The redundancy phenomenon: A quest for motivation in times of Covid-19

Lately, I have been struggling with a severe lack of motivation. Life has been halted, daily routines have paused, the world has basically stopped – for me. But this isn’t a new reality for everybody: While on the one end, system-relevant people are working their butts off to keep people alive, fed, and taken care of, and on the other end entrepreneurs and their staff are forced to not work at all, having to fear for their livelihood after Covid-19, and yet another large group of people in between is trying to juggle work and childcare, the childless, laptop-only-dependent group of workers I’m counting myself to has as much time as ever for their job. No more commuting to work, no more breaking for lunch, no more distraction. In Academia, even the semester as we know it has come to a halt – exam shifts are postponed indefinitely, lectures will be digitalised or minimised or both, conferences and meetings have been cancelled. The time that’s freed up is entirely available for research. I could do research from the moment I fall out of bed till the moment I fall back in – or at least till the moment I meet my only company these days, the daily glass of wine.

Yet I have never been this demotivated to do research. Don’t get me wrong, I am working in this field since several years – the occasional lack of motivation isn’t new to me. Having a love-hate-relationship with my work (usually I love it and it hates me), and a very volatile motivational drive, I consider deadlines my saviour and best friend, as they keep me going reliably at gun-point, under tears, sleep-deprived, and without social contacts or food for days. But, deadlines become weirdly unimportant in times of a pandemic changing the world to an extent where entire economies are deliberately being jeopardised. And, let’s be honest, accounting research kind of does lose its significance, too. Of course you don’t necessarily have to be a virologist or an epidemiologist to have important stuff to do in corona-times. Also social sciences get a whole pool of data to work with, which they could only dream of before – what will happen to people when they lose social interaction and are locked up in their homes? How does it change people’s perspective, character, outlook if you rob them of all their distractions and confront them with pure uncertainty? What can be done to avoid severe slides into depression? And, most importantly, do people shower less when there’s no one to judge their smell? Accounting research can’t answer you any these questions, unfortunately.

Despite the obvious need for jobs ensuring our societal system won’t collapse entirely, and research on how to stop the virus from conquering the human body, and people working as information transmitters, and politicians deciding on provisions of monetary aid to all those affected by the pause of the economy – does anyone need research in accounting now? Or people who teach others to do accounting? I feel like the answer is: probably not so much. I honestly feel very much redundant. And that’s a shame, cause there’s a (semi-)fit human body with a (mostly) working brain to make use of here, rotting away in a pretty stylish living room – I shouldn’t be redundant in times of crises, should I?

While I acknowledge that calling this problem of my perceived redundancy relatively mild compared to those that others are facing at the moment is still the understatement of the century, I didn’t write this text to just whine and complain. It has a message, too. I’d actually like to do something about this. But first, let’s rewind to some moments before: So here I am, wondering what’s wrong with me, whether perhaps the next depression-episode is early this year, or I am just really spoiled with my job that pays also in home-office times and beyond, and I should just get my shit together; trying to force my lazy, procrastinating ass into my office chair and finish this piece of code that keeps me busy since 48+ frequently interrupted hours, when I suddenly come across an opinion-piece in a newspaper about academics and their students. Yes, this is how I work nowadays – I click on every newly popping up Corona-article on my phone and read it. No wonder I don’t finish that code!

Anyhow, this rather short text refers to the discussed ‘non-semester’ for Germany’s summer term, an idea where anything that happens in the upcoming term won’t be counting towards, well, anything – so students won’t lose time counting towards their maximum amount of semesters allowed for financial support, fixed-term contracts won’t count this term as part of the contract but add it up in the end (you know, kind of like your current gym membership being paused, which now, unlike usually, you’re not paying for for nothing!), and credit points can be gained, but don’t have to for those who are unable to do it this term. Basically, all we’d lose is a couple of months of our lives while trying to do a half-job, or an as-good-as-we-can-but-we’ll-repeat-it-later-again job.

The author of the text, however, disregards the idea of this, but then suggests an alternative – and this alternative is what finally woke me up from my dull, languishing existence. Even enough to take my laptop and write this text (I wanted to write it on the phone first because getting the laptop required me to get off the sofa – luckily my hand hurts too much from all the extensive phone usage, thus I had to move)!

So here it is, the alternative: Why not mobilise the immense resources at universities, compiled of students and staff accumulated, and utilise them for something useful? Something related to helping those in need during the pandemic crisis. Something related to keeping our societal systems alive, or bringing them back to live, and to avoid a complete fallout after this rigorous halt of life and the economy. The author suggests that students could get credits for this, instead of fulfilling the requirements of their usual curricula, and scientific employees could account for this as being a part of their job. Because, and she’s right in that, Academia is flexible. And damn, it is resourceful! The combined brain- and manpower of thousands of professors, lecturers, PhD-students, post-docs, and multiple times these amounts of students could be of enormous help to aid in rearranging, fixing, and supporting during the upcoming economically and psychologically triggered consequences, suggests the author – and I agree.

So, perhaps, I am demotivated because I am, spoiled and privileged as ever, sitting in my cozy home, not having to fear for anything existential. Perhaps, the calm and quiet and being locked up in an apartment have simply done their job and finally turned me into a cat – napping and eating does seem very tempting lately, and I definitely always had a tendency to dislike most humans –, not giving much of a f*** about anything anymore. Or then, maybe, I just really see no point in writing up stories about overconfident CEOs and their compensation schemes, and which particular tiny trait in a director on the board of a huge corporation makes them work more effectively – things that were, in and of themselves, never of a particularly extensive importance to the world as a whole, but, despite being interesting to me, at least when the world wasn’t going down simultaneously, still could be considered puzzle pieces of the big picture – while other people in my immediate surroundings are struggling to cope with their daily routines, with paying their rents, or, even worse, to stay alive.

Maybe my subconscious has decided – rightly so – that right now, there are way more pressing issues that one could and should take care of, and instead of not giving a fudge about anything anymore, it simply just doesn’t give one about the – relatively – less important things anymore. If we were to mobilise our resources and redirect them jointly to help this society as a whole – man, I’d motivate the shit out of my days. I’d skip my sleep and meals (not a bad thing after two weeks of quarantine). Isn’t the underlying driving force that keeps all of us in Academia going the urge to do something useful? We wanna expand knowledge, help answer questions and raise new ones, in order for us to progress as a society, right? Then isn’t it more than understandable that in times like these, we would want to do something useful, helpful, something that enables progress? I know I do.

The Big Picture

A crucial skill for any researcher is the ability to zoom in and out of the big picture. If you can’t see the connections in a broad scope, what will keep you on the track of important matters, and, for example, from researching mammal shit for 800K euros without any particular hypothesis (yes, this happened)? And, if you’re not able to zoom into the tiny details and micro-pixels of the picture to fix a spot, how will you ever make sure you don’t accidentally destroy the whole thing?

