Lost in transit

Easter in Austria

I'm not saying everyone in Austria celebrates Easter exactly like this. Being a bicultural (?) family, we improvise sometimes.

1. Long weekend. The children got, I think, a week and a half off from school. They go back to school tomorrow, which is Wednesday. I got Good Friday off, and yesterday, the Monday following Easter. Getting Friday off is, I have been told, not automatic in Austria, although Monday is a legal holiday.
2. Decorating the Easter tree. This involves placing cherry and pussy willow twigs in a vase and decorating them with decorated Easter eggs (hollow) and other Easter-theme decorations. This appears to be common here.
3. No church bells. Church bells fly to Rome prior to Easter, and return Easter day to ring in the holiday. During their absence, groups of (authorized) children walk around the village making a racket (at the times the bells would normally ring) with wooden rachets and at the top of their lungs chanting something we have not yet deciphered.
4. Building the Easter house. This works like this: the youngest child in the family (almost 9, in our case) says, "I'm sick of this crazy family. I want to move out. I want a house of my own in the back yard," whereupon the father and mother drive around to hardware chains and garden stores looking for a suitable garden shed. After picking one out (2x2.5 meters), the father builds it in the back yard. First he has to make a foundation, which requires removal of a tree and several bushes, and much flattening, and piling up of stones and gravel, and trips to the hardware chain for large blocks of concrete for footings and foundation bits, and this is a bit comical since he has only a small car now. Then the house is assembled, which turns out to be the easy part. The child is invited up onto the roof to help nail down the tar paper, which she turns out to enjoy greatly and carries out with dedication, concentration and skill.
5. Redundant deception of children. This includes threats that "the Easter bunny will/won't do/bring/like" something if the children do/don't do something, and blurting out statements like, "did you just see that large bunny over there? I wonder if it was the Easter bunny," while driving; and secret shopping for Easter supplies such as eggs, dyes, decorations and gifts; and pit-stop/Mission Impossible-style boiling and decoration of eggs when the youngest is finally out of the house with a friend for an hour or so, and midnight basket filling and hiding; despite the fact that the youngest has said, quite clearly, "Dad, I know who the Easter bunny really is: you and mom," and the second fact that her 16-year old sister has probably also figured it out.
6. Contracting laryngitis. This happens to fathers when they build garden houses in the rain, despite already having a cold, because wouldn't it be neat to have the house finished before the weekend is over? So one spends Easter weekend sounding like the offspring of Tom Waits and Margot Kidder, croaking things like, "gee, it sure is funny, the less voice I have the more I want to say things."
7. Fantasizing that the rest of the population has succumbed to a catastrophe of some sort. Because the streets are so empty, but for gangs of rachet-wielding chanting children, since everyone else is away on holidays, out of town to one place or another. You go to the movies, twice, once with the kids and once with grown friends who happen to be doctors or music teachers, because somehow most of your friends are either doctors or music teachers while you are the odd one out, the cello student, and patient.
8. House cleaning. Because youngest daughter's room is just way too dusty. When you start, you figure it can't take more than an hour for you and your wife to straighten it out. She has more thorough plans, and it takes all day. But looks real nice afterwards. Then, before bed, you polish all the shoes in the house, because you are keeping some and donating others to charity (a whole large black garbage bag full, as it turns out) and you can't give away unpolished shoes.
9. Skipping church. This was the first time we did this. We were just too tired. Maybe from housecleaning, maybe from making Easter baskets at midnight, maybe from getting up at 4 AM to hide them in the yard before the kids got up, just in case. Which turned out to be the right thing to do, because they woke up around 6 and gathered their eggs.
10. Half day in Vienna. Very few people do this, I think, because Vienna was like a ghost town yesterday. We went to an okay painting exhibition and then browsed in the gift shop for a while, where I saw some neat Lomo cameras, which I may try out someday soon, because they seem low-tech enough for me. Gamma we gave a choice between a wiggly eraser thing, a multi-colored pencil thing, or a spinning top thing that draws as it spins, with what I thought were colored pencils but which turned out to be some sort of indelible brightly-colored felt pens. After the exhibition, you go to an Asian fusion place for lunch, where they have installed spiffy white-leather sofas along the walls of which they are quite proud, since they are mentioned in the menues. The father orders bulgogi, the mother some lemon grass chicken, and the youngest child orders fried noodles. The oldest daughter eats somewhere else with a boy from school. When lunch is finished, the father turns over the daughter's paper placemat and says, "let's give your new top a spin." The girl spins it a little and it makes a few squiggles. The mother spins it carefully and it makes a few squiggles. The father gives it a powerful spin and it makes a lot more squiggles, clear across the table and about a meter along the white leather sofa before coming to rest in a crack. Automatically, the youngest daughter spreads out her coat, concealing the indelible squiggles and when the waiter comes to collect payment for the check, she waits until he is out of eyeshot before gathering her coat and leaving with her parents, leaving her father simultaneously grateful for and concerned about her larcenous heart. She uses the moment to ask for an ice cream cone, which she is not denied.

