Urban Mining

I visit Officeworks now more than twice a fortnight because of printing purposes and to satisfy my stationery fetish. Out of all the times I have visited Officeworks, though, I have failed to see something sly sitting in their little entrance until today.

A recycling bin with three compartments: one for old ink cartridges, one for old batteries and one for old mobile phones. Upon a singular glance, one would agree that Officeworks is benefiting the environment, that they are now more sustainable than yours and that you should thank the Gods for having somewhere to stash your old mobile phone without feeling guilty about harming Pat the platypus. But you are wrong. Here is what they claim their mobile recycling does:

Well, they certainly left out the part that despite the conservation of natural resources and the saving of energy and whatnot, they are assisting in the harvesting of valuable and precious metals and materials that are "melted down and sold as ingots to jewellers and investors as well as back to manufacturers who use gold in the circuit boards of mobile phones because gold conducts electricity even better than copper". It is also noted that "a tonne of ore from a gold mine produces just 5 grams (0.18 ounces) of gold on average, whereas a tonne of discarded mobile phones can yield 150 grams (5.3 ounces) or more" - still want to donate your old phones? The same amount of mobile phones, apart from all of that gold, "also contains around 100 kg (220 lb) of copper and 3 kg (6.6 lb) of silver, among other metals". Think about that. And here is what Mobile Muster says about what components break away from phones and what they use them for:

Right, they want your old mobile phones so that they can create kettles and fences and batteries; they want your mobile phones so that they can sell ingots of gold melted from them to jewellers, they want your mobile phones so that they can sell this gold back to other phone manufacturers so that more phones can be sold and abandoned and that more gold can be sold in the name of 'sustainability'. By donating your old phones, all you are really sustaining is their pockets.

I remember when Mobile Muster first began. They sent out information packs to my school, I was around seventeen at the time, and they gave us bags to deposit our old mobile phones and our parents' mobile phones and return them to school where they will safely be given back to Mobile Muster. I thought it was a wicked idea, and in the good sense, because of the poster they gave us showing pans, computers and all other goods being reproduced from clicky little gadgets. But I never donated, and I am glad that I did not.

Think twice before donating your old mobile phone. Why put a company one step towards riches when you can salvage parts from what you own and sell them off for prices far greater than what you paid for your old mobile phones? We have all been beaten to it, though, a company called "Eco-System, established 20 years ago near Tokyo, typically produces about 200-300 kg (440-660 lb) of gold bars a month with a 99.99 percent purity, worth about $5.9 million to $8.8 million."

Officeworks is attempting to get even more richer than they currently are, with the assistance of Mobile Muster. Help me to stop them. Do not donate old phones.

Juárez: the New Vice City

For years I have grown up exposed to the Grand Theft Auto franchise. I have every edition of the game, played out through multiple fictional cities. The game has been in my life for so long that everything contained within it passes through my mind as a norm, which disturbs me when I think about it, but I am disturbed even more when I think that it is based on things that happen in some cities in real life.

Horrid things like prostitution exist in most cities all around the world, and as does crime, however I saw a cringe-worthy documentary on the ABC channel just moments ago, Ross Kemp: Extreme World: Juárez, Mexico which altered the way I think about Grand Theft Auto and its effect on me and other video game players around the world. I have never witnessed such trepidation until I viewed most that goes on in Juárez in this documentary. I imagined myself placed in that city and wondered how it would be to go about my usual activities whilst cartel members or enemies or betrayers are being shot down or sliced up and dumped on roads near me, members who could also my members of my family. It is insane to think that this is a norm. That somewhere in the world, within Mexico, gang wars are a norm.

I hear about drug addictions and I begin to sympathise towards all those addicted. The demand for drugs must be so high. I would have never imagined the drug market to be so rapid in money gain and so dominant in a city not that significantly large in size. I know that the drug market brings one good money but hearing about one ex cartel member earning just under seven-hundred thousand dollars from one run then legitimises these peoples' actions, in my eyes, in terms of why they partake in these dangerous ways of life. People who struggle to acquire an education, to acquire a career and to bring money to their households, assuming if there are any, would no doubt turn to selling drugs or joining  cartel.