Unfortunately, this seems to be solely a skill attainable through very particular training and lots of willpower, generally forgotten by the lay and professional population in all areas of life. People, distracted by their ulterior motives of accumulating material bullshit to fill a void they don’t know they have, wander around randomly and without orientation, heads up their butts, arbitrarily picking the things they care about, and making it their ultimate life goal to vehemently mock, fight and ridicule those who care about other things. If these things regard their taste of music or movies, so be it. But if their randomly selected list of importances, and consequently the list of non-importances, touches areas of social interest, I am every time again appalled and – yes, still – surprised by the seemingly bottomless amounts of ignorance humans are able to display.

Zooming in…

Be it the career-hungry salesman who, for some reason, even in times of high-speed internet and various video call options, considers his butt so important that he has to place it physically into each and every sales pitch and meeting he arranges, no matter where, and thus uses an airplane 17 times per month, and when asked, argues that “Yes, the environment is important, but my bank account is more important”.

 

Or take the pretentiously concerned citizens who claim they value animal welfare, worship those species who were fortunate enough to reach the inner circle of human appreciation as valued pets, but have no problem buying the cheapest eggs and steaks from a mass-produced animal slavery farm, and continuing to consume dairy products way past the natural age of nursing despite their bloated bellies and the endless pain and suffering of those animal species who, unfortunately, are not chosen to be “a man’s best friend”. A phrase that conveniently bridges me to my last example: People generously ignoring the causes, magnitudes and consequences of discrimination.

For some reason, there seems to be no other area of interest that brings about as many unsolicited opinions, strong feelings of denial (mainly denying others their genuine experiences), as much brushing off and ridiculing issues, and also a certain loudness, than discrimination. Mainly, all of the above come from that part of the population who, based on their sex, ethnicity or personal status, have never in their life been exposed to discrimination themselves, and are very unlikely to ever will be. For reasons I to this date have yet to understand, people who have never experienced any form of discrimination seem to be frightened to death by those, who have, pointing out unfairness, and go above and beyond to prove those concerns ungrounded. For instance, by pointing out outliers who made it to great achievements besides the obstacles imposed on them by discrimination. By bringing in other issues, seemingly related yet purposely distracting from the initial matter. Or by bringing in “more important” issues. By concluding that because it has never happened to them or anyone they know, it doesn’t exist. By depicting someone who has the strength and courage to speak up about something unfair as “weak”, “whiny” and redundant.

…and zooming out again.

However, what strikes me even more as a surprise, is how those who are prone to experience discrimination themselves often times side with their potential perpetrators, especially – and now we finally get back to the initial topic – when it is about seemingly unrelated issues. Small, tiny details, that don’t seem to make sense unless you zoom out to the big picture, and realize how this tiny issue could, in the long run, be the cause of something really big. Like, when you keep taking a plane to get some bread from the supermarket, because it’s important for your bank account, but suddenly the oddly warm winters and screaming hot summers blur into one big period of heat and your concern is not anymore your – probably now non-existing – bank account, but rather where to get fresh water and that bread from to keep your greedy butt alive another month.

A picture of a woman changing a baby’s diapers indicating there’s a changing table in the toilet was one of those instances where I personally experienced how people, both female and male, tried to ridicule a matter because it seemed “too tiny” to be important. For someone zooming out to the big picture, the danger of using such symbolism seems obvious: It suggests changing diapers is a woman’s job, something that up to very recently didn’t seem as such a crazy, far-fetched idea to most people living Europe.  As a matter of fact, it still seems to be such an extraordinary discovery that having a penis does not actually hinder in doing this job that not seldom, males brag about this accomplishment  in front of their peers. Another downside of this symbol is of logistic nature. Finding changing tables usually located in women’s toilets, only, raises unconsidered challenges for single dads, homosexual dads, or simply just a dad taking care of his baby while the mom is not around at that particular moment: Or how do you think the public reacts when a dude walks confidently into a woman’s bathroom, telling the female teens present not to worry, he’s not up to anything bad, just to change his kid’s poopy diapers?

But for the big picture, it’s the suggestive underlying implications such a symbol brings with it. Just like dressing little girls preppy and little boys prepared for the adventures they endeavor suggests that girls have to be pretty and boys can have a personality. When a woman and her daughter tried to sort some hundreds of children’s books by discrimination, getting rid of all books that had neither a male character (about three) nor any female character (about 80), of all those where the female character doesn’t speak, and of those where the female character has zero own aspirations or drive, and her mere purpose is waiting for some dude to rescue her, they ended up with about 20 books. Now for someone not thinking of the big picture, it might sound really confusing to sort out all these perfectly good books. For someone being able to zoom out, though, it seems terrifying what kind of values we teach our children from an early age onward, usually without even noticing.

We thus pave a way towards discrimination, victim-hood and victim-blaming, and, yes, rape culture. Because if some”thing” is passive, has no own character or personality or will, the one that does usually is free to use “it” for their own purposes. Vice versa, you can tell a kid as often as you want that she could be anything she wants later in life, but if she keeps encountering only males in powerful positions, is playing “taking care” of her dolls and subconsciously is brainwashed by her children’s books into thinking that her main purpose is to be pretty to look at and please a man, will she really aim for that management or engineering position, or rather get miraculously drawn towards badly paid caring jobs*, and the still unpaid job of being a housewife?

And here’s the crux of discrimination: Its underlying necessary condition is to divide a group into “us” and “them”. Sure, there’s fundamental differences in males and females that can’t be ignored – but I’m talking about “us”, the worthy creatures, versus “them”, the lesser creatures. And if then systematically and continuously certain attributes are assigned to these two divisions, for instance, “we” are strong and powerful and can be anything we want, “they” are weak, need to be protected and have certain roles to fulfill (like, changing poopy diapers, and being pretty and an object rather than a subject), a whole system of beliefs is established beneath the surface.

Based on these values and norms, things that usually shouldn’t be OK are somehow justified. Like catcalling. Or inappropriate comments. And actual sexual harassment. Despite acknowledging the existence of the popular argumentation that “everyone knows when they are doing something wrong”, I claim that when you train someone gradually to devalue another living creature as something of less worth, you enable them to do terrible things without feeling particularly bad about it. That’s how slavery had/has a chance. That’s how hate crimes exist. That’s how we breed animals regardless of their pain as something like an economic resource without a nervous system. And, unfortunately, that’s how sexual harassment is, in the eyes of most perpetrators, actually not a big deal.

No one without a clinical condition ever turns around and suddenly decides this other living and breathing creature deserves pain – it’s always a progress. And by zooming out and looking at the big picture, we might notice how multifaceted this progress is, and what kind of seemingly unrelated or seemingly minor issues play a role in it.

