Day #9 of 30 - HOW Much?

I have commented before on how expensive it is to live in Perth compared to other places. Over the past several months I have pondered this mystery and discussed it with several people who have grown up here. After piecing together the various bits of information I have gathered, I have a theory which might explain it. So here goes.

The first and most obvious element is taxes. The free health care system (ironically, it is called Medicare) is not available to people from countries who do not provide free health care to Australians who visit there. While this makes sense, it still hurts to pay for benefits you will never receive. Also, in 1992 Australia made saving for retirement compulsory, in a program called superannuation. Broadly speaking, it forces everyone who works to save a certain percentage for their retirement. It's similar to the USA 401(k) system, except that your employer also makes contributions to the fund. The idea is to help full-time workers save enough money to live in retirement. The Australian version of Social Security pays only 25% of one's salary.

So... taxes pay for benefits and pensions. Then add duty (for imported items) and transportation to get everything to this remote place. These costs make their way into the price of goods and services. We do well with food and alcohol, because most of it is produced locally, hence no duty and lower delivery costs.

Why does it cost so stinking much to live here? I personally think that the largest contributing factor is the high wages people are paid. When we first moved here, I found it amazing and frankly, rather irritating to know that someone with barely a high school education could earn as much money as I was earning, with a Masters degree and 25 years work experience. But... over time my opinion is changing. The concept of work-life balance is starting to make sense. (See my earlier blog entry on the subject http://vetteroo.blogspot.com/2010/01/not-quite-perfect.html )

The average Western Australian has the equivalent of a high school education. There is no expectation for people to go to University. Why not? Because there are plenty of great-paying jobs for people with skilled labor qualifications, and the apprentice system is alive and well. For example, house cleaners start at $18 per hour, and an inexperienced construction labourer starts at $17.50 per hour. It costs around $100 for someone to mow your grass (although with last year's dry weather, this service isn't much in demand). This is completely opposite the USA, where you can get your grass cut for $25-50, house cleaners earn closer to $10 per hour, and construction workers earn minimum age ($7.25 per hour).

People get paid a heck of a lot of money to work here. Minimum wage is $15 per hour, and the average Australian earns $28 per hour, or $1,124 per week.

Before you start packing your bags to move here, keep in mind that Australians pay significantly more income tax than the average American. High income earners (>80,000) pay 48.5% in income tax. So no matter how much you earn, you're going to give a big chunk of it back to the government. These taxes pay for the very generous government services here. While this is of great comfort to Aussies, expats who pay into the system do not receive benefits back except in a minor way, such as being able to use the library.

Why do Australian workers earn so much more than Americans? A couple of reasons. First, there is no class or race of people who are willing to work for so little. There are very few refugees here, and the foreign immigrants here are almost always more highly educated than Australians. The closest thing they have are Aboriginal peoples, but their spiritual and psychological makeup is completely unsuitable for working - they go walkabout, they can live on almost nothing, and working is not important to them. The only alternative is to pay people a living wage -- enough to provide an incentive to work.

Costs are high but so are wages, so an equilibrium is maintained. The result is that you can be a gardener, bricklayer or hairdresser here and support a family on your salary. You can be a waitress* and not depend on tips.  There is a thriving work force and a healthy blue collar class of people who work hard and are proud of what they do. Like America in the fifties.

** No tips? See tomorrow's blog for more.
 

Day #8 of 30 - Off Season

"Let's do one more set, guys - my 6:30 client canceled," said Marc, the young whippersnapper who can inflict more pain on me than any soldier. I'm talking about our personal trainer, who puts us through our paces three times a week, and who is mostly responsible for our weight loss and improved fitness. I know it's mostly Marc because left to my own devices, I would hit the snooze button faster than you can say "blow off your workout." Some days the only reason we show up is because we paid in advance, and the only thing capable of getting me out of bed is the thought of not getting our money's worth. Greed. Sloth. Sometimes it works for you. I think that falls in the category of God taking bad things and using them for good.

