that it doesn't promote more rounded speech as much as it allows the heavier and less melodious accent run rampant.  I can live with both but I'm afraid Australian children only hear more articulate speech on shows that come from overseas and, frankly, I don't want them to sound American or copy variations of the British accent.  The Australian accent can be very pleasant when it's not over the top or the words all slur together when it's spoken too fast.

I doubt if I'll ever change my mind about reality television shows but enough people like them to keep the industry coming up with more and more of them.  It seems that, like Cricket, I just can't escape them.

END

 

 

 

 

FUSSY EATERS: the bane of a cook's existence.

 

I remember not being a particularly fussy eater as a child.  I believe the only problem with me was that I didn't eat much.  This may have been because I wasn't very well until I was about five years of age.  After my antrums were drained my health was restored but, judging from childhood photos, I remained a string bean.  Boarding school made me a fussier eater but hunger drove me to eat all but the most gross offerings.  These included beetroot and junket.  To this day I can't stand either.  I gave beetroot a good try when it was served with salad three days in a row at lunch.  I forced it down the first two but on the third I gagged too much and gave up.

I hadn't run into a fussy eater until my son came along.  As a baby he was just so easy care he was a dream and remained that way in all but one respect.  He was a fussy eater.  Once he went onto solids there was a repertoire of foods he would stick to and from which he would not vary.  These were: eggs, sausages, fish fingers, corn on the cob, salami, cheese, noodles, bananas, ice cream and spaghetti without sauce.  He did eat cereal with milk and may have eaten toast, I can't remember.  Straying outside these lines just wasn't worth it as he would just stubbornly refuse to open his mouth.  I told my doctor about it and he said that my son was getting enough protein and sustenance and not to worry.

I would give my son his dinner early when he was young and cook for my husband and I and we would eat later.  Eventually son developed a liking for my Spaghetti Bolognese, a passion he retains to this day now he and his wife make it.  We lived in Hong Kong when he was between the ages of two and five and a half.  We would take him with us to restaurants and one of my favourite memories is of watching him eat a bowl of noodles with chopsticks.  His head would be just above table height and he would use two hands to stick the chopsticks into the bowl then bring the sticks together and grip them in one hand, raise them up high with their clump of noodles, bend his head to the side and then lower the noodles into his mouth.  He enjoyed doing this and didn't want help.  To me it remains a sign of his tremendous self reliance that has endured and I admire to this day.

I remember being five years old and having breakfast with my parents.  My mother, father and I would sit at the dining table and eat poached eggs on toast.  I used to have cloudy apple juice to drink with mine.  I would watch fascinated as Dad would cut the egg that sat atop his toast into nine squares by slicing two lines one way and another two the other way.  This left the nice, soft, runny yolk sitting on the middle square and that was the best bit.  He always did it this way and for years I did too.  Over time, however, I realised that to get some yolk with the other parts of the egg I had to be less tidy and after that I carved mine up so I can get some in every mouth full but I am still nostalgic for Dad's method.

As I grew older my father would become very frustrated watching me eat a roast dinner accompanied by vegetables.  Dad would put meat with gravy on his fork, add potato, pumpkin or whatever and then squeeze some peas on it as well.  I ate everything separately.  One night he took my fork over and made a compilation and asked me to try it.  I did and went straight back to eating everything separately.  Mum told him not to worry.  Eventually I ate the way of adults.  It all comes around in the end.

This brings me back to son.  There is something particularly galling about trying to encourage your teenage child to try some salad with dinner.  Once he began to eat the same meals as we did, I would put out salad with certain dishes like spaghetti or steaks and urge him to try.  I gave up pretty quickly and the salad remained untouched by him for years until one day when he was about fifteen.  We were eating and, all of a sudden, son puts some salad on his plate and, lo and behold, begins to actually eat it.  I gazed at him in wonder and said, "And when did you start to eat salad?"

"Oh, I tried it at a so and so's place," he replied.  I can't remember his friend's name now, hence the 'so and so'.  I was pleased I suppose, but also a bit miffed.  What had so and so's mother or father done to make salad so appealing?  My thought is, however, that it wasn't the appealing look of the salad but the fact that another teenage boy was eating it.  I think that was why he deigned to try it or was shamed into it and then discovered that he liked it.

The worst experience his father and I had making him eat was on our return journey from living in Hong Kong when he was five and a half.  We arrived in Perth, Western Australia on a weekend.  Now Perth was a bit backward about opening anything on weekends and that meant we had to rely totally on the kitchen of our upmarket hotel to feed us.  I think the chef was deeply insulted at having to create dishes for our son that were to be delivered to our room.  In fact we didn't want him to create anything.  When we ordered an apple and some cheese that's all we wanted but, not only did it take an hour but what arrived was a cored apple with cheese grilled in the centre.  Guess who wouldn't touch it?  We sent a message: simple please, no embellishments.  Next time we ordered a bowl of spaghetti noodles.  Please don't add anything.  Either the chef was brain dead or toying with us.  He melted butter over it and then ground fresh parsley on the top.  Again son starved as he wouldn't touch it.  I think he survived on milk the entire weekend.  There was simply not a shop open where we could buy him anything.

I also spent years trying to get him to spell properly.  You know how parents have to go through the spelling exercise at night with their children on the words they are learning that week.  This went on into high school and, brilliant as son was in most subjects, his spelling was never perfect until year four of high school and then suddenly it was.  I will add here that I was a brilliant speller from the get go.  Son, however, was like a chrysalis in regard to things such as food and spelling.  At some stage he just emerged from the pupa and did it properly.  Actually I think he just made the decision to do so and before that happened he just went with the flow.

Having a child is like being handed a self drive car that comes with absolutely no instructions and is designed to be self autonomous and take no passengers.  First you have to figure out what fuel it takes, and it spits quite a few types out, then you must maintain it until it can start its own motor and begin to steer itself.  Having then put your heart and soul into looking after it until it reaches self sufficiency, you then watch it putt putt off into the distance and hope it comes back to visit.

