eBay to Acquire Skype - About Skype

London, September 12, 2005 – eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY; www.ebay.com) has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration. The acquisition will strengthen eBay’s global marketplace and payments platform, while opening several new lines of business and creating significant new monetization opportunities for the company. The deal also represents a major opportunity for Skype to advance its leadership in Internet voice communications and offer people worldwide new ways to communicate in a global online era. Skype, eBay and PayPal will create an unparalleled ecommerce and communications engine for buyers and sellers around the world.

 

“Communications is at the heart of ecommerce and community,” said Meg Whitman, President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay. “By combining the two leading ecommerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in Internet voice communications, we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net.”

Founded in 2002 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, Skype offers high-quality voice communications to anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world. The Skype software is easy to download and install, and enables free calls between Skype users online. Skype’s premium services provide low-cost connectivity to traditional fixed and mobile telephones. Skype’s software also offers a robust set of features, including voicemail, instant messaging, call forwarding and conference calling. Upcoming product innovations include Skype video, expressive content such as avatars, and customized toolbars for Outlook and Internet Explorer.

One of the fastest growing companies on the Internet, Skype already has 54 million members in 225 countries and territories. Skype is currently adding approximately 150,000 users a day and has created a thriving ecosystem of products, services, developers, and affiliates. Skype is considered the market leader in virtually all countries in which it does business. In North America alone, Skype has more users and serves more voice minutes than any other Internet voice communications provider.

“Our vision for Skype has always been to build the world’s largest communications business and revolutionize the ease with which people can communicate through the Internet,” said Niklas Zennström, Skype CEO and co-founder. “We can’t think of any better platform to fulfill this vision to become the voice of the Internet than with eBay and PayPal.”

“We’re great admirers of how eBay and PayPal have simplified global ecommerce and payments,” said Janus Friis, Skype co-founder and senior vice president, strategy. “Together we feel we can really change the way that people communicate, shop and do business online.”

Zennström and Friis will remain in their current positions. Zennström will report to eBay CEO Whitman and join eBay’s senior executive team.

A Powerful Ecommerce and Communications Engine

Online shopping depends on a number of factors to function well. Communications, like payments and shipping, is a critical part of this process. Skype will streamline and improve communications between buyers and sellers as it is integrated into the eBay marketplace. Buyers will gain an easy way to talk to sellers quickly and get the information they need to buy, and sellers can more easily build relationships with customers and close sales. As a result, Skype can increase the velocity of trade on eBay, especially in categories that require more involved communications such as used cars, business and industrial equipment, and high-end collectibles.

The acquisition also enables eBay and Skype to pursue entirely new lines of business. For example, in addition to eBay’s current transaction-based fees, ecommerce communications could be monetized on a pay-per-call basis through Skype. Pay-per-call communications opens up new categories of ecommerce, especially for those sectors that depend on a lead-generation model such as personal and business services, travel, new cars, and real estate. eBay’s other shopping websites — Shopping.com, Rent.com, Marktplaats.nl and Kijiji – can also benefit from the integration of Skype.

PayPal and Skype also make a powerful combination. For example, a PayPal wallet associated with each Skype account could make it much easier for users to pay for Skype fee-based services, adding to the number of PayPal accounts and increasing payment volume.

In addition, Skype can help expand the eBay and PayPal global footprint by providing buyers and sellers in emerging ecommerce markets, such as China, India, and Russia, with a more personal way to communicate online. And consumers in markets where eBay currently has a limited presence, such as Japan and Scandinavia, can learn about eBay and PayPal through Skype. Skype can also help streamline cross-border trading and communications.

With its rapidly expanding network of users, the Skype business complements the eBay and PayPal platforms. Each business is self-reinforcing, organically bringing greater returns with each new user or transaction. The three services can also reinforce and accelerate the growth of one another, thereby increasing the value of the combined businesses. Working together, they can create an unparalleled engine for ecommerce and communications around the world.

Transaction and Financial Information

eBay will acquire all of the outstanding shares of privately-held Skype for a total up-front consideration of approximately €2.1 billion, or approximately $2.6 billion, which is comprised of $1.3 billion in cash and the value of 32.4 million shares of eBay stock, which are subject to certain restrictions on resale.

The maximum amount potentially payable under the performance-based earn-out is approximately €1.2 billion, or approximately $1.5 billion, and would be payable in cash or eBay stock, at eBay’s discretion, with an expected payment date in 2008 or 2009. Skype shareholders were offered the choice between several consideration options for their shares. Shareholders representing approximately 40% of the Skype shares chose to receive a single payment in cash and eBay stock at the close of the transaction. Shareholders representing the remaining 60% of the Skype shares chose to receive a reduced up-front payment in cash and eBay stock at the close plus potential future earn-out payments which are based on performance-based goals for active users, gross profit and revenue.

The above-mentioned dollar and eBay share amounts are approximate, based on the Euro-Dollar exchange rate and eBay’s stock price as of September 9, 2005. The final value of the stock component of the consideration may vary significantly from this estimate based on the value of eBay stock at closing.

