Tag Archives: Iran

My Dad’s birthday, and former neighbours

Posted on by

Jeffrey Noel Whitfield 25 November 1911 – 27 December 1989

A photo of Dad that I had never seen before last year — and yes I wondered if AI had been involved. But it is on Virtual War Memorials Australia. The Patron-in-chief is General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK AC(Mil) CVO MC (Retd) so it is legit.
I have colourised it.

A poem Dad never tired of quoting

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door where in I went.
With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand wrought to make it grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d –
‘I came like Water, and like Wind I go.’

From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam translated by Edward Fitzgerald

Omar Khayyam (1048 – 1123) was a Persian mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and poet, today most famous for his Rubaiyat, a spirited and profoundly humanistic celebration of life, love and liquor! The best known translation (or rather adaptation) is that of the English writer Edward Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was born in 1809 and published his first set of Khayyam-inspired verses in 1859.

My Persian neighbour

At Puckeys, North Wollongong October 2013 — my former neighbour Danny from Isfahan on the right.

See also Reclaiming Australia Persian-style in Wollongong.

I had a beautiful lamb shank dish, buried under fragrant rice.

Danny was not a great fan of the current regime in Iran, had in the past been a student protester. We had many informative conversations. And here is a reminder from recent times;

Incidentally, the first Iranian I ever met was when I was working at Wessex College of English in 1990. He was a colleague. He had been a member of an Iranian rock band and had to leave to escape persecution.

Danny had contacted me, sadly, because another of our former neighbours had died.

I heard the news today…

Posted on by

Cartoon from Eureka Street

And this came to mind, but one hopes it really ain’t a match!

Persian Danny came from Isfahan…

My neighbour here in West Wollongong around 2012… Not a fan of the current Iran regime by any means, hence he (and his friends) preferred to be known as Persians. Danny had participated in student uprisings against the regime…

Learned a lot from Danny and his friends. See for example Reclaiming Australia Persian-style in Wollongong. He was at the time doing PhD research in the area of materials science and engineering.

“We were accompanied yesterday by a Korean colleague of Persian Danny, glimpsed here entering the restaurant:

P7181205

“I had a beautiful lamb shank dish, buried under fragrant rice.

P7181206

“We all had free soup, and two appetisers, one a spinach and yoghurt dip, the other an eggplant dip rather like baba ganoush  but with mint and topped with walnuts. That we were hardly in a hotbed of Islamist extremists appeared from the tea set, a bit like this one:

persian-tea-naser-al-din-shah-dordaneh-roohani

“That’s Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar.

…the third longest reigning monarch in Iranian history after Shapur II of the Sassanid dynasty and Tahmasp I of the Safavid Dynasty….

Naser al-Din was the first modern Persian monarch to visit Europe in 1873 and then again in 1878 (when he saw a Royal Navy Fleet Review), and finally in 1889 and was reportedly amazed with the technology he saw. During his visit to the United Kingdom in 1873, Naser al-Din Shah was appointed by Queen Victoria a Knight of the Order of the Garter, the highest English order of chivalry. He was the first Persian monarch to be so honoured. His travel diary of his 1873 trip has been published in several languages as Persian, German, French, and Dutch.

“And then there are the wall decorations, perhaps pointing to Alexander the Great:

P7181207

“Excellent food, great company – and praise be for Australia in all its 21st century diversity. A pox on all those who wish to disrupt our harmony.” — July 2015

It is now the home of excellent gumbo! See Yesterday: books and gumbo in that order.

My Friday adventures — eating Korean-style at City Diggers

Yes, Methusaleh had another outing…

Given the Bunnies’ track record this season so far, black may be apt. So afterwards the young woman who served me at BWS said… Not those words exactly, but a similar sentiment. Said she was a ticket-holder to The Burrow — those in the know will know — but had not availed herself of this yet this year. Yes, even The Gong is awash with Bunnies supporters.

My BWS purchases

Back to lunch. There are some new items, Korean-style, on the menu, so I decided to sample one: Korean fried chicken pieces — the red stuff is Gochujang (Korean: 고추장; Korean pronunciation: [kotɕʰudʑɑŋ][a]) or red chili paste — a savory, sweet, and spicy fermented condiment popular in Korean cooking.