Of course it's not just children that sometimes prove difficult to feed.  My ex husband had a grandfather who used to demand a roast lamb dinner every night of his married life from his long suffering wife.  Apparently he put her in a mental home for a few years but she eventually returned home.  He was eccentric and my guess is that he had driven her to a nervous breakdown.  It's not always the nuts who end up in the nut house.

I live with a Polish man and have for many years.  He is lovely in so many ways and so utterly perverse in others.  So many meals I used to make are now off the menu as he simply refuses to eat them.  I ask him what his ex wife used to cook and tell him to get the recipes.  But it's not just that.  In his world and his past he could open the refrigerator door and find all manner of goodies to eat.  You know, pre-cooked meals and so forth as well as smoked meats, sausages and cheeses.  It never occurs to him that food goes off and also that it costs money.  My fridge always has the necessities but I'm not going to keep it fully stocked with different meals to fancy someone's hunger pangs at any hour of the day or night.  When I dare to ask him in the morning what he wants for dinner so I can get something out of the freezer to cook he grumbles.  I then tell him that he's lucky he doesn't have to go out and hunt for something to bring back to cook.

As for Polish food, some is good and a lot of it is not.  I recall a meal at his friend's house that began with an entree made up of a boiled egg around which was wrapped a herring, both of which sat on a potato, carrot and pea salad in mayonnaise.  As for Bigos, well it's basically a hunting stew that, in the past, you would keep adding to as time went by.  Modern versions have smoked sausages, pork and I honestly don't know what else but it always tastes distinctly suspect to me.  My partner will bring things home from his ex's house that she has kindly cooked.  We all get on famously.  I love her pirozhki and some of her desserts but some things I leave to him to consume and there is always so much.

He also loathes lamb.  I think they used to get mutton in Poland that wasn't very good when he was growing up and nothing will make him eat it.  There is also one other thing I simply can't get him to try and that is a prawn.  I don't much like fish but I love crustaceans.  A prawn does not taste like fish but he just says they are the cockroach of the deep and won't touch them.  I love lobster too but when I realise some are boiled alive, I'd have to be pretty sure they were killed humanely.  Even so they can live to be one hundred and I would just feel like a spoilsport if my desiring to eat one cut short a long life.

My partner also just goes off things at a whim.  One moment he'll like my curry, the next he won't.  I make a pretty mean Chili con Carne but, no, it's too spicy and besides, like Bolognese, there's tomato in it.  He hates tomato in cooked dishes and there aren't many stews and sauces that don't have it.  My one staple for him, pork rissoles, he decided the other day I was making too thick so he formed the patties next time I made them.  They were just as thick but smaller in diameter.

Now I come to my grandchildren.  The eldest boy lives on not much but noodles and wraps, sometimes with chicken in them.  Oddly they all love my Spinach Pie.  Granddaughter likes Taco boats with sour cream and she also likes noodles.  Youngest grandson isn't picky yet but I'll bet you anything he'll like noodles too.  The Chinese really came up with a winner there.

Children usually grow out of their choosiness but I am blessed with an adult who is like a child but he makes up for it in other ways.  Aren't we lucky to be able to be so choosy?  Imagine if we had to hunt and grow things to eat to survive without any farmers or supermarkets to help us.  Also imagine the time when humans ate what they caught raw.  Apparently cooking food led to us being smarter but what on earth made us so picky when we have so much choice?

END

 

 

UPROOTED: longing for a long lost home.

The view from my home when I was a teenager after the pool was put in.

I was born in a place as close to being paradise as you can imagine and it has been a serious liability to me.  I don't for one moment regret it but it has had a curious and irreversible effect on my aspirations.  You see, I didn't develop any until after I left it.  Nowhere else has come close to what I felt for my home and nothing will ever live up to it.

People may come from less appealing surroundings or even hardship but at least this makes them strive for something.  It's like a rocket booster to thrust them onward to better things.  I didn't want to strive, I just wanted to stay put.

I count myself as very fortunate that I came from, not only beautiful surroundings, but also a happy home.  From the time I could perceive and think I fell in love with the nature and beauty around me and reveled in it.

My grandfather, my mother's father, bought a large parcel of land situated overlooking Pittwater, a large inlet of the Pacific Ocean thirty kilometres north of Sydney, Australia.  

The land sloped down to the water through bush and tall eucalypts and had a north easterly aspect.  Our house was built on land my father bought from my grandfather.  It was higher up on the slope than the house my grandfather built and had, in my opinion, the better view.  Over the bay we could see Scotland Island to the left, which protruded like a headland, and further out over the bay to the right, the headland that contained both suburbs of Newport and Clareville.  The bush and trees were so dense on these that the houses on this headland only peeped through the foliage but at night the lights from them sparkled like stars.

A narrow, sealed road runs along the bay beneath our land and leads further into Church Point and onward to Kuringai National Park and also West Head.  It is single lane in both directions and only a couple of metres from the water.  There is a small rock wall of sandstone a couple of metres from the road that is barely a metre high and at which the water laps at high tide.  At low tide the water can recede up to fifty metres exposing sand and some mangrove aerial roots.  At Christmas however, there are king tides and it was always a thrill when the water would come up to the bitumen and sometimes encroach on it.

 At night I would lie in bed and listen to the musical sound made by the masts and rigging of the yachts moored on the bay and some nights the moon would cast a glorious path over the water.  Happily my bedroom window had a bay view and also a door that led out to our patio.  There was one annoying street light down below on the road that, although at least two hundred metres distant, would shine into my room.  I did have a blind and would pull it down.  I loved the darkness even as a child and to this day I loathe street lights that intrude into any bedroom I occupy.  In fact I am annoyed by the fact that street lights near houses aren't turned off at night.  Now I know this isn't practical for safety reasons but that doesn't stop me feeling that civilization is intruding upon nature and the natural peace and darkness of the night.

