Travel broadens the mind
Uncategorized - - Posted on June, 20 at 3:11 pm by Ken L
It’s remarkable how being out of Australia for even 10 days, liberated from daily exposure to the news, can provide fresh perspectives on life.
On arriving home I found that the story du jour was about something called ‘iguanagate’ - the very name reeked so much of triviality and childishness that I couldn’t be bothered trying to find out what it was all about.
Catching up on the news feeds and the blogs I was struck afresh by the sheer volume of whining in this country … incessant whining about why da guvvermint hasn’t done this or that or something else but most of all, how tough people are doing it because of all the terrible rising prices of petrol and housing and groceries and so on. Poor bloody Australians, their heroic endurance through the fifteenth year of uninterrupted economic growth is awesome; their stoic determination to rise above their problems will go down in history as a triumph of the human spirit.
Unfortunately I took a somewhat jaundiced view of these petulant whinges having come fresh from a third world country where I visited a family who live in an apartment about 4 metres by 3 metres by 2.5 metres high. They insisted that I share their meal.
I lived for a week in Navotas City, where people cook on charcoal fires in the street and children play games with rocks because that’s all they can afford. Pedicab drivers about half my size strain to shift me around the streets, along with one or two of my friends, for a few cents; and are grateful for the business.
I visited a fishing village where once again I was invited to share the food and the family was deeply apologetic that they did not have an electric fan. Appliances cost 30 pesos a day each to run (about 75 cents - someone calls each day to collect the money) and that’s way more than they can afford. Here they are, and no, that’s not their veranda, it’s their house. When the typhoons hit they go sleep in the church.
You know the funny thing is that during my visit I didn’t hear a single whine. Just happy people grateful for their blessings and eager to share what little they had with their guest.
People can write their own conclusion. I don’t want to sound un-Australian.
Posted in Uncategorized |
June 20th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
This happiness,is really a function of necessity,rather than a outcome of many material limitations.Given by introduction and challenge to use their time more effectively,you cannot be sure that,their limitations are solely a matter of material disadvantage.The immediate past use of words are applied in other terms to the unemployed in Australia,where whingeing isnt that great,but often desperation is.I think you are confusing something.That is the whingeing,and you give no distinct and clear example in place time and climate,of people in a more materially advanced society having their simplicity,incl.their chosen purposes disrupted by many unknowns, that seem irresponsible… rather than unknown challenges,that just have to be dealt with.I heard on the radio in the last week the commonality of expression and what they mean across various cultures.If you note the emotional response associated with whingeing in the context of its expression as a physical expression,then how can you be so damned sure,this whingeing is really unnecessary!? Its an emotional release,not a compounding intellectual function,operating outside the moments of standardized dissatisfaction.That is,the fuel pump its vicinity and prices may occupy the matters of whingeing,but it is also a function of disruption to a whingers life.Powerlessness isn’t the same as material disadvantage,but maybe similar in outcome,if goals of the two distinct groups were similar.Whingeing is also a low brow,but creative matter,as oppurtunistic and endeavouring as the moment of who will be listening.What you personally found is an unwillingness to be more intense as drama in this whingeing.If you saw someone in film,whingeing it would be part of the character plot,part of the whole story.If you are old enough to remember TV. programmes like Rawhide,there was a character the Chef Wishbone,whose foment on life was whingeing,as others whinged against his food preparation and coffee.The end result was spitting the coffee out.The immediate comparison,that Australians have little to complain about,will be simply deniable,by yourself,when attempts at your normal day to day sense of responsibility ,even to self,is disrupted by what seems irresponsible intent or design.Being flustered isnt a function of already unhealthy,it might be the fluster occurs because there is a barrier to not being flustered.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
While some may be enjoying the rise in the $au; every time we forward money across means less Pesos, three years ago or so we could afford to send, what seemed a vast amount converted, now we have to about double from this end for the same effect. It ain’t all good.
June 20th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Well said Ken.
I remember living out of a tent & travelling across Australia picking fruit & veges, it was the depth of the recession back in the 80s…but I was lucky compared to those I’d seen begging for food & entertaining the hotel aristocracy in Bombay…I always remember this little fella on an old skateboard, no legs & his nose had been eaten off. When I handed him a few hundred rupees he smiled & then whipped off to the next cab…urgent, agile & not a winge. Just a smile & a hand held out. A certain nodding of the head & a sparkle in his eyes. That was his day job & he knew how to work the crowd.
And the only whingeing we heard was from the hotel visitors…”my meat is overcooked, it’s too hot in here”. I got so disgusted I picked up my food & went down to the beach to give it to the poor & starving. The security guard told me it was a useless gesture. “They won’t eat it, it’s tainted by meat…and they’ll kill you if they get their hands on you”. I left it there on the sand just in case. And walked back to the hole confused & dispirited. And naive at 20.
Prosperity can breed naive & ignorant people if the government & media don’t think wider.
I think I see A LIGHT on the horizon. Some positive changes today across the world. A few, but a few is better than none.
Better to adapt…than winge & fade away.