Skype generated approximately $7 million in revenues in 2004, and the company anticipates that it will generate an estimated $60 million in revenues in 2005 and more than $200 million in 2006. For Q4-05, eBay expects the acquisition to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.01 and $0.04 respectively. For the full year 2006, eBay expects the transaction to be dilutive to pro forma and GAAP earnings per share by $0.04 and $0.12 respectively, with breakeven on a pro forma basis expected in the fourth quarter of 2006. On a long-term basis, eBay expects Skype operating margins could be in the range of 20% to 25%.

The acquisition is subject to various closing conditions and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2005.

About eBay Inc.

Founded in 1995, eBay pioneers communities built on commerce, sustained by trust, and inspired by opportunity. eBay enables ecommerce on a local, national and international basis with an array of websites – including the eBay Marketplace, PayPal, Kijiji, Rent.com and Shopping.com – that bring together millions of buyers and sellers every day.

About Skype Technologies SA

Skype, the Global Internet Communications Company™, allows people everywhere to make free, unlimited, superior quality voice calls via its award-winning innovative peer-to-peer software for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Pocket PC platforms. Skype is available in 27 languages and is the fastest growing voice communications offering worldwide. Since its launch in August 2003, Skype has been downloaded more than 163 million times in 225 countries and territories.  Fifty-four million people are registered to use Skype’s free services, with over 3 million simultaneous users on the network at any one time.  Skype Technologies SA is headquartered in Luxembourg and is growing its offices in London and Estonia.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements regarding Skype and the expected impact of the acquisition of Skype on eBay’s financial results. Those statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from those discussed. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, the timing of the closing of the transaction, the possibility that the transaction may not close, the reaction of the users of Skype’s services, the future growth of Skype’s user base and public acceptance of Internet voice communication services, rapid technological changes in the Internet voice communications sector, the reaction of competitors to the transaction, global developments in the regulation of Internet voice communication services including those provided by Skype, the possibility that integration of Skype’s offerings following the transaction may be more difficult than expected, and the possibility that entry by Skype and eBay into potential new lines of business will not be successful. More information about potential factors which could affect eBay’s business and financial results is included in eBay’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2004, the company’s Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and current reports on Form 8-K. All forward-looking statements are based on information available to eBay on the date hereof, and eBay assumes no obligation to update such statements.

UPDATE: Webcast with Meg Whitman, President & CEO eBay, and Niklas

Zennstrom, CEO & Co-Founder of Skype (Monday September 12, 2005 - 8:00 AM

ET).

 

 

via about.skype.com

 

Avalanche kills over here in France

British Boarders Killed by Tignes Avalanche

Two British snowboarders have been killed by a massive avalanche on the North face of the Grande Motte glacier at Tignes. The slab avalanche, which measured 500 meters wide and 1.5 meters deep in places broke 100 meters above the snowboarders at around 3,200 meters. The alert was given shortly after 16h00 by a witness who had seen the avalanche and the two snowboarders. The boarders were carried some 700 to 800 meters over a series of cliffs and were buried under a mixture of snow, ice and rocks.

The two snowboaders were on a popular but technically difficult off-piste route at the time. Aged in their twenties and off-pisteenthusiasts they were season workers based with a small UK tour operator in Val d’Isere. Both were equipped with avalanche beacons. The avalanche occured in a spot that was difficult for the 30 rescue workers to reach, situated between cliffs with the risk of crevasses and further avalanches in the sector. The search was abandonned with nightfall.

The body of one of the snowboarders was found by rescue workers shortly before midday today at the base of a 100 meter cliff. They had detected a signal from his transceiver. An avalanche beacon, belonging to the second victim and mobile phone have also been found. The beacon was in the pocket of the victim’s anorak which had been ripped in two, a testament to the force of the slide. A signal from another piece of electronic equipment has been detected under some 7.5 to 10 meters of snow. A number of deep trenches have been dug but so far with no result. The recovery operation has been suspended for the moment due to the arrival of bad weather and the risk of rockfall and further snow slides.

The avalanche risk was 3 (considerable) at the time with some 30cm of fresh snow in the area; the avalanche bulletin had noted the risk of slab avalanches above 2300 meters. The north face of the Grande Motte is known more for crevasse than avalanche risk. The director of the Tignes Piste Service, Jean-Louis Tuaillon put the accident down to bad luck rather than any particular error committed by the young men. 15 of the 23 French avalanche deaths have occured in the Savoie this season with a worrying increase in the number of off-piste snowboarders and skiers getting caught. Despite a greater emphasis on off-piste safety with the introduction of transceiver training and the SPOT (Skiing Powder of Tignes) there have been two other snowboarder fatalities in the Espace Killy this season.

Snowboard Instructor killed in Val d’Isere - 27 Jan 2005

Four Killed in Separate Avalanches - 25 Jan 2005

Posted by redac on Friday, 22 April, 2005 at 02:36 PM

BBC NEWS | Hardtalk | Greg Roberts' amazing story

Greg Roberts plans to make Shantaram part of a quartet

In a HardTalk Extra interview screened on 30 December, Mishal Husain spoke to Greg Roberts about his new book Shantaram -- a tale of a bank robber who escaped from prison in Australia to live a fugitive life in the slums of Bombay.

 

Click here to watch the full interview

 

Gregory Roberts' first book Shantaram tells an extraordinary story of a man who becomes a drug addict and bank robber, escapes from an Australian prison and flees to Bombay -- where he works a doctor in the slums and runs with the Indian mafia.