So anyway, we somehow make the half-mile drive (yes, drive - it's pathetic but quicker) and stretch for 15 minutes so we don't tear anything important. It's a quiet day at the gym. In fact, it has been a quiet week here. Winter has truly arrived and so has the nesting instinct. People start canceling appointments, going on holiday to warmer places like Bali and Singapore, and generally forget about their workout regime. I'm sure that's why they have contracts and make you pay up front.

Poor trainers. They'll be lonely for couple of months, until the weather starts to warm up. Then, as the realization that beach and bikini weather is approaching, they will be swamped with desperate clients, queuing up at the treadmills and grunting in unison in group training sessions, and complaining about how unfair life is. Yeah, kind of like us on a tough day. :->  Meanwhile, we have extra room and Marc has a little extra time and attention to give us as he inflicts torture -- oops, I mean helps us reach our fitness goals. He tells terrible jokes, pushes us farther than we feel like going, and manages to stay positive in spite of our whingeing (complaining). Good on ya, Marc.

See you tomorrow (muscles permitting) for Day #9.

Day #7 of 30 - When the Shoe is on the Other Foot

When one is immersed in a foreign culture, it is easy to assume that we are the only ones who are confused about what is happening around us, and that the burden of adapting is ours to bear. But every now and again I am reminded that it does work both ways, as the following email demonstrates. I received this exchange last week from some mahjong friends.

From: Lyn Gilmore
Sent: Wednesday, 8 June 2011 12:35 AM
To: Anita Vetter et al…
Subject: Hey yanks :-) Real marshmallows at Target

Hey y'all,

I was at Target at Bullcreek today and they are selling genuine USA Campfire marshmallows for $3 a bag near the checkout. Expiry date 2012.  Since I brought back some graham crackers it looks like we are well on our way to all the fixings for s'mores.  Who has a backyard fire pit?!

Cheers,
Lyn

------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Julie Porter
Sent: Jun 9, 2011 10:32 AM
To: 'Lyn Gilmore' , 'Anita Vetter' …

 Subject: RE: Hey yanks :-) Real marshmallows at Target

Ok . following questions from an ignorant Aussie

1.  How are  'campfire' marshmallows different?

2.  Is the expiry date important other than the obvious?

3.  What are Graham crackers and why are they important, ?

4.  You will be pleased to know that I learnt that ' fixings' are 'ingredients' from watching F Troop when I was a child. BUT WHAT THE HELL ARE S'MORES ?

5.  Firepit? Seriously?

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Lyn Gilmore
Sent:  Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 8:51 PM
To: Julie Porter et al…
Subject: Hey yanks :-) Real marshmallows at Target

I totally sympathize Julie! 

1.       They are big fat soft fluffy pillows of marshmallow-y goodness.  Different from the small yet delicious marshmallows served with coffee etc here.  About twice or three times the size.  Also, pure white.  Never pink.

2.       Mostly the obvious on the expiry - often USA products are pretty close or past their expiry when found.

3.       I will have to bring you a graham cracker.  Not sure I can adequately explain...it's a sweet cracker...kind of like a digestive biscuit?  We also use them crushed and mixed with melted butter for pie crusts.

4.       S'mores - traditional Girl Scout and Boy Scout treats (Girl Guides?).  Two blocks of graham crackers, with one or two roasted/toasted campfire marshmallow pressed between, along with a delicious square of (traditionally) Hershey's milk chocolate. http://images.foodnetwork.co.uk/recipes/traditional-smores.html

5.       They are WAAAAY better with the marshmallows cooked over an open fire.

It's a thing.  Like vegemite.  Something American kids all grow up with :-)

The vegemite "thing:" Australian kids grow up with vegemite spread on toast. Sometimes they add butter or cottage cheese. It looks like motor oil sludge and to my American palate it tastes just awful. But hey, they're not so crazy about pumpkin pie either. ("Why would you add sugar to a vegetable and put it in a pie?) And how about corn bread, chicken fried steak, and tamales? Anyway, I'm looking forward to a "s'mores night" as soon as it stops raining and we find a park with a barbecue pit. See you (munch, munch) tomorrow for Day #8.