These days, if I look at a photo of the view that once was mine it does look lovely but no photo can do justice to the scene.  The bay's mood would change throughout the day because of the angle of the sun on the water that either sparkled or became varying shades of blue depending on the time of day.  The sound of insects filled the air and the various greens of the bush and trees, the lantana, the smell of frangipani and the bush itself created an incredible palette for the senses.

As I faced the bay standing in front of our house, to my left was another block of land that ran the whole distance down to the road below.  On it there was an empty house that had been built many years earlier and was called by the neighborhood children 'the haunted house'.  It was owned, so we were told, by a Papua New Guinea plantation owner.  It was built of dark, purple brown bricks on a foundation of beautiful sandstone blocks.  It wasn't easy to get to as it was surrounded by lantana that surrounded the house and also most of the way down the hill to the road.  We had many fun excursions through that jungle to the house undeterred by snakes and spiders.    In fact, we never saw anything dangerous although we knew they were there.   We were fearless and, as an adult today, I would never have the courage to do the same.  Other local children had left chalk drawings on the bricks but nobody went inside as it was fairly secure.

When I reached my twenties the haunted house property was sold to a retired airline pilot who subdivided the land, thankfully into large blocks so that the natural beauty of the area remained intact.  He demolished the haunted house and used the sandstone blocks as a foundation for his house, which he built on the block he had designated for himself closest to the water.  I was grateful, however, that the land had remained a jungle throughout my childhood.  It had been completely taken over by nature and was a playground for our imaginations and adventures.

Our property had a long driveway that went down to the road below.  At first it was a dirt track but was later concreted at great expense to my parents.  We even had a little boat that we could take down to the water and go out on forays into the bay.  It was a dinghy with an outboard motor as my father was never into sailing as so many in the district were.  I'm with him there; I loved our boat.  Sail boats just seemed like work to me.  You can fish from a dinghy and explore.

We also had a driveway leading up to the road above the house.  Until I was about eight years of age, the road ended at the top of our driveway until one day the council decided to extend it about one hundred metres.  This required cutting upwards into the hill and then it finished in a cul-de-sac.  This also had to be cut into the hill and a great cutting into the orange clay made up its upward side.  Houses were built precariously above this and a driveway also extended from the end of the cul-de-sac on either side of which other houses were built.  The one on the lower side was built further up above where the haunted house had been.  Many years later that house went for a trip down the hill thanks to rain and the unstable clay.  Another house was built in the same spot on the land but with a very wide, concrete open drain built into the clay above it.  I saw it on a visit to my old home although I don't remember if it was after my parents sold up or earlier.

When this extension to the road was planned the council did something I could never forgive and made me, if I wasn't already , an ardent greenie.  I used to try and estimate which was the tallest gum tree in our area.  One was on my uncle's property next door and one was at the top of our driveway where the cutting was to be made.  We were informed the tree was to be taken down and I was, all eight years old of me, furious but there was nothing I could do to stop it.  When it was brought down I salvaged a large thick piece of its outer trunk.  It was at least 45 centimetres long and 20 wide.  I kept it in my cupboard for years until my mother, an obsessive tidier upper and thrower outer, threw it out.  She'd do this kind of thing when I was away at boarding school.  She threw out my teddy bear and another dear stuffed toy when I was away and in my teens.  I never forgave her for it.

The good thing about the cul-de-sac was that it was on a hill and was just great when we reached our teens and had bicycles and would launch ourselves down the road.  One day my girlfriend and my male cousin started off from there.  Now the road, Bakers Road, was two way, although narrow, and had driveways going off to houses along the road.  Some of the driveways went uphill to the houses on the high side, some downhill to the lower houses.  Well my cousin lost his brakes and yelled out to warn us and we followed him with our hearts in our mouths.  Bakers Road is one steep hill and went all the way down to the water but there was also a road at the bottom, the one that curved around and met our lower driveway.

My cousin made the brave decision to head up an uphill driveway to stop his descent but, unfortunately, a few metres up it, a gate was closed blocking it and behind that a parked car.  My friend and I watched horrified as my cousin hit the gate, went up into the air, did a somersault and landed on his back on the car.  Happily and amazingly he didn't break any bones although, to this day, he has a very bad neck.  I don't know if that had anything to do with this incident but I had also witnessed him fly off a cemented area into lantana beneath it on his tricycle years earlier and disappear.  He was nothing if not resilient.

My parents sent me to two different boarding schools during my youth.  One was a primary school in the leafy suburb of Wahroongah.   I cried for two weeks but eventually got used to it.  I would go on Monday morning and come home Friday afternoon.  I was there for two years and then I was sent to a school overlooking Sydney Harbour, or part of it, for high school.  I had a bad dream about it before I started and it was right.  I hated the school with a passion for six years.  It was also weekly boarding but nothing would convince my parents to let me go to a local school as a day pupil.

It was situated overlooking Rushcutter's Bay in the wealthy eastern suburbs and looked directly over the bay to Bellevue Hill with its many apartments and houses that were older in style than those of the north shore.  I found the view distinctly inferior to that of my home.  I liked to look at trees and bush.  It also smelled because of the smog that settled so heavily over the city in the sixties.  What I really resented most was not being home.  I loved everything about my home.  Oddly my mother did not.  I don't know to this day what her hang up was but she was a depressive and generally unhappy without knowing the cause.  She had a good life but I think lacked purpose in spite of her many friends.  I have very few friends to this day but as long as I have nature around me I'm fine.  Sadly that didn't work for her.

After leaving school I was encouraged to go to University but, having been so miserable at school, I had developed no direction.  I studied Science for a few years and dropped out then sat around at home thinking what to do next but no one would let me take time to think.  My parents encouraged me to do a computer programming course.  Apparently my presence wasn't appreciated in the house and it never occurred to them the damage that had been done by keeping a psychologically distressed teenager in the wrong environment against her will.  I had had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder badly since I was six and eventually panic attacks.  I'd coped at the first school but not the latter.

I did the course and worked as a programmer for nine months, decided it wasn't living, dropped it and agreed to marry my boyfriend of four years.  Harsh as this sounds, he was my friend and the only chance I had for peace and to heal.  We had a son and divorced after fifteen years but I am eternally grateful for those years he gave me to become whole before the marriage fell apart.