So next time you decide to ridicule a matter that someone points out as an important factor in the fight for a more fair and righteous world, stop a second and zoom out. They might actually be onto something. Also check if any of your short-term goals might be interfering with your willingness to consider something in the bigger scope. And, perhaps, this bigger scope might actually, in turn, be affecting you again – the world you live in, the world you want your kids to live in, or simply the world you want to maintain existing just so that your future fans can enjoy your legacy many centuries ahead from now.

*“Fun” fact: Studies actually found out that salaries for lines of profession, which used to be male-dominated but now are perpetrated by women, drop after an increase of woman workforce in the respective market.

 

 

 

 

Traveling India as a solo female traveler – a Finnish perspective

When the nights last three months, the snow to at least mock a daylight-like atmosphere keeps us waiting, and our vitamin D intake comes in the form of small pills, it might be time for a change of environment. I was invited to my friend’s wedding in Chennai, India, and decided to use this opportunity for refueling some sunlight and exploring a new country. The idea of traveling India solo as a female made most of my friends worry their heads, but I did make it back to Finland in one piece. Here’s a debrief.

The preparations

Hands down, at first I myself wasn’t very fond of the idea of being all alone in a country as vast and traditional as India, with headlines concerningly pertinent regarding women’s safety and well-being. Coming from Germany, I’m used to feeling fairly safe wearing whatever I want while roaming at least well-lit streets on my own at any time of the night. Plus, having been living in Oulu for the past 8 years, where one can sanely bike through a pitch-black forest at 2 am, intoxicated or not, I’d reckon I comfortably exist in a pretty little safe-world-bubble. In India, however, from what the media suggest, it is not even safe to go to a movie as a woman, no matter what you are wearing, and regardless of whom you are with!

So, to an admittedly crazy extent I tried to find a friend, acquaintance, or any fellow human to accompany me to my friend’s wedding and the surrounding trip. Unfortunately, not even my catchy Tinder-profile description add-on (it’s OK to be direct about what you’re looking for, right?) turned out to be very fruitful; so I got myself the bible of all travelers and started planning a trip on my own. After all, if you wait for others to join in on your ideas, you’ll probably end up never going anywhere. Two weeks off work, with the wedding being the highlight in the end, I had myself a time frame. Have you ever looked up India on a map? Having two weeks in India is approximately equivalent to attempting to do your entire Christmas shopping five minutes before closing time on Christmas Eve (looking forward to next Monday!).*

The route

After some extensive research, I decided for the Golden Triangle (Delhi, Agra, Jaipur), some quality beach time with a special Yoga-add-on in Kerala, not Goa, and an additional day or two in and around Chennai, close to the venue of my friend’s wedding. Aside from being used to traveling huge countries by train on my own after a China trip in 2015, I opted for planes for the longer distances, and trains for the North of India. But, the North was also what had me worry the most in terms of my safety. There are many sources on the internet from where one can find useful, not so useful, and freaking scary information about solo travels in India as a woman. What they all have in common is the suggestion to carefully plan every bit of your trip ahead, as the last thing you want in India as a female solo traveler is ending up lost, confused, or stressed. Now that is a suggestion that doesn’t really comply with the romantic idea of freely backpacking through a country, ending up wherever the wind carries you, does it? I definitely didn’t want to partake in any pre-planned tours, either. Anyways, safety first, so in the end, I had every train and plane and hostel booked, keeping three different options for the latter in Delhi. The budget central version in Paharganj seemed like a good idea to me, but when even my male flat mate, who is from Delhi himself, suggested to move to a “safer” district, I got a bit nervous. Meeting an overly worried girl from Delhi on a recent conference, who now lives in the Netherlands, gave me the final push to spending a quarter of my entire budget on the two nights in Delhi, in the rather posh Connaught Place district. It also increased my paranoia and the vividness of the horror scenarios maturing in my head about all terrible outcomes of things possibly going wrong. By the time of the evening before my flight, I could no longer intake any food, and I had made my peace with this trip potentially being my last one.

Finally there

You probably made the connections – I am still alive and well off, having returned two days ago to writing this article now*. Luckily, all my anxiousness fell off me when I set foot into the country. You know how things look bigger and scarier from the outside, but once you are within the situation, you manage to handle those scary things, one thing at a time? It is indeed the same with India. You handle India one step at a time. I ended up having the most exciting, joyful, interesting, happy trip in a very long time. Hell, I would even say ever – just because my expectations were so frightening, and reality was so much better. There is no minute of the day I don’t thank my past self for not letting my fears get the best of me, and instead facing new challenges and going on this trip. And, going on this trip alone. I am not sure I would have met all the awesome people I ended up having a blast with, had I been roaming the streets with some acquaintance, or worse, a random Tinder dude.

But now to the heart of this piece – let’s throw in some feminism, shall we? Cause the situation of gender roles was admittedly the culturally most astonishing thing I experienced (yes, I haven’t been around much yet). Coming from a country where men and women are considered as equal as in Finland, it is painful to experience first-hand how constrained women are elsewhere.

India and the sexes

For me as a traveler, it was not a big deal to restrict myself in clothing and destinations, raise the level of cautiousness, and carefully pick accommodations, as it was only for a very limited time period. Having spoken to the aforementioned girl from Delhi though, I now understand her “never feeling safe in Delhi”, and rather staying in the Netherlands forever. It was not that I ever felt unsafe – but I could at no point relax and just go with the flow. At all times, I had to cautiously consider which clothes to wear that simultaneously serve the purpose of hiding my body sufficiently, and are still light enough for the weather conditions (luckily I was there in December, and not in July).

In Delhi, I made sure to be back in the hotel shortly after the break of dusk – going for a beer or a cocktail was not even crossing my mind; and if I had not managed to have dinner before that, the costly hotel restaurant was my last resort. Even though I would have loved to explore more exotic places, like the Thar Desert, I picked destinations that surely have lots of other people around. I experienced the great discrepancy between being on my own and being in male company, when for two days a fellow traveler from Spain and I explored together. He was a guy. Being with someone male suddenly “upgraded” me from being some sort of publicly available prop for pictures and approaches to being more or less invisible. Nevertheless, our Tuktuk driver asked particularly and exclusively me why I am traveling alone and not with my partner, and not him. Continuously reassuring the existence of a partner was also what saved me some trouble two or three times in other situations. The take-away point of this: if you are a female traveling India solo, always “have” a partner somewhere! Patriarchy still is a world-wide problem, with its consequences remaining prevalent even in seemingly egalitarian countries like Finland – but in India, it is so deeply rooted and obvious that I could not help but see it everywhere on the streets, every day of my trip.

Despite India being one of the countries with the biggest share of female politicians across the globe, a skewed male-female ratio due to female infanticide, sex-driven abortions and daughter neglect, a skewed male-female literacy rate across the country, and non-existent property rights as well as fewer women than men in the paid workforce are probably the biggest drivers of the inequality one can observe. But this is not a story about the underlying social constructs in India, as it would demand you to keep on reading till past New Year’s*. This is a brief story about some anecdotal experience in India as a woman, through the eyes of a woman.

