$22 here buys you one beer and four anemic drumsticks in something resembling a bbq sauce.
I mention this for a couple of reasons. First, QA Hotel, if you’re going to call these things “Buffalo legs,” let’s get with the Frank’s or at least the tabasco. Second, it costs a lot to live here.
I had a conversation with a friend yesterday about my ex-pat/relo package, then dinner with my team’s recruiter and her husband. In both conversations, the topic of money came up, and…
I have to buy a refrigerator and a washing machine for my apartment. I’m annoyed that I didn’t know this was standard Aussie rental practice, in that you’ll get an oven, a dishwasher, and a dryer, but neither a fridge nor a washing machine. That’s going to run me anywhere from $500 (used & cheap) to $2k (new & decent-not-exceptional). Add to that all the things I have to replace due to voltage issues (anything with a motor like my coffee grinder, although I’m keeping my mixer), and the things I had to buy to get my entertainment center set for Aussie use (a transformer and a PAL-to-NTSC converter – retail price combined $500, which is cheaper than buying a new TV), and I’m out of pocket $1500-$2k minimum for shit I wouldn’t have had to buy had I stayed in the States.
Without getting into the details, I did ask for a relo bonus, but was told my salary increase was plenty. I didn’t push my luck at that point. I worked hard to come up with a rough cost-of-living number, but wasn’t properly prepared to understand the cost of the ramp up to that steady-state rent/bills/groceries total I had put together.
This stuff is really small potatoes, though. I’m an adult, I have money in the bank, and I can buy a refrigerator if I have to.
I’ve always used exaggerated anger on minor indignities as a coping mechanism for dealing with the bigger stuff. For example, it wouldn’t be too far from the truth if I said to you, “Nothing makes me angrier than having to pick something up off the floor that I just accidentally dropped.*” I can channel that anger in the moment, release it, and have more room in my soul to handle the big ticket items. Whoever said “don’t sweat the small stuff” doesn’t have to spend time living inside my head.
*You can add “hourglass/spinning wheel for more than three seconds on my computer,” “the extended WinXP boot cycle,” “realizing just after the door shuts behind me that I have forgotten something and need to take four whole steps back to fetch it,” and many, many others to that list of frustrations.
When something larger is bothering me, then, it has tended to live in this sort of zen purgatory, where what should be constructive thought towards resolution is instead replaced in a sort of surrogate sense by an active search for whatever I can get angry about instead.
I can’t really talk about money right now, and I’m in no danger of running out of it. But between cost of living and poor preparation, I’ve got a potential problem looming, and I’m curious how it’s all going to turn out.
Frankly, it’s even odds right now that I’m going to have a difficult decision to make before the year is up. If you see me getting angry about the lack of meat on a drumstick, you’ll just have to trust that I need that quick burn to settle the rest of it back down to a steady simmer.
