q is for qualifications

(I apologize for being a day late with my 'Q' topic; my husband whisked me away for the weekend... but more about that later!)


I've decided to write about qualifications because there are thousands of people in the U.S holding them, who just can't find jobs.  Of course the current state of the economy has plenty to do with that, but perhaps you'll be (as) surprised (as I was) to discover just how big Americans are on networking.
Surely you've all heard the phrase 'it's not what you know that matters: it's who you know,' well this is definitely the case in America.  Yes, I know most countries work this way too, but the preferred networking strategy in the US is handing out / swapping business cards.  It seems like everyone has a card and I was surprised to find kids younger than me - many still in university - handing them out, anxious to make an impression!  While I worked in fashion, I couldn't turn my head without receiving a card from an aspiring designer, writer, model or actor looking for leg up... or even from someone wanting to hire me.  I'd end up with a full bag of business cards after every event and hardly any memory of who they'd come from, never quite sure that this is an effective networking tool.

But card-swapping happens in most business settings, and sometimes socially too.  Americans respond very well to this and will often make notes on the card about their first impressions of the owner.  I never got the hang of this, I mean it's quite different to where I'm from, where we think handing someone a card with your phone number is 'stuck-up.'  I think most Australians (well the friends I've spoken to about this anyway) feel that if we're going to be friends, why can't you just tell me your number so I can save it into my phone?  Does handing me a card with your position somehow make me lucky to be considered as your friend?  Or do you have your dream job and just like to show off?  What's funny though, is that some of the cards I've received from people without qualifications say things under their name like: amateur photographer, animal lover, student at blah blah college, aspiring interior decorator... and so on.  I used to think, 'you paid $25 to print 100 of these?  Why don't you just tell people how to find you on FB so we can read your profile?' lol

Anyway, that's just how it is.  In situations outside of interviews, the people who can hire you are more interested in the impression you make upon them rather than the kind of qualification you hold anyway.  It won't matter to the magazine editor, you've just met at a charity, that you have a masters in journalism if you're an introvert who doesn't approach them all night.  Chances are that the out-spoken lass who's been fetching the drinks and throwing suggestions for features out there will be the one who lands the J.O.B - qualified or not (and business card or not! :P)

a pair of P's for letter P

I couldn't decide upon a specific topic to blog about for letter P so I thought I'd do both my top ideas - keeping them short and sweet of course :)

1. Paper money that all looks the same:
I miss Australia's brightly coloured, different shaped, plastic notes.  Not only for the obvious reasons that everyone knows; like how paper rips, or that it's porous and therefore harbours bacteria plus just feels dirty to touch... but also because I've considered the following scenario: say you're in social a situation with friends, (no let's make that) people that you've only recently met and are trying to impress, when you spot a bill on the ground not far from from you ... with American notes that all look the same - how can you tell whether it's worth bending over to pick it up?  You don't want to be seen as the tight-ass who dives for a 5-er off the dirty ground!!

I mean, with Australian currency you'd likely leave it if it was purple ($5)... depending on how important these new acquaintances are you might even leave a blue ($10), or a red note ($20) casually laying there, but no one would leave a shiny yellow ($50) and certainly not a green bill ($100) laying there!  Picking one of those up would afford you instant center-of-attention-ness with your new posse - especially if you jubilantly proclaim 'drinks are on me!' as you raise it into the air!

It's nice to be given a conscious choice through colour recognition, because you know that with paper money that all looks the same, there's no choice:  you'd leave it laying there to save face in front of your peeps in case it's a $1 bill, then spend all night wondering if you should have risked it in case it was a $100!

2. Pharmaceutical commercials 
Seriously these blow your mind the first time you see them!  In America it's illegal to NOT mention the side affects of any advertised medication so a simple, 30 second ad for headache medicine turns into a two minute event, where after the initial commercial, some guy yaps on about side affects the pills may cause, for example:

Here, take these lovely allergy pills to clear your nose :) 

But beware, side affects include: brain hemorrhaging, unknown bruising, kidney failure, multi-personality disorder, impotence, blindness or absolutely in the worst case may result in limb amputation.

Lol, are you laughing?  Maybe it's best if I demonstrate, check out this popular ad for sleeping pills which screens regularly on everyday TV:

It's actually very mild comparing to many others I've seen which seriously resemble my above joke!

o is for opening hours

When I first met Will, I lived in a small beach town in Australia's Central Queensland.  The town had one local grocery store, a Woolworths, two pharmacies and a handful of restaurants.  People that lived there were beyond excited when the first 24 hr McDonalds was built (in 2008) because even though nobody particularly enjoyed the food - it gave them a meal option past 9pm.  Nothing in this town was open past 9pm!  If you had any kind of (un-medical) emergency, you called your friends or knocked on your neighbours' door and hoped to heck they had whatever you needed!  My American husband was shocked by this.

It got even worse Will and I became serious and decided to move in together.  For a change of scenery but mainly for work reasons, we did so at the other end of Australian continent in a slightly larger beach town called Scarborough Beach on the coast of Western Australia.  Here, business hours were even worse!  Many places closed at 5 or 8pm and many more remained closed on Sundays!  It used to irritate me whenever Will would complain about nothing been opened because, well, how dare he say anything cross about my beloved country!  Damn spoiled, consumeristic American, I used to think.  Can't bare the slightest kind of inconvenience!  Now, three years after living in the States myself, I've become just as spoiled!  This became obvious on a recent trip back home to Brisbane, where I complained the whole time about not being able to get anything done without an appointment! HA!