Where’s all the women of India?

Most striking was probably the high male-female ratio on the streets. For every woman I saw in public, I could count approximately 70 men, without exaggeration. There were groups of boys hanging out by the side of the road, killing time. Groups of men playing games on the ground. Single men standing around, not waiting for anything in particular, staring at me as I passed by. In Old Delhi, when visiting the traditional factories that employ a handful of people to manually print, embroider, bake, and produce, all employees I saw were male. In Jama Masjid, the huge mosque in Old Delhi, the only women inside were some curious tourists like me, otherwise there was only men. My tour guide for exploring Old Delhi revealed that women are not going for prayer into the mosque anyways. This seems to be the case despite denying women access to any grounds being found unconstitutional, a fact that was just this year’s September reemphasized in the State of Kerala*.

Whether I was having street food close to the Red Fort, or strolling a bazaar, I was surrounded by men. In fact, there is so many men in public in Delhi, that one ladies-only-coach in the metro is enough to comfortably fit almost all women commuters, with nearly any one of them having a seat, while the all-gender-parts of the metro are stuffed with men sitting, standing, cramming themselves into the many coaches. I also failed to spot any female drivers of cars or scooters or bikes in Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. Going more south, there was some women driving around on scooters by themselves, instead of being escorted by men like in the other places. And, most surprisingly, as I have been to places of 35 degrees Celsius and 80% humidity, I did not see a single Indian woman’s leg in the entire country. Girls and women do wear skinny jeans in Delhi in certain districts, but I did not see anyone with shorts, or with skirts without leggings or harem pants underneath.

Down South, men dressed according to the weather, in short mundu (a skirt that resembles a draped towel), and women kept covering their legs and chest, with not too tightly fit clothes to not reveal too much of a body shape. Finally, the wedding I attended , as beautiful and colorful and exciting as it was, was also a collection of traditions that emphasize male choice and female impotence – but then again, I guess one could say the same about Western weddings. I want to stress that my friend’s wedding was completely a love, and not an arranged marriage, as the latter to this day makes up the majority of Indian weddings.

No more harassment than in Europe

With my precautions, modest clothing and probably some luck, I managed to remain completely untouched throughout my entire trip. I am not going to go into detail about cat calling, as this unfortunately is such a global and frequent phenomenon that I could not call it extraordinary anymore with my 30+ years of female experience. The only actual harassment I ever experienced was by overly persistent street vendors. Being stared at was, after some time, just part of my daily routine – and people do stare differently in the North and in the South, a fact that a restaurant owner in Mahabalipuram mentioned amused: “In the North, you cannot tell if someone is just curious, or if something bad is going to happen…”

After an initial, very short period of cultural shock and anxiousness, I returned to being my usual self, waving back at people who wave at me, making jokes and funny remarks when someone shouts for the 120^th time across the street for my origin, or if I need a Tuktuk. I met a whole lot of interesting, open, fun, warm-hearted people who know of the many problems their country has, are sad that those seem to be the main thing outsiders know of India, and cannot wait for it to change. I am more than just glad for not letting my fears get the best of me, but instead using them to prepare properly for my trip. Perhaps I still prepared and worried too much, but I managed to have an amazing trip to at least a tiny fraction of India. And, after all, you would not exactly go by night into the outskirts of Paris by yourself, so why risk it in Delhi?

Food for thought

But being alert and cautious is just something you constantly do as a woman in India. A girl from Delhi, whom I met at the wedding, revealed how she would never try to get home during the night, even when going out in a “safe” district. She would sleep over at her friends’ places instead, and take a car home in daylight. You have to restrict your life conditional on your gender, even nowadays with anti-discrimination principles set in the constitution, every day. As a boy, you wake up, put on whatever clothes, and go out. As a girl, you consider what to wear based on how you want to be seen (or not seen), you carefully plan where to go and how and at what time of the day, and you refrain from any contact with strangers that could be misinterpreted. Admittedly, this is particularly pronounced in countries like India. But here comes the thought of the day: is it really that much different in Europe?

*This article was supposed to be published in an online magazine right before Christmas, thus the off timing.

Addicted

I am an addict.

I am an addict, and I would like to formally apologize to myself for it.

See, me, being a grown-up means taking responsibility for your actions. It means recognizing that it is you yourself who sits behind the wheel. Recognizing that it is in your power to take decisions that do not constantly put you in misery, in an endless loop of sadness. Me, it is up to you to take decisions which do not hurt you, and to walk away from situations that hurt you when you are out of control to change them. Remember that. This is important.

But me, with me, it is not just you who sits behind the wheel. Sometimes I sit there, and I take over, and I control. And sometimes, it hurts you. I hurt you. I hurt us.

It is you who sits behind the wheel, and it is me, who is you, too. For me, it is the yearning for a high, the craving for an explosion, the hunger for a tirade of happiness that makes me take over the steering wheel and drive us straight into disaster. And you know, me, I am so terribly sorry for that.

You have to understand, me, I am addicted to how good it feels. I am addicted to the moment in which everything else becomes irrelevant, and all we do is feel. All we think is feel. The moment when all we feel is feel.

Can you see, me, how then every thought that crosses our mind has a color, a smell, a certain touch? How it makes our head spin and our heart tingle? Can you understand how I want us to stand still and hold on to it forever? How I want us to burst into all the colors in the world, to shower in the emotions they set free? Is it not like singing and dancing and crying and laughing – all at the same time? Is it not our favourite song and our favourite dessert and our favourite place in the whole world translated into a beautiful composition of warmth and joy spreading through our body?

Me, can you not understand why I am doing this to us?

Is the pain not worth the happiness we get?

I am terribly sorry for causing you pain, me. I truly am. I wish I could make it stop. But I am an addict.

I do not want the high to stop, ever.

I do not want to miss the joy, ever.

I do not want to ease the ecstasy even a little, no matter how much it would ease the misery.

And I am sorry, I truly am, that sometimes, you have to bear the misery.

Silent visitor

It’s when life calms down, when the hasty stress takes a few moments to catch breath, that you come for a visit. Once again. As if you were never gone, as if you were just hanging around invisibly nearby, waiting for a good moment to show up. ‘Hey, remember me? I will always be here!’

What sounds so reassuring is a silent threat. ‘You are not alone!’, you whisper in my ear, and it gives me shivers. I tried so hard to forget you. I kept myself busy with tasks and goals, rushing from achievement to achievement, no time to stop and acknowledge them. Mini-steps, bigger steps, just never stop.

Cause if I stop, you’re here with me in a heartbeat. When I run, rush, swirl around, I cannot see you. You cannot see me. Or at least, you cannot get to me.

