Retirement

  • 64 replies
  • 18439 views
Re: Retirement
« Reply #45 on: March 28, 2017, 12:15:53 PM »
Antarctica would be toooooo cold for me, especially with the blood thinners I have to take. bibibibibi I have been retired for 20yrs and I find that my situation suits me. agagagagag I own a small 2 bedroom house on a small block of land. My neighbours are not noisy and there are no children living nearby and no units or townhouses. :dancemj: Whilst I drive my own car, there is a bus stop close by if I need it. The shopping centre is also close. I just go inside my house and close the door and I am in my own world with my TV set and my video recorder. It is an easy drive into the city of Brisbane to go to "the den" where I get free parking. I can just go out the front door of the Casino and can walk down the main city street. I am very happy with my retirement situation and am so glad that I was able to retire early, given that my heart specialist says I will be lucky to have four more years. bfbfbfbfbf Whilst I don' get a pension from the Government, I do get a "Pensioner Concession card". One of the things that this entitles me to receive is cheaper medication.  The full cost of a packet of 28 blood thinner tablets, is $86.64. I only pay $5.30 for these and for each of my other medications. bfbfbfbfbf

*

Escaped Lunatic

  • *****
  • 10847
  • Finding new ways to conquer the world
    • EscapedLunatic.com
Re: Retirement
« Reply #46 on: March 28, 2017, 02:38:17 PM »
So Calach wants a dog, pigeon, and noisy neighbor free zone in a climate conducive to the presence of dogs, pigeons, and neighbors.

This does present a dilemma, but we here at Lunatic Retirement Estates will go to great lengths to satisfy even the craziest clients.

How about a small tropical island inhabited only by coconut trees and a very quiet ball named Wilson?  We'll even throw in a pair of ice skates in case you might need them for anything.
I'm pro-cloning and we vote!               Why isn't this card colored green?
EscapedLunatic.com

Re: Retirement
« Reply #47 on: March 28, 2017, 06:25:59 PM »
The deal with all these irritants is stop feeding them. Neighbours, pigeons, dogs. STOP LAYING OUT GARBAGE BANQUETS FOR THEM AT MY DOOR! Riding around I sometimes get the impression everyone does live in garbage. Seemingly intractable piles of litter are to be found everywhere. With the shit that gets strewn around buildings sites, you could say progress in China is built on garbage. Magical tropical paradii such as [nowhere] and [neverwhen] are my final destination. I won't be able to pay for any of it and unless I start making tangible plans soon, I'm not even going, so..........

I expect Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, all those places, they are strewn with garbage too. Actual human infrastructure barely exists here, I don't see why it would exist in less developed places, but maybe those places are less fucked up too?

I think in China development, which has been good for many, has also, frankly, to be the imperialist for a moment (longer), stripped the place of "charms". Charm, in a poor country, is that simple infrastructure that exists above subsistence farming and below urban development. For example, restaurants can exist, and they'll often be open all hours and all days because the owners are too poor to think of themselves as people who can take time off. That was China ten years ago. That's not China now. Would I genuinely like to go exploit the masses elsewhere for a while and call it retirement? If they have internet then yeah, maybe.

The other strand of this style of think is I don't think I'm going to make it. I'm going to get older, weaker, and less able. I fear and hate that. It'll be like teaching English again.
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

Re: Retirement
« Reply #48 on: March 29, 2017, 11:45:33 AM »
Calach, if/as your health deteriorates as you get older, you will need medication and even some one to care for you. bibibibibi I guess that is going to be the main issue to consider. bjbjbjbjbj

*

Escaped Lunatic

  • *****
  • 10847
  • Finding new ways to conquer the world
    • EscapedLunatic.com
Re: Retirement
« Reply #49 on: March 29, 2017, 05:35:58 PM »
I'll confess to the occasional fantasy of moving off to some incredibly remote village where I could live like an emperor on my life savings (currently 262 RMB plus $13.38).  The drawback is even if I went so far as to take over and have all of my whims obeyed by a few hundred peasant farmers (and their lovely daughters afafafafaf), the cost of cholesterol meds and a few other things I need to discourage the grim reaper would put me in a financial bind after a few short years.  There's no point in running off to paradise if you get sick a die too quickly there.

