本文的作者已经91岁了，但思路之清晰活跃一点都不比年轻人差，文采也很好，让你读起来一点也不觉得累。作者出生在奥地利，母语是德语，后来学习了法文，然后才开始学英文。这篇文章本身的主题在我看来也是非常有价值的人生指导。特地全文转贴出来，给有兴趣的朋友们分享。
Being Prepared is Key to Success
By Ernest Rodeck
The world is full of people who have something to say and I am one of them. Here is why you should listen to me. I have been around for 91 years and have seen many adverse events. Some have come unexpectedly. My message is about being prepared.
Australia has been, indeed, a lucky Country. The last piece of luck came when the world was hit by a major financial crisis. It coincided with our boom in exporting iron ore and coal. Prices escalated due to a world shortage and Australia was not hit hard.
World shortages have a habit of suddenly coming to an end. I remember well when Australia was riding on the back of the sheep. Wool was twenty shillings a pound weight. A week or so later it was two shillings a pound! I was then the Chairman and Managing Director of FLER Company Ltd., a Company listed on the Melbourne Stock Exchange. One week we had two months’ of orders in hand. The next week most were cancelled and we had barely any orders.
Obviously, every business is planning ahead. The art is to have a plan for the unexpected. A plan for emergencies.
I am a native of Austria. One day in 1938 Austria was an independent Country. The next day it was part of Germany with Adolf Hitler in charge. I was a student at Vienna Technical University. Nine months later, I was a refugee in London looking for a job to feed myself.
By now you will have guessed my message. It is the message I learnt when I joined the Boy Scouts at age twelve: “Be Prepared”.
Fortunately my father had the foresight to take me into his factory during my school holidays. His workers taught me their trade and, most importantly, their point of view of the world. This has been of great help to me during my subsequent career.
My mother insisted that I learn French. She engaged a French lady who barely spoke German when I was four. The lady took me to the park to play. We only spoke French. Eight years of French followed at School, together with four years of Latin.
English was a poor extra with one hour per week, in my matriculation year.
My parents spoke German. Dad had worked in Italy before World War One. They spoke Italian at the dinner table if they did not want my sister and me to understand. We both picked up Italian phrases in record time.
Here are some unexpected events I have lived through:
Hitler invaded Austria in 1938. Overnight, Austria, an independent country, became part of Hitler’s Germany. Suddenly, my destination was London and English had to be my language if I wanted to eat. I was fortunate in obtaining a British working permit as a consequence of a previous visit representing the Austrian Scouts.
In the general turmoil that followed Dunkirk, I was interned and shipped to Australia as one of the 2,500 odd “Dunera Boys”. Again fortunate, I was released from internment on war work in 1942, as a skilled press tool maker. I became an Australian Citizen before the end of the war.
In 1945, when World War Two ended, Australia depended on imports. But imports were hard to get and even harder to pay for. It took us ten to fifteen years for Australia to establish our own world quality manufacture. I still remember how hard it was to buy a micrometer in those days.
Now, our prosperity depends mainly on two commodities: Iron ore and coal. Employment in our manufacture peaked at 28% of working persons. Now it is less than ten per cent!
We now mostly work rendering services to each other. Our prosperity depends on the boom prices currently achieved for some commodities. How long will this boom last? Can we survive if I cut your hair and in return you wash my clothes? Should we not plan to be able to survive by being able to make the things we need? We are one of the few countries in the world that can survive if the rest of the world did not exist.
We are an Autarky and we should be very much aware of this. That gives us an independence that amounts to great strength in international negotiations.
My message is: let us make plans and prepare for a glut in our export commodities. At least, let us build and maintain the institutions and technologies and train the teachers needed. Let us plan for a rapid expansion of local manufacture if and when the need arises.
One thing is certain: when our export prices drop, our international credit will crumble. So will our ability to pay for the massive imports on which we increasingly depend.
Ernest Rodeck is a 91-year-old Dunera Boy shipped for internment in Australia after the fall of Dunkirk in 1942. Creating FLER Furniture with Fred Lowen in 1945, they eventually had nine factories and floated the company in 1962. Ernest thinks that an old dog can still teach a few tricks.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/43112.html
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好
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对，厚积薄发，举重若轻
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是不是叫Ernest都比较油菜
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恩,我觉得文采是一种感觉
文章讲究得还是创造力.个人喜欢读有内容,读起来流畅的文章,其实不是要研究过语言学的才写得好文章
比如那个 one car come one car go,two car bang bang one car die, 我觉得也很有才啊
哈哈
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不错，起码是想让读者看的懂的英文。
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哈哈，我刚才拿这句话问我家大孩子能不能听懂，人家笑死了，一个劲点头说能能能
想起周柏春老爷爷说英文了
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语言好，内容也好：）谢谢lz分享！
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从这篇文章里我还学到了一个新词：Dunera Boy
大致翻译一下Wikipeida上的解释: Dunera Boys是英国历史上很不光彩的一幕，二战时在法国陷落后，所有在英国境内的德国人和奥地利人都被抓了起来。刚开始只是作为预防措施，但政府很快陷入恐慌，决定把这些人统统作为德国间谍送出境外。
1940年七月10日，总共2542名“外籍敌人“被送上了只能装载1600人的HMT Dunera号。这里面包括200名意大利战俘，251名德国战俘，几打纳粹的同情者，还有2036名反对纳粹的人。他们绝大多数是犹太难民。
经过57天的航行后Dunera号到达悉尼。首先登船的是澳洲陆军军官、医护官Alan Frost。他被船上的极为恶劣的生活条件所震惊。他的报告导致后来Dunera的船长被送上军事法庭。船上这些虚弱苍白的乘客们被送上火车，送到NSW内陆750KM的小镇Hay。
这些人在英国的亲属们一开始根本不知道他们去了哪里。后来一些信件从Hay寄回英国本土，公众才知道到底发生了什么。下议院爆发了激烈的争吵。1941年日本空袭珍珠港以后，这些人被宣布重新审核为“友好的外国人“，交送给澳大利亚政府处置。数百人加入澳洲陆军。大约一千人在战争结束后被安排了起居并永久留在了澳大利亚。更多的人回到了英国，很多人在那里加入了军队。
这篇文章的作者很显然是受害者之一，但他提起这段历史的时候并没有任何的激动，也许对于这样一位睿智的老人而言，苦难的记忆只是留给自己的，人生的经验和教训才拿出来跟他人分享。
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痛苦的往事, 早已不必再提, 淡然分享的, 是沉淀下来的人生领悟. 这是一种经历沧桑后的沉静.
(半夜加班的人出来冒个泡.)
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周末晚上加班？真是太辛苦了...
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