But once a year, you catch up. The sun is shining and never stops, the nights are gone and won’t come back, it’s warm and pretty and nice outside, everything is alive, and everyone is full of joy. The hectic daily routines slow down, everyone fully enjoys life, and everything should be more than alright. That’s when you strike. Not unexpected, not anymore, but not less harmful nevertheless. When it becomes silent is when I hear you. Hear you whisper, hear your presence, feel your cold.

You are a part of me. No matter how fast I run, you follow me like a shadow. Only visible in the light. Sometimes further, sometimes closer, but always there. I don’t like how you make me feel. I don’t like the thoughts you plant in my mind. I want to get rid of you, but I don’t know how.

More work. Another goal to achieve, another task to accomplish. One day it will be enough. One day I will be enough. One day you’ll leave me alone.

But when you reach me, you slow me down. You weigh so much, it’s hard to move, hard to breathe. I want to carry on and bring distance between you and me, but it’s too late. You’re so heavy. You’re so cold. I get tired to try. I get tired.

Maybe I can just wait it out. Maybe one day, you’ll have enough. Maybe one day, you’ll leave me alone.

And I can breathe again.

Back in the game: Of Tinder oddities and other problems

Oh, Tinder. I am so happy to have you back in my life, because what would my procrastination be like without some daily portion of tindergarten-drama?

Someone asked me what Tinder was like in the US. Well, surprisingly normal! You find some that you meet up with, and have a beer and nice conversation, you find some you don’t wanna meet up with, and you find some that directly tell you all they want is to hook up. Pretty good representation of the normal population, I’d say.

But the social awkwardness of Finns paired with an increasingly common assumption that this particular dude you swiped right is the answer to all questions any woman ever had, his phallus the solution to every problem in the world (plus his greatest achievement ever), and his ‘very complex personality’ a gift to womanhood in general, makes Tinder in and around Oulu a rollercoaster of horror. You either end up talking to those that almost autistically ignore every cue you offer, and rigorously and diligently work through their catalogue of questions, or you find the ones that are a bit less socially awkward, know of it, and thus consider themselves the king of Finnish dating-hoods. And they might have a point, after all, in a land of the blind, the one-eyed man is the king, right? But as an expat, it’s like an endless pool of research material for social studies. Sure, there’s normal people too, but here they are the outliers, and not vice versa.

Admittedly, Finland being a very emancipated country is not exactly known for its gentleman culture. While in the US, you actually feel like the guy is at least trying (or pretending) to court you, and for sure he pays for the first date*, you wouldn’t even dare to expect the latter in Finland. But boy, what about some basic human decency, at least? What about not insulting someone 3 minutes into the first conversation, because it’s simply not a very nice thing to do in any kind of human interaction? Also, is this really part of a mating game?

The saddest thing that comes with the awkwardness, the ignoring of cues and the self-praising-attitudes is that you get the feeling the other person is not the slightest bit interested in you. Sure, Tinder is a meat-market, and you occasionally feel like you’re going shopping. On a flea market. Or in a fifth-hand-store. But if you don’t value the goods you wanna buy even a little bit, why barter at all? There can be more to human interaction than rubbing your genitals together and exchanging body-fluids for a certain amount of time. And isn’t the reason for flirting working so well that, often, anticipation is a major part of an event?

Who doesn’t like being catcalled?

The attention you get on Tinder boosts your self-confidence, is what my male friends told me once. Well, not really – this kind of attention I basically get by just passing any random construction site. If you have boobs, many people feel obliged to tell you that they can observe this fact with their own eyes, and that it makes them think of lots of nasty things. Instead, it would be somewhat special to get some attention that’s directed towards my jokes, or brain. Or how about just some simple interest in who I am beyond those boobs? That might be actually flattering. But if the definition of a compliment on Finnish Tinder is “You have nice body :)”, and the understanding of courting someone “Do you like to touch? I like being touched!”, my desperate cry for attention is not answered on this platform, unfortunately. Even my cat gave me more attention than that, and cats only love themselves by definition.

It is probably the incapability of putting oneself in someone else’s shoes that makes guys act like that. After all, they are immensely proud of a body-part that simply came with the mere fact of them being alive, in an entirely random size and shape. So when they admire the equivalent on someone else, they most likely think it is a strong compliment. Following a similar logic, it seems unclear to them as to why they have to ask questions about someone. “Maybe this is just something you do, it’s part of the game, gotta ask X questions per girl.” If anyone stopped for a second and pondered over the deeper meaning, maybe he would realize that the questions are aimed at getting to know someone? So, how about asking stuff then you’re interested in getting to know? Stuff that enables you to ask follow-up questions? No, “What do you eat for breakfast?” is not part of that (I have to admit, at first I thought he was trying to make a joke about me ending up at his place till breakfast, but unfortunately it was just question no. 3 on the list). Neither is “What are your favourite flowers?”, especially if it comes as an answer to what I eat for breakfast.

I’m not a big fan of these interview-like conversations anyways, and a firm believer in discussions over questions. You’ll figure out the important stuff along the way. And what better way would be there to get to know someone than engaging in a discussion, preferably with opposing view-points? Unfortunately, the last time I did that, I was told I have problems. And that something must be wrong with me to be willing to “discuss something in such detail”. Later, the same person then offered me his time. You see, this happens a lot: Apparently, it’s completely irrelevant whether you have time or not, because all you did your life up until that point was waiting for him to be free for a day, anyways, right? (Also, this is how I ended up in my last relationship). Well, I dared to decline because I do this odd thing during the day called work. He passive-aggressively sent a thumbs up and unmatched me.

Without any doubt, I perhaps seem just as odd to them as they seem to me. Plus, I can already notice myself changing towards an odder version of me, working through a catalogue of questions, and becoming picky when someone doesn’t talk the right way. So it’ll probably just be a matter of time till the first rant I’ll appear in. But until then, I’ll patiently collect more material for this blog, and continuously work on my fish-picture-collage.

*I’m a feminist, but I got no problem with that. I don’t think it hurts anyone to spend 3 dollars on a coffee just to signal some appreciation, and I don’t feel undermined by it. If I spend an hour blow-drying my hair, creating this face of mine, and shaving my legs (on a good day) to show my appreciation, I think it’s a fair trade?

maybe it was true

This is the stuff grand love stories are made of, he says. Her heart skips a beat when he takes her hand.

It was not logical. It was not rational. It was just feelings. So many of them, in such a vast spectrum of colors. Colors whose existence she could have never pictured in her wildest imagination. They took over her mind and her ability to reason. Like lava they worked their way through her brain, hot and bubbly, creating tiny explosions while silencing slowly but steadily any doubt her self-defense tried to raise.

Maybe it was true. Maybe it could be true. She had always been fast to know when she liked someone; one conversation, one glance, and it’s a clear yes or no. Crazy, people would say. Naïve, and they’d be shaking their heads. Hopeful, she would answer. Optimistic. If I work that way, surely there’s others, too?