When I married, naturally I left home and that was the hardest thing of all.  It isn't that I was a natural homebody, it's just that the place was magic.  I truly had been in love with my environment since I could remember.  My husband's work took us interstate and eventually overseas and we lived in some decent houses and owned a couple but I could never feel anything for them.  To me they were suburban boxes with no view and fences.  There wasn't a fence in sight where I grew up.  The houses I lived in were also close to one another on grid like streets and had no soul but they were comfortable.  My old home wasn't at all grand, just comfortable and reasonably large but it was the surroundings that were exceptional.  Yes, I was spoiled and terribly grateful for having grown up there but the sad thing is that nothing else could live up to it.

Over the years I would go back and visit my parents of course who were now relieved to have me off their hands, their one and only child.  They also loved their grandson who was able to see my old home until he was about four.  We were living in Perth when my parents gave me the news they were selling the house.  I was dumbstruck.  I think Dad needed extra money to retire and they liked the idea of starting afresh and to my horror they chose Perth, a place I had come to loathe.  They didn't like it either and two years later moved south to Dunsborough, which they loved.

I don't remember when I last saw my old home.  When my parents owned it I came and went thinking it would always be there to go back to.  There was a time I saw it for the last time not knowing it would be the last.  It's probably just as well or my heart would have broken then and there.  I had always thought I would at least inherit it.  If I had wild horses couldn't have dragged me from it.  It is well out of my price range now and I wonder what I would do if I suddenly won enough money to buy it back.

Something tells me it wouldn't be a good idea.  A home is not just a place, it's a time.  It's the people that surrounded you and the times you had there and it was the most wonderfully close neighborhood in the golden age of the fifties, sixties and even the early seventies.  I am just incredibly grateful for what I had, even though it wasn't exactly mine but in a way it is because it is part of me.

END

FUTURE IMPERFECT: the eroding effects on the mind of the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

Picture courtesy of The Guardian

Here I sit on a cold and wet winter's day during a global pandemic and wonder what life holds next.  I may no longer be in my prime but I wasn't planning to be dead any time soon.  I used to feel that I had up to twenty good years left in me based on my family history; okay, those family who haven't turned their toes up young.  In fact, I was setting myself the goal of doing better than my forebears.

When I wake in the morning these days, however, I am finding it increasingly difficult to feel any sense of hope or optimism.  At night as I attempt sleep, I chide myself for this and think of those people around the world who have worse things to contend with as well as a pandemic, which sits like a cherry atop their other miseries.  I think of the refugees from Myanmar, the children starving in Yemen and the refugees from Mozambique and so on.  All of this suffering comes from the actions of lunatics pushing their own vicious or greedy political agendas without care about the families caught in the middle.  So many of the perpetrators of these little wars are young, fanatical or opportunistic young men who are guided by older, slyer and more jaded ones.  Women are probably involved in there somewhere too but mostly they are being violated in some way or watching their children suffer.

I really shake my head and wonder how fanatics can carry out their agendas during a pandemic?  I guess the point is that they are fanatics and all else pales to their vision of utopia.  God forbid what that might be after they've made life a hell on earth.

Do these thoughts about the suffering of others make me feel better about my own situation?  Well how could such thoughts make one feel better about anything?  In answer to this question, no they don't.  It does though, help me put my feelings in perspective but someone else's suffering doesn't reduce one's own unless one is a sociopath or sadist.

Before I lost my job to Covid, I retained hope.  I long ago ran out of money due to divorce, having Chronic Fatigue and other factors but I live comfortably enough.  When I got over Chronic Fatigue I found a job that provided me with a living and, when I reached pension age and worked part time, what my job gave me was the possibility of affording a vacation or something to look forward to.  It also kept me busy.  That is now something completely off the table.  I don't own my own home and am enormously grateful to this country for its social security that gives me a pension.  It's not where I envisaged being at this age, having come from a reasonably privileged background, but I've taken some pride in being able to take it on the chin but I'm not taking things on the chin as well anymore, which rather surprises me.  I thought I was made of stronger stuff.

It may have to do with the way this last year and a half has panned out for me on a personal level.  If you, reader, have read any of my other blogs, you may know I took a year to come off an antidepressant I'd been on for thirty years.  I also caught pneumonia.  When I first caught it the clinic that I visit to see a doctor wouldn't let me in as I had a fever so I went off for a Covid test.  At that time I wasn't particularly worried and, when the test showed negative I just stayed in bed and waited to get well assuming it was 'flu.  It was my son who eventually called an ambulance.

Since then I've had two viruses and had to have a Covid test each time.  Both times I have been very nervous and upset that the results would be positive.  Neither were but I sure didn't feel good and the wait for a result each time played havoc with my nerves.  I don't even know how I got the last virus given the precautions I take and that is a worry in itself.

That's one of the big problems about this pandemic, it's shredding our nerves.  There are some people out there who don't worry or simply don't believe there is a pandemic and that it's all a conspiracy.  In a way I envy them.  If I'm going to get Covid, I'd rather just not worry about it first but I think this year has taken its toll on me and I can no longer stop worrying.  My mood sometimes improves but, with any new concern, it plummets to new depths and this is becoming a concern to the point I am considering going on another antidepressant.

I am, of course, I suspect not the only person whose mental state is deteriorating.  When I told my general practitioner doctor that I was feeling more optimistic a few weeks ago after having my first vaccine shot, she said a lot of her older patients were too.  The virus has obviously been preying on the minds of those of us who were anticipating a couple of more decades of life.  After my last virus, post the vaccine, I began to lose that hope again.  If it was only a rhinovirus, it was a beauty.  I didn't have a fever, blocked nose or cough.  My lungs were fine too.  I had a mighty sore throat and just felt as if I had the 'flu.  The thing is, I've had a 'flu shot.  If the virus made me feel this bad, how capable am I, even vaccinated, of dealing with Covid?