June 21st, 2008 at 12:35 am
Socialise and pander to ridiculous extremes and what would you expect? http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/06/20/1213770867478.html
Not much different here with a slightly fatter bunch of whinging nanny-staters and the newly entitled by all accounts. What are you suggesting, starve the beast?
June 21st, 2008 at 12:38 am
…or flee your Frankenstein monster?
June 21st, 2008 at 12:46 am
As happens not infrequently obs, I haven’t the faintest idea WTF you are talking about.
June 21st, 2008 at 2:34 am
’socialise and pander’,Obs, don’t be a bloody boof head,you may well sit back and snipe in a non committed way,and take cheap shots at people who make little noise at compassion to the less well off.Ken is doing his bit and is trying to enthuse others ,to educate others, and Mrs. Lang and myself have been helping support two Philippine family’s for some years,and they being good catholics means over twenty people, they are people, also sponsored some to our country and fought Howards (your hero)DFAT,DIMIA now DIC, so don’t get on here and annoy me. More than enough about us.You sit back and scratch your gut and think of ways to piss off us here, well you’ve achieved that with me to the point where I had to react. So, rather than to tell you to piss off,and this will be good, what have you done to help the less fortunate , fuck all,right,come on be honest, more like Obs is less fortunate so i’ll annoy these bloody lefty do gooders.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:57 am
Why don’t you live in the UK Observa? You’d enjoy reading THE SUN…& see the results of RMs social engineering, w/ a little help from friends Tony B. & Cap’n Brit Brown.
I sometimes wonder about your origins…:)
WELL SAID Lang Mack. Poverty is caused by many factors…think New Orleans. It’s handled in various ways…think Cuba.
Noone promised you a rose garden Obs. But if you manage to grow one…mind them pointy things…can be sharp…& prickly. Like some commentors eh?
Am I a MARKET DEMOCRAT?…the Third Way mach 2 perhaps?…or another mutation from the collision of belief systems?…not real sure…but if it helps build worthwhile bridges, then i might be just A-OK w/ much of it.
But it’s all in the recipe…& the making & eating of the pudding…the freshness & goodness of the ingredients, the experience of the cooks, the nutrients, the origins of the recipe…whether it’s digestible, tasty, mood lifting…how it’s sold…or SHARED.
Some like to SHARE. And expect nothing but a smile & thanks in return.
And who owns the rights to the recipe? Can anyone own the rights to something drawn from a variety of ancient & contemporary recipes?…generic ideas/experiments? Perhaps some think THE NEW recipe is ORIGINAL & deserves REWARDS…& PROTECTION. Mebbe…mebbe not.
Mebbe some speak w/ forked tongue…protect MATES…whilst appearing to be pro-competition? Mebbe not. The proof will be in the PUDDING. And the WALKING of the walk.
So far so OK, pretty good.
N’
June 21st, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Ken said:
Probably something to do with the Law of Unintended Consequences.
And Nas please (please!) tell me you aren’t putting up Cuba as some sort of example to follow
June 21st, 2008 at 9:36 pm
I concur with Ken: I’m not sure how TF any of the above comments pertain to the original article.
However, having lived in the Philippines for some time and travelled there many times, it always came as an annoying shock when I landed back in spoilt-rotten Australia to suffer, as Ken does, the instant whingeing and the rabidly idiotic OZ TV where fat-arsed Ozzo’s moan about how it now costs an extra 10 cents a litre to fill up their $130,000 BMW 4WD’s and how the guvvmint’s doing nothing about world interest rates (which they can’t) and how everyone else is a terrorist except them and it’s affecting their share portfolio.
A Filipino friend of mine once showed me her pet rat. No, this isn’t a joke. She lived in a rusted tin hovel with many other people and cojointly inhabited it with the family of the rat who she called Ferdinand. A baby had died the previous day, probably from the filth, and no-one could afford proper disposal so they illegally had it ‘taken away’. I joined them as we prayed and sighed that this little one was now with Jesus.
She asked me, as a rich foreigner, could I please buy her a great gift: a tiny radio to listen to at night in her straw bed. That’s all she wanted in life and it cost me $10. Oh, and a few pesos for tampons which she also couldn’t afford.
The rest of the world would call her a prostitute but she used to work in a shoe factory hammering out Reeboks for 100 hours a week. “Every day it was work, work, work!” she said. “Not allowed to talk, not allowed the toilet - only once a day - we just work forever.”
For these endless hours of slavery she was paid the grand sum of $22 a week until her hands failed her, probably from RSI, and her mind saw no future except torture. When a girlfriend told her she was pretty and could earn lots more from dancing in the bars of Angeles City she readily accepted.
But there they ripped her off for rent, the Mamasan of the bars kept half her ‘bar fine’ and men who drove Cadillacs or BMW’s back home used her like toilet paper - once only.
When she offered me her body she was old at the age of sixteen, and when I refused she took me ‘home’ to see her Mom and swarms of sisters and brothers, and her pet rat Ferdinand. What made me cry was when they insisted I eat their food in that rusty shed as the rats looked on.