It was a match. A perfect fit. They spoke the same language, they thought the same way. She got excited. I can’t wait to meet you, he said. The first minutes were awkward, in a good way. Nervous, in an exciting way. Still, the same language. Looks, words, gestures. Everything was fast, quick, intense. Time rushed and stood still. Your crazy matches my crazy. Finally.

Be careful, reason tried to warn. Shut up, cheered the heart and jumped in head first. Your crazy matches my crazy. Such a relief when you can be yourself. Finally. No games, just be. No thinking, just feeling.

This is the stuff grand love stories are made of. And when you’re in love, anything is possible. Maybe it could be true. Maybe it was true. Maybe it could last, for a moment, for now, forever. With the hours spent together accumulating, the number of times they touch, laugh, kiss, new plans manifest. Ideas pop up, dressed in excitement, dragging along anticipation, and hope. They stay. They fill the space around her and him. A vague future begins to draw itself, in fine lines at first, the strokes getting stronger and bolder. First days, then weeks. Maybe the next months. Maybe it could be true.

It was not. It was not true. He was quick, fast, intense. Like her. And quickly, fast, abrupt, he changed his mind. About her. About them. And it was not true. It could not be. I can’t wait to meet you, is something you just say, to reach your goals. I love you, is something you just feel in a quick moment, and then it’s gone. Some day I’ll marry you, means sleep with me, and then I’ll forget about you. I miss you, is something people want to hear. Whose crazy matches my crazy?

It was not logical, and it was not rational. She got lost in the storm of feelings, got high on them. They unarmed reason and sanity, and swooped her off her feet. A tornado of irrationality disguised as a breeze. Too late to put the guards up, when it suddenly revealed its nasty face. Unexpectedly it hit, and she was defenseless. Caution had long gone overboard. Without protection, she was powerless against the impact.

Such a relief when you can finally be yourself. Let that shield of mistrust and suspicion crumble, and underneath is just you, and you just are. You just feel.

But without a shield, you are vulnerable. You can get destroyed, in the fight. And who can you be when yourself is gone?

Is Love Really All We Need?

The Beatles had it all figured out. LSD gives you weird trips, yesterday is always better than today, and as long as you got love, anything else is solvable. But is that really true? What about all the dysfunctional relationships that people are stuck in because they don’t know how to leave the one they love? The woman that stays with her husband even though he occasionally beats her up when he’s drunk, just because she loves him? The man that stays with his wife even though she regularly cheats on him with all his friends? What if love is actually the force that leads us into misery and makes us remain there, just like the frog in the hot water that missed the point of escape and now has to boil to death?

Clearly, without being in love we would not be able to stand being crammed into a tiny space with another human being and bear all their oddities for an uncertain amount of time, maybe even forever. Note that the tiny space can also be a big space physically, but due to all the compromises and the fact that you’re now not living your own life anymore, but half of someone else’s life instead, really provides you with not a very big space, symbolically, or does it now? So, love definitely is a necessary condition for being crazy enough as to even start sharing all your thoughts and dreams and plans and time. But is it actually sufficient? Whenever people see a couple with an enormous amount of chemistry, they enviously mention how these two are that perfect match that everyone dreams of finding. This passion, this devotion, this crazy amount of love!

You can be almost 99% certain that the passion and intensity you observe in the good parts of a relationship are most likely happening also in the bad parts. Every couple fights. But those who have extreme passion probably also fight extremely passionate. And who would like to be part of a fight with great intensity, exaggeration, and passionate screaming and dish-throwing? Here’s the problem: You can’t really pick only the cherries of a phenomenon. If you like the extreme thrill of skydiving, you’re also aware that once it goes wrong, the consequences are much more fatal than for example consequences of the far less exciting cross-country-skiing (though people do die in stupidly normal situations, admittedly). If you “settle” for a less crazy, less rollercoaster-like relationship, maybe also your fights actually take a more reasonable course than they otherwise would.

As with every decision we take, only we personally are able to weigh the costs against the benefits and go for the option that suits us most. Maybe you’re fine with having crazy fights. Maybe it’s less of an effort for you to destroy a couple of plates every once in a while than having to come up with ways to artificially create passion in almost every daily situation. Only you know. But don’t tell me that ‘love’ is the only thing that’s important in a relationship.

Or, perhaps, we got it all wrong. Maybe The Beatles were actually talking about love for oneself. I am pretty sure that every single dysfunctional issue we can find in ourselves and others can be derived from the fact that we don’t accept ourselves the way we are. Insecurity and a lack of self-confidence is what feeds an unhealthily huge ego. If our ego is enormous and we constantly try to live up to our own expectations of who we ought to be, then it’s no wonder we are miserable. And how can a person who’s miserable deep inside actually be free to give to the world, to their partner? They are trapped in constant inner conflict about all the ‘shoulds’ around them – this person should treat me better, this situation should have gone a different way, the world should not be this unfair. Acceptance is the only way to deal with such conflict – acceptance of those things that are not changeable, and acceptance of ourselves. The way we are, the way we developed – and also the fact that things we don’t like about ourselves can only be improved if we first accept that they are there now.

I don’t know if there is such a thing as bad chemistry between people. Or the wrong kind of chemistry. Or if it could all be resolved through love – if not just for one another, then certainly for oneself. I do believe that almost all situations are resolvable through communication and patience. But love for one another, the way we romantically define it, the way we value crazy passion over everything, is certainly not enough to make things work. Relationships are work, they require a strong will for committing to a situation that deviates from what we otherwise would have done by ourselves. They require taking your partner into consideration when you take big decisions such as where to live next just as well as small decisions such as not being reachable for a weekend without a warning. But most of all, they require knowing who you are. And accepting it. Knowing your flaws and your strengths, and accepting them as part of who you are. Communicating why we do the things we do might be the most important factor in interpersonal relationships, because all conflict usually comes from misunderstanding each other. And this might just as well be achieved through an honest understanding of and true love for ourselves.

How intolerant is demanding tolerance?

I don’t like to see myself as a Social Justice Warrior, but I have to admit that I do take chances to point out intolerant or non-differentiated nonsense people utter or post on Social Media. Simply because I think change starts small, and if everyone who sees or notices something in their inner circle (yes, I count my 1000+ facebook-friends to my inner circle) speaks out, maybe people will start listening, and, more importantly, start thinking. Towards a more tolerant and kind society.

Fact is, however, that human beings are selfish little scumbags. Since, like, ever, we need institutions like religion or the government to tell us what’s right and what’s wrong, simply because we don’t seem to be able to internalize something like moral values, and act accordingly. Discussing about ethics and moral is thus as constructive as Sisyphus keeping on rolling that stone. Because, here comes a fun fact, there will always be counter arguments as to why the person that in someone’s eyes acted intolerant is actually very right in what they are doing, has reasons that can be related to, and anyway, there’s no law that would keep them from doing whatever disgusting little selfish act they are living out right now. And then you stand there with all your good intentions to make it right, to bring someone onto “the right path”, and you start questioning yourself: How do I even know the path I want them to take is “the right one”?