I do not blame these people. I blame the government. I blame the rich. I blame the world for not believing in equality in every possible way. I believe in he who first created money to be used as a tender and to be valued more than a human's life. Take the movie The Box starring Cameron Diaz as Norma Lewis, for example. This strange human arrives at Norma's doorstep and drops off a box with a big red button. If she was to press the button, she would immediately acquire a million dollars, under one condition: a spontaneous human dies right as the button is pressed; money or a life? She chose the money. That reminds me of the cartel and of society in general.

In a way all those not in the cartel act in a similar way. Take those working on Wall Street for example. Those who exploit others to make fortunes. Or the wolf himself, Jordan Belfort. Exploitation does not only exist in prostitution or drug dealing, rather in big money corporations. Remember that Joseph Kony hoax? Or how about a little hoax that happened quite locally, where a mobile phone recycling company asked students at my school to rid themselves of the burden of keeping their useless old mobile phones. These phones contain fragments of gold, which are the best conductor to place in these devices. This company has so many phones that it pulls out kilograms of gold and other metal goods and sells them to other companies in order to make money off people who do not have a clue about what is happening.

How about those people who act like the homeless? Like that old Asian man who knelt and looked as though he had no feet, and somebody scared him off in a way I could not remember so he stood up revealing his feet and ran away? I wonder how much money he made off people. Or that lady who was caught out asking for money to get back home at petrol stations, but then gets back into the car with her boyfriend and drives off with all of the money she obtains, only to return the next day and the day after for more?

But that Ross Kemp documentary really got to me because of the amount of dead bodies it shows. Grand Theft Auto does not have realistic graphics when it comes to dead bodies, nor do I think it ever will due to how gruesome they would be, however they do, in their simplicity, create a visual world where the goings on in places like Juárez become the norm for the game player.

The Price of Life

Sometimes I find myself feeling quite jealous of the wealth of others, particularly those fortunate with fame and popularity. I become jealous of lawyers, doctors, programmers, designers and anyone else who can apparently effortlessly obtain a significant amount of money than I.

Considering my future as a teacher, I also become hesitant on journeying on through that path because of the supposed low pay. In contrast to a lawyer, yes, teachers do get paid less. On a $60,000 annual income, it would take me one hundred and fifty years to make what top lawyers make in twenty-two years - do not even get me started on rappers who curse and cuss and diss and hate and make fools of themselves, or Disney princesses gone wrong sitting nude on wrecking balls and sticking their tongues out so much so it scares the living daylight out of every person who once had fantasised about them - so much so that ice-cream fears for its life when it is called upon by this person.

But the price of life is also important. So many people would give all of their money and more just to live another day, just to remain youthful, just to remain on this planet. Life, I have figured, is much more valuable than any amount of money earned. Sure, life can be made significantly pleasurable with more money but it cannot be made richer in essence. This is probably the basis as to why teachers continue teaching. When they claim that their jobs are 'rewarding' they are not speaking in terms of finances, rather speaking in terms of the joy that comes to them when they see the look of familiarisation and realisation and thankfulness in their students' faces. They can spend days, months, years with the absence of a high amount of money yet they are left with a high amount of joy.

When I become jealous, which happens but on rare occasions especially on those where I find amazing super-cars or muscle cars or any other thing financially unattainable and crave them, I then remind myself that the simple things necessary in life count the most, and everything else is a bonus. I tell myself that so long as I obtain a rewarding job, purchase a reliable car, and find myself the most perfect partner who loves me as divinely as I will love them, then I have the basis of what I want in my life. And when the time comes that I and my spouse have a steady enough income, children will fall into the picture. And when our children are living comfortably and getting their education they deserve, I will see to it that I help out charities which care for children unnoticed. 