Roberts admits that the novel very closely mirrors his own extraordinary life. So why decide to write a novel and not a memoir?

Roberts told Mishal Husain that "I think the novel form chose me. I was a writer before I became a criminal .. my first instinct was to write."

Australia's most wanted man

Roberts became a heroin addict after the break-up of his marriage and losing custody of his young daughter.

"You think that it's going to solve all your problems, but what it does is roll all your problems up into one huge problem which is getting the money for drugs."

In an attempt to fuel his addiction, Roberts began to rob banks, and his three-piece suits and polite manner gained him a degree of notoriety in his native Australia.

Sometimes, when you live a life at such a wild edge, an extreme edge of experience, you can come back into the world -- if you come back at all -- with some essence from that experience that people find useful Gregory Roberts

He was eventually caught and imprisoned -- only to escape in broad daylight and flee the country. He ended up in Bombay, where he was captivated by the huge city and its remarkable energy.

"The first thing you see is the wretchedness and misery. You see the slums and it really does strike you so powerfully. It's a kind of agony looking at it for the first time."

But Roberts said when he got beyond the first shock of the slums, he began to see "the real city and the real people and the real lives that are being led .. it was the freedom that I saw around me. It's a city that manifests a huge degree of freedom compared to the freedoms I'd experienced in my own life."

"Man of Peace"

Roberts befriended a local man who took him to stay in his village in the country. There, the local women decided he needed a new name -- they called him Shantaram, which translates to "man of peace". Roberts was intensely moved by this.

Roberts was once Australia's most wanted man

"I went into the jungle and I sobbed .. because they saw something in me that I didn't know was there."

Eventually, Roberts was arrested and thrown in prison in Bombay, where he was tortured. A man eventually bribed the police to release him, and that man turned out to be a senior figure in the Indian mafia. Roberts repaid his kindness by going to work for him. He smuggled drugs and passports and ran with the mujahedin in Afghanistan.

Writing Shantaram

Roberts was eventually captured in Germany and extradited to Australia, where he served the rest of his prison sentence.

In prison he began to write the book that would become Shantaram -- but saw his manuscript destroyed by prison officers, not once but twice.

The second time he decided the only thing to do was forgive the man who ripped up his life's work: "I looked at the shattered pieces of my own life in front of me and thought, if I don't do something to move past this, it will destroy me .. I found the prison officer who destroyed the manuscript and told him that I forgave him and I understood why he did it."

So what next for Gregory Roberts? He plans to make Shantaram part of a quartet of books. He is reconciled with his daughter, plans to set up mobile clinics in Bombay and works with young offenders in Australia.

"Sometimes, when you live a life at such a wild edge, an extreme edge of experience, you can come back into the world -- if you come back at all -- with some essence from that experience that people find useful."

HARDtalk Extra can be seen on Fridays on BBC World at 04:30 GMT, 11:30 GMT, 15:30 GMT, 19:30 GMT and 00:30 GMT.

 

It can also be seen on BBC News 24 at 04:30 and 23:30

 

E-mail this to a friend

Printable version

via news.bbc.co.uk

 

French top single

 

Riot On!

via imdb.com

Recommended doco!

The First Death is the Hardest

 

 

An edited extract of this was published in The Australian Women’s Weekly 2004

By Ruth Ostrow

It was a cold afternoon early in 2001. I made the pilgrimage to Sydney from Byron Bay to visit a terminally-ill girlfriend.

Not realising the weather would be so cool I set aside an hour before my appointment to go shopping for a coat. As I walked down Oxford street I was trembling - from cold, from fear. I was bracing myself for what I would see. Deb Bailey was one of the most beautiful women I knew. High cheekbones, a fresh open face, a seductive smile and large empathetic eyes that really saw you.

“Be aware that she has deteriorated very quickly,” her husband David Armstrong, my friend and then-boss as editor-in-chief of The Australian newspaper, told me over the phone. “She can’t speak, and she already has trouble holding a pen but she can communicate through notes.”

She had been communicating. Long emails, telling me her fears, her dreams, her nightmares. She had only a short time earlier found out that she had Motor Neurone Disease, of the most virulent kind. “Enjoy the weeks and months ahead,” the doctors had said, ominously.

She refused to give in, writing me the most amazing letters of courage as we searched for meaning, searched for hope, and for the sacredness of life, together late at night when she couldn’t sleep.

But one day the emails stopped. Already confined to a wheelchair, her muscles deteriorating rapidly, she was having trouble sitting at the keyboard. She was 47 years young, vital, inspirational, one of the top women’s magazine editors in the country, former Assistant Editor at The Australian Women’s Weekly, with two daughters who shared her beauty. I jumped on a plane.

Ah grief. It’s a vast country. A foreign land. This was the beginning of a long journey for me into that wilderness of pain and sorrow that would span three years and span four friendships, as woman after young woman in their 40s – all treasured friends - died from illness and disease. As a journalist and writer I would struggle to grasp through words what was not, and is still not, graspable.

I remember feeling bewildered and frightened as I scoured Paddington for a coat shop, wondering how Deb was going to look. Steeling myself for the shock, I wandered past a shop full of sexy lingerie and see-through silly things. What was I thinking?

To this day I am still miffed by my behaviour. I had never bought sexy lingerie before and not since. But suddenly, as if it were the most important thing in the world, I ran into the shop and started spending my coat money. Compulsively.

