Timing

Well, we seem to be having a perverse run of good fortune: I say perverse, because everything seems to be breaking down: the TV has developed a truly alarming neon-green overlay, which makes watching everything quite, well, trippy; the old phone has died and been replaced, the washing machine has been acting up (and smelling of hot motor oil!).

But this is good fortune, as they all seem to happening just before the warranties run out: poor planning on the manufacturers' part, I'm sure.

It does remind me of one thing that has struck both of us here, tho: the sheer amount of stuff people buy: not just clothes and such, but furniture, sports equipment, decorations, machinery, TVs & electrical knickknacks, you name it. I mean, I know we live in a consumerist society, but that seems to be exaggerated to the Nth degree here, compared to NZ, or even the UK.

In the UK, the homes always seemed jam-packed and stuffed overfull, but that always seemed like a function of the tiny crammed houses they live in (at least, in London & the South East, where we were): they might have a three-bedroom house, but it would be less than 1000 sq ft (or tiny, by NZ standard), so naturally just trying to fit everything they wanted into it, left it crammed. Of course, they also grotesquely overdecorated, but that's a different rant.

Here, the houses are 2 or 3 times as large on average - we have gone from an 800sqft 2 bedroom 9th story flat in London, to a 1500sqft 3 bedroom bungalow with a back yard (and a creek!) in Little Rock, and halved our rent in the process.

But the houses mostly seem to be at least as overfull as the English (although without the horrible overdecoration, thank ghu). TVs & CD players in every room, all manner of expensive toys, just stuff lying around because they don't have storage space for it, you name it: even people I'd regard as not very well off at all, still seem to have just ..... well, tons of junk.

Fortunately, I think, we're too old to start developing habits or tastes like this :) But it does ram home to me in a pretty visceral way, just how driven they are to shop, and how they're sold this bill of goods that shopping is inherently enjoyable.