P.S. My friend Lyn writes a wonderful blog called "Lyn Upside Down" which also addresses life for Americans in Australia. You can find it at http://lynupsidedown.blogspot.com/

Day #6 - The Cool Factor

If you have ever traveled overseas, you may already have come across the "no ice" syndrome. That's when you order a drink in a restaurant or from a street vendor and it comes (a) in a small glass and (b) without any ice. A request for ice cubes elicits an eye roll and the response "but madame, your drink is already cold. What for do you need ice?" If you persist, they will comply (at a leisurely pace) by bringing you a glass with 2 or 3 small ice cubes in it.

The same is true in Perth, where we have found that cold drinks are rarely served with more than a couple cubes of ice, if at all. We've also noticed that a high percentage of people enjoy hot drinks with their meal instead of cold ones. Dinner guests almost never accept cold drinks when we offer, and they look at us with blank stares when we ask if they would like a glass of iced tea.  Seems most Australians haven't heard of it, although you can find the odd bottle of pre-mixed tea in the grocery stores. Again, not refrigerated.

Why are there no iced drinks in Perth? Vince and I came up with a couple of theories.

1. It's a holdover from the early settlers from England. It's a jolly cold climate there much of the time, and people drink hot drinks to help them stay warm. The cool weather means that stored drinks never get that warm, hence there is no need to cool them down. Consequently, people are accustomed to having hot drinks with their meals.
   
2. Economics. When you purchase a drink here it comes in a 250-350ml bottle (8-12 oz) and if you're in a restaurant they will give you a glass to go with it. Only a few places provide fountain drinks. They do not give free refills, so people usually make one drink last the entire meal. Adding ice would either (a) take up space which could hold more of the beverage in question, and (b) during the course of an entire meal, it can water down the drink, making it less desirable.

In the US we have come to expect free refills in fast food joints as well as restaurants, and it is hard to imagine a place that does not serve fountain drinks. It is hard for us to imagine a watered down drink because, knowing we can have as much as we want, we load the cup with ice which means the cup will be only about one-third full of actual beverage. We can drink that long before any serious ice melting occurs.

Geographically, even the most northern American cities are south of most European cities. Boston is much warmer than London in summer, for example. And Houston is just "damn hot" as Vince says. We need ice in our cold drinks. If we're not cooling our drinks, we're using the cold glass to cool our foreheads.

This difference in approach is well illustrated in the story of my friend Cindy, who recently had reason to purchase a refrigerator for her apartment.  At the appliance store she requested a refrigerator with an ice maker. The salesman showed her a model which had a small freezer with two ice cube trays. "No, no, I mean an automatic ice maker." He showed her a model which had a small freezer section, plus two ice cube trays which were attached to the freezer and which turned over to release the ice cubes into a tub. You still had to fill them manually. In exasperation, Cindy complained "look, I need an icemaker that will make lots and lots of ice. Ten trays worth at least, that refills itself and empties ice itself. Do you have such a thing?" The salesman was stumped. He looked Cindy in the eye and asked "why would you ever need so much ice?" with a huge shrug of her shoulders and an exasperated voice she said "Ice -- it's what separates us from the savages!"

Cindy eventually found a refrigerator to meet her needs. Vince and I have several plastic ice cube trays which we fill manually. We have commandeered the one drawer in our freezer and use it to hold ice. Lots of ice. Ten trays worth at least.

Tomorrow is Sunday and I'm taking a day of rest. See you back on Monday, for Day #7.

Day #5 - Silver Linings

Another day of rain and I'm missing Houston, which makes it easy to complain about the things in Perth I find less than enchanting.

• Like the fact that their technology is about 15 years behind what I'm used to. For example, when iTunes released all the Beatles tunes, I couldn't download them because iTunes won't make them available to Australia. Hmmm...
  