And how was your Easter?

Watching from the Sidelines

Three years ago, I didn't know much more about Australia than "the three Ks": kangaroos, koalas, and convicts. (All right, the three "K-sounds".) And a fourth, that the capital was Canberra, which knowledge I duly used to impress the Australian guy I met in Prague two-and-three-quarter years ago.

Once we started going out, I took it upon myself to read up and learn more about the land down under. One of the things I learned was that Australia has a long and renowned history of labour rights. For example, organised Australian trades workers were the first in the world to win an eight-hour day with no loss in wages, back in 1856.

So it came as a surprise to see that Australia's Federal Government, under Prime Minister John Howard, passed the so-called "WorkChoices" plan, a comprehensive workplace law reform bill that eviscerates the regulations that previously protected employees' rights at work.

Hourly wages here used to be set by the government depending on such things as the industry in question, the position, the worker's skill level, etc., and awarded employees a higher rate if they had to work overtime, weekends, or public holidays. Now, employers can force their workers to replace their previously-set contracts with new ones, called "Australian Workplace Agreements" (AWAs), wherein they can be paid as much or as little as the employer wishes to. On top of that, the "unfair dismissal protection" has been done in for companies with a staff of 100 or less, meaning that their employees can be fired at any time, for any reason at all, and these employees are no longer allowed to seek reinstatement of their jobs or compensation for their loss of income.

An article in today's Sydney Morning Herald tells of a 16-year-old schoolgirl with her first part-time job at a juice bar, who was told only two days after the new laws came into effect that she had been made redundant (i.e. let go) and then "rehired" under a new AWA agreement, which she never signed. Under this new AWA forced upon her by her employer, her base salary was cut by 10 per cent and all extra weekend and public holiday rates abolished. Now, she earns a full 40 per cent less in before-tax salary for her seven-hour Sunday shift.

Another woman, a part-time medical receptionist, recently widowed, was assured by her local Member of Parliament that it would be unlawful for an employer to pressure or coerce an employee into negotiation of a new AWA contract, or to fire someone for refusing to negotiate one. Shortly after the new law took effect, her office manager came to her with a new contract and insisted she sign it on the spot. She asked to take it home for closer study first, and the next morning came to work and asked the manager for a meeting to clarify several points in the new agreement. At lunch that day, the manager fired her on the grounds that her reluctance to sign the contract proved she was not a team player.

The most chilling quote in the piece comes from the juice girl's boss, a man identified only as Andre:

"If they don't want to sign, they can leave," he said. "It's not about what's fair, it's [about] what's right — right for the company."

I never thought Australia was an absolute utopia, but at least it was, I thought, a social-welfare state, as in, a state that looked after the social welfare of its citizens — a state that cared about "what was fair" by providing such things as basic health insurance, low school fees, and industrial relations protection, unlike my homeland, where millions of Americans are left to rot under a pile of debts with bromides about Protestant work ethics and the American dream ringing hollowly in their ears. I thought Australia had to be at least a nicer, more stable place to live than a country with no universal government-provided healthcare or state-subsidised school tuition, a pitiful minimum wage, and a corporate culture that gleefully plundered employee retirement pensions to enrich their superstar CEOs.

Now I sit helplessly and watch as, more and more every day, Australia begins to resemble the country I wanted to leave behind. And I'll be looking for a full-time job once my degree is finished, so what kind of employment contract might I be forced into?

There'll be no assurances for me from my MP, false or otherwise — I pay taxes here but I'm not a citizen, and if I don't like what the politicians are doing, I can't even vote them out. Then again, the government here passed the bill despite numerous and widespread protests and rallies against it, and the disapproval of millions of its citizens.

Yep, it's almost like being back in the US.

Today I am a . . . consumer?

I get all sorts of mail that indicates that I live here in Australia: school tuition bill, electricity bill, gas bill, cell phone bill, car registration.

