Cardboard Spaceship

Despair Squid

I always joke that if I ever write a sitcom, it will be called "Geneva, an everyday tale of expatriate folk."  Only problem is, even if I just wrote the simple unalloyed truth of our daily lives no-one would believe it, because it is too bizarre.

As you will see from the predecessor post, life has been a bit rough here in the Spaceship over the last few hours.  One of our neighbours caught up with us on a dog walk, and casually refused to do the obligatory francophone air kissing, "because I am on chemo."  Turns out she has an advanced cancer of the lung, and metatheses.  All discovered in the last week or two.  She seemed remarkably calm, I would be a wreck in those circumstances.  I wish her the best for what will be a tough trial.  She has courage, I have to say, she showed us a photo of her wearing the wig she has bought for when her hair falls out.  It was a shock to say the least.

Then Mrs Spaceship was talking to another good friend, giving advice on what to do about her daughter, who seems to have a significant depression, when the doorbell went and one of our neighbours came in.  As Mrs Spaceship is a psychiatrist, and as far as I can tell, a good one, so many of the worried of the neighbourhood turn up looking for advice, which is fine, as being part of a village means giving as well as taking.  So, classic presentation, she turns up looking nervous and out of sorts, and wants to speak to my wife.  I could tell that it was a drive by emergency, so I offered her a glass of wine, and started to ask what was wrong.  Then she started asking why we were spreading rumours about her getting divorced.   (We do not gossip here in the Spaceship, the village is too small, and we know too much.)  So I just thought bollocks to that, and told her to get out of my house.  Very stressful exchange of views followed, just what I did not need.  Anyway, we patched it up, but that's more than I wanted for a quiet Monday evening.

To add to this, the drivebyer then went to the one person whom we had mentioned it to, to ask if she knew if it was really the case that the couple in question were divorcing, and gave her a rough time as well, so the poor woman showed up on our doorstep in tears and we had to calm that down as well. 

Then, just when life could not really seem to get more turbulent, a very good family friend who was at school with Mrs Spaceship called, and told us that a mutual friend had died.  Alasteir Scott, RIP  A talented and gifted man, whose life has been cut short.

I could do with less real life right now.  It seems that as we hit middle age, (I am 44 at the time of writing,) for some people, the centre cannot hold. 

"TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;"

Yeats.

Great Tagline

Had Philip Hogden drop a longish comment on my view about the fact that the potential collapse of the Californian economy is not a brand issue.  Obviously, if someone takes the time and courtesy to do that, you want to know more about them.  I went to his site, and the reason I am posting this is because of the tagline on the site, which is to do with international tax advice.

"International tax is complicated. We’re not."

Heh.  That gets my vote as the only financial services slogan I have seen that struck a chord for a long time. 

A Meme for Our Times

I have noticed that the poster that was intended to reassure that British population in the event of Mr Hitler's countrymen popping over for visit in the middle of the last century has become something of a new Meme.

For those who would like to have a wallpaper version for your computer, here is a nicely done one, found on Deviant Art.  Deviant meaning "free-thinking" in this case, and it IS "Safe for Work".

There is a commercial site dedicated to it called, not surprisingly, "Keep Calm and Carry On."

Also, I used it in an internal presentation in SAP the other day, and was surprised to find that some of my colleagues seemed to be adopting it too.   Shows that humour and thoughtfulness overrides historical bias, which is reassuring. 

Fun with Crayons

Found a link via good old Boing Boing, where an artist called Christian Faur is making very unusual pictures with crayons, or perhaps more accurately from Crayons.  He arranges then in a frame and the ends act like pixels on a computer screen, giving a very interest result.  (He's no one trick pony, his other stuff is also great.)

Swiss Chatlets, Lined with Gold Apparently...

According to this article in the usual "quick, go hide in the basement" style favoured by Ambrose Evans Pritchard, the rich have taken to hoarding gold to offset the coming Zimbabweisation of the different currencies. 

"the price is now being driven by investors. They range from the billionaires stashing boxes of krugerrands under the floors of their Swiss chalets (as an emergency fund for total disorder) to the small savers buying the exchange traded funds (ETFs)."

I like the idea of people hiding Krugerrands under the floor of their chalets, and next time I get invited to a friends house in Verbier, I shall be sure to take my clawhammer, in the light of a little bit of entrepreneurial investigation.  Must be bloody hard to take up floorboards quietly, but hey ho, needs must.

The rest of the crew of the Spaceship went up to Verbier last week, and spent the school holidays there in a chalet, shared with friends from the UK.  I went up to the mountains for the weekend, and we had the most wonderful snow, and a pure blue sky. 

I took a panorama, and used some automated software that came with my Canon SLR, and knocked up the following image.  Glorious, is it not?*  Now that I know it is also lined with Gold, my enthusiasm knows no limits. 

 

*actually no.  Typepad doesn't seem to like the image size and shape, so you'll have to take a little version. 

Zen and the Art of Watching the World Crumble Like Tissue Paper

Created a new category for this one called "musings.", as though somehow all the other stuff on here has been evidence based.

Right.

Reason for this post is twofold, firstly because my wife seems to be on the phone to the person, or at least one of the group that thought of this idea, and therefore I have to wait to cook our tea, and secondly because it just might be the whole way to survive this mess. 

Radical Acceptance, as part of the mindfulness in Zen. 

Eh?

Stick with me.  The world has gone so blopping horrendous and unbelievable that I had to catch myself the other day, and say

"I am beginning to feel depressed and overwhelmed by all the bad news that seems to be formenting out there."

One thing that I do believe is that the human being is a monad and not a duad. That is to say, that the so called body and spirit are one entity, and that living in a stressed body gives you a stressed experiential mind.  You are what you eat, think, etc.  To me that's not a very radical thought, but Thomas Torquemada would have happily burned me at the stake for thinking it. 

So, I had to take myself in hand the other day, and say, that only a radical acceptance of the new reality will do.  The certainties of the last two decades have proven to be false, it would seem.  If we are to survive and prosper in the new environment, then we have to say:

"It is as it is, and wishing it to be otherwise will not help."

In other words, half of the glass has been tipped out, but half remains, and all of the human value is still there.    Mrs Spaceship was very happy that I have stopped doing the haunted doomer thing, and actually decided to enjoy what we have on the Spaceship that is good.  (One of the best lines from the film Apollo 13.)

Enjoy the ride, it's been a very expensive ticket.