• Clothing comes in lots of colors, as long as you like black. Shiny black, matte black, black & white stripes (no, that's too daring), faded black and dark black together, black cotton, black wool, and if you're a guy, you can wear a white shirt to go with your black pants. Ladies clothing sizes seem to end at 16, and that's an Australian 16 which in the USA is a 14. Sometimes I can wear them, sometimes not. I've given up on shoes - nobody carries size 12. But the stores are filled with black ones.  Black is the color of business clothing, and the locals follow this code faithfully. I have seen people strolling St. George's Terrace, the main drag of Perth's CBD (Central Business District) in everything from a suit & tie to a sundress (with bra straps showing) and flip flops -- and each person considers themselves dressed professionally. Some days I wear my tomato red dress into town just to brighten up the place.

• It is nearly impossible to go out to a restaurant on the spur of the moment. They take "bookings" (reservations) days, even weeks, in advance and have no problem turning people away if their book says the restaurant is full. When you book a table, you get it for the entire evening, regardless of how long you actually stay. So... the good news is that you can stay as long as you like, but the bad news is that many people are turned away when, if they had arrived 20 minutes later, they might be able to get the table once the customers finish their dinner.
  
• After 18 months here we still haven't found a place which sells anything like a burrito, taco or enchilada, let alone a proper Mexican restaurant. Gotta make them at home, which we do on a regular basis!
  
• House prices are through the roof. The average price for a 3-bedroom home is about $500,000. That's around 2,700 square feet. The bedrooms are small, small, small and the bathrooms are tiny. Guess they save it all for the living room and patio. Gotta have room for the barbie.

But... even these inconveniences aren't all bad. There's just one Freeway, the Kwinana Freeway. And while one fender-bender can tie up traffic for an hour, we live just one exit from the office, so we have been spared most traffic grief. And... I have saved lots of money NOT buying clothing and have managed to do just fine on my existing wardrobe. Nobody really looks at what you're wearing unless it's a real dress-up occasion (or it isn't black).  So nobody knows I'm wearing last year's sweater, and I can use the extra money for more fun things, like a vacation! And I really do have enough iTunes for the moment -- I still have a box of CDs in storage in Houston that I can load into the computer and onto my iPod.

The hardest thing of all about being in Perth isn't the weather, or the food, or the traffic. It's being so darn far away from y'all - our family and friends. I'm sending lots of hugs your way and thinking of you today. See you tomorrow for Day #6 - I gotta go crank up the Brooks & Dunn and make some enchiladas.

Day #4 - The Good, The Bad and the... Different

It's Thursday June 16th, the fourth day in a row of rainy weather.  Farmers all over WA are delighted since their crops will grow better and their livestock won't suffer. My neighbor's parents, who own a farm about an hour's drive north of Perth, have been paying $1,000 per week to have water trucked in for their cattle and for home use. I expect a big thank you from them all -- it was our shattered windshield that triggered the storms, I'm sure. :-)

Cold, wet weather makes me want to cook comfort food, like beef stew and cornbread. My recent marketing brought to mind several observations about things that are really good about living in Perth.

** Car insurance is really cheap compared to Houston. $584 for a whole year, and that's for the super premium version. Only $300 deductible (they call it "excess" here) and the service is fabulous. It only took one phone call to report my incident and they arranged everything else. The problem was fixed within a couple of days. The glazier actually came to my home and did the work on the spot. 

** There is no tipping here. When you eat at a restaurant, the price you pay is all you pay. Granted, it costs a bundle to eat out, but servers are paid a living wage (approx. $20 per hour) and don't expect gratuities. I thought this would mean that service is poor, but it doesn't. These kinds of jobs are highly sought after and people work to keep them. Great service and no need to leave a tip - wow.

**  Golf is incredibly inexpensive. On weekends it costs $20 per person and only $15 per person on weekdays. The courses are beautiful and well designed. I'm going to get in as much golf as I can in the next 2-1/2 years! In theory, I could golf every day...

