While it seems that the cost of living in Australia is about twice that of America (with the cost of gas and food and lodging for example), in fact Australia’s cost of living is only about 60% higher. Only Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Venezuela, Iceland and Luxembourg have a higher cost of living than Australia (in that descending order). To keep up the standard of living I have in California, I’d have to earn about $35 an hour Australian.
Michael Fumento posts to FB: My friend Mary Jo Joyce uses a term called “smart, smart, stupid,” which doesn’t really translate into anything else, but the general point is that very smart people can make mistakes others wouldn’t BECAUSE they’re smart. “Hubris” is the closest you come, but it’s more than that and it’s something I admit to suffering from.
For example, why didn’t I back out of Colombia after the first signs of trouble? In part because I thought that whatever Colombia threw at me I could overcome with enough persistence and intelligence. NO! The best race car driver in the world can make a Model T do laps faster than other drivers, but a Model T will always be just that. My belief that with enough mastery of the language, customs, experience overall, etc. that I could make Colombia were wrong. Fact is, in most ways I’m worse off than I was seven months ago!
Here’s another interesting example, which forces me to admit I suffer depression but with half of all Americans on anti-depressants, so what.
There are two types of depression: clinical and situational. Clinical has no clear outside cause while situational is just that. It’s my theory that situational depression is often nature’s way of saying “Change SOMETHING!” If Colombians weren’t so damned happy with so damned little, they might have a better country. They quite literally need more depression.
Here’s where stupid comes in. I resisted anti-depressants BECAUSE my depression is clearly situational. To be in my position and be happy would be INSANE! Finally it occurred to me that situational or no, perhaps ADs could still reduce the pain level and even help me think better so as to IMPROVE my situation.
SO, knowing that the traditional SSRIs have lots of side effects I don’t want, I went on something called Mirtazapine and generically Remeron. After about two weeks a curious thing happened in that I began dreaming. Only at that point did I realize I had STOPPED dreaming. Except I knew that couldn’t be true; if you stop dreaming you go insane. Some people have compared dreams to nature’s way of organizing your hard drive while you sleep. It’s a little-known horrific aspect of Michael Jackson’s death that the anesthetic he was on was NOT sleeping medicine! It prevented REM sleep, that part in which you can dream!
So as I explained it to the doctor a couple of days ago, “I know I’ve been dreaming all along, but now I can remember the dreams. And the dreams are always nice, so I wake up feeling good — although once I realize they’re only dreams it does put me in a funk. Whereupon she doubled my dosage! Obviously she thought that a good thing.
Unfortunately, while most drugs here are dirt cheap this one is outrageously expensive! Ouch! So while price-shopping I let my usage lapse for two days.
Here’s where stupid comes in. Since ADs always take weeks to kick in, I assumed no big harm from skipping two days. WRONG! Today I felt awful! More depressed than the US economy in 1933. But why? Colombia didn’t suck any more today than yesterday!
MEANWHILE, last night I watched part of the new Robocop movies and in one scene the doctor (a good guy forced by Michael Keaton to do bad stuff) said of Robocop, “Let’s give him some good dreams; give him anti-depressants.” Now I know, as stated above, that’s not possible. But today while shopping it hit me that one factor HAD changed. I’d stopped the Remeron! THEN it hit me! REMeron! Holy Toledo, researchers had dubbed it that because it affected REM sleep! I WAS having more dreams, and now quite suddenly my REM phase of sleep had been cut short! I was in dream withdrawal!
So I added a nice chocolate bar to my basket, because there’s evidence that chocolate is a temporary mood elevator. I had just finished an aerobic workout, which also has been shown to help, but it didn’t. Anyway, that’s all I needed was temporary. Then I bought the Remerol. I feel better, but only because I figured out the problem and finally got through the huge line at the store. Hopefully as soon as tonight I will have improved REM sleep and feel better tomorrow.
So you can see how the combination of high intelligence both helped and hurt me. What somebody like me needs is what another friend of mine referred to as a “wing-man,” somebody to help me better channel the intelligence and avoid the pitfalls. I used to have this thing called a “wife,” who often acted in that capacity. I had hoped that in Colombia I could find another such person. But it never occurred to me, and probably wouldn’t have occurred to YOU either so don’t get smarmy, to check out international marriage rates whereupon I would have discovered Colombia ranks LAST in the whole world! Nor do they even cohabitate much, as some have suggested. Women here just don’t like men.
So yeah, I still have to fix the SITUATION. Find a less insane country where women don’t hate you or see you just as an ATM because your chromosomes contain an X.
And a country like the US USED to be where my talents at finding and processing information can actually be used to help large numbers of people and be a source of income, as opposed to a mere FB posting.
My guess is I’d love a place like Sydney. But something Americans just can’t understand is you don’t get to pick and choose countries, they pick and choose you. That concerns jobs, visas, and naturalization. It’s not like deciding “I want to live in California!”
Thus, “For anyone wanting to apply through the Australian General Skilled Migration program, there are some basic requirements that you must meet before continuing with your application.
Age
You must be 50 years old or under when you apply.”
Whoops! I’m 54!
But without looking, I know I wasn’t on the list anyway because it’s going to be almost identical to the kiwi list.
I’m considering NZ in great part because I know people there. I know people in very few countries outside the US. But again, NZ is going to be a tough nut to crack. ANY country will accept you if you have a ton to invest; scratch that. And many will accept you just if you’re a pensioner; scratch that for me and indeed NZ and Australia don’t care about those anyway.
So I suspect that with Oz as well as NZ it’s a matter of getting somebody to sponsor you for a special talent waiver.
But I really regret posting on FB that I’m looking for ideas because Americans DO think it’s like moving from one state to another and there seems to a myth floating around that I’m independently wealthy.
No. It’s a matter of getting a work visa, work, and often a matter of language. I had people tell me to “just” move to place with impossibly difficult languages. It’s not like VISITING where you have an English-speaking hotel concierge. In Colombia, outside Bogota NOBODY speaks English. And dialects change by the city. So if you don’t speak VERY good Spanish, keep out!
I don’t give a hoot what those “10 Great Places to Retire To!” articles say. They’re always written by people who have never visited ANY of the countries, nor have either moved to or retired to another country. They’re clueless; all of them.
