Friday, February 11 2011 (diary)

I had another meal at Restaurant Chez Claude last night. His home made duck liver "parfait" (paté) is just delicious. Claude has also a well stocked wine cellar with reasonably priced excellent choices of French wines. Last night I had a wonderful red Côtes du Rhône ($35 per bottle). For these French wines alone a visit to Claude's restaurant is worthwhile, they are so refreshingly different from our Australian wines (but he has a good selection of those too).

Mind you, I am by no means a wine connoisseur. I quite simply either like a wine or I don't and you will hear no fancy descriptions from me.
As I write this I suddenly realise that this is exactly how an introvert experiences the world around him. He does not literally analyse what he sees, feels, hears or (as in this case) tastes in any detail. He experiences it in a vague but all encompassing unique abstract sense, which can not and should not be defined in detail.
Descriptive details (as for example expressed by connoisseurs) are not important to the introvert, for they are irrelevant to his own (almost mystical) experience. So that Côtes du Rhône last night was very agreeable to me, no more need to be said.

Saturday, February 12 2011 (diary, international politics)

Mubarak has resigned at last. Egypt celebrates, but its future lies in the balance. Will it be for the better? If so a sway of other countries may dramatically change as well. That would be a historic event.

At long last the USA and other Western countries have abandoned their tacit support of repressive Arab regimes for the (self serving) sake of stability and now finally switched to a call for democracy. Something (according to "The Economist", Feb.10, 2011) George Bush had urged, but was ridiculed for by the West only a few years ago. (Confirming that so often in life : being lonely in one's opinion is the precursor of being right!)

Egyptians here in Australia are celebrating too. A long held dream looks finally to have a chance of becoming reality. Let us hope so, for the whole world may feel the benefit of it in the long run.

Sunday, February 13 2011 (diary)

Literature (according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary) is writing whose value lies in beauty of form or emotional effect.
Many literary writers have in common the ability to redefine a common experience most of us have, by presenting it from their unique perspective, and expressing it so creatively that forever after the reader will think of it (the common experience) only in this way.
Here follows a cameo example of this very thing, taken from a book I just started to read : Desperate Remedies, the first published novel (in 1870) by Thomas Hardy (1840-1926).

It is both painful and satisfactory to think how often (emotional) antitheses are to be observed in the individual most often to our observation - ourselves. We pass the evening with faces lit up by some flaring illumination or other: we get up the next morning - the fiery jets have all gone out, and nothing confronts us but a few crinkled pipes and sooty wirework, hardly even recalling the outline of the blazing picture that arrested our eyes before bedtime. Emotions would be half starved if there were no candle-light. Probably nine-tenths of the gushing letters of indiscreet confession are written after nine or ten o'clock in the evening, and sent off before day returns to leer invidiously upon them. Few that remain open to catch our glance as we rise in the morning, survive the frigid criticism of dressing-time.

I am sure we all have been there, I certainly have. And the common wisdom to "sleep on it" evolved as a consequence of it.
But acting upon this wisdom is not always easy to do I have found. Often we are so enthusiastic about an idea that we just can't wait until the morning, and have to act on it immediately. And in this modern age where emails reign supreme, quick action is easier than ever before. Sometimes this proves to be fine, but other times definitely unwise.

These days I follow a compromise procedure : I do sleep on a new idea I have for one night. Quite often it has been reduced the next morning to Hardy's "crinkled pipes and sooty wirework". But if the following evening ("in the candle-light") the same idea rises up once more, like a Phoenix from its ashes, you can't stop me and I do go ahead with it.

Monday & Tuesday, February 14 & 15 2011 (diary)

Today (Tuesday) I have reached a peculiar personal milestone in time, one I have been anticipating for at least six months now. My father died in May 1981, exactly one month after his 74th birthday. Today I have reached that very same point in my age.

Mind you it has not been an anticipation of my own possible death at this point. Far from it, the GP has just given me a clean bill of good health, I feel quite fit and, provided I keep mobile and mentally healthy, I hope to clock up at least another 20 years or so.

No, I wanted to get an idea of my father's journey through life in terms of his evolving emotions and mental development from the perspective of my own experiences over this same stretch of time. Based on that comparison I believe that he has had a full and fulfilling life.

He was a man who enjoyed incorporating the latest gadgets and technology into his business, and for that reason I regret that he has just missed the mini computer (PC and Mac), mobile phone and internet era.
At the other hand (as many of his employees and friends have said to me at the time) it was fortunate that he did not have to confront the difficult business situation Martinshof found itself in shortly after his death, and I am grateful I have been able to do that for him.