I do not value the objects I desire as much as the things I need. I am content with what I have, and I am grateful. This is beginning to sound like a Thanksgiving speech, I know. But what I am trying to say is that living a happy life is possible without large financial endeavours. I am grateful that I am here, wherever that is. I am grateful that I am healthy despite my weight issue. I am grateful that I have the amount of money necessary for my daily survival, and that my family is also healthy and content also. I am grateful for the relationship I have with my mother, father and sister, and for the peaceful situation I am in. I am grateful for my education, for my academic striving, for the impact I have already left on a cohort of younger people, for the impact those younger people have left on me and for many other things that I turn a blind eye to during my moments of jealousy.

One does not need the economical prowess that is money in order for their lives to be fulfilled. They simply need things that money cannot buy, such as love, honour, and kindness. This post may sound like something Buddha would have written had he had his own blog, yet I hope it inspires you, dear reader. Be all that you can become without resorting to being jealous of others.

Mysterious Money

A long, three hours of tutoring and two hours of conversing with two sets of varied people later, and I found myself at home, scavenging through my purse, counting my week's takings when I noticed something out of the ordinary - I had sixty extra dollars laying in the between the creases of bankcards and IDs.

A crispy golden fifty dollar note, crunched up along a rustic blue ten dollar note, both sitting tightly in one compartment of my purse. I closed my purse, zipping it tightly, then unzipped it, expecting some sort of hallucination from the inhalation of too much nail-polish smell after my shower in the early hours of the day. The two notes sat there. I touched them - yes, they were real. I had thought this was strange because they certainly were not my notes, seeing as the ten dollar note was creased in a corner - I normally put my money, however low the value, immaculately into my purse. These notes appeared that they had been left there by somebody who has been hearing my constant petrol price complaints.

Rationally, I left my purse on my desk and headed to the bedroom and asked my sister, who, after showing a rather confused look on her face, answered, "no, I have not been home all day." So then I headed for the bathroom where my mother was seated, excuse the imagery you may or may not have just gotten from reading that, and I asked her, to which she responded "no, I didn't put it there." As soon as I turned my back, both of them pleaded otherwise jokingly, in hopes of scoring an additional sixty dollars.

Then it occurred to me. I received that amount in the first half of my evening, from my first student's mother. How could I have forgotten? Perhaps that amount of money was pressed so tightly to her left breast, yes, that is where my wages for teaching her son comes from, that it was permanently creased to a point where I would refuse to think that such a state belonged in my purse at all, despite the fact that I was tiresome for teaching him for two whole hours. 

Then I began to wonder, if I ever have the chance to travel to America and exchanged my Australian money into American money, paper-like and easy to crease, would I forget that I was in America and completely freak out thinking I had stolen someone's wallet when I look down at my money? I probably would, even if I had a mini-freak-out, inside my mind. I easily freak out about things, like today when I mistook my rollerball pen for my fountain pen, both of which are the exact size, colour and build on the outside. 

And had not I remembered that I taught a student for two hours today and received money, I wonder who I would have given that sixty dollars to - my mother or my sister?

Parental Attachment and Dependency in Lebanese Children

In the wild, baby animals are generally weaned by their mothers for an average of nine months, depending on what sort of animal they are, and then they are released, so to speak, into the utter wild, with nobody to fend for them but themselves. Whatever danger comes their way becomes their own problem, for now their parents can move on with their lives and find whatever prey to slay, this time for personal consumption rather than the lowest rations, because their babies would have been prioritised.

This is the same way with Australian mothers and children. Children are usually housed until they are eighteen years of age, after which they are gifted a key by several people to indicate their freedoms and to boost their hopes that one day they too can afford a house of their own and to pay for their own phone bills and cook their own chicken parmagiana with a side serving of peas and carrots, and to afford to pay for the electricity so that the can enjoy some shrimp on the barbecue and to watch a round of football on the television after removing an icy cold bottle of VB beer.

