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Tag: Australia

  • Money for Nothing

    Money for Nothing

    Niccolò Machiavelli and Money for Nothing
    Niccolò Machiavelli

    Australia (Oz) taught me so much and I was so green in my twenties that looking back, I consider my years from the age of twenty one to twenty five to have been my college education. Also, it was the years leading up to the move to Australia, where I worked in the toughest jobs in Canada, from work camps inside the Arctic circle and up the sides of the Rocky Mountains. Seasonal work in every industry, such as mining, logging, tree-planting and lot’s of pipeline construction, with a stint in seismic to boot.

    I was RWA (ready willing and able) in Oz

    I survived the first part of my youth and felt well prepared for Australia and one lesson I learned there from the very beginning, well two, always say “Good day” to people you pass in the morning, whether you know them or not, and the second and most important lesson; there’s no free lunch. Although I did here about young Brits who had come to exploit the unemployment insurance that accept people who had never previously worked to pay into it. That was what they called “the Dole” since they doled it out and some people surfed every day while collecting free money.

    We all know that there’s a massive inequity in the distribution of wealth on our planet, much of it has to do with access to information. Yes, really, often times people just don’t know the same things other people know and usually it’s because we are not asking the right questions. However, what you come to learn, is that knowledge is power, not money and that is why Oz was part of my journey to find, obtain and consume knowledge.

    Starting with the Penguin Classics I read every great author and anything recommended to me. From the start of my journey I’ve never had less than 3 books on the go at a time, same as now. I let each book suggest the next and follow all topics to their source, until I feel satisfied I understand and then move on. Some classic authors are harder to relate to, like James Joyce for example, it takes longer to appreciate than Joseph Conrad, for example but within every single book was the clues to my path to current day.

    Fast forward to 2010 where the library in Youtube had now grown to encompass every single writer, every single book and all the ideas contained within them and indexed out into incredible byte sized downloads, to meet the maximum data input rate, of an information addict (me) accustomed to the highest doses, that is how I am. I turned that logic analysis machine, which is my mind, into a funnel with filters and then poured as much information through it as was possible.

    One of my main questions, especially because I have been the editor of Invest Offshore and report on cross-border banking, is there an evil cabal of people who intentionally control the world through the central banking system? Then, secondly, and largely because of my favourite classic that touches upon this topic with historical context; The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli what knowledge can I derive from this information.

    The answer is to the first is yes, and corroborated by the The Creature from Jekyll Island (1994) by G. Edward Griffin. The answer to the second is to become an agent of Private Placement Programs (PPP) and to become knowledgeable in Bank Trading Platforms. Then with this knowledge, seek and find qualified participants and inform them of this knowledge, explain how it can benefit them and provide an introduction to the experts.

    The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.

    Niccolò Machiavelli

    The Prince is an extended analysis of how to acquire and maintain political power. It includes 26 chapters and an opening dedication to Lorenzo de Medici. The dedication declares Machiavelli’s intention to discuss in plain language the conduct of great men and the principles of princely government.

    So in the end, it’s who you know and what you know, then being able to prove that you can help them. That sounds an awful lot like politics to me : ). So, all you need to know, is someone with vast amounts of money and show them Private Placement Programs (PPP) and Bank Trading Platforms, then introduce them to a banker that is willing to award you for introducing the person with vast quantities of money.

    Sounds simple right? Like Money for nothing, just remember though, that there’s no free lunch.

    Money for Nothing Macchiavelli Photo credit: Prachatai on Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-ND

  • Palm House at Adelaide Botanic Garden

    Palm House at Adelaide Botanic Garden

    Botanic Bar, Adelaide Australia

    The day I graduated bartender school in South Australia I walked into the Botanic Bar in Adelaide in the middle of the afternoon and asked for the manager, the burly dude behind the bar said, you’re talking to him, to which I responded; “I now have my State license and mixology degree to tend Bar, when do I start?” (….he started laughing) and said “you just did”.

    The Botanic Bar, Adelaide

    The Botanic Hotel was built when the most amazing Botanic Garden on earth was created in the 1880’s. The hotel is across the road from the main entrance to the Garden and home to the famous Botanic Bar, where I had my first bartender job. The Adelaide Botanic Garden was amazing to me, I went every day to discover everything about the place.

