I knew it wouldn’t take me long to get back into the swing of things and today I rediscovered the truth behind all this dosh that hits you in the face at every turn. I have re-found the secret of why everyone here (even the not filthy rich) are so well off. They work hard. Out of left field, I know. Not what the Union of the Unemployed would have you believe. Not quite regarding buying a Triple Dip every Saturday as you retirement plan. But I’m afraid that is the answer. Head down, bum up and into it.
Returned to my previous place of employment for the day and made the trip on the MRT, the Mass Rapid Transit - the underground. Something very odd here. One. Cellphone reception on the train, even in the tunnels is superb. How do they do that? Two. If you are between the ages of fourteen and twenty five you are not allowed on the MRT unless you have a pair of earbud headphones inserted in your lugholes. The boys here have to do two and a half years of National Service at age seventeen. The arrival of the call-up papers is a well-known black letter day in most houses. It would appear that three years before the arrival of this epistle the youth get another summonsing them to the Earbud Insertion Centre. Here you earbuds are surgically implanted and you are free to walk the streets without being looked upon as a pariah by your peers. iPods would appear to be a bit passé. You should really have one of those all singing and dancing cellphones that have a built in MP3 player (and GPS, and PDA, and coffee maker, and nose picker, and…..) to really cut the mustard. Or a portable gaming machine. You can also plug your earbuds into these (well you have to do something with them as you can’t take them out) and I’m not really sure about these as most have two screens. I’ll investigate further when I have, at DA’s insistence, my technology arvo. This may be today, we’ll see.
Anyway got to the fields of my previous toiling and I realised how bloody hard they work and recalled with something of a shudder how hard I used to work. All my contempories looked knackered and all the juniors, who were still at school in my time, were preparing to look knackered. I had a cup of coffee with a Kiwi who I had placed in a year’s job and he looked knackered. He’d been there for three months and was yet to have a complete day off. When I arrived last Friday night my mate who picked me up apologised for being a tad late as he had not quite finished work. My plane got in at 9.00pm. Now I remember. I used to do this and I had been there so long that I thought it was normal. It didn’t even piss me off until after about eleven years I thought ‘There has to be a better way’
There is of course and it is, like so many things, a sensible balance between too much of anything and not enough of everything else. There is little point in having all this filthy lucre when there is no opportunity to do anything with it except grow it into an even bigger pile of cash. There is no point having all the time in the world and not have the wherewithal to do the things you want. That’s the answer balance.
Off to buy a pair of scales – there’s sure to be sale on somewhere.
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