For the first time, however, I've received something that tells me that I'm not just a foreign national living a fringe life outside the experience of native Australians, but that I finally fit in, that I'm truly just like everyone else on my block.

Today I got my first direct-mail advertising brochure. Postal spam.

Did you know that if you send just $139.95 to a post office box in Singapore, you'll receive 56 QuickSlim patches that will help you lose between 21-35kg in 8 weeks, all due to the wondrous properties of FUCUS?

Until today, I know I hadn't.

Yes, that's right, Fucus is "the Latin name for a group of familiar Atlantic and North Sea, [sic] seaweeds. Herbalist [sic] have known for generations that these seaweeds can help fight obesity - and now scientists have proven this in clinical tests!"

In case I'm not sure about the idea of Burning Fat 200% Faster!, a small note tells me that the QuickSlim Fucus formula is the preferred weight loss method for many celebrities and stars! (And if it's in bold AND italic, you know it has to be true.)

Well, gee, why didn't you say so? Sign me up!

Thank you, Australia Post, for making me feel like I finally belong.

No, your other left.

There are plenty of things that will make you stand out as an expat -- your accent, your language, your spelling, your hair color, your clothing, etc. One that you don't usually hear about, however, is your sense of lateral spatial positioning.

In other words, what side of the road do you drive on?

For instance, I grew up in a country that drives on the right; I'm currently living in a country that drives on left. Now wait a second, you might say, unless you're actually driving, what sort of real difference would that make?

Besides having to learn which way to look when crossing the street ("right-then-left" was my mantra for a few days), it comes out in much subtler ways that you don't even think about until they crop up.

The first time I lived in Australia, for example, my then-boyfriend kept chiding me for standing on the wrong side of the escalator, blocking all of the people behind me who were trying to walk up or down it. No matter how many times he mentioned it, my muscle memory would always steer me to the right side of the step — the slow lane back home, but the passing lane here.

And even more frequently I'm caught in an awkward, shuffling pas de deux with some stranger walking towards me on a narrow strip of sidewalk. I instinctively move to my right to let them go; they, being raised in Australia, instinctively move to their left. Their left, my right. This happens at least once a week.

Even though I have a car here and drive on the left side now — and that was a whole other story, learning how to shift a manual transmission with my left hand instead of my right; the gears are in the same exact position, so have a think on that one for a second — I still can't get the hang of moving to the left instead of the right. Decades of conditioning win out every time, I guess.

One is the Magic Number

One of the things that bothered me about living in the Czech Republic was feeling like I couldn't fully engage with the society all around me because I didn't speak Czech. I had a bit of it down, enough to buy things in shops, but my lack of language skills meant I couldn't talk to people on the street or in a bar, couldn't apply for most jobs. I couldn't even read a newspaper.

Here I am now in Australia, in a country that speaks my native language, enabling me to go to grad school, apply for any job I'd like, read every magazine and newspaper on the stands, and be able to talk to just about anyone I wish. And yet I'm more socially isolated in Melbourne than I ever was in Prague.

The expat scene in Prague can get tiring sometimes – it's a bit like being at boarding school or summer camp – but the point is that there is a scene in the first place. There are bars that are known to be hangouts for expats and backpackers, so at the very least you can find people to chat with for a night. And once you meet one or two other expats, you meet their friends and those people's friends and next thing you know, your dance card is full. In Prague I found myself going to bars and parties all the time, sometimes several nights a week. I was a regular social butterfly.

In Melbourne, though, I know hardly anyone, and end up sitting home alone most nights, just me and my laptop. It's like any move to any other city, where you hope to meet people through work, or maybe in your building. But I live in a house by myself, and don't have a job, and only see the people in my program a couple of hours per week, with little to no interaction between us. I have a few friends, but they're mostly foreigners themselves, also new to town, and with a limited social circle. I don't end up meeting many Australians, and neither do I have an expat scene to hook up with. There are expat scenes here, of course, but they're mainly for non-English-speaking folks, like the thousands of Asian students at my school, or the Arab or Greek immigrants all around my neighbourhood.

Ironically, the fact that I spoke so little Czech in Prague actually gave me a method for meeting more people – it meant the other English speakers I met and I had something in common. But of course speaking English in Australia is, well, normal. Entirely unremarkable. Certainly no reason to introduce yourself to someone in a cafe or bar.

Being able to talk to everyone means I don't have a reason for talking to anyone.