    Previous to Adelaide I had been living in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia working for a company from Adelaide, and living on the edge of a botanical garden. From the second floor I could look across the tree tops and down to the Timor Sea, on the seashore is a massive white pyramid of the Diamond Beach Casino, Resort Hotel.

    Walking across the gardens of Darwin, then Adelaide I was in awe of the collections and how well marked and organized everything is, there were rarely anyone in these magnificent places, that’s what started my lifelong passion for botanical gardens. At any rate, when the Darwin job was done, I was invited to work in Adelaide.

    Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) - Northern Territories - Australia
    Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) – Northern Territories – Australia

    The Ghan was another great adventures of my life, it’s an Australian passenger train service between Adelaide, Alice Springs and Darwin on the Adelaide–Darwin railway. Operated by Great Southern Rail, it takes 54 hours to travel the 2,979 kilometres (1,851 mi) with a four-hour stopover in Alice Springs. There are no words (now) to describe the experience.

    Youth Hostels in Adelaide were excellent and full of young travellers from all over the world, the tip for the best rock bars could be found in the hostels, and so could willing party-goers, life was grand. Then a great opportunity arose to work part-time, on the restoration of an old house that belonged to the brother of a friend I met in Darwin. My work was paying my rent, I really enjoyed the project because it was like my own house.

    The owner, was a middle aged bachelor of Italian descent, said his family were mob from Calabria and he introduced me to his Mom, whom he lived with, she couldn’t speak English but made perfect tomato sauce and the best Italian food around. Lou drove an Alfa Romeo convertible, bet on the horses compulsively and liked to smoke heroin off of tin-foil, sucking the smoke through a BIC pen. I tried it a couple of times and both couldn’t afford it, and also got turned-off by how fiendish my friend became.

    That grand house in Adelaide was over 100 years old, still had the same tiles most everywhere and really good bones as they say in the house restoration business, with high ceilings, big heavy old windows and like many Ozzy homes had great wide covered veranda all the way around the house. I really learned from working with the Italian, he dropped by almost every day and gradually we brought that house back to it’s original grandeur.

    Palm House, Adelaide Botanic Garden
    Palm House, Adelaide Botanic Garden

    Speaking of Grandeur, in the Adelaide Botanic Garden is the Palm House it’s an exquisite, painstakingly restored Victorian glasshouse imported from Bremen, Germany in 1875. It is thought to be the only one of its kind still in existence and also there’s a huge conservatory and fabulous grounds and perhaps one of the best plant collections anywhere, due to climate.

    From my 100 year old house in Adelaide, I could walk to the Botanic Bar in about 20 minutes, across the gardens and my house became a wonderful haven, especially from the heat, as there was something about those old masonry houses that were built to deal with the almost insane temperatures. Did I say that South Australia is hot?

    Beaches in South Australia may be some of the best in the world, a little ways to go in order to reach the better ones but it’s a slice of nature and raw beauty that I wasn’t prepared for back then. As I met some homesteaders who lived in hills above the city on cottages farms, and many musicians started to enter my life, also a few great girls, one of whom stole my heart.

    The girl from Broken Hill worked in a bank in the day time and worked with me at the Botanic Bar in the night time. That Bar was busy every night of the week and it was hard to find waitresses that could handle the job, it was among the more intense places I ever worked. We really had to use teamwork and keep good math, remember drink orders and move fast, avoid spilling and deal with inebriated revellers. The after-parties for staff were legendary, like a victorious band that could party like rock stars.

    One night there was a knock at my window, early in the morning, on a night I wasn’t working. It was my girlfriend with another cocktail waitress from the bar, they were drunk, so I let them climb through the window and into my bed. The reason I remember was because this was at a time when I was sober and intimidated by these two bad girls, so instead of doing what would have been obvious, I got us all into the kitchen and made more drinks and totally destroyed the vibe and the fun we were having.

    That night never left my mind, as I think the girls were curious about each other and wanted to make-out but back in the 80’s it was so unheard-of, or much more rare, and I was prudish and lacked knowledge. The other thing is, we have a tendency to remember only the ones that got away, and like a good classic movie, those imaginary love scenes never left my mind.