I've really come to enjoy my impromptu massages, salon trips or shopping 'emergencies.'  Not that Americans need to justify ducking into a Walmart (like a BIG W) at 1am - but it still feels exciting to me!  I giggle just thinking about it sometimes:
- need a prescription at 11pm? You got it!
- getting ready for bed, only to remember you're out of toothpaste?  No problem!
- friend called you up crying at 9.30pm because her idiot bf just dropped her like a sack of potatoes?  Don't stress!  Run out, buy her some flowers, a bottle of wine and their favourite chick-flick and head on over to her.

Here's the low-down: in most major American cities:
- retail stores remain open until 9pm every day!!
- grocery stores are open until midnight every night - some are 24 hr!
- restaurants stay open until 10-11pm every day!
- banks and post offices are open on Saturdays!
- if you happen to stop at a petrol station that isn't open, it's a pretty safe bet you'll be able to get gas anyway because most petrol stations leave their pumps on over night, so you can pre-pay with a card, fill up and be on your way!

Ahhh extended opening hours... they're a wonderful, wonderful thing!

n is for New York!

Anyone that's ever been to New York City will understand why I'm dedicating my entire letter 'n' to it.  There is nowhere and nothing in the world equal or comparable to New York!  Every song, movie, tv show, book or magazine article I've ever read about this miraculous city falls short when describing her grandeur, her magnitude or the feeling you experience every time you visit.  A feeling that I can best describe my comparing it to a spiritual connection.

Everywhere you look you are overwhelmed.  Everything you see is a contradiction: stinking rich, diamond clad ladies wearing heels straight off designer runways, beside homeless, desperate and dirty people laying on the littered streets/ ancient buildings and taxis clad with the latest modern technology in the form of billboards or plasma screen tvs/ glamorous with bohemian/ culture with punk rock/ and representatives from every country in the world coexisting in an open-minded utopia that the rest of the prejudiced world can't conceptualize!

Truly the cultural, economic and fashion center of America - New York is the place to be for all the latest and fresh events.  I love this city (can you tell?) and despite having visited three times and seeing almost every borough - I feel like I could spend my whole life there and never see all that this wonderland island has to offer.

Rockefeller Square

Will beside fire engine outside one of NYC's most
iconic hotels 

Me outside the famous plaza hotel

m is for Mexican labour

Ok, so straight off the bat, this post is probably politically incorrect but it's true, it happens all over America and it was very shocking for me so I must stay true to myself and discuss it. Let's dive straight in and get this over with:

There's a well-known problem in America that many Mexicans are here illegally.  It's an ongoing battle for the whole world to see, between the government trying to help and certain citizens who believe the 3rd world should stay in the 3rd world.  The unspoken of part to all this is daily life.  In daily life, their arrival equals survival.  To survive they must work but as they're here illegally, they can't get legitimate work, therefore they work for cheap doing most of the household things Americans are unwilling to do.

The other unspoken part is where you can find willing Mexicans looking for work: congregated outside of hardware stores and I'm telling you this in case you ever visit a hardware store in the US so you know what's going on.  It was quite unsettling for me upon my first visit to see what looked like a gang just hanging at the front door and I almost peed myself when one of them tried to follow me to the car on my way out, all the while asking me things in Spanish... Turns out he just wanted to help me with those buckets of paint and find out if I needed a painter!  Something Will laughed at later and casually said 'o yeah, I forgot to mention that.'  Well that won't happen to any of you - because now I've mentioned it (hopefully without offending anyone!)  

Most Mexicans and Americans know the basics of each others' languages.  In a hardware store situation, they know enough to communicate what they want done or how to do it, how many people it will take, how much it will cost etc.  But while assuming the hardware line is made up of 'illegals' is a fairly safe bet - the labour industry in America is largely dominated by Mexican workers even if they arrived the 'correct' way.  This is because those with qualifications can't afford to translate them and, given Mexico's economic problems, the vast majority of others are simply uneducated. They are however, super hardworking and trustworthy.  Case and point:  Americans (mostly) love well kept yards and homes but most of the ones I know don't own a hedge trimmer or lawnmower and many others get someone to clean their homes every week!  

Maybe it's so shocking for me because I come from a country where everyone did their own yard work and house cleaning.  I'll admit to feeling uncomfortable whenever we would visit the in-laws on a weekend and sit around the back yard with refreshing drinks and our feet up while a team of landscapers performed 'yard maintenance' around us that involved pulling out weeds and watering plants.  But why was I uncomfortable?  Just because I believe it's bigoted and wrong, who's to say it's demoralizing for the landscapers?  They need work after all, don't they?

Maybe it's strange because I'm from a country where Occupational Health &Safety rules micromanage every workplace and something as unlawful and un-managed as this would have the authorities heads rotating 360 degrees upon their shoulders... or maybe it's because I'd never really stopped to think about the fact that a 3rd world country borders one where the streets are paved with gold and the ramifications of that.