Grr.

So, my parents have offered to bring me home for a while, either after my first Aussie visa or before I head over to Australia.  The offer is tempting, and it would be nice to see my grandma, who, you lj readers will know, is not doing so well health-wise.

My Mom told me she'd either like me home for 3 weeks and just visiting family members or 6 weeks, which (from my point of view) would be a good chance to earn some more money for Australia without paying rent.  Then she said, "Just to let you know, if you're home for 6 weeks, we'd expect you to get a job." 

This really pissed me off.  First, that she would assume that I'd be able to stand being at home for 6 weeks without a job without being bored silly. Second, that she thinks that I'm so lazy that I just wouldn't get a job.  And third, that she obviously thinks that I'm immature enough that I need to be told this.  I told her that her saying this upset me, and she said, "Well, I just thought it would be better out there in the open."

FUCK.

So now, I'm not sure that I want to go home at all.  It is obvious that my Mom doesn't think I"m capable of making responsible adult decisions about things like this, so why should I bother to visit where I won't be respected?  Maybe if I stay away for another year or two, they'll actually start to treat me like an independent adult.

Though I seriously fucking doubt it.

Zeitgeist grumblings

So, I'm kind of getting sick of all the Germans down here.  Actually, that's not really true.  I'm getting really sick of one particular German fellow down here.

This young man, P, and I share a very dangerous trait: we both like to be right, and we both like to think we're the smartest person in the room.  Frankly, I know I'm not the smartest person in the room at any given moment, but this does not impair my imagination's hubris.

Now, I am usually quite happy sharing the title of Wise Font of Knowledge with another Very Smart Person, but P is unfortunately not terribly smart.  He only thinks he is.  (He is also just 18, so everyone thinks they are smart at age 18.)  Now P is also very homesick, and keeps talking about why things are so much better in Germany.  This happens with every conversation.  I can be talking with someone else about how I miss my brother in Minnesota and know he is stressed out because he's having to make difficult life decisions and such, and P will jump in with an inane remark like, "I don't think there is this decision in Germany.  People can do whatever they want."  without grasping that sometimes that is exactly the point.  Freedom is choice and choice is hard.  On top of which, having spoken with a number of German travelers, I know that this is simply Not True.  The cost of German efficiency, if I may broadly over-generalize, is indecision.  You must train hard and be very good at what you do to do it well.  And you must do it well to get a job in Germany.  Therefore, students in Germany must also agonize over what kinds of jobs they will get after graduation and how long they will study to do it, just like in the USA.

We were talking the other day about minimum wage.  Now, in New Zealand the minimum wage is $12 an hour.  Coming from the land of $5.25 and a comparable cost of living, this is paradise.  Being a backpacker, I work at places with high turnover.  When a place has high turnover, people themselves become commodities, and it doesn't make sense to invest in a renewable commodity, so minimum wage is all you get.  Unless you are very, very lucky.  It is still crap wages, I realize, but much, much better than I could expect in many other countries, including the USA.  I remember being thrilled in New York that I got an $11 an hour job.  And that was NYC, the international home of inflation.

Well, this strikes P as manifestly unfair.  Why should the hardest workers get paid the least?  Answer: they are expendable.  There are always more backpackers coming through.  It takes about 20 minutes to train someone to do the kind of jobs that I'm doing.  According to P, I deserve to be getting $25 an hour.  That'd be great. Just not gonna happen.

One the other hand, P spent more than half an hour last night grumbling about how immigrants are driving up basic costs in Germany.  They come in, they take jobs at lower wages than the Germans will accept, once the Germans have been driven out and the skills lost, they demand pay raises.  This drives up the cost of, say, trucking, and affects the end cost of consumer goods.  According to P, this is manifestly unfair.

This kind of pisses me off.  He doesn't want foreigners in his own country to get more than minimum wage because it would cost him, a citizen, too much. Yet I, a migrant worker in New Zealand, deserve nearly double that?  This is why I am unwilling to share with P the title of Smartest Person in the Room.

The injustices of capitalism do not much move me.  Why?  Because it isn't going to change.  Or at the very least, bitching about how making minimum wages sucks is not going to change it.  The better idea?  Figure out how to not make minimum wage.  (Getting skilled jobs or working for yourself come to mind.)  Or live better than you should be able to on minimum wage.  Or shut up and join a hippie commune in the bush somewhere.  But please, stop telling me how much better it is to be a priviledged, middle-class student in Germany than a poor immigrant backpacker in New Zealand.  That's the choice you made.  If the lifestyle doesn't suit you, go home.

Oh, and especially don't insist that this sort of thing doesn't happen back in the EU.  Because I can sure as shit guarantee it does.  You just don't have to see it.

stolen from cryus

So, I had one of those experiences today that allows me to define something I like about myself.

A little while ago, a friend posted about her ability to have a better idea, an ability that I lack.  Instead of asking, "how can I make things better?", I ask, "Why are things that way they are?"  Making me perfectly suited for academia, where, to paraphrase Ghostbusters, they don't expect results.

However, I realised today that I do have one very significant good quality.  And that is the ability to jump in and go for it.

What happened: I had just gotten back to the hostel in Christchurch and up to my room, which overlooks a very accident-prone intersection.  Just as I was getting ready to shower, peeling off my sweater, I heard a terrible screech of brakes.  Looking up, I just caught site of a van ploughing into a smaller sedan with a sickening crunch of things bending and breaking that really shouldn't bend or break.

So I did something that I consider perfectly reasonable: I ran outside to check that everyone was OK. They were, and declined offers of help, so I went back inside.

Back in the kitchen was a group of about a half-dozen backpackers, all of whom had also seen the accident, and all of whom just sat there wondering if maybe they should do something while I was thundering down the stairs to check on the drivers.  And I realised that I kind of like this about myself: that of all the people who saw the accident, I was the one confident enough to run out and make sure everything is OK.

I don't mean to sound smug or congratulatory or anything like that, I really don't.  Because I'm not exactly a saint; I've walked past accidents where I knew I was out of my depth before and the like.  But I don't know, I still like that willingness to just take the plunge.

American Cities That Best Fit You:

60% Washington, DC 55% Honolulu 55% Miami 55% San Francisco 50% Los Angeles

I like the idea of Honolulu.  Miami, not at all.  Charleston was really nice when I was there.

Also: my computer is broken, and this makes me sad.  I only get internet access infrequently, and when I do manage to get on a computer, I'm either applying for jobs or grad school.  hence the near-total lack of updates at both sites.  Will try to update livejournal tonight.

Parents are visiting.  And trying to baby me.  Can I say "I'm an independent adult" any louder than working for a year to move as far away from home as I can get without leaving the planet?  No?  I didn't think so.  (Not that this was a primary motivating factor, but it did play a part.  Also: I love my parents dearly, but they don't want me to grow up for some reason and it is incredibly frustrating.)