However, with wogs, Lebanese people in particular, things for children do not quite flow in this manner. Darwinism is eliminated and rewritten, in that the child, child meaning a son or daughter aged between zero and whatever age they are before they wed a suitor who the parents fall in love with before he or she does, has only two predators: their father or mother, depending on who wears the pants in the marriage when they are angry with the child, or anything in the 'outside world', illicit or totally legal, such as clubbing, Australian children or peers, public transport, alcohol, driving at nighttime, driving in the daytime, driving in the afternoon, not wearing socks or using an ATM machine to withdraw cash without the protection of the child's grandmother. There are many more predators out there, and unfortunately, due to the many types of wogs and beliefs in the world, the list of these predators is too long to mention. It is thus safer, in the Lebanese version of Darwinism, for the child to remain indoors and eat things wrapped in pita bread and to be molly-coddled until a rather exquisite wedding ring states otherwise.

There is no mere weaning in a Lebanese household - there is a constant spying and feasting and nagging and never-ending sadness about things such as out of date food or the latest bombing victims sprawled on live television or missing an episode of a Spanish show that is dubbed in Arabic, even though the missing of this episode will not leave the viewer confused because each episode is a dramatic reenactment of each prior episode - and, mind you, in the viewing of these episodes, the Lebanese child must too watch it and enjoy it even if they speak and understand a dialect which differs from the one being spoken in the series.

The Lebanese child must not argue, and must take into accordance every claim made by their parents as a fact, such as the Lebanese people differentiating from Arabs, the Lebanese people inventing the wheel, the Lebanese people inventing language, the number system and the alphabet, the Lebanese people inventing all good foods and deserts, the Lebanese people being the people of the Lord Jesus and the Lord Jesus being the only leader of religion for any other religion is a demonic one even if Christianity branches into several types and Lebanese people are all different types - all other claims by other cultures are simply false if they claim that they begun either of these great things, for their creations are simply derivatives from all creations by the Lebanese people. 

Lebanese people are not the wagers of war, it is some other form of people that began war and Lebanese people simply have no capabilities or intentions of performing any acts of violence, even though they cluster in gangs in Australia and shank anything with a pair of eyes that ponder near them for a duration of two seconds.

Lebanese children, apart from having a dependence on their parents, also have a dependence on welfare and insurance claims. Centrelink sponsors their vehicular customizations and the acquiring of their three-white-striped pants and nightly meals at McDonald's which follows their meals at home cooked fresh daily for painstaking hours, but I suppose all that hair needs a large amount of vitamins and nutrients from all food sources in order to maintain their Mediterranean shine.

Holidays such as New Years, Christmas, Easter and even Birthdays become a blessing for Lebanese children and their financial statuses because apart from Centrelink, they also are sponsored by their grandparents' pension money. These money-giving times also may happen on weekends, or after the Lebanese child taking their grandmother shopping or dropping their grandfather off at the horse races. The money is usually found lying around curled in their grandparents' old socks, or tucked away in the storage compartments of their sofa-beds. This money may arrive into the hands of the Lebanese children smelling mouldy, but that is just because they have been tucked away for so long, hidden from any source of fingers or light. 

The money Lebanese children have, despite from whence it came, must be spent wisely, and there is no better way to do that than to haggle down the prices of things which have already had their prices reduced due to them being sale items, located in the sale basket, a place where all Lebanese inhabitants of earth enjoy thriving. Although most that they purchase from this place are things that they do not need, their purchase will still please the Lebanese people simply because they are things which have been haggled down twice. They do not, during this time of haggling, take into account the humiliation that their children feel. A sale item reduced to two-dollars must be reduced even more, no matter how loud their voices must go. They fail to keep their claims said to the shopkeepers about five dollars being the only amount they have, because of the fact that their Gucci handbags are full of fifty-dollar notes.

Over-feeding, multiple-cousin support systems, and hundreds of gifted bottles of perfumes are amongst most things that come with being a dependent Lebanese child. While I am indeed dependent, I will enjoy every minute because life as good as this does not come to any other culture.