If we were all super tolerant, nothing could ever bother us, right? The most intolerant behaviour, which, according to my established hypothetical parallel reality would now need a different adjective, would just be an “alternative” way of doing things, and we should be absolutely fine with it. If an acquaintance offers you to lend you their vehicle when you’re in need, to conditions that would let the most nefarious business man turn green with envy, and then calls it an act of friendship, while you are one of those people that are used to helping out even random strangers on the street at your own expense – well, then that’s just the way they roll! You do it your way, they do it theirs, and because we’re all so tolerant, there’s absolutely no problem with that!

Since I came to the US, I compare and rant and complain about all the little nasty things that come with this strongly individualistic, capitalist system that leaves so many people behind and seems to benefit only the few that are in power to change it (which, of course, they won’t). I’m sure you noticed. So the other day, I was starting another rant about how on social events, people seem to need to hop from person to person to make small-talk about uninteresting things for two minutes. I went on how I, of course, totally boycott this, and refuse to play this game. How I rather have conversations with a deeper meaning and a real value, and maybe even some entertainment factor, instead of trying to “invest” in the future in which this random two-minutes-person might be of help to me some day. And then, suddenly, I caught myself in my own head as being very judgemental.

Who am I to decide which way is the better one – having conversations to invest in the future, or for mere entertainment? Yes, I do advocate the YOLO approach to a certain extent, but why would that be the one right one? Everyone is on this planet only once, and only for a limited amount of time. If some people want to make the most out of it by enjoying every second, it’s their choice, but if some people want to try thriving for being remembered way beyond their existence, and they thus need to “invest” in their future and career at any possible point in time, shouldn’t that be their own choice then, as well?

You can carry this thought forward. Who are we to decide that socialism is better than capitalism? Sure, it’s unfair if people are left behind merely because they were born in the wrong place at the wrong time, and others are given a head start because they are privileged. Sure, no one on this planet, I claim, is able to sustain their high living standards without living off of other people’s poor living standards – but does that mean they owe being fair to anyone? That life is unfair and random becomes most evident when natural catastrophes kill people. When a spider ends up in your house instead of your yard and this might be the last thing the little creature ever saw. When you want to get in shape and all the weight you lose leaves from your boobs.

The other day, someone shared a very true comic about having ideals, in the context of inheritance and true equality in opportunities. The bottom line was that everyone seems to have an ideal opinion as to how fair society should work – until they are affected themselves, and something they think they earned or deserved is suddenly at stake. This is usually the upper limit of people’s kindness and generosity. And these upper limits are defined very subjectively and per individual. For some people, money is the thickest boundary, for others it might be time. As soon as we have to sacrifice something we value in order to give it to someone else who might need it more, we take a decision about where to set those boundaries. We might be willing to sacrifice a little bit, but not too much, and the threshold of this sacrifice is again very subjective. So while you (or I, in that matter) might be thinking we are super altruistic people because we are willing to lend our car to a friend for a weekend and drive around by bus ourselves, because the friend needs to go 500 kms and we only 10, this is actually just defined by our own constraints. For someone else, the constraint might be at the fact that even though it’s just 10 kms, it’s still their own car, so why the heck would they even need to lend it to anyone in the first place?

This was just an excursion into what-would-be-land for me, and I will of course continue to regard our society as a whole, and our goods and assets more as a shared basket where everyone randomly happened to be in control over a certain part; if nothing else then because of the unfairness and randomness of being born into the ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ family, which I mentioned earlier (I hate unfairness). In this ‘basket’, I weigh 500 kms against 10 kms, and I disregard the my-car-aspect versus their no-car-aspect, because there might be so many reasons why someone does not own a car but I do. And also, it really doesn’t hurt me to take the bus.

I just wanna make sure you *know* you’re living in an ivory tower – ok, thanks.

I will, however, try to be more tolerant towards those that set their constraints lower than I do. Those that think they earned every penny they own by themselves, with their own hard work alone, while randomness has nothing to do with it. Who think it is thus OK to not tolerate anyone who works less than they do, or earns less than they do (which apparently implies someone worked less, according to these people’s belief system), and dares to live off social welfare. I will try to not judge them. After all, I have to tolerate their intolerance. But I won’t shut up, either. And while I will still explain to them why I see things very differently, expecting my view to be tolerated, I do admit that this might be a discussion to which there is no ending: it might as well be that the world will change to the worse instead of the better, benchmarked by my own, socialist beliefs. Tolerating each others tolerance and intolerance will lead to a vicious circle of confusing nothingness, where any opinion is to be accepted, even those that might generally be considered morally and ethically wrong.

Because, after all, human beings are nasty, selfish scumbags, and with moving more and more away from religion, we seemingly managed to eliminate the one good thing the Bible had to offer: Love thy neighbour as thyself. Breaking news: now tolerance is the new next-love!

American Dream or Blatant Scam? More on how to make money in the US.

People who have ever traveled as tourists through Asia know that in most parts, haggling is a big part of the culture there. On markets, no prices are on display. Instead, you ask for one and then start haggling, or you initiate the bargaining by offering a price yourself. If you were to pay the first price mentioned, some vendors might even be disappointed or offended. Then there’s another reason for the lack of publicly visible prices: If you are a tourist, you usually end up paying the ‘tourist price’ when buying things on local markets. Obviously, vendors cannot easily display two different prices; that would cause too much discontent. And maybe you might say it’s just a rumour. But anecdotal evidence of a wife angrily whispering into her husband’s ear after he has made an offer to a backpacker, which resulted in the price suddenly rising, is just one of many stories to prove this unofficial rumor.

Since I came to the US, I noticed many parallels to the parts of Asia I have seen so far. I am not referring to the working culture, which strangely resembles the Chinese one, with 10 days of vacation a year being a blessing, or to the deliberate withholding and tunneling of public information. Well, at least not in this blog entry. Here, I actually am talking about the culture of setting prices completely at random, and trying to deceive and confuse consumers to an extent that leaves me in shock almost every day again.

I admit that I might come from a very protected environment. In the European countries I am familiar with, we have consumer protection, we have tenant protection, and we have employee protection. As a result of a more socialist culture on the continuum of capitalism, those people without power (so basically those who have at most an average income and no connections to any Mafia bosses or other politicians) are taken care of fairly well, contrary to what they actually might believe themselves. In the US, a country that strongly believes in capitalism, the rights of the individual are valued most. This basically means that theoretically, everyone could do what they need to be well off – but reality looks a bit different. Few people who have all the power make all the rules, and everyone else just has to follow. The consequences are an exploitative employee-employer-relationship, an imbalanced tenant-landlord-bond, and a consumer market where not supply and demand find an equilibrium, but instead the suppliers play consumers like little puppets and squeeze every cent out of them until they stop moving.