** The price on the tag is what you pay. No extras. I LOVE this. It makes it easy to figure out whether I can truly afford something or not. How does this work? There's no sales tax here. Well actually there is, and it's called GST, but it's already included in the price of whatever you buy.

** And my favorite thing... non-food items in the grocery store cost the same as they do elsewhere. Such a balm to my pet-peeved soul, which always hated that a tube of toothpaste at HEB or Kroger costs twice as much as it does at Target. Now I don't have to make a separate trip to buy cleaning products, lotion and shampoo, or nail polish. I can get it all at my local Coles or Woolies.

Writing about this has put me in a most cheerful mood. Who cares about a little rain? See you tomorrow for Day #5. Yup, I'll probably winge (complain) about a few not-so-great things in Perth, but I'll be sure to include some good things too. Until then, cheers!

Day #3 of 30 - Scrapbooking

It's kind of like Kindergarten on steroids. You get to color, draw, cut out stuff, glue things to paper, and make a really big mess. You can even take a nap when you get tired. About two years ago my friend Jean introduced me to the Lone Star Scrapbook store, a wonderland of paper, ribbon, stickers, buttons, and creative ways to document one’s life. From that moment I was hooked. 

What I didn't know at the time was how consuming this hobby can be. One moment you're taking out a few sheets of paper and a couple of photos and next thing you know five hours have passed, you haven't made anything for dinner and you're late for an appointment. And then there's the associated paraphernalia. For example, there is a little machine to do almost any measure, cut and/or paste action imaginable. I used to use a little die cut machine called an "Epic" to punch out alphabets and borders for my scrapbook pages. I got it on sale because a newer, fancier model was coming out but I still invested over $100 in the machine and the die cuts. Then it was $10 here, $20 there for the cutest little flowers, alphabets, geometric shapes, etc. 

I considered myself queen of the scrapbook heap until word spread about an even cooler machine: the Cricut. It's a little computer that does all the stuff the Epic did, except you don't have to crank a little handle round and round or even line up die cuts to get the most number of die cuts from your paper. This critter does it all for you. It works on a system of software cartridges and you feed a sheet of 12"x12" paper into it, then tell it how big you want your lacy border, palm tree or whatever to be. It calculates everything for you, cuts it, and shoots it out ready to peel off and put in your scrapbook. Even better, Cricut has collaborated with Disney, so now I can make enough Buzz Lightyear cutouts to keep my grandson Owen happy. I waited a year before investing in the Cricut, and again I was able to snap up a bargain because... yes, there's another version due out in any week now. Oh, I forgot to mention the "Gypsy," which lets you plan out a scrapbook page and then it tells you which shapes you will need and the name of the cartridge they're on. It is possible to spend huge bucks on these conveniences. More than once I have heard a lady in a scrapbook class whisper to me, "I couldn't bring myself to tell my husband how much I spent on scrapbooking this month. He wouldn't like it if he knew." Oh right, Vince, you're reading this? Well, I only bought a few pieces of paper and a glue stick-- didn't spend more than $20... really.

Fortunately for me, my favorite scrapbook store here in Perth ("Just Scrapbooking") has set aside a day every month to teach people how to use these very cool machines, and the best part... they let you use all of their cartridges for free. At around $30 a pop, you can save serious money by coming to "Bug Day" and cutting out as much stuff as you think you'll need until the next time. You still have to buy your own machine, though. The next version of the Cricut is supposed to print things in color for you, so you don't have to buy colored paper at around 60 cents a sheet ($1.10 in Australia). Sounds like a bargain, but haven't we all been seduced before by cheap printers with cartridges that cost almost as much as the hardware? So I think I'll stay at the cro-magnon stage of die cut machines for a while, and maybe pick one up in two or three years when the next version comes out -- the one that makes dinner for you too!

So far I have completed two scrapbooks - one for Vince's daughter Sharon and one for Owen, who turns five years old on Sunday (Happy Birthday, sweetie!). Here's a sample page in his honor. See you next time, on Day #4.