brendarover

Well Vim,

Your signature makes me realise how far I have come, a younger Brenda may have thought hang on, but as you travel this journey of life, well you realise the important things, they are other people, other people you care for, artefacts are artefacts just artefacts, things that are just there with or have no meaning.

Keeping up is keeping up for many, but when you do not want much; the keeping up does not matter because you do not want it. The richest man in the world is the man who wants for very little because he has very little materialistically and wants for nothing else.

Nice sig!

Vim Fuego

Yup, material possessions are just subject to the next disaster or change or circumstance. The fickle hand of fate and all that ...

Related to this, I was watching a programme called 'Stuff' on the ABC on Tuesday, it's very good and all about the 'stuff' we accumulate and the reasons why.

Anyway, there was this family and they'd lost practically everything in a bushfire and it was interesting to hear about what they thought of their possessions now ... basically it was 'don't save it for best because it could be gone tomorrow'.

I got rid of most of my 'stuff' before I came out here (and was in the process of it anyway, by financial necessity) and I can recommend it totally.

My life tends to accumulate baggage which I drag around so a good hard reassessment of what I am and what I want out of life is a bloody good thing for me.

Hence the month off the booze and quitting smoking ... remove the distractions, focus down on what is important and I may just find something with a bit more relevance to who and what I want to be.

And that is well a truely off-topic so, pseudo-hippy-bollocks off

mr mover

I thought it was going to the "wogs".............mm

brendarover

Vim,

Its funny really, in this capitalist society we are all apart of, well we make it up; as without us all, there would be no consumer led economy? Anyway, from a young age we are fed this diet of “want this”, “get that”, “you got that”, “I want this” etc etc?

As you grow older, wiser, ache more, cynical maybe, but you realise the musts and wants are kind of bred into you, it takes a special kind of intellect to take a step back, and decide not to get involved with spending unlimited hours, precious life’s time, spent carrying out a role/job, to make a fellow human artefact/commodity rich, where you hate the role/job, but you do it, to pay for cr@p you do not need, like you say, do not really want, but it keeps you up maybe with the Jones’s or impresses people you do not really like? As sometimes you can surround yourself without realising it with people who you do not like and do not like you, but hey it’s the way to go, quantity of goods/artefacts and associates is better than quality of needed/required possessions and real trusted friends? A little cynical maybe, but sometimes I feel we are contributing to our own downfall, and playing right into the hands of the money masters at the top? Maybe if we all withdrew every penny we had in the banks all at once on the same day, I wonder what would happen to our Fiat based monetary system?

Experiences are the baggage that I like to acquire; they are there till you fade, and no one can re-posses the memories of great times? They can take everything, but never can they take the special memories of experiences which good or bad make life the fantastic journey it is as long as you do not get all wrapped up in other peoples musts and wants?

Vim Fuego

Aye, there's a lot of truth in all of that.

This isn't to say that all possessions are bad and money ruins everything of course ... it's just the mindless pursuit of things and the mis-use of money that causes problems.

I mean, I'm still human, I still WANT stuff, I'm just more picky about what I choose to buy and I make sure I have the cash beforehand instead of lobbing it on a credit card (been there, paid off $60K ... ouch).

It's the instant gratification 'want it now' mindset that affects everything from house prices to interest rates to increasing land-fill to water shortages to ... well, you name it. To migration in fact ... all those promises of utopia ...

Everytime I see an advert or a peice of marketing my first thought isn't 'I want that', it's 'What is their angle? Which weakness are they trying to exploit?'.

Sounds ridiculous and like I'm incapable of enjoying something for the hell of it but I actually enjoy questioning stuff.

And at this point I'd like to thank Bill Hicks, a late, great, 'comedian'.

Which brings me to my job, I'm in IT and I work in a bank ... this does not sit well with me, I have tried to find angles so I can reconcile it but I think eventually I will only be satisfied if I get out of what is essentially a bloody pit of blood-sucking leeches. The more 'senior' you get the more you are expected to just suck the bullshit down and be some unthinking robot ... anyway ... I was actually told to stop asking (valid) questions the other week, which pissed me off no end.

That's my next self-improvement project anyway ... maybe I'll never find what I want ... like the lyrics of that Who song 'The Seeker' ... "Won't get what I'm after, 'til the day I die".

Still, fun trying innit?

<Off-Topic-Meter Rating 9.8>

brendarover

Thats a tune, a real tune!

I've looked under chairs
I've looked under tables
I've tried to find the key
To fifty million fables

They call me The Seeker
I've been searching low and high
I won't get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die

I asked Bobby Dylan
I asked The Beatles
I asked Timothy Leary
But he couldn't help me either

People tend to hate me
'Cause I never smile
As I ransack their homes
They want to shake my hand

Focusing on nowhere
Investigating miles
I'm a seeker
I'm a really desperate man

I won't get to get what I'm after
Till the day I die

I learned how to raise my voice in anger
Yeah, but look at my face, ain't this a smile?
I'm happy when life's good
And when it's bad I cry
I've got values but I don't know how or why

I'm looking for me
You're looking for you
We're looking in at each other
And we don't know what to do


For me, a touching anthem below, one for the times when life seems sometimes dark and unforgiving?