Perhaps I am being a wuss but I'm rather tired of being sick or feeling unwell.  I am really wondering how other people are feeling mentally at this time.  It isn't easy on any of us but I also wonder how many people are keeping their fears to themselves.  I have sometimes, when wearing a mask to the shops, had people come right up to me and talk to my face.  I figure that these types are not big worriers.  They also can't take a hint.  I remain pleasant but wonder where their heads are.

The old saying that ignorance is bliss is true.  It's become so that I really don't want to listen to the news on television at night and hear one more thing about Covid or vaccinations.  I see it on the internet but can skim past.  I take in the rudiments and the latest local figures and move on.  The television news, however, just won't let it go.  For the last sixteen months we've been fed a diet of Covid related news.

I yearn for the day when I never hear another mention of Covid and I'm sure you do too.  I yearn for the day I can shop or got to a cafe or restaurant without worrying and for the time I can travel again, even though I really no longer have the funds.  I'll just take a road trip to anywhere and enjoy the scenery.  I long for the day I can look forward to thinking I may see my grandchildren reach adulthood.  I just long for another day.

END
 

 

 

 

COMPUTER SCAMS or STUPID ME.

 

I thought twice about writing this post because I feel like such an idiot.  Do you remember Sylvester Pussycat's nephew who would put a paper bag over his head when his uncle embarrassed him and then say: "I'm so ashamed"?  Well that's me right now.

I'm a pretty intelligent person and thought I wouldn't fall for a scam but I did.  Well I'm 99% sure, no make that 100%, that it was.  Happily I twigged to the situation at the end of the phone call and immediately changed my banking password, rang my bank and had my card blocked.  Oh, the shame.

Here's what happened.  I was on my laptop, a morning routine, and had to use a different Internet browser because Firefox wasn't loading and hadn't been the previous night either.  Firefox is a great browser for avoiding pop-ups and I love it.  It also has an accessible Ad blocker feature you can turn on and off as you wish.  Some sites won't load with an Ad blocker so this is handy.  I now think that the scammers may have been jamming Firefox for that reason so I'd use another browser that was less secure

I opened Google Chrome instead.  Almost immediately all these windows pop up with warnings.  As soon as I went to close one, another would open until there were four.  I couldn't close any of them.  A Microsoft logo appeared on the bottom right of the screen with a toll free number to call for support.  My earphone volume was up from the previous night and, although I wasn't wearing the earpiece, I could hear a voice alerting me to a problem.  The warnings on the screen alerted to me having a computer virus and that Microsoft would block my Internet until I phoned them to fix the problem so my computer, or something I can't remember, would be damaged/corrupted or whatever.

I then did what any sensible person would do after pressing numerous control keys and control, alt, delete keys that did nothing, I turned the computer off at its power button.  I decided it was a virus or scam and I might make it go away.  I should state that I had previously had something like this happen a few years ago.  I can't remember the details or where I obtained the phone number to attempt to fix the problem but it must have been from the site.  When I phoned the man sounded reasonable and helpful but, after fifteen to twenty minutes of explaining to me what had happened and how he would fix it, as he could see my computer screen from his, he said it would cost me a sum of money.  Again I forget how much and it wasn't a huge amount, but it was money.  At this point I smelled a rat and hung up.  Somehow I then managed to fix the problem myself.  This experience made me very wary.  The blighters always sound so professional and know their computer stuff.

Back to now.   I let the laptop have a little rest and went off and did other things.  I then turned it back on.  I have a little routine in the morning on my computer and it goes like this: first Facebook as friends' news is often more interesting than other news and I just like to see what everyone is up to.  Some of them also put up great jokes or memes that I enjoy.  I also like to make the occasional comment.  It's lovely to talk to friends near and far to stay connected.  I've become rather fond of FB for its good points.  I don't do other social network sites, just that one.  Then its onto emails, then news from various outlets and then a quiz site that has a new set of questions every day.  I very occasionally shop online and sometimes do banking but that's not my morning routine.

It took me years to be happy not having a print newspaper every morning and to feel my way around the Internet and find things that would replace it.  Having done so I'm now better off as there's even more to interest me.  Thus, when my routine was blocked yesterday I was not happy.  I no longer work and need my routines throughout the rest of the day as boredom skulks around every corner.  I also am not so financially flush that I can afford to call a computer expert if something goes wrong that can be fixed some other way, or free.

My laptop has had a nice little rest and is booted up.  I try Firefox again just in case it works this time.  It doesn't load, or rather, a blank white page with grey bars loads and stays that way.  I close it.  I open Chrome and, lo, the lousy error windows pop up again as well as the annoying voice from the earpieces.  If I have a problem I normally Google who to phone to sort it out but I can't because I can't make the pop-ups disappear to get to anything else.  The Microsoft logo leers at me temptingly on the bottom right of the screen.  I'm a bit lost without my computer these days since my job finished last year and since Covid has so restricted life.  I give in and phone the number.

I can't remember how the conversation started, if he said, 'Microsoft support' or just 'How can I help you' or something.  He sounded reasonable and, although Indian, easy to understand.  Unfortunately I wasn't my usual polite self.  I simply said, "Are you a scam?"  and probably a few other words to suggest I'd had someone attempt to try scamming me before who'd asked me for money.  He sounded offended by this and when I told him that I would not be paying money he assured me they would not ask for any and that when I bought the computer I was entitled to free help from Microsoft from then on so, for a while I decided to trust him.

My thoughts now are that  he and the next man I spoke to had previous experience on real help lines.  Their computer knowledge was very good, their English not too accented and they had the patience of Job in talking me through the problem, first one and then the other in 'technical support'.  They talked me through things on the computer that opened various internal windows in DOS and opened bars on the bottom menu that said 'setup.exe' and the like.  They knew the ropes of how to make it look like they knew what they were doing.