    Something else happened to me in that house but I’ll never know if it was the bourbon or delusion. Only all this time later do I think that I had a higher consciousness experience, after being alone so much in that old house and after a long extremely hot evening, burning candles and playing soft trance music, pacing around the huge empty house and coming back to stare at my face in an ancient mirror, I saw myself. I knew something unusual had happened, it’s etched in my mind to this day. In an instant I became without time, completely separate from my body, while in it.

    What I saw was myself, looking back at myself down the ages. I knew that I would remember that moment for the rest of my life, as I recall it to you now. I saw that I had no age and there was no concept of time, in a place where infinity exists and everything and everyone is known.

    Now I’m almost 60 years old and on at least 3 different occasions I’ve experienced the same profound sensation, where all of a sudden I was aware of the universe, inside my own mind. In that place of ultimate peace there’s a deep sense of relief and an understanding that I knew all along but had neglected to remember. I seek that place daily, the task gives me purpose and every now and then, I find this inner place of comfort that I discovered when I was 22.

    A Course in Miracles, of which I am at Lesson #296, teaches not to think about the past, let it go and not to worry about the future. For the most part I remain in the Power of Now but occasionally I smile to reflect on how naive I was as a young man, stupid almost but with great curiosity for the world and always on a quest for adventure.

    Palm House Photo credit: MargaretDonald on VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND Ayers Rock Photo credit: pallotron on Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-SA

  • Sugar Cane Cutters

    Sugar Cane Cutters

    Once upon a time, in my “young ‘n feerless” days, way back in my early 20’s, I was hitching across Queensland looking for work and boy did I find it. Just outside of Port Douglas, in northern Queensland I met a young dude who’s family owned a sugar plantation, every day they took newbies out to the fields to see if they could “hack-it”, literally. The old photo from Ayr, Queensland shows one major difference from my session (which lasted 2.5 days, as I was let-go at lunch on the 3rd day), was that we were sugar cane cutters of just previously “burnt” sugar cane. Yes, it was black with soot and with every whack of the machete, big blooms of black dust would poof into the air from the sugar cane stocks. Burning the sugar cane a couple of days before the cutters get there, reduces the number of deadly snakes in the 8 foot high sugar cane fields.

    It was the single hardest job I ever tried and one of the very few times I was let-go, for not being able to keep swinging. The first few hours seemed easy and relatively enjoyable, as a young man you’d be thinking about a golf or baseball swing and how this repetitive chopping will be good for the physique etc… Then, as the afternoon heat starts to melt into heavy humidity, you begin to realize that the sweat is causing slippery grip issues with the machete, next you start to realize that your hand is beginning to blister. If you make it through your first day, as I did but most walk-off (without pay). The next day was a total attitude adjustment, ok I thought, let’s do this and it will get easier after today. By the late morning it was discovered that I wasn’t chopping the sugar cane stocks low enough to the ground, more demonstrations were given, corrections made and work carried on but it was obvious that I was falling behind the other cane cutters.

    On the 3rd morning, I was dreading holding on to that machete in my oh-so-sore hand. The regular crew of sugar cane cutters just jump straight into the black charred wall of sugar cane. it’s truly incredible watching a real pro, the ease with which they chop through giant stocks of sugar with perfect precision, to lay it in a perfect angle on the ground. It’s similar in some ways to watching a golf or tennis pro. The toll it takes on the body is insane, even hard to explain, unless you’ve tried it. The amount of deadly snakes in Australia is another factor but it’s that humid heat of northern Queensland that put’s a young man to the test. My test ended about mid-morning on the third day. The boss dropped me in town, paid me, thanked me and said I did much better than most. That was my dirtiest job and I was happy to get sacked, the sore hands and arm were soon forgotten.

    In modern days and the reason for remembering this story, is that I’m an agent for Brazil Sugar, the best sugar in the world. Sugar is the commodity that I have focused on learning about, now I am a commodity trader. Yes, after years of trying, I finally found a buyer for sugar. For years I’ve had the exact perfect connections and agency agreements in place, to sell and export Brazil sugar. Although it’s taken me over 5 years to make my first sugar deal, I’ve got one in the bag and just getting started. If you’re a commodity trader and know a buyer for sugar, please contact me for a Brazil sugar quote.