And for my one thousandth post, some happy news.
According to Leon Gettner I live in the happiest of happy capitalist countries, Australia.
The report says happy societies have 10 signs:
1. High degree of trust in fellow citizens.
2. Low amount of corruption.
3. Low unemployment.
4. High level of education.
5. High income.
6.High employment rate of older people.
7. Small shadow economy.
8. Extensive economic freedom.
9. Low employment protection.
10. High birth rate.
Australia scores highly in most of these categories.
I certainly think that it is a nice place to live and I trumpet it on my blog header every day.
We ended up in Australia, not by design, but by the impact of some loonies flying 747s into the World Trade Centre. I have a vivid memory of being woken up by our next door neighbour in Sacramento. She knew that we did not have a television and wanted to share the dramatic news. I had recently moved back to America, with the company I had worked for for over ten years.
Most recently I had spent time in Singapore, where I had a nice life jetting around Asia advising on environmental and land contamination issues. I extricated myself from a previous unhappy marriage, got a divorce, met my current wife and we had two kids after living in Singapore for over five years. Singapore was very stable and a very easy and comfortable lifestyle.
I had a Green Card, which meant I had no issues with immigration into the US. My family were with me, although their long term visas had not been processed yet. We bought a house, a car, a fridge..., everything you need to get going in a new country. I just assumed that everything would work out.
Well that dramatic event put paid to our plans and to cut a long story short, visa processing for immigrants and temporary residents went into the slowest of the slow lane as all immigration resources were poured into rooting out potential subversives.
During our trip to Canada to renew my families temporary visas, my family were denied reentry and forced to decant with their bags to Australia through Singapore immediately. So I was in America with a job and all of our stuff and they were in Australia, with nowhere to live. My son was only one at the time and my daughter was three, so my wife had a lot on her plate.
After finally extricating myself from this odd situation, giving up my job, house stuff etc, I ended up in Adelaide. Elizabeth got a job with the Government, which gave us some stability and I started the process of applying for residence. Adelaide was nice. It was possible to do a lot of stuff without a lot of money. It took me a while to get over it all, but over time I rebounded.
That is all resolved now and I am an Aussie Permenant Resident. After four years staying home with the kids until they went to school, I am now gainfully employed part time in the same field I was working in before. I arrange my schedule so that I can take the kids to school, pick them up in the afternoon and do my domestic tasks. I have a nice work environment with nice colleagues. I volunteer at the school and am on the Governing Council. I do all the shopping and most of the domestic chores. Life is relatively uncomplicated and stable.
So yes I feel lucky here in Australia. We have a good life and I am generally satisfied with my lot.
As Crushed mentioned in the last post, Australia is very familiar for British people, something I never felt, living in America for all those years. I think that has a tremendous impact on your level of happiness. Having lived in many countries there is always the feeling of not really belonging.
So for me happiness in no particular order is having a stable family life, cultural familiarity, not worrying too much about where the next dollar is coming from, nice weather (we have a lot of that here), being able to get up early and have some quite time to myself, nice work arrangements with pleasant coworkers, access to a computer and broadband and what that allows, a dishwasher, a garden to fiddle around in, a few pets, a reliable car, being able to spend time with my kids, a few pets, a smooth commute to work, access to a beer now and again, nice food and having time to be around my wife.
As one of the commentators on Leon's blog said, it is all relative.
Happiness. It's all relative. Take the Soviet diplomat who said, "When I am not abroad, I live with my family on the 16th floor of a high-rise apartment building in Moscow. I am sitting with my son on my knee, reading him editorial from 'Pravda', when I hear 'knock-knock' on door. I open door and there stands Secret Policeman. He says, "You name Ivan Ivanovich?". I say, "No! He live upstairs...". That's my idea of happiness."
Although I am not really the upbeat or particularly optimistic type and can be quite depressed at times, I think what it really boils down to, is to be happy with what you have and always look on the bright side of life.
Now that always makes me laugh.
adelaide