A staggering $1000 poorer, I stumbled into the street carrying bags and bags of knickers, bras, leopard-skin leotards, shiny PVC pants, a red silk Suzy-Wong bodice, fishnet stockings, a fishnet top, and a pair of pink, velvet cat-ears that to this day have me shaking my head in shock as they sit in my wardrobe gathering dust.

I was shivering from the cold, trying to hail a cab, holding ridiculous things I’d never wear. It would have been comical had I not felt sick with guilt.

Some time later, prominent grief counsellors Mal and Dianne McKissock - founders of the internationally-acclaimed Bereavement C.A.R.E Centre in Sydney - would tell me that the way people grieve is extraordinarily different. Some will cry, other people will go on party or sex binges or do escapist things, some will go on shopping frenzies, others will be in bliss and find God, others will be furious, others will just go cold and stony silent. “None are better than others,” said Dianne.

“Whatever your defence mechanism is from childhood, to run away, or scream, or hide, this is what you will most likely do in times of extreme stress of which grief is one. Don’t feel badly Ruth. Don’t feel badly for panicking at mortality. Your purchases were an expression of love-of-life.”

That day however, not yet having the benefit of those kind words, I sat the whole way to Deb’s in the taxi berating myself for being “shallow”, “an awful friend”, “a bad, bad person”. “How could you do this as your friend lays dying?” I yelled at myself inside my head as my mind filled with images of sexy lingerie and my sweaty palms made anxiety marks on the elegant paper bags.

I arrived with no time to put the bags down. Instead I followed David straight into the kitchen where Deb was sitting limply in a wheelchair.

Standing in front of her was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Here was my friend, so beautiful, and alert, flopped in a wheel chair, gaunt, pale, face frozen from the disease, dribbling slightly, watching me for signs of shock.

My face was fighting itself. The false smile was so false as to make my lips tremble. I was finding it hard to breathe. “Show her what you bought,” said David, peeking into the bags. I went bright red. “But it’s lingerie,” I whispered. He took me aside. “She wants to feel alive, not be pitied, not talk continually about death and illness. Show her the stuff, she’ll love it. Treat her like a girlfriend,” he said discreetly disappearing into the next room.

My heart was breaking for him in that moment - her beloved husband who attended her every need till her moment she died, trying to second-guess her every desire. His courage and devotion became legendary, as have his efforts with Deb’s friend Robyn Paine in setting up the Deb Bailey Foundation for MND research.

One by one I dragged out the stocking’s, the frilly and fluffy things, as she nodded and wrote on pieces of paper how beautiful each piece was. It was like a scene from an absurdist play or a strange arthouse film. Me prancing around the kitchen with cat ears, and a pink, furry bodice, she with her extraordinary sense of humour enjoying the pantomime, scrawling merrily, her “oooo’s” and “ahhh’s” on bits of paper and holding them up. I played too for a few moments, lost in escapism, lost in her joy and amusement.

But then her teenage daughter walked in the room and the spell was broken. Something inside me snapped. In those first minutes I had been in too much shock to take it all in. But as her child entered it all suddenly registered. “Oh my god,” my mind screamed. Deb saw the truth cross my face.

“It’s okay Ruth. I know how you must be feeling seeing me like this,” she wrote and handed me the paper. As I read her note my face - so tired from grinning - just cracked. Not out of pity but at her extraordinary compassion for me. Her kind, kind soul. There I stood clutching cat ears in my clenched fist, as the tears began spilling out, everywhere, all over everything.

In this society we are not allowed to show grief in front of people who are dying, but what else on this earth is a greater tribute of love than our expression of emotion and pain? It is okay to laugh and it’s okay to cry or play with sexy lingerie or just be. There are no ‘shoulds’ in this mysterious, scary world of grieving.

Within a few months of this special day Deb had died. She had only lasted five months after diagnosis. I had always believed that the first death is the worst. Like the first time someone breaks your heart, or the first time you fall. There’s a shock to it, a quality of indefinable confusion that somehow intensifies the pain, a loss of innocence that we grieve the first death.

I now know this not to be true. For grief isn’t one thing. It is a whole world with its own languages and cultures. Order has nothing to do with it. Some deaths leave us with a sense of abandonment, a loss of intimacy and closeness, others with guilt. Others are almost joyous - the releasing of an ‘old soul’ back to God.

The death of a baby which I went through with one of my girlfriend’s during this fitful time has its own particular quality of emptiness and meaninglessness, the loss of an older child holds a sense of terror and existential anxt. My own dad died young, whilst his hair was still black and shiny, and I have never gotten over my rage and despair at his leaving so soon.

Losing Deb was the first of a new and terrible kind of grief we all have to face. One which has changed me forever - losing a peer, a mate, a buddy. As my Fate would have it, I was to lose three more women of my peerage in the months ahead. Two were cousins. All had children. Peers are like mirrors of our own body. We mourn our own ultimate passing as we mourn theirs, we mourn for their children as we mourn and fear for our own.

One by one each died, and it never got easier.

Whilst I was on planes to Sydney visiting Deb, I was also on planes back and forward to Melbourne where I grew up, dealing with my sick cousin.

