Friday 16 June 2000

Pic of the day: Sometimes, falling on stony ground is simply not enough to dissuade a seed. Of course, it's not going to be an easy life.

No sacrifice?

"You can make sacrifices for your career.
You can make sacrifices for your family.
Or you can choose not to make sacrifices."
-Compaq, 1997.

I challenge this assumption.

The statement was made in a beautifully illustrated advertisement, featuring a woman typing on a portable computer, while a child was lying on the sofa beside her, one leg in a cast. Certainly most parents would indeed find it a sacrifice to leave their child alone at home in such a condition.

But kids are resilient creatures. After a couple days, they are back in primary school, showing off their cast to oohing and aahing classmates who want one too. Pretty soon the cast will be covered in handwriting and stickers, and life goes on. Unless, of course, Mom has bought a Compaq Armada in 1997. "Has It Changed Your Life Yet?"

Don't know about you, but for me a good Compaq notebook would cost ca 2 months pay after tax and forced insurance. 3 months if you consider rent and commuting expenses, which you pretty well have to consider. Yep, that's 3 months without food. I'd consider that a pretty huge freaking SACRIFICE. Your mileage (and fat deposits) may vary.

***

It's a bit over one year ago that I took the plunge and bought a laptop. Not because I needed it for my work, or for a sick child. Well, some may want to challenge that. :) Actually I bought it for the woman I love. OK, one of the women I love. But the point still stands. Laptops are cute and non-techy. Just drag and not drop. The ideal student tool. But that's not how things went. (It's all in my archives, tee hee.)

"And it's no sacrifice
just a simple word;
it's two hearts living
in two separate worlds;
but it's no sacrifice
no sacrifice
it's no sacrifice at all."

(Elton John, Sacrifice)

Now the laptop was a Toshiba Satellite, and cheap for a portable. That's cheap not just as in "low cost", that's cheap as in "slightly shoddy". It certainly locks up more often than any other computer I have had, and there were defects which I discovered around the time when the other computer was on its way to Germany: The CD player stopped playing music CDs after less than a month, and the parallel port zip drive which I had used on my other machines made this one hang up for minutes or hours at a time. I think "cheap" is not a harsh word. And it still cost me over a month's pay.

Of course I could not actually use a month's pay. I bought it for the June salary, which is for some reason excempt from tax deduction. Even so, I had to whip out my Mastercard, and pay off some of the cost next month. Which meant that I had to postpone a few bills that month. All in all, there were definitely sacrifices to be made.

***

In Norwegian news today: Only 5% of those on disability pension think that they are in poor health. Approximately half of them say that they are in good or very good health, according to an anonymous survey. A spokesman from Norway's Psychiatric Association pointed out that these people would hardly have been in such a good health if they had to work.

I can certainly relate to that. I was feeling rather shabby in my guts today again, but I couldn't well stay at home, so I risked the trip to work. This passed without any mishaps, and the growling and bubbling sounds of my digestion had also largely disappeared. However, I soon found that I hurt in the right side of my throat and down into my chest and a bit up towards my head, if I stood or walked. I have no really good idea why, and what this would have to do with my digestion. My best guess is that something was pressing on a nerve somewhere else. This happens sometimes in the human body: A pain is felt somewhere else than where it originates. Anyway, it pretty much ruined my workday, but it also kept me from falling asleep, so it wasn't all bad! :)

Would my health be much better if I did not need to work? Mmm .. that's a tough one. I do get some exercise just by going to work. It's a ten minutes fast walk to the bus, and the same from bus to work. I also walk around a bit at work, helping the coworkers, and I almost never take a lift when there is a staircase. Would I have been that active if I did not have to work? Or would I play The Sims all day long? Well, I would still need to go get some food every other day or so... and I'm known to take walks in the woods or along the road sometimes in the weekend. It's hard to say, really.

But unless there is a giant leap in robotics really soon now, most people will have to work. And even if there was such a leap, we Norwegians would probably invent more work, just so people could have jobs. (In fact, I personally think that most of my workplace is employed with made-up, needless tasks.) A job is considered essential to human existence, more or less, here in Scandinavia. Protestant Work Ethics, I think it is called. I work, therefore I am.

And usually, it's no great sacrifice.