I was told how to get rid of the error pop-up windows so I could access other functions on the computer.  This, for your information, was to press the CTRL key and the letter 't' at the same time.  Of course it may have worked only in this situation.  CTRL and 'r' brought up another box and when I typed 'cdm' into that box it opened another screen that was a big blue screen.  I can't remember what was on it, it looked official, but eventually, having filled in boxes, a screen came up in DOS programming language with a list of files, some headed 'local' and some headed 'foreign'.  Apparently those under foreign were other accounts who had access to my computer and could send viruses.  It was the second man I was talking to at this point and I was told to look to the right of the 'foreign' list for a number.  I couldn't see one.  He said he could see the number 11 and just now I realize, that this meant he could see my computer screen.  That's a very important point even though I couldn't see the number eleven, he knew what else was on the screen.  Anyway, he said I had eleven viruses.

I had been told at the start of the conversation by the first man that I would have to get rid of any viruses and go through all the apps I used on my laptop, from email, to Facebook, Internet and so on.  I had asked if this would take long and he said no more than thirty minutes.  To cut a long story short, once in the DOS screen and under the first files I was told what I needed to type to clean up my applications.  This started with network and then to my email, which I typed in.  After this the fellow told me to type in the name of my bank, but not to tell him the name.  I asked if the shortened version of the name the bank used was okay.  He said yes.  I typed it in.

At some stage without filling out more application names, the screen ended up back at the normal Chrome screen and the man asked me to log into my bank account and this would secure it.  I had to use my account identification and password.  This didn't include my account numbers but I was now forty minutes into the call and began to smell a rat.  I asked the man if he could see my screen.  Stupid question and I didn't really believe him but for some idiot reason I logged in after which he said I could close it again.  Do I have another bank account?  Yes, I said, a small one I use to only pay one bill.  I'd forgotten how to log in and he said if the other account was the main one, not to worry, but at this stage I was.

'What about Facebook and other accounts?' I asked.  "Oh, you can do those later," he said.  How I wondered?  At this point he told me we were finished now.  I then suggested again that he was a scammer and he seemed offended.  I hung up and, after a few minutes of self flagellation, opened my bank account online and changed my password.  I didn't panic but I really felt compromised.

I tried to ring my bank but got a recorded voice asking me which option I wanted and there were none to do with security.  I rang another number and they wanted my phone banking log in identification.  I'd forgotten the number.  Now, I'm in a hurry at this point and why can't I just yell 'emergency' into the bloody phone and have a human answer?  I finally remembered my password and got through and told them my shameful story and they told me I'd done well to change my password immediately.  They then changed my card numbers but not before I'd asked Jan to run down the street and withdraw all the money from my everyday account.  I knew the scammers couldn't withdraw from the credit card as it's in debit.  They could have used its numbers to buy something, however, they don't have the expiry date or security numbers.  I've changed the card but I'm still not happy.  When my new credit card arrives I'll change my everyday account as well.

I really thought I was smarter than this.  These guys are so smooth.  One even wanted my blog address and said he liked to write too.  I asked for his address but 'it's not published yet'.  So many little, fishy clues that should have made me twig.  I have no idea what he wants with my blog but I don't make money from it so that won't help him.  Once I was online again I looked up Microsoft's real support number under which was a piece on how to recognize scams.  The fourth example was exactly what happened to me, the pop-up error messages with the toll free helpline phone number.

You see why I'm ashamed to put this up but it's a warning.  Even if you think you're a smart cookie like me with some computer knowledge, there are smooth operators out there with absolutely no conscience.  When they rip off the people who have little money, that's vile.  I wish I could report the toll number but it will probably change.  Next time your computer is blocked, use your mobile for a real helpline number.  I don't know why I didn't but I swear something happens in our brains when our computers play up.  They're complicated things to fix when they don't work, the computers that is, and I think we feel out of our depth, but better out of our depth than out of money.

END

 

 

ON GROWING UP A BABY BOOMER: what Millenials need to know.

 

A while back I was watching a quiz show and a contestant in his twenties missed answering a multiple choice question correctly about something in the 1940's because he wasn't sure if people had running water in their homes back then.

I was pretty stupefied and it made me realize how little youth, even grown up ones, know about the not so distant past.  At first I thought 'Is this kid real'?  Then I wondered if history teachers weren't doing their jobs properly since I'd left school.  I mean, surely, his parents and grandparents would have talked about their past but, in his case, apparently they had not.

One thing that I have noticed about some younger adults these days is that they think they are mentally superior older adults.  Perhaps they think that being knowledgeable about computers and technology is a sign of intellect.  Certainly I and many other people, both younger and my age, are not so skilled in that area, but we are far more knowledgeable about many diverse categories as we have had decades to accumulate more knowledge and experience.

I can only hope that the youth who feel so superior now will one day find their children think less of them because they can't operate the latest gadget.  I suspect they also think they are clever because they have access to all the answers they require on the Internet as well as being adept at all the new gadgetry.  Has it occurred to them that some people don't want the new gadgetry because they've managed without it all their productive lives?  I do enjoy a lot of the new advances but not all.  At a certain age you just get more selective about what technology you find useful but I can see how kids love it all.  My seventeen month old grandson loves iPhones as did his sister and brother before him; they're like magic after all.

Kids grasp new technology quickly because their young minds are like blank pages.  It's the same with language.  If you learn a second language before you are about twelve you will speak it without your mother tongue's accent.  This is a fact.  If we learn a new language after that age we will speak it with an accent.  There may be linguistic savants who don't, but they'd be pretty rare.

We have accelerated learning ability as children because our brains are growing.  Once our brains mature and we have had myriad experiences and have absorbed huge amounts of information, naturally our absorption rate won't compare to our earliest learning ability.  Another thing that people who have grown up since the year two thousand don't take into account is that some of us have been dealing with computers since their earliest days and that constantly adapting to the changes becomes less amusing and more annoying.

I started my working life as a computer programmer after dropping out of a science degree.  I programmed, what were then termed, mini computers.  I wrote programs in COBOL on a paper form, sent them off to a compiler that translated them into ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Exchange) punched onto paper tape that I then fed into the mini computer to program it.