She was 44 years of age at the time – four years older than me. She was like a sister, we had daughters of the same age. She trusted me, and I knew I had a privileged place in her heart. She was a fragile woman. Externally robust, always laughing, curvaceous, full of life and love, but like so many of us, a girl underneath.

Just before the news came through about Deb, my cousin rang to tell me she’d been feeling unwell. Her blood tests weren’t looking good, she was turning yellow. She was waiting for the results of a liver biopsy. I waited too, high on a hill-top, in rural Byron Bay, where I had moved from Sydney for my sea change.

“Don’t keep calling,” my mum had chastised me. “We’ll call you when there’s news.” The days were long, without any call. Finally I picked up the phone. It was dead. Somewhere out in a field miles away, a backhoe was preparing the ground for a new property. In his ignorance the driver had cut the cable linking my line to the network. I hadn’t realised. My mobile was out of range.

Finally down the hill, I managed to reach someone in my family on the crackling mobile. While the phone had been dead my cousin had been rushed into hospital. She’d been diagnosed with cancer. It was in her lungs and they suspected it was elsewhere given the signs.

Sitting in my car, cut off, alone, by the side of a dusty road, no one there to comfort me in their warm arms, I remember gazing out over the grass and feeling helpless, terrified and alarmed as the adrenalin was making my tummy do back-flips.

“It’s so unfair. She’s so young and vital and passionate…she has a young daughter!” I railed at the windscreen that reflected back my distorted face.

I remember the sky so pure and open above me. The sky that has watched terrorist attacks and murders and wars and personal tragedies. I watched the indifferent animals wandering about, the birds still chirping. That’s the funny thing about grief. You can’t understand why the world doesn’t just stop.

Optimism, denial, optimism, denial. Where does one stop and the other begin? My first trips to my dying friends I brought books, stories of courage, positive statistics, Buddhist philosophies, and my belief in yoga and reiki energy as self-healing tools.

Talk to the doctors and there’s always the cold, hard facts. Talk to natural therapists and miracles abounding everywhere, if not in curing cancer or disease then certainly in creating longevity and a richer quality of life.

Deb was open to everything and had a very peaceful death, despite her pain, as a result of the spiritual world she embraced before she died. My cousin met me with a curious stare. She was in denial which made it difficult for me. It’s hard to say goodbye to someone who isn’t going anywhere.

“How would I be if it were me?” I’d ask myself when I became frustrated. I know now that she did bravely confronted her own death with dignity and courage. But she couldn’t come to terms with having to say goodbye to her treasured daughter - only a little girl of eight. Which mother ever, ever could?

I’m crying as I write this. Crying for all of them. Still. There’s no time limit on grief. It is an endless well of acceptance of the losses, inevitable and tragic, that we have to go through over a lifetime: person by person, love by love, the old houses we cherish, our nanas and papas and parents, and friends, precious things, sometimes our children, eventually our own selves taken piece by piece by aging, illness or accident. And each loss takes us back to the great well, where we stand looking down at all the losses looking back at us.

We grieve not only for the people who have gone but for how it could have been with them, what should have been, the child she/he would have grown into. How much our dad would have loved to meet his grandchildren. Each Christmas, each birthday, each anniversary we grieve, endlessly.

“What is the meaning of life?” I’d ask my God in those trips back and forth. Before Helen and Deb would die, I was to get a phone call from another beloved friend in Sydney, another Helen - mother of two girls, who had been fighting stomach cancer. The prognosis was grim.

I was planning to go visit her, when Deb Bailey died. One week I stood in the pouring rain at the cemetery in Sydney burying Deb, the next I stood in the pouring rain at the cemetery in Melbourne burying my beloved cousin. Between all this I went to visit my friend Helen to say goodbye. Helen was an extraordinary and compassionate human being. This anecdote best sums her up. When I told her of Deb Bailey’s death she said: “Poor thing, how tragic for her and the children.”

Helen like Deb had accepted her death. In doing so they left valuable things for their daughters, diaries, notes to read as they grow. They said things that needed to be said.

A few months ago, with a sense of death behind me, another cousin, a beautiful mother and friend, had a massive coronary. Apparently she just looked up over morning coffee and said to her companion: “I feel I’m about to go on a journey somewhere,” and then slumped over and died. She left three children.

I have cried so many tears my face is older from fluid loss. But I have laughed also.

For what I’ve learned is this. To say all the things we need to say now. Not to put it off, not to hold back on words or feelings nor money. To dance as if no one is watching and live life to the fullest, seizing every moment. To not put off spending time with our children, parents, partners, or telling them a million times we love them.

The Buddhists have saying: “Keep Death as a friend, always on your shoulder”. Each moment we and our loved ones are alive is a gift not a given. Only a few of the millions of fish born to one mother make it out to sea. It’s the law of Nature. I have learned that accepting death helps us celebrate life.

I’ve learned to allow ourselves to grieve as long and hard as we like, as madly and badly as we like. It is our duty to honour those we love by silencing the silencers who would gag our souls.

But mostly I’ve learned this: there is always, always room for hope.

