Another Day, Not Another Dollar

First day not working. Finished the contract yesterday - must remember to bill them. Dental appointment today, my hygienist was so tall! She was in three inch heels, I have never seen her in heels before. Visited a recruitment agency I have worked with / through for nearly ten years and collected a work statement from them, now I have two from clients and one from an agency, there is still one outstanding from another agency. These are to accompany my visa application. Then to the place I bought my Suzuki from because the remote key has been playing up since they serviced the car last week. Then home and I have tied in the last of the furniture and the fridge. I packed the clothes drier and the two mobile air conditioners, but not the clothes washer, and put all into the container, but not tied in yet - must do this at first light!!! The container is being collected tomorrow and trucked to my mum's farm to settle into the super shed (the shed for superphosphate, not being used now that no farmers in the area can afford fertiliser due to the drought, said drought mostly being caused by government drainage projects emptying the water table). So close to an empty house, and so much wiser - next time I pack boxes but pay men to pack container! Much quicker, much more effective stacking and tying.

Side story! Today I suffered the worst abo begging story I have ever heard!
Whilst the Suzi was being fixed I went to have a (belated) bite to eat, bought a roll and was biting away in the park when an aboriginal woman comes up and asks me if she can talk to me for a minute. Okay, I think, we all know that this will turn into a request for money, as if living off the taxes that I pay isn't enough! But maybe it could be amusing, and maybe it will be original enough to encourage me to give her ten dollars and send her on her way. So this is what I got:

"I have just travelled down from Broken Hill to meet my lawyer. He will meet me in one hour to give me my compensation payments. He phoned me and told me to meet him at that seat there." (Points to park bench about ten metres away.) "He will pay me my compensation money. I will get $25,000 in compensation. He won't give it to me all in cash, he will give me about $4,000 in cash in an envelope and the rest in cheques. Can you help me out in the meantime and lend me some money to feed me and my kids. " (Who are not in sight anywhere.) "I promise to pay you back in one hour."

How many holes to you see in that story?
Your lawyer is meeting you in a park? What happened to his office?
He is paying you some cash and some cheques? What happened to the protocol to pay one cheque payable only into a bank account?
You are getting $25,000 in one hour and yet you are begging for ten dollars now?
And where are these 'kids'?
Does she seriously think that anyone would fall for that???

It has been a long time since I have been hassled by begging abos in the parks in Adelaide. I thought that the cops had cleaned them all out. Or more likely Social Services has given them all brand new four bedroom houses to live in and new holdens to drive - all at tax payers expense - and they are mostly satisfied. Forget for the moment that begging is illegal in South Australia, or at least it used to be, maybe the Socialist government decriminalised it, along with prostitution and minor drug use.

Many years ago I totalled up all of the government handouts to aboriginals and divided it by the number of abos in the country. It worked out at about $40,000 annually for every man, woman, and child of them. With all of that money how come most of them are still living in poverty with bad health services and little education?

On another point (apart from the comment that goes through my head about making lots of typos because I am sitting cross-legged on the lounge room floor because I have no computer desk or any sort of table in the house) I closed my Russian internet bride accounts this morning. Done! Another chapter in my life finished. No, there had been nothing back from the incredibly beautiful eighteen year old blue-eyed blonde from Kharkov. She was the only one that I was still writing to, but her letters had been getting vaguer and thinner and somewhat tardy. But no response to the three dozen pink roses, so therefore she misses out on the life of romance with this being. 'Cos if I did have a total young babe like her then you can be guaranteed that I would be showering her with flowers and gifts and dining out etc., etc., etc. Kind of a hopeless romantic, which never meant much with the Australian women. Maybe it doesn't with any women?

Four days until I have to be out of this house, ten days until I am flying out of this country.
I am starting to get more concerned, worried, anxious I think is the best description. How will I find Singapore as more than a place to visit or pass through? Will I actually enjoy living there? Will it be a bad move? Will it turn into just a long holiday? Or will it be the best thing that I have ever done? Will it be the start of a totally wonderful new phase in this incarnation? Will I find physical, emotional, intellectual, economic, and spiritual fulfilment there - or will I find that same emotional and intellectual emptiness that I have found here?