What I would have given for a VDU and a keyboard to program directly into a computer, even in DOS.  I lasted one year doing the job and decided it wasn't living.  I did go back and study Computer Science a few years later thinking I should try again but, by then there were teenagers fresh from school who could spend all day at University on the VDU's, which existed by then, while I had a baby to care for and couldn't spare the time or baby sitting money.  To be honest, I really wasn't interested enough.  I think, today, I'd enjoy it a lot more as the results of what I'd do would be more immediate.

Computers are a lot more interesting since they've become part of our lives, not just part of the corporate, commercial and scientific world.  The Internet arrived like a supernova but when I started out, I was programming accounting packages and that was it.  There was no Internet .  Had I seen the future I may have stayed, but I doubt it.  I just enjoy the benefits now.

Forty years have passed since I worked as a programmer.  Computers, or I.T. if you will, haven't ceased developing.  Now try to put yourself in my shoes.  If you were me would you keep up to date with every single new advance after forty years?  Frankly, it gets a bit ho hum.  You just know the next new thing is going to be superseded within the year.  If you learn something new, you'll have to learn the new version next year.  Okay, if you're under thirty, you probably still get a kick out of every new release, whether it be an iPhone, an operating system or whatever.  What you don't realize is that it's just not going to stop and it becomes overwhelming and, frankly, tedious.

I'll give you an example of something that just recently annoyed me.  I have a new second hand car.  It's new to me but ten years old.  One thing I love about it is the reverse camera and, because I am so smitten with this gadget, it has taken me six months to realize the car has no CD player.  You're laughing aren't you?  Fine, I'm not very musical but my old car's CD player had broken and it occurred to me that now I could play CD's in the car.  Next time I went for a drive I looked below the reverse camera display for the CD slot.  To my amazement there wasn't one.  Later I asked my partner if he had one in his car.  He said, "Of course not, people use iPods now and download everything or use their phones that they play through the car radio."  Well I don't want an iPod, I have perfectly good CD's and my iPhone is a late model and won't communicate with the car so that's out.

As an example of obsolescence let's look at videos.  There aren't any these days.  In the eighties I lived in Hong Kong.  My then husband and I bought a video player that took Beta tapes.  We chose that over VCR's as it seemed that Beta was the way to go but back in Australia VCR's had taken off.  Out went the Beta player.  Next up DVD's came in.  Much lighter and smaller but video hire shops could still survive.  Somewhere along the way Blueray came in.  I really have no idea what Blueray is because I probably lost interest.  As soon as televisions could be attached to the Internet we began to stream, to download shows straight from the Internet.

Now I'm certainly not complaining about that, it's great, but my grandchildren still have Blueray discs so that when one comes to stay and wants to watch one, I'm meant to boot up the DVD player.  I recently tried and couldn't so we settled for streaming.  I'm from a generation that has gone from floppy discs to CD's to USB's.  I have also gone from vinyl to tapes and Walkmans to CD's.  I have not moved on to iPods.  As I have said, I'm not musical.  I have also loathed all music produced since the year 2000 so why bother?

Let me take you through one other area of advancement: cameras.  When we moved from film to digital it was great, except for poor Kodak and its film processing facilities of course.  There is one thing film still has over pixels however.  You can blow up pictures taken with film a lot before you lose detail and some professionals still use it for that reason.  When I first bought a digital camera it was 3 megapixels and I was told 5 megapixels was for professionals.  I should have known, and did suspect, that 5 megapixels would soon be outmoded based on my initial purchase of a personal computer when I was advised to get a 256 Kilobyte rather than a 386 Kilobyte.  Well you know how that went.  Soon my 3 megapixel camera was left for dead by 12 Megapixels and onward but then Smartphones came along and you could send a photo from it directly to anyone or to the Internet without uploading to a computer as you did with a camera.

I only gave in and got a Smartphone for the camera capability or would have fought the purchase for years.  Generations of Smartphones have superseded my phone but, by now, I'm sure you can see I've seen enough things outmoded not to care.  It will have to die before I give in and get a new one but, by then, another generation will have come along and I'll be really up to date, until a year later when I'm not.

Baby boomers like me have seen more change in their lifetimes than any generation before them, even their parents.  Fifty years before I was born, women were still in long skirts and unable to vote, the airplane had just been invented and electricity was really just coming into mass use.  My parents saw huge changes but I have seen more, many of them good.

If we can just get the world's population stabilized and climate change under control, following generations may see more than I have, but change for the sake of change is not the best idea.  I've seen wonderful things but crammed together in too short a space of time.  It wouldn't hurt to slow down a bit.  There's no rush if we play our cards right.

END

 

HUMANS: DESPICABLE US.

 

Humans are a pretty terrifying species and one reason for this is that most of them don't question what motivates them to do the things that they do.  In pondering why this is the case I started by thinking two very different kinds of people in the history of the world.  My examples are drawn from amongst men rather than women because until recently, and through no fault of their own, women have not figured greatly in positions that gave rise to them being noted in earlier human history.

The two types of people I have considered are the doers and the thinkers.  I was going to call the doers, achievers, but mostly that is not the case.  In fact their desire to do has mostly come with a great deal of death and destruction while, in the case of the thinkers, their inquiry has often been met with punishment and even death.  When I say 'doer', I am not including inventors or those who have created devices that have improved our lives.  These types are, by their natures, thinkers.  The type of 'doer' this article addresses are those who command power.

Species that are not self aware, or should I say as self aware as humans, direct their energy into finding food and procreation; in other words towards survival and the survival of the species.  When they are not active they are usually resting.  They can be terribly busy when they are active, just look at insects, but their activity is directed to a purpose.  They don't take up hobbies to fill their leisure time or become wantonly destructive, as humans do.

It is worth noting that animals can also be bored.  One only has to observe dogs to see that.  They may lie around and look like they're sleeping, but just rattle their leash and you'll see they've only just been waiting for a bit of amusement.  Dogs are pretty intelligent and I believe that boredom is a result of intellect but in humans boredom is both a motivator and our worst enemy.