Do not stand at my grave and weep 
I am not there. I do not sleep. 
I am a thousand winds that blow 
I am the diamond glints on snow. 
I am the sunlight on ripened grain 
I am the gentle autumn rain. 
When you awaken in the morning's hush, 
I am the swift uplifting rush 
Of quiet birds in circled flight. 
I am the soft stars that shine at night. 
Do not stand at my grave and cry. 
I am not there: I did not die

Mary Elizabeth Frye (1904-)

 

 

Nervous Breakthrough

As appeared in the Weekend Australian 10th April 2004

By Ruth Ostrow

There is a moment when you realise you’ve got it wrong: An epiphany, a breakthrough, a breakdown, a midlife crisis, call it what you will. It’s the moment when the wave hits. The moment you realise that everything you’ve ever aspired to is illusion and you have to change to save your life.

These epiphanies are pretty dramatic things. You would ideally be behind a closed door or under a couch when the tears start and the mascara runs and the panic rises and your skin turns red and itchy. Mine came at the most inconvenient moment possible, with cameras rolling and a film-crew monitoring my every word.

It was late 1998 and the ABC-TV series Australian Story was preparing a documentary on me which would subsequently air across the country to an audience of more than a million. The prospect had initially filled me with pride. It was validation that I was now a prominent Australian, recognition that I’d finally arrived where I’d dreamed of being since I was a little girl growing up in the then-outer Melbourne suburb of Bentleigh, the oldest of four daughters from a working-class, immigrant family.

I wanted the filming to be perfect. I had blow-dried my hair. My make-up was immaculate. In fact, everything was perfect in order to create the perfect media image. Sitting there in a spectacular long, red dress - my trademark - which I’d humorously dubbed “Aphrodite”, I had answered all the perfect questions perfectly. Until I was asked one probing question too many.

Suddenly I was in tears. Not a trickle, but a torrent. The filming had to stop as the camera crew and sound engineer prowled angrily around my apartment waiting for me to get a grip. Every time they started filming, the tears would start again.

This was the day, the moment, I credit with my nervous ‘breakthrough’ – and the realisation that everything I’d aspired to had left me empty. Within months I would be living on a farm, having traded stilettos for Blunderstone boots, a spectacular waterfront penthouse for a modest weatherboard, and money, status and professional respect for peace-of-mind.

I didn’t know it the time but I was about to become part of a quiet revolution called ‘downshifting’. Realising that happiness and success cannot be bought, many around the western world are sick of feeling like rats on a treadmill. Using “Voluntary Simplicity” as their mantra they are divesting themselves of possessions, pruning back work hours, or going bush, pulling kids out of private schools, growing their own food, in order to have a richer inner-life. Basically making more time for joy.

All across Australia this Easter weekend, people will live the life they should always be living – enjoying the company of kids, lovers, partners, family and friends, laughing and finding time for each other and the things that truly sustain us. The things that matter. But come Monday or Tuesday morning they’ll be back at their workplaces wondering why these are just moments in time. They will be asking each other as they lie on beaches and look out over rainforests: “Why can’t life always be like this?”

If I could speak to each of them I’d tell them this: “It can be like this. But it comes at a price. The price is realising that less is more. Less money, less creature comforts, less security, equals more time to live and love.”

It’s already happening in large numbers overseas. According to The Trends Research Institute, 15 per cent of America’s 77 million baby boomers will have joined the movement by the end of the decade. Here a staggering 25 percent of the adult population according to the Australia Institutehave begun the process of scaling down.

This is my personal story of the day I slid off the greasy pole or fell off it. Made a decision that precipitated my own sea change.

At the time you are meeting me, in late 1998, I was the woman who had it all. At 38 I was on top of the world. Splashed across magazines, on the cover of Who Magazine, I had made front page of The Age not as a journalist, my vocation, but as a news story. If you were young and ambitious you may have modelled yourself on me.

My sex & relationships column was being syndicated through the News Limited Sunday group with a readership of several million. The Triple M Sex Show I started on late-night radio across the country was rating brilliantly thanks to continued efforts by Senators Harradine and Alston to get me thrown off air due to the graphic honesty I was eliciting from my listeners.

I had the lavish apartment on Coogee Beach in Sydney, the adorable child and supportive husband, the respect of my colleagues for the decade I’d spent at The Australian Financial Review as a finance journalist and author of a best-seller on the secrets of success.

I had attracted the attention of Australian Story for my stand against censorship and my controversial views on love, marriage and sexuality. I’d been in the news for having taken on the Howard Government which had accused me in Parliament of “ushering in Sodom and Gomorrah”. I was defending the right of average people to speak their truth about what really goes on in their marriages, hearts, beds, and souls.

The producer, one of Australia’s very best, Vanessa Gorman who went on to make the extraordinary documentary Losing Layla about the death her daughter, and was later to become one of my dearest friends herself having just made a sea change to Byron Bay, was not a woman to suffer hype. She wanted me to speak my truth. Demanded my truth. “Why do you do this?” “But what drives you to work up to 16 hours a day?” She probed as I fielded each question expertly.

Sensing a sadness I’d never admitted to, she kept probing me off-camera. “But what would you be doing if you could?” Before I could stop it, it was coming out of my mouth. “I would be sitting on a mountain top, away from all this bullshit and real estate madness. I would have a quiet life, simple and full of love and joy. I’d be dancing and hanging with friends. What’s the good of having all of this if you haven’t got the time to enjoy it?

“We don’t own anything anyway, it’s all an illusion,” I blurted out. “I’m trapped by my huge mortgage. And people die. Even Princess Diana died. Why do people wait until they’re old and retired before enjoying life?”

