Despite growing up on opposite sides of the world and living in different eras, Pat Molloy and I had a few things in common.

Both of us have Irish heritage to burn. We've both traveled far and wide to destinations considered outside normal convention by our peers and families. We also both suffered acute bouts of appendicitis. And that's about where the comparison ends.

In his youth, Pat was a merchant seaman traversing the globe in the 30's. In my youth, I was a pimply bank-teller in the 80's who was yet to learn of the term 'back-packing' and the lifestyle it embraced. My travels were a long way off yet.

It took a while, but eventually I escaped the exciting world of a floating Australian dollar and booming consumer credit debt for a life on the road. In December 1996 I finally crossed paths with the fabled Pat Molloy.

I say 'fabled' because Pat Molloy's bout of appendicitis is a story too fantastic to be true. Yet there it was as fact: laid up on his back, he was carried off his ship whilst it was docked in Fiji to whatever fate had in store for him. The ship's captain instructed the crew to make arrangements for a coffin to be sent with the gravely ill seaman such was the severity of the diagnosis.

It goes without saying that Pat lived to tell the tale.

Sitting in his lounge on Christmas Day 1996 he still had yet to mention it. Pat struck me as a taciturn man not given to self-promotion. The story had been repeated to me many times by my mother who adored him. He was a self-educated, extremely literate and well-read man of few words with more than that number of degrees from the university of life behind him.

I felt intimidated by his intellect long before the topic conversation swerved from pudding to politics.

He wanted to know whether I thought Paul Keating was good for Australia. The former Australian prime minister once famously dubbed his own country a 'banana republic'. Rubbing people up the wrong way was part of his 'schtick' to stimulate debate amongst the masses and the views of voters were often polarised.

For my part I replied that some thought he was good. The Australian economy had benefited from the deregulation of the financial markets. Some thought he was bad. Deregulations had brought change and uncertainty. Lack of experience within the Australian banking industry lending money in such conditions had led the country to the brink of financial disaster.

"I'm askin' yeh", he repeated in his Dublin brogue, "What do you think?".

I admitted I didn't really have a view one way or the other. There's nothing an Irishman loves more than a good debate and I had failed to come up with the goods. The floor would soon open up to swallow me whole saving me from death by embarrassment.

My political disinterest was based on a healthy disrespect for 'the game'. I had long worked out that the facts were rarely mentioned in doorstop interviews. Politicians were skilled in the art of spin. Media was skilled in the art of putting spin on the political spin.

What was the point I feebly offered? How are we to ever believe what we are told? As far as I was concerned elected politicians, and professionals employed to report on them, were more interested in proving to each other how clever they were. They seemed to have their hearts set on everything but an interest in telling the public the truth.

Unknown to Pat I once had a keen interest in politics and a sense of purpose - of making a difference. But after two or three years I felt used and spent. Yet hearing myself say it out aloud to my host hardly seemed to make it a valid position.

I'd been found wanting and I knew it.

Pat listened. He didn't interrupt. Nor did he judge. He simply responded. I can safely say that the conversation we had that day was one of the best Christmas gifts I ever received.

Maybe it has a lot to do with my being here at Cyberista.

Would Pat be pleased? Impressed? Would he care? It's hard to say. Pat outlasted that coffin until just a couple of years ago.

One thing is for sure. Pat Molloy's thoughts on any topic would have made great reading on Cyberista.