Monday 31 July 2006

Pic of the day: This should amuse my coworkers, at least.

Finance: 8.5

If anything beats the exaggerated negatives, it must be the exaggerated positives. Foremost of these is a finance index of a whopping 8.5 out of 10 available. This should indicate that I am a millionaire at least, surely some kind of CEO or a playboy with an inherited fortune larger than fast spending can erode. And I suppose to the average starving Afghan, there isn't all that much difference.

But to my fellow Norwegians I am rather a pitiful creature: At the height of my career, more or less, I earn roughly $40,500 a year. (Although the dollar value will surely rise over time as the dollar slowly approaches the peso. It won't matter all that much to me though since I intend to stay here.) In comparison, politicians are now proposing a "citizen wages" of almost $20,000 a year. That's not minimum wages ... that's what they propose paying people to breathe. If they pull that through, I will be sorely tempted to quit my job an just leech off the state instead. (It is not as if I don't leech off the state while working, after all.) I might have to move further out in the countryside to find some deteriorating old house to rent, but what would I do in the city anyway? I could sleep all morning, write shounen-ai all day and play CoH all night. "Just like Heaven..."

Seriously though, here in Norway $40,000 is the kind of salary part time housewives earn. Unsurprisingly, I don't own a house, or a car, or a boat, or a cabin (as most Norwegian families do). Not even a TV. But I do have computers, enough and to spare. And heaps of clothes from back when I enjoyed shopping, though I usually only buy an item or two a year now from the clothes shop. And I buy lots and lots of fruit yogurt. So my life is certainly not without luxury. It is just without the trappings of competition for status in the pack.

I don't depend on anyone else to help me pay my bills, and I pay them on time or before (except for the socks... I never get around to unpacking the socks before the enclosed bills fall due, but they are pretty understanding and the amounts are tiny anyway.) I don't have worries about money. I was in a tight spot during the move, I admit, since I had paid two rents and suddenly I didn't get to move to the second place and had to rent yet another. That and paying a deposit too. So yeah, I had to stress a few days there. But apart from that, it is quite a few years since money has burdened my thoughts as all. On the contrary, I have made a habit of buying books and other useful stuff for my younger friends, who are either still in college or struggling to get started. (I won't get any reward in Heaven for that since I do it in public, but it's OK, I do it to make them smile anyway.)

So I guess it is true, after all: I am rich. After all, according to Lao Tzu, to be rich is to understand that enough is enough.

The average Norwegian earns so much money that it makes me cringe. It is just unseemly the way they can wallow in luxury, much of which is more to impress than for comfort. And it just keeps getting worse: Over the last 4 years, the disposable income after tax increased by 30% for the average Norwegian family. Makes you wonder why not more people are moving here. I keep trying to tempt my online friends to move here. You can sleep on my couch, especially if you are a pretty girl. Probably a pretty boy too. I may need some inspiration for my fiction. ^_^ You may have noticed that I write all this stuff instead of the fiction I had planned.

Anyway, I'm not writing for money, although I suppose if I live to grow old, I might want to reconsider that. Then again, if I live to grow old, it will be 2030, and the world will likely be very, very different from what it is today. I don't think people like Ray Kurzweil or Vernor Vinge will be anywhere near right about how the world will be in 2030, I admit. But neither am I sure my current job will exist by then, or many others as we know them today. We shall just have to see. But because I don't need much, I have less worries than most. And that's what counts, isn't it? Better a little with peace than a lot with struggle.