There is no governmental regulation, there are hardly any upper limits to what can be charged from people, and the only players seem to be competitors who randomly rise prices as they please, which results in a higher and higher overall price. Housing is expensive and so badly maintained that people have pest-problems all over the country, food is either literally toxic or unaffordable, when an employee falls sick they have to take unpaid leave or vacation, and reproducing is a financial disaster from the moment you get pregnant till you have to put your kid to college. If you ever wondered why the majority of the poorer people here seems to be overweight – contrary to Asian cultures by the way, where a big belly is a sign of a wealthy lifestyle: It’s because the food you can afford to buy here has so much added corn syrup and is run through so many additional processes that there is basically zero nutrition left. And what happens if you keep cramming empty calories into your stomach? Right, it still feels empty, so you naturally keep cramming. But if you can buy a kilo of sugared crap for a dollar, and a single apple for two, the story is quite straightforward.

Confused what to pay?

Despite the prices randomly being set at the will of sellers, they also are almost impossible to know from the start. Probably this is due to the fact that you can confuse people better by deceiving them, and because you can alter the prices daily without having to alter your information out there, and because you can drag people till the check-out and then reveal the price, and going back and changing whatever it is they wanted to buy would be too much of an effort by now, and… well, there are numerous reasons, really. None of them aids the customer, though. If you want to know how much to pay for a car repair service, you have to call. It is bad enough that they charge you for visiting any random tree stump, but putting a sign at the bottom of a mountain that says “Tickets at the gate uphill”, and letting you drive all the way up first before you even find out that now you gotta pay 15 bucks per person to climb up a mountain, that’s just pure evil. Who would turn around again now? And what on earth is so difficult about giving the actual price when already making the effort of asking you personally if the additional fee for the extra driver for the rental car is OK? You literally find out about it when signing the credit card receipt 20 seconds later, and you probably do notice that it is 30 dollars more than what was just said.

It’s like riding a taxi and anxiously observing the running meter accumulating to your last salary.

Also in Germany retailers make use of the psychological effect of displaying a seemingly lower price. However, this is a psychological effect, and not an actual attempt to scam you into buying by withholding additional information! Instead of displaying 5 euros, a sign would read 4.99, or 4.95 euros, for example. Your eyes see the big 4 and your brain suggests it’s super cheap. Still, with a minimum conscious control over your idiot brain, you could at least know what the real deal here is. In the US, I have already given up on trying to convert dollars into euros in my mind. What’s the point? The mere fact that one dollar is about 80% of a euro doesn’t mean anything. Actually, 80% of a euro is what you can see, and the remaining 20% are random sales taxes, fees, and I-don’t-like-your-face-add-ons, so in the end it’s really more like a 1:1 relation. You do save some money at the check-out though when you sign-up for yet another customer-card, and your toilet paper is suddenly cut in half. Literally already in production, and now also monetarily! But, as always, you gotta work for that, and you gotta sell your soul and email address to them.

I have a theory that their weird units are also just another way to deceive people. Having a metric system with 10s and 100s of the whole piece certainly makes comparing easier. Comparing olive oil in a 100-ml-bottle for 1.50 euros to a 200-ml-bottle for 2 euros directly reveals which is the cheaper one. But if stuff is sold in random sizes like 15.8 oz, 3/7^th of a gallon, or 36 handful of Donald Drumpf’s tiny hands, there’s no way you know how to save money at one glance. Only with an excel spreadsheet and a lot of time you may find out. As tempting as that sounds to me as an accountant, I don’t usually have the time to do that in a supermarket, unfortunately.

One mile is fivethousandtwohundredandeighty feet. Easy.

Sometimes they don’t even try to deceive you, and just yell right in your face how stupid they think you are: Yesterday on the State fair a seller advertised his “Ice-cold pepsi!” with a bargain-price of “Fifty cents only, two for a dollar!” – I believe people who are used to quantity discounts might just buy two without even thinking about it. Trust me. I am the one who signed up for a 4-months gym membership for the price of 6 months. Or maybe they punished me with an extra fee for laziness because I don’t wanna go to their office every month again and again. I still think I let this adverse quantity discount happen only because they managed to confuse me extremely beforehand. That’s why I insist on claiming the US doesn’t keep their measures in “turn right in one MILLION feet” because it would be costly to change everything, or because they wanna remain special, no, they do it solely in order to keep everyone confused. You can sell confused people more.

The advertising sometimes crosses limits that no one would even think of approaching in other countries. By the highway, you see huge ugly signs with commercials of all kinds. The weirdest though are hotels promoting themselves with printing FREE BREKFAST in house-sized letters. Now probably what it means is that by paying an adjusted room rate that has already considered charging a fortune for cardboard waffles and plasticky pancakes, you don’t need to pay for those another time. What it does suggest, however, is that you can just pop by that hotel and ask for some free food. How likely is it that the latter is true? In America? Right, chances are like the p-value I wish to see in all my results: smaller than the fraction of a percent. So why the heck do you even write such a stupid thing on your stupid ugly billboard? Who knows, maybe a small number of confused people actually shows up and then ends up paying for it anyways because they already made it all the way there, just like with the mountain-visit-fee.

I think the award for the brashest scam goes to the management of my rental agency though, who were so clever to praise themselves for not having to increase the rent last year: They sent out an email that opened with the words “We are very pleased to tell you that this year, there will be no rent increase!”, and then they continued telling the tenants that, in case they wished to keep unnecessary luxury goods such as internet, TV, maintenance and pest control, and one of their so far included two parking spots, they would need to pay 125 dollars extra from now on. I have no clue what the second tenant of the shared apartments does with their car nowadays, to be honest. Maybe they sold it. Though, how do you go all the 2 kms (I think that’s about 4500 feet in size 5.5) to Trader Joe’s if you sold your Hummer?

The missing or confusing and misleading display of prices is not the only thing that resembles a proper street market like the ones I loved so much in Asia. Also the fact that you get constantly bombarded with advertisements and screamed at with misleading offers reminds of vendors trying to drag your attention towards them. Maybe that’s just how it is on a “real” free market. Maybe it is better if prices are set at the market and government cannot interfere. What is just very confusing is to find it in literally every instance of your daily life in a developed country that claims to be the number one of the Western world. Because, despite the fact that the buyer-side seems to have hardly any negotiation power in the US “street” market, while it might not be very hurtful to decide against buying the certainly really real RayBans from the street market if you don’t like their price, can you really decide against buying food or paying rent because you find it too expensive?

The rental agency increased the rent again this year, by the way. In Germany, you can increase rents only up to maximum 15-20% of the rent, distributed over three years, with very valid and clearly stated reasons. The house I currently live in here has raised rents by roughly 30% over three years with reasons varying from “We don’t increase the rent, we just offer you some things outside of your normal rent now” over not mentioning any reason at all to “We have to because everyone else does, too”.

But this is really material for yet another blog entry about the many USO-ddities.