As the grief rose up in me I realised the tidal wave I had run from all my life was inexplicably crashing down. I was a sex writer who never saw her own bed so gruelling were my work hours, a pleasure activist who forgot her body. “Where is the meaning of it all?” I cried, as she stroked me gently, keeping one eye on her watch.

One spiritual guru would later coin the phrase “nervous breakthroughs” to describe what I’d been through. It is the point where we know we’ve reached the end of deluding ourselves. In mythology it’s the Hero’s Journey into the deepest parts of ourselves. We go down into the darkness, to find the light. For being lost is the beginning of being found.

When I’d regained my composure and the cameras started rolling again, I wanted to tell the truth. But shame and guilt got in the way. I was ashamed that with all my blessings, all the opportunities my parents had worked so hard to give me, I wasn’t happy. It has taken me four years of solitude to shake the cloying feeling that somehow I’d failed by walking away from the ‘Happy Ever After’ myth. In fact, I now realise it was the most courageous thing I’ve ever done. And I’m ready to tell the truth.

But where to start telling the truth that no one dares speak of? The disappointment that life went too fast, the lack of understanding at how marriages fray at the seams, the boredom, the greed, the jealousy we feel towards others, the sense of missing out, the sense of being pulled in too many directions, the exhaustion, our sexual confusion, potency problems, hatred of our bodies. The sense that someone is always coming up from behind - a younger woman, a younger business rival. We cling with sweaty fingers to an illusion of permanence, yet we can’t keep anything - not our looks, not our youth, not those we love.

At the height of my success, thousands of Australians were either writing to me each week or calling me on radio. When I asked for people to talk about their hidden world of fantasies I got 10,000 letters in two weeks which became the book now retitled ‘Burning Up’. Yes, there were letters that were titillating and sexy but so many people used me as a Mother Confessor for things I could hardly read for the pain and confusion buried there.

To know how unhappy people are in their bodies, in their souls, in their marriages is a huge burden to carry. Many feel silenced, forbidden from grieving too hard or long, punished for aging, lonely behind the picket fences of suburbia. There’s the resentment at always having to prove themselves, feelings of not being valued and appreciated. The sense of being trapped on the mortgage treadmill – the capitulations we make to others because if we don’t we’ll lose the house, the status, money for school fees.

There’s also the guilt at the neglect of our children, particularly from working women like me. Where do we begin to unravel the knots we tie ourselves in our attempt to have it all?

But most of all the desperation we feel when we realise this material life, this youth-obsessed, beauty-driven culture, isn’t making us content. Renowned academic Joseph Campbell in his masterpiece Myths to Live By talks of a sense of meaninglessness that pervades our competitive western life. We don’t know why we are here.

And here was I, forged in a working-class home, following like a sheep my parents’ capitalist dream. I was a consumer-society pin-up girl. A walking close-peg for designer life and designer body, as my personal trainer took me out for a trot three times a week so I could look good on daytime Tele giving three-minute grabs on “How to keep your marriage hot and spicy.” And I woke up every morning with nausea because of some undefined fear.

Were it just me who felt lost, I’d probably be too embarrassed to speak up. But it isn’t. Looking back over my career I see it was everywhere, this sense of emptiness. I dated some of the wealthiest men in the world. I rode the crest of the ‘Greed is Good’ 80s. I wrote my book on secrets of success from jacuzzis and private jets.

But what did it all amount to, all the money, all that so-called power? Back then, George Herscu had just taken over Hooker Corporation and couldn’t stop: "I love it. I am an entrepreneur, a workaholic…" he told me from his lavish home in Toorak which he modelled on Tara from Gone With The Wind. His words were echoed by another colorful identity of the 80s, head of FAI Insurance, Larry Adler, father of businessman Rodney. “I work golf, I work tennis, but I play work. I absolutely love it and if another heart attack is the price I have to pay to keep going at this pace, then I'll pay it gladly."

Floyd Podgornik was a racing identity and the man behind Melbourne's famous Florentino's restaurant. One of the leading property developers in Australia he shared his secrets of success with me. "I never sleep. I work all night...I hate wasting time. I look at my watch and I get frightened that another day is passing me by."

The three men, who became the subject of fascination during the turbulent 80s for their rags-to-riches achievements, echoed an obsessive work ethic and desperate need for financial success that belied all physical evidence of fatigue, exhaustion and burnout of either themselves or their families.

Within a few years of my book The NewBoy Network being published Larry Adler had suffered a massive coronary and died, his son Rodney is now facing criminal charges, George Herscu was in jail, and Podgornik, a man unable to sleep for fear of wasting a moment of work time had allegedly taken his own life in the bathroom of his elegant St Kilda road apartment. Their demise reflected the fate of many our monied elite: Alan Bond, Robert Holmes a Court, Coles-Myer's Brian Quinn, Christopher Skase.

American psychologist, Judith Viorst, writes in her best-seller Necessary Losses that there needs to be a spiritual context in order for us to live happily ‘For no matter how triumphant we are, no matter how high we may climb, the course of a normal life will lead us to losses. To illness, to age… to separation and loneliness and death… Without some larger meaning beyond the “m”-“e”, the passage of time can only bring horror on horror.’

