Morning into Evening and Again
As I stood on the platform the other day, dazed with sleeplessness from a later night than expected due to a fire alarm that brought the fire department (just smoke; somebody cooking something that got out of hand or some such) and an earlier awakening than usual (the cat punishing me for helping stuff her into her carrier and haul her out to the street: but we were saving your life!), I was considering the necessity of familiarity and what my present situation provides in that regard. Beyond the cultural divergences and geographical reversals, much remains the same in kind while distinct in the details. Business is business, I’d say while we were planning our relocation, speaking of the kinds of change I’d face in seeking employment here, and that’s been true overall, even though I’ve come to discover just how untrue it is at the same time. Take contracts, for example, a very common employment condition here, whereas “employment at will” is much more the rule back home. My duties under contract are no more explicit nor my performance of them any more measurable than when I toiled under the vague conventions of the U.S. system, although I’d guess that’s really only because individual contracts are simply a legal mechanism, a formality, setting out the “at will” condition of the employment. The same late nights and lunch-at-your-desk assumptions appear to be at operation here as anywhere else I’ve worked, and will probably only spread to exert influence on increasing numbers of workers as more and more categories are reclassified as “professional” and therefore exempt from overtime. (There is more than one reason secretaries are more often Administrative Assistants these days, and it won’t be long before most of them are Administrative Officers, at which point they might as well just set up a cot next to their desks and sign up for child care services.) But I like routine, knowing when I will do something and where I will be day-to-day, even as much as I enjoy breaking out of the routine to do something, go somewhere different. “Different” is, however, a relative term. Different is going to the movies when you haven’t been in a while, or even just going to see something with subtitles (that aren’t translating from the Klingon). Different is going to a restaurant you haven’t tried, having the green curry instead of the red. Different is familiar – most of the time. I would like something truly different, which is pretty remarkable considering that I am on the other side of the world, living in a distinct cultural milieu, amid a unique set of environmental conditions (no koalas or kangaroos, but there have been kookaburras sittin’ in the ol’ gum trees, but that’s beside the point; think heat, drought, desert, serious UV exposure, and the eucalyptus scent of the trees), under unrecognizable constellations. The language is different, too: colors are coloured, authorizations are authorised. . . . It’s the little things. And the big ones. But every morning during the week, I get on a train to travel west for work and for the first twenty minutes of my ride I’m travelling on the same line I did to get to my last job. The train leaves from the same platform to go to Parramatta as it did to go to Epping. When we travel to Windsor, we’re still on platform 18. Reliable and efficient. At the office, I have the same job I did in NYC, although the larger context is quite different from that in which I have previously operated. As Kath ‘n’ Kim say: Nice, different, unusual. What’s it all about? After four months of unemployment, I find myself more than ready to retire, except for the part about the money. Damn.