The biographies of doers get complicated.  Take, for example, Napoleon Bonaparte.  He didn't just decide one day to go and conquer the world out of boredom.  He was a product of his time.  When he arrived on the scene, France was already engaged in numerous territorial disputes and it's own revolution.  Napoleon first entered a military academy before going on to be a very successful soldier involved in France's territorial campaigns.  It was, basically, his job.  Eventually, after he made himself Emperor, he just overstepped himself.  That's where the doer's drive comes in.  They tend to not be able to stop once they've achieved optimum success.  While Napoleon is credited with many positive reforms, such as the Napoleonic Code and those in banking and education, a great many people died as a result of his ambition both in the territories he conquered as well as a huge number of his own troops when he really over reached himself and marched into Russia.

Genghis Khan, another doer, started out by uniting the disparate tribes of Mongolia, which was in many ways, beneficial to the people of that land.  That done, he spread outwards so that his empire encompassed areas that included parts of modern day Poland, Georgia and China.  Whatever good these doers eventually do comes at the cost of the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, a huge proportion of whom were non-combatants.  At the same time as he was effectively reducing the world's population, he was also working at manifestly increasing it.  He had numerous wives and concubines and innumerable children, however, only the sons of his first wife, Borte, would be considered his heirs.

Napoleon and Genghis Khan are both extreme examples of people born with way too much drive for their own, and everybody else's, good.  They are like tsunamis that, once in motion, cannot be stopped until maximum devastation has been achieved.

The interesting point to note about thinkers is that although they don't have armies or physically threaten anyone, they have been considered as dangerous to society as those who do.  Take Galileo and Copernicus for instance.  Both these men threatened the status quo, which in their times was the Church and its teachings.  The Church, at that time, held enormous political power and wealth.  The thinker's thoughts alone made them as dangerous to the stability of the entrenched powers as any army.  All these two men were attempting to do was to understand the nature of the Universe but their theories went against Church teachings that were based on the Bible and the theory of creation.

The Church wielded immense power in those times, not only because of its immense wealth, but because people from peasants to kings, believed it had the power to pave the way to Heaven through confession and plenary indulgences.  Plenary indulgences reduced punishment in the afterlife for their recipients who had to perform certain good works or recite certain prayers many times to receive them.  Reforms to the Church in the twentieth century have largely abolished these indulgences but, in a time where people were very religious, you can imagine the power this afforded the Church, placing them above rulers who believed the clergy had the power to smooth their way to the afterlife.

While Copernicus escaped punishment for his theories, Galileo did not when he added evidence to support Copernicus's ideas with the help of the newly invented telescope.  For his trouble he spent thirty years until the end of his life under house arrest.

In modern times the way to exert power is through controlling mass communication and technology.  It is interesting to note that the more technologically, scientifically and medically advanced we have become, the less dependent on religion we have become.  Of course billions of people are still devoutly religious but in earlier times people's ignorance as to how the universe worked as well as lack of medical knowledge to prevent an early death necessitated religion to both explain life and to be prepared for the afterlife.

Now we are in the are in the information age and, throughout history, one of the greatest ways to hold power has been to control the flow of information or to suppress it.  In the age of the Internet it has become harder for those in authority to suppress information and so they must have access to the means of transmitting it.

China has its own internet and its population can only gain information through it.  Most information from the west is suppressed.  Don't think, however, that western or free nations are beneath manipulating content.  Just recently when farmers were protesting in India about their rights and protection of their income in a peaceful and orderly fashion, the Indian government cut off their access to the Internet, which amounted to a diabolical misuse of power by a democratic nation.

Let us also look at the case of Julian Assange who hacked his way into the USA government's secret files and then let the world read them all in the name of freedom of information.  Governments suppress information they consider not in the public interest or that will threaten the nation's defenses but the files also showed that the government had undertaken questionable activities it really didn't want the public to know about.  Assange now sits waiting in a British jail trying not to be extradited to the USA where he may be sentenced to over one hundred years in jail for treason.  Governments may have valid reasons for suppressing some information that may make them vulnerable to other governments or show weaknesses in their defence, however, sometimes they're just covering up incompetency or abuse of power and that is why Assange has many supporters who feel that a government's dirty secrets should be exposed.  Unfortunately, when you let one secret out of the bag, the others come with it and these may well make a nation vulnerable to attack.

Privately owned Internet companies can also use suppression tactics.  Take the social network site Twitter, which banned former President of the USA, Donald Trump from using its site because of his inflammatory tweets.  Let us remember that they are a private company and can make their own rules, however, an extraordinary amount of garbage ends up of Twitter and isn't banned.  Freedom of speech allows people to make their own decisions about a communication but Twitter made the call on Trump for them.

On the other hand certain social network sites have not stopped terrorist organizations from using their sites to recruit followers and even to post how to make a bomb, so where does freedom of information become dangerous and then who gets to police it?  There are arguments for and against totally open communication now that the world is truly global and anything may ignite the powder keg of public opinion, which may, in turn, lead to violence and war.

As you can see, I've moved away from my original subject of doers and thinkers.  The world may once have been molded by the actions and thoughts of just a few or a number of governments, but that was once.  While governments and individuals can still get away with a lot they now have a harder time doing it because we are all watching them and having our say.  The population of the world has become Big Brother and this may well be why there are now theories, some call them conspiracy theories, that talk of an elite and wealthy few who are trying to take over the control of the planet and people's thoughts and opinions.

If such a group exists and has some evil plan to inject us all with computer chips or whatever, using, for instance, a vaccine against a pandemic, I think they have Buckley's chance of succeeding.  When you get enough people who don't agree with something or are unwilling to be pushed around there is always a revolution.  Computer chips in the blood stream, if possible, won't stop this.  For one thing no one yet knows how our brains work and for another, the chips would have to be teeny, teeny weensy and be able to fit through a needle attached to a syringe.  If the idea is to terminate people using their micro chips, well, they're not going to have too many people left to follow them like zombies after most people are terminated.  All in all, it's a madman's plan but, as I said at the beginning of this post, humans are a pretty terrifying species.

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