When Vanessa Gorman finished filming, I curled in a corner of my bedroom staring at photos of my late father who died too young. He was an absent parent trying to make good. I looked at the child I was, and knew I would have given up all the material comforts he provided to have had more time with him. Which child wouldn’t?

When I finally came out of my room, I stood bravely in front of my own little girl and asked: “Are you happy?” “I don’t see you much, Mummy. It makes me feel sad,” she said. I turned to my husband. “It has to stop!”

“I got it wrong, so wrong. I want peace. We can rent a shack somewhere and grow our own vegies. I don’t need this apartment. We spend so many hours working to pay it off we never get to see the view - or each other. I don’t need all the applause if I can’t be proud of my own self.”

Ah…the ramblings of a crazy visionary. Breakdowns should be revered as times of profound insight and wisdom. My husband, a finance journalist, tried to talk me out of the madness: “If we get out of the Sydney real estate market we’ll never get back in!” he warned ominously. I let him have his say. But within a few months my career had unravelled. Accidentally-on-purpose things came crashing down around, whether sabotage or fortune, deals fell through. I couldn’t sustain the mortgage and without my financial input nor could he.

I loved watching it all fall apart, loved seeing the responsibility fall from my shoulders. The day we finally sold the fabulous apartment, I wept in relief.

During that time I dropped from public view, took a modest job at The Australian and started writing my column on life-matters and spirituality whilst arranging the move, taking my daughter off waitlists for private schools. Her birthright would now be the love of life and books we’d instilled in her, not a fancy school name.

I’m writing this from my beach shack in Byron Bay. When we first arrived we spent three years on a farm. Now we’ve moved close to the sea. It’s a very basic house, but surrounded by rainforest. I can hear the ocean outside my door.

I’m surrounded by great friends, fresh food, good music and lots of love. And how much do we really need? A pair of jeans, a few pair of sandals, a sarong, a guitar, a drum to bang with friends. And at what cost to our souls do we take more?

My daughter’s school is a spiritual place. I don’t care a hoot about her grades – the arbitrary definition of success in a consumer world. When she rescues an ant and quotes the Buddha on compassion at nine years of age, I couldn’t be more proud.

My husband, who reluctantly came along on the sea change “just for one year” would never go back to the rat-race. “You should not have sold,” said one Sydney friend recently. “Your place would be worth millions by now! Millions!” he said looking exhausted, grey-skinned, geared to the hilt. His wife tells me that don’t make love often.

What have I learned from my tribulations? That we can change. I am different. Softer, gentler. Finding meaning makes you full and plump. No money, no possession, no fame can plump you up like self-satisfaction. I have watered my soul, taken up guitar, singing, and cooking. I work from the heart nowadays not to service a stupidly-high mortgage or out of poor self-esteem.

I’ve learned never be afraid to let go. In the world of mountain climbing, the creed is “cut loose or die”. You have to let go of where you are, before you can move to the next place. All relationships, all things have their time, and their use-by date. It isn’t a failure to let them go. We are trained to cling on, but when we unclench our hands, new energy floods in to fill the void in ways we can’t imagine possible. It’s the law of Nature.

And I’ve learned the most important lesson of my life, to be repeated every day like a mantra: “Often less is more.”

 

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World’s biggest jumps at Red Bull Big Air

World’s biggest jumps at Red Bull Big Air Posted Wednesday 17th March 2004, 9:30 am by Dunx A first-class line-up of stars are set to go big at the final of the Red Bull Big Air in Åre, Sweden from the 25-27 March. Simon Ax, the new snowboarding big air World Cup Champion, is among the riders trying to take the Red Bull Big Air title away from defending champion and fellow Swede, Hampus Mosesson. Among the skiers, the name to watch is undoubtedly the Swedish phenom and three-time defending champion, Jon Olsson. The competition this year will be intense, with US huckster Steele Spence, 2004 X-games medallists Simon Dumont and Peter Olineck, and a talented international field all gunning for the top spot. Red Bull Big Air in Åre is internationally known for its huge jumps which offer … BIG AIR! The first big jump has a plateau measuring 28 meters between the kicker and the landing. Riders will average around 70 km/h on the in-run. During the air they will reach a height of about 5 meters. The length of the air will measure over 35 meters - that’s approximately 3 city buses, or a 10 story house, if you like. The landing is extremely important as they’ll really need the speed in the second obstacle. The second big jump is a “box” with a 10-meter-high kicker. Riders will choose to either fly over the box or land on one of its sides. Last year, Henrik Windstedt won “Highest Air” when he flew 12 meters (!!!) off the kicker. During the air time, riders typically spin up to three times and add a nice grab or two. The judges rate and overall impression of the two big jumps, paying close attention to the landings, style and difficulty of the tricks. “Maybe it sounds dangerous, but we are full-time pros and know what we are doing”, says Henrik Windstedt, who finished 2nd at Red Bull Big Air 2003. “I train almost every day during the season which minimizes the risks. It is actually very rare to have serious injuries, but of course if you have bad luck things could go really bad.” The competition is divided in two classes: 17 snowboarders and 17 skiers. 12 of the 17 spots in each class are exclusively reserved for international pros who are invited to the event. The other 5 spots are for riders who have qualified for the final through 5 Nordic qualifiers held earlier this winter. [Press Release]

via snowboardclub.co.uk