Social Commentary

It’s been a while since I’ve written, but I am enjoying a rainy, cold Sunday afternoon to finally update my blog. Today I did my first long-distance trip by myself, driving on the right-hand side of the road. I drove along California’s infamously huge and busy highways (6-8 lanes one way!) in peak hour traffic… in the dark… in the rain… Yes, dear friends and family, it’s official, I can drive on the right side of the road! It has been just over 2 months since touchdown in the US. But it feels like 6. It has been an uphill battle finding my feet here. That is not to say that I have not been happy, quite the contrary; I often look out the window of BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit – the local underground train system) on my way to work and feel so appreciative of not only my life & loved ones but for the opportunity I’ve been given to be here in San Francisco. I changed jobs as the working conditions at my old job weren’t compatible with me, and what a difference it has made! Finally I am getting some money in (still significantly less than the minimum wage in Australia, but at least more than the minimum wage here), which is a blessing I cannot explain. Today I indulged and bought myself some waterproof shoes, as my old ones started to get holes in the bottom causing me to walk around with wet feet all day, and I went grocery shopping and bought RED meat. Wild, I know. I can feel my iron levels sky-rocketing already. The next ‘luxury’ items I have my eyes set on are ski clothes/warm weather gear. It has been -22C up in the nearby mountains lately, with metres and metres of snow, so I am itching to get my ski boots on, and, of course, feel my toes again soon.

I have come to realize that the US both intrigues me and scares me at the same time. It’s difficult to write my honest thoughts for fear of being crass; being ‘PC’ is more than important here. No more Summer Heights High humour for me; at least not in writing, my accent still entitles me some free passes in conversation. The other day I bought a slice of pizza whilst waiting for the bus, and one of the hundreds of homeless men that exist throughout the Bay area came up to me and asked if he could sit down at my table. Without hesitation, I said ‘of course’. It was 6pm at night, dark & cold and he had just woken up for the day. He talked proudly about the blanket he had back at ‘home’, a garage in a block of apartments, and boasted about how warm it kept him. He told me his story, and it honestly seemed a little far reached—he was in the secret service around 9/11 and was an anti-Zionist, or something along those lines. But who knows, this IS Berkeley. Homelessness is a lifestyle choice for many whom you see lingering along Telegraph Ave and there are layers upon layers of Berkeleyans. The most entertaining layer is the upper-middle class Toyoto Prius drivers. There are hundreds of them here. You can’t walk to yoga without at least seeing 30-40+. Speaking of yoga, the yoga scene here is amazing. I go to a Yoga Centre called Yoga To The People, and it is Power Vinyassa Flow. It is athletic, yet thorough. The best part about it is that it is community run, so you only have to make a donation to go.

I am now working in downtown San Francisco and commute every morning from the East Bay. I absolutely adore San Francisco. The other night my friends and I went out in the Castro. If you don’t know what that is, reference Harvey Milk. Every day I talk to people from all walks of life about political, environment and social issues. The Bay area (San Francisco and surrounds) is a unique demographic in the United States. People are considered progressive and/or radical socialists here, depending on who you speak to; in other words people believe in pro-choice, gay rights & climate change. I don’t see what’s so radical about that, but with the rise of The Tea Party and capitalist conservatism the norm I guess it is all relative. More than half the country doesn’t have access to health due to complete privatisation and the health system  being ‘left up to the free market to allocate resources most efficiently’; another notion which astounds me. Everyone seems to harp on about economics here, but they seem to neglect to realise that most of the economic theories they rely on cannot function in a world that has one of those annoying, dynamic, ‘can’t be defined in a perfect system’ variables, aka humans. Health, education, equality and the environment – you know, just a few of those fundamental things that make societies work – seem to be put on the back-burner here. I’m still yet to realise for what, though. Big oil? Corporate interests? I feel I need to go and live in Texas or the mid-west or anywhere less progressive than here to even start to try and understand the mentality of the general population. With the collapse of the economy here, the collapse of the social systems, and the collapse of all that Americans hold dear and true; the American Dream, I still do not understand why this countries opts to go backward in the direction that is causing it’s collapse and realise it’s time to let go of their old ways. I know people from abroad of the US have talked for a long time about the rise of China and that ‘all great Empires must fall’, indicating the transition away from a US-centric world, but you can actually feel it happening here, day by day. It’s not some news story. There is a big shift ahead.

I see this girl every day. She has pet rats.

She sits outside the train station begging for change. 

Well, without getting much direr, I felt it important to communicate an outsider’s view from an insider’s perspective of what is happening in the US, politically and socially, at the moment. Every day I crave to go back to Norway and even Australia (which is at large a generally politically conservative county) for the simple ‘opportunities’ I once took for granted; the easy life. However, I am learning a lot here and feel blessed for this experience, all the while knowing I can go home and escape when things get ‘too hard’. Unfortunately, there are a few hundred million others who don’t have that luxury.