Good afternoon to you POIROT...

Apropos your last comment. I just wanted to thank you for sharing with us that lovely, positive reflection, of your times' past.

And the many critical lessons you've learnt, that will no doubt hold you in good stead in preparation for any future demands, and adversity you may need to confront, today, tomorrow and in the future.

Thank you and take care...Sung Wu.

*But, jeez, now I feel like millionaire - so fortunate.*

Some good points there, Poirot. Life really is relative. It seems
that we need some hard times, to appreciate what we really have.

Take kids who are given everything. They then expect everything
and think they are hard done by. I've had kids tell me that they
suffer from child abuse, as mommy won't buy them a mobile phone!

We really should stop occasionally and appreciate what we have.
Like you, I feel that I am very fortunate.

Thinker 2, I get the feeling that you just suffer from "Grumpy
Old Man" syndrome.

I'm with Houelly & Poirot on this one. Yes perhaps things were a little better in the 60s for a young couple to get ahead, but only a little. I was lucky to be starting out then, but only if I stayed fit & healthy.

Compared to my parents we are now on easy street. There was very little chance for ordinary folk, born in the early decades of the 20Th century to ever attain home ownership, rent & food was about all they could afford, & there were no low start loans either.

Even if they had not had a couple of world wars, & a depression to contend with, it was no bed of roses.

They paid their own doctors, & hospital bills until medical insurance came along, & pensions were much lower. Anyone down on their luck had only a soup kitchen, & even then, only if they lived in the right places.

If anything we are a bit too kind to the bludgers & ne'er do wells today.

I shared your waif like status, Poirot, but only up until secondary school when the paper-round money kicked in.

"Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?"

Or typing into the internet ether. (either?)

But $7.95 for 32GB... really? Where?

Looking to the future? You betcha... it's still better than the alternative.

"And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you."

Hi, o sung wu and thank you for your post, and G R gets it, and Poirot I must say that I like you have my moments, and Houelle, I too agree about the analytical mind.

I don't believe I have ever suffered from depression, if I have, I probably quickly forgot about it when I went on to next thing. I've always kept myself busy. Music was a professional pursuit in my past and it still takes up a lot of my time (and my day job) despite that my wife of over 40 yrs still loves me I think.

So my own situation is pretty nice.

But and here it comes, my post was reaction born of discontent with the extreme and diabolical things occurring at both my own and my wife's workplaces simultaneously.
Completely different things but equally devastating to the persons' working there.

It's like Workchoices never went away Belly, employers are acting in my experience with impunity towards their staff these days in many different ways. I believe it's behaviour they (the employers) learned from Workchoices, and they liked it.

And I can't believe I'm saying this Rehctub, but I also mostly agree with you as well on this subject.

Thanks guys.

WmTrevor,

Yes, I didn't have a paper round but I did get a job after school when I was fifteen in the city in the evenings at a steak/coffee house - where I proceeded to become the world's worst waitress. Actually I much preferred being left in charge of the huge industrial dishwasher in the little room out the back where I could do my own thing and listen to Bohemian Rhapsody : )

Just on interesting times in childhood. I think my most memorable occasion (apart from waking up to a flat full of smoke and finding my day lying sound asleep on the half of the pillow that wasn't glowing red kapok) happened in the northwest when I was ten. Dad had secured us a caravan which we'd lived in for quite a while, and one day I came home from school and the caravan was gone and so was he. I was so shocked to see the empty space that I retraced my steps thinking I had somehow come down the wrong road. I hadn't of course, and I knew it, but that action seemed to delay the realisation. So that's about as abandoned as you can feel at ten. My belongings, my home and my dad just vanished - sort of strange as you can imagine. It's just as well I'm so charming. I needed all the charm I could muster to graft myself onto all the families that took me in whenever dad disappeared.

I often laugh occasionally when I'm called a snob on OLO - which seems to occur reasonably often.

I wonder how that happened?