So filling are they that I asked for the doggy bag and had the rest last night with some added baby Roma tomatoes for moisture — microwaved in the container. Turned out well.

At home too I had chopsticks — those or fingers being the best approach.

That 65th Reunion

Also while at Diggers I had a great Facebook Messenger exchange with Richard Buckdale, a classmate from Sydney High’s Class of 1959. We grow old indeed…

Hi Neil, I went to the 65 year 1959 reunion at SBHS a few days ago. There were just 20 of us there altogether and none of them were on my list of blokes I wanted to see: Edward Oliver, Eric Sowey, Graham Delaney, Clive Kessler, Nicholas Laletin, David Capewell, Philip Selden, and Brian Hennell—I knew I couldn’t meet Alf van der Poorten as he died in 2010.

The headmaster gave a speech which I couldn’t understand a word of, as I had left my hearing aids behind. So, all in all, I felt somewhat sad….

We continued for best part of an hour….

Our amnesia, forgotten history, and my own archive trawl

Posted on by

Yes, motivated by present tensions and attacks I went on a time travel

Some videos time forgot — any conclusions you may draw are yours alone….

Trawling my archive I found 18th April 2006

“The Poet” is my former colleague Dick Stratford, former Principal of Sydney Boys High, and in the same Dip Ed class as me in 1965, later 1977-8 a colleague in the Dip Ed program at Sydney University under the great Ken Watson!

The Poet has also sent quite a few news items in the past few days. This one he says is a must. I agree. Brian Cloughley was deputy head of the UN mission in Kashmir (1980-1982), Staff Officer 1 (Force Structure) in Australian Army HQ (during which time he was appointed to the Order of Australia, or AM), Director of Protocol for the Australian Defence Force, and Australian defence attache in Islamabad (December 1988 – July 1994). He now lives in New Zealand…

It was on Counterpunch but is there no longer.

…Even if Cheney and Bush are not lunatic enough to send their cruise missiles and bombers to attack Iran they might manage to have harsh economic sanctions imposed, additional to the unilateral ones in place by the US for years. They usually ignore warning signals, so doubtless they dismissed the unmistakable threat in September 2005 that Iran could endure a self-inflicted cut in oil exports in the national interest of combating what it would consider rabidly hostile action. It is estimated that cutting exports would raise the price of oil to $80-100 a barrel. This wouldn’t matter to the rich in America, who are all that Cheney and Bush care about. But it would matter to the average man and woman who are even now struggling to make ends meet as a result of the rich-supportive tax policy of the present Administration.

There is no point in putting the moral position against attacking Iran. The Cheney-Bush administration has shown itself impervious to argument, and presenting a case against killing thousands of innocent people cuts no ice with blinkered zealots. The planned blitzkrieg of divine strikes will probably take place. It will alter the entire world and create hatred of America that will never be eradicated. And there is nothing we can do about it. At this Easter time (and Thai New Year), God help us all.

Oh good — the Internet Archive has it!

Brian Cloughley read my post:

Also found in this archive trawl — the best Iraq War blog ever

It eventually appeared as a book.

Salam Pax has attracted a huge worldwide readership for the Internet diary he kept during the buildup, prosecution, and aftermath of the war in Iraq. Bringing his incisive and sharply funny Web postings together in print for the first time, Salam Pax provides one of the most gripping accounts of the Iraq conflict and will be the subject of global media attention.

In September 2002, a 29-year old Iraqi architect calling himself ‘Salam Pax’ began posting daily accounts of everyday life in Baghdad onto the Internet. Written in English, these postings contained everything from descriptions of the hardships of life in Saddam Hussein’s paranoid regime, to reviews of the latest (pirate) CDs by Coldplay and Bjork, to gossip about his employers. Salam daily risked retribution from Saddam’s regime, as over 200,000 people went missing under Saddam, many for far lesser crimes than the open criticism of the regime that he voiced in his diary.

I was a follower of the blog which was originally on Blogger but transferred (as I did) to WordPress. There was even a YouTube version.