Love Reign O'er Me This refers to Meher Baba's one time comment that rain was a blessing from God; that thunder was God's Voice. It's another plea to drown, only this time in the rain. Jimmy goes through a suicide crisis. He surrenders to the inevitable, and you know, you know, when it's over and he goes back to town he'll be going through the same shit, being in the same terrible family situation and so on, but he's moved up a level. He's weak still, but there's a strength in that weakness. He's in danger of maturing."

Only love
Can make it rain
The way the beach is kissed by the sea
Only love
Can make it rain
Like the sweat of lovers
Laying in the fields.

Love, Reign o'er me
Love, Reign o'er me, rain on me

Only love
Can bring the rain
That makes you yearn to the sky
Only love
Can bring the rain
That falls like tears from on high

Love Reign O'er me

On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool cool rain
I can't sleep and I lay and I think
The night is hot and black as ink
Oh God, I need a drink of cool cool rain


Sat there many a night, influenced my much, but supported by so few, what a tune!

mitosblog

If you like cold weather, Melbourne's the best choice.

Hot weather opt for Brisbane or Cairns

Good luck with your choices!

talbot

Cold weather IN WINTER you mean. We can have the hottest days in Australia in Summer sometimes!!

talbot

If you have children, this is the lovely old fashioned life for them - ie playing outdoors, riding bikes to school, catching tadpoles/yabbies in the stream down the road etc etc.
If you are young and single and want a busy social life then don't live in the suburbs, you'd want to be in the city.
If you love the British sense of humour, don't watch TV here, invest in FOXTEL.

hippyboy1

You are a bit naive, grass is greener type thing. Immigrants in Oz arent that high class. The UK does not hand out citizenship "to anyone"-in fact it probably harder to immigrate to the UK than Oz if you arent an EU citizen or of recent British ancestry.
For other reasons you wont like Australia

tonychef

just a point on the imigration thing to the uk, what about the illegals ???????
the goverment knows nothing about them and how many there are ???????

During 5 years in manchester we had at least Albanian , mongolian , congalesse ( congo ) nigerian etc etc they were all illegal and employed by the company i worked for, as they all had documents ( forged ) and sent to us by ther job centers, after which it was our job to look over there documents !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( a load of bollocks )

The arrived the polish and other east europeans offering there services as chefs for the minimum wage !!!!!!!! my staff we english with loans, mortgages ,and a certian standard of living, so my boss mentioned that we could employ 2 immigrants for every english guy, and i told him to f off

How many other places has this happened ??????? as still is.

I agree they don`t take on the culture and try to intergrate wether they are illegal or not and thats what pissed me off about the uk.

Im here to be australian ( even tried shopping in bare feet ) but il stick to thongs, thats why we moved and will fit in to be accepted as aussies

my theory is you move to another country to take on there values and culture, and not bring your own with you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and the bloody do-gooders dont help like liberty etc !!!!!!!!!!

Vin 'n Bin

From another point of view...I checked this out myself after reading about someone near my age complaing about what happened when she inquired about going back to live in the U.K. The only difference between that person and me is that she is 18 months older than me...so here's what happened:
She emigrated to Australia in 1970 and took out Australian Citizenship. She was 26 when she emigrated. Thirty five years later she inquired about going back to the U.K to live. She was told that she would have to 'get to the back of the queue and apply' like everyone else
They told her she wouldn't be entitled to any public housing, NHS, benefits etc....even though the Australian Government would be paying her pension.
She decided to stay in Australia.
I wonder if it works the other way about?

NickyC

That doesn't make sense - if she emigrated from Britain and had a British passport she would only have had to hop on a flight to go back. You don't have to 'apply' to live there, if you're British to start with - regardless how long you've been away or whether you've taken out Australian citizenship.

I can understand that there may be waiting periods before claiming benefits but if she really wanted to live there, no-one could have stopped her.

Vin 'n Bin

I couldn't believe it either ...she is a friend of mine and lives in South Australia. Because I found it hard to believe I checked it out..and they told me exactly the same thing, so.........
some friends of mine in the UK also inquired, with the same response, except if you are quite wealthy and can buy a home or rent one. But no benefits such as NHS etc.
She didn't have the money to do this. She found herself on her own over here and thought maybe, as a widow, she would go back to the place of her birth, she was born in Derbyshire.
Oh I forgot to add, one of the main reasons she was told to 'get to the back of the queue' was because she hadn't kept up her UK residency in all the years she had been away...like going back every so often and staying awhile
She has since remarried and now lives in a retirement village and is very happy

NickyC

So the real reason she didn't go back was because she couldn't get housing and other benefits - and not because they wouldn't let her in.

Anyone who is 'ordinarily resident' in the UK is entitled to use the NHS. If you move back permanently you would become 'ordinarily resident'.