Thread-safe cache of one object in java

google collections actually supplies just the thing for just this sort of thing: Supplier

Your code would be something like:

private Supplier<List<String>> supplier = new Supplier<List<String>>(){
    public List<String> get(){
        return loadCountryList();
    }
};


// volatile reference so that changes are published correctly see invalidate()
private volatile Supplier<List<String>> memorized = Suppliers.memoize(supplier);


public List<String> list(){
    return memorized.get();
}

public void invalidate(){
    memorized = Suppliers.memoize(supplier);
}