The only thing that kept my sanity that night was thinking about how I’d rejoice in strangling the first Aussie bastard that I heard whingeing after I stepped off the plane back home.
June 22nd, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Thanks for adding that tale to Ken’s own, Sailbad.
June 22nd, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Sailbad, I agree w/ Damian.
Vivian Solon is an Australian born in the Phillipines. She barely winged when the Australian government shot her out of this country like a cannon ball back to the Phillipines, regardless of her health & connection to Australia:
Vivian Solon was wrongfully removed to the Philippines by the Department of Immigration.
An anonymous senior immigration official reported to Lateline that Solon’s situation was due to a systemic problem in the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. Lateline reported that the official said:
“In the compliance area, people on the whole are a bunch of cowboys, under so much pressure to deport people. All proper processes have broken down. They put their energy into picking up people and deporting them without proper investigation.”
The social worker who was one of the last people given access to Ms Solon before her deportation said she had requested from Immigration the grounds for Solon’s deportation.
“This one, it just really baffled me because they said they couldn’t find any paperwork or documentation about her.”
(wiki pedia)
When you think of the poor in the Phillipines going thru this latest catastrophic typhoon & ferry disaster…& how many have felt the need to leave their uncaring nation to help construct & serve American military bases in Guam, it’s so sad:
HAGATNA—Guam is expected to be further flooded with workers from the Philippines in the next few years once the US work-visa cap for Guam and the Commonwealth the Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI) is temporarily lifted, according to David Cohen, former deputy assistant secretary of the Department of the Interior.
S. 2739, passed by the US Senate on April 10 and awaiting President Bush’s signature, contains a provision that exempts Guam and the CNMI from the nationwide quota on all H visas through the end of 2014.
The military expansion plan for Guam—the largest US troop-realignment project of its kind since the end of the Cold War—would require between 12,000 and 20,000 workers to build a new military base, military housing and utilities from 2010 through 2014.
“Guam, which bills itself as ‘America in Asia,’ is approximately three hours from Manila by plane, and is expected to draw most of the workers needed for the buildup from the Philippines because of its large, well trained, English-speaking work force,” Cohen writes in an article posted on the website of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, at which he is now a partner.
(OFW influx to Guam seen, MAR-VIC CAGURANGAN
ABS-CBN online 22 June 08)
Filipinos are in demand across the world. The Saudi kingdom couldn’t do w/out them:
“In 2006 alone, the Kingdom recruited more than 223,000 workers from the Philippines and their numbers are still increasing.”
(Arab News, Saudi Arabia, 15 June 08)
Well, I guess they’re jobs for the long suffering Filipino people. You’d almost think part of the reason their leaders & elite intentionally keep them suffering & poor is to be able to provide other nations w/ a cheap labour force. That includes sex workers. That’s silly tho…isn’t it?
I’ve met many lovely Filipinos here in Australia. Doesn’t seem to be as many arriving lately. Maybe they’re put off by winging Aussies? Or worry that if they get injured they’ll be unceremoniously dumped.
And Democrat Senator Bartlett & others won’t be there to help speak for them:
“On 12 May 2005, Australian Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett, with the support of the Australian Greens and the Australian Labor Party (ALP), initiated a debate in the Australian Senate for a judicial inquiry or Royal Commission into the operation and administration of mandatory detention, deportation and enforcement.”
(wki pedia)
N’
June 22nd, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Try here slowpokes-http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/06/starve-beast.html
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:15 am
Starving the beast eh Obs? Rather than breaking the bank by letting all the piggies eat first & then pointing fingers at the programmes that help provide opportunities for the real starving & snorting:
“Cut, cut, cut cause I don’t wanna contribute my tax obligations…squeal”.
I was just reading about how Peggy Noonan has become so insightful & acts like an oracle…& how original she is. Hmmm…
http://wwd.com/issue/article/125874?page=0
As you walk down that path to enlightenment, it’s amazing how many robots pop up next to you & pretend to be human & insightful. They love to mimic…& put on a show…but wisdom & integrity can’t be taught in a factory that makes nothing but pulp & pap. And speakers need to use their own voice. And speak for the dead & those who can’t. Not for those who already HAVE.
That’s why it’s positive when people like Ken speak about the conditions for some Filipinos…& selflessly go to such countries to assist schools & their students. And he doesn’t need to turn his head like some pretentious, artificial knob & put on affectations whilst being interviwed by sock puppets. He just tells it as it is. Warts & all.
June 24th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Good for Ken nasking and he’s to be applauded for that. However, that doesn’t address the real problem here that nanny staters have fostered a dependant mentality and subsidised consequent bad behaviour with their liberal progressive views. That leads me to conclude they’re just another producer group out there building empires for themselves. Here’s another tip of the iceberg of their outcomes in doing that-http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23913063-421,00.html
Is it any wonder they’re so eager to say sorry all the time, but sorry is as sorry does for mine.
June 25th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I’m sure the Filipino family in Ken’s story appreciates your championing of personal responsibility on their behalf, observa.
We’re all fighting the good fight, right?