Guess I'll have to keep slaving over a hot keyboard a bit longer.
I'm pro-cloning and we vote!               Why isn't this card colored green?
EscapedLunatic.com

Re: Retirement
« Reply #50 on: March 30, 2017, 02:02:54 PM »
Whenever I visit Australia these days I boggle at the facilities for older people they have there now. Aside from actual air that can be breathed, the environment is generally free of mess. Cars move way too fast on the roads, but they all follow a reasonably good order. Buses actually kneel at the curb to let older people on. And then there's hospitals, doctors, built up infrastructure, the ability of older people to use, say, walking frames or scooters and get around supermarkets.... it's like some scifi super-future compared to China - clean, bright, cheerful, helpful, and everyone enabled rather than locked away. I don't know for sure that I'll be able to take part in that. I'm still in the Australian Medicare system, but I'm not insured and by now I don't have money enough to make up the shortfall. I hope I end up finding a way out of all this, but I feel like I've chosen to give China too many of my years.
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

*

CWL

  • *
  • 309
Re: Retirement
« Reply #51 on: March 30, 2017, 06:22:53 PM »
Escape while you can. 

Re: Retirement
« Reply #52 on: March 31, 2017, 01:00:32 PM »
Calach, as you know, there is plenty of help available in Oz. If you need medical help, you will get it, If it's not urgent, you will join a queue. If it's urgent, you will be taken care of immediately. I am a member of Defence Health, but lots of people don't have any health insurance and are well looked after here. I hope that you can obtain enough information to make the correct decision about your future. bfbfbfbfbf

Re: Retirement
« Reply #53 on: March 31, 2017, 02:10:34 PM »
I can't prove it with actual facts, but trying to be a teacher in Australia is like being the kid who puts the Kick Me sign back on. First, there's the laundry list of qualifications required. Second, there's the poor conditions, the overwork, the low status, the fact that qualified teachers actively choose within a few years of graduation to LEAVE THE PROFESSION. Third, even with all that, there's the competition.

This kind of happens everywhere though, I guess. Even in China you get the sense teachers are overgrown children. They have enough money to be lower middle class wannabes, but they have so little actual status they're subject to the most ludicrous of culture bullshits. For instance, teaching young people keeps your heart young.

Teaching isn't a respectable profession. For most, it is glorified child-minding.
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

Re: Retirement
« Reply #54 on: April 01, 2017, 12:12:15 PM »
Calach, I wouldn't have the patience to be a teacher. bibibibibi The closest I came was when I was about 18yrs old and I worked as a "governess" on a huge property out in western Queensland; about 60miles from the nearest very small town. My job was to teach two young children by correspondence lessons using the school of the air on the Royal Flying Doctor radio. bibibibibi My observations are that the young people of today have toooooo much money and freedom to say and do things with very few consequences.

Re: Retirement
« Reply #55 on: April 01, 2017, 04:34:29 PM »
If teaching is working properly, students need your patience only at the beginning. Pretty quickly they acquire some level of ability in what you want them to do, and that serves as a foundation for whatever else it is you want to do next. At some point they become self sustaining and they only need you to add fuel. You just have to watch out for them getting bored or burnt out.

That's the theory anyway. Lots of other mismanagement gets in the way. Other staff, dumbass institutions, overbearing expectation invented by social groups. Teaching and teachers are a strange whipping boy but by golly if lots and lots of people don't like to kick a teacher.
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

Re: Retirement
« Reply #56 on: April 02, 2017, 12:19:25 PM »
Calach, do you think that children today have a far different attitude to learning and to teachers, than say you did as a young lad?

Re: Retirement
« Reply #57 on: April 02, 2017, 02:32:53 PM »
I don't know. It's been a good 15 years since I took an up-close look at Australian society, and when I was a lad I don't think I was much like my peers. As a student I was always all about the knowledge and getting good grades - the proverbial swot. From maybe university on I started being about managing my own knowledge rather than just getting good grades. (Pretty much failed the second year of uni as a matter of fact.) What I do think though is there is a cherished lie in Australian and probably other societies about how we all value education. We don't. (I might be having some oddball ideas about that. My primary schooling was in the late 70s and secondary in the early 80s. According to my mother, school was a bit weird in those decades. Standards were... off, somehow.) So, in all respects, I don't directly know what kids are up to these days.

But, for instance, I look at current stories like this (School funding divides along class lines as teachers and parents dip into own hip pockets for resources), and find them eminently recognisable. Sausage sizzles, cake raffles, fundraisers of all sorts... that crap has been around since forever and it does tell us something...

Universities don't do that kind of nonsense. (Do they?)
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0

*

cruisemonkey

  • *
  • 1265
  • You could be next.
Re: Retirement
« Reply #58 on: April 02, 2017, 05:08:04 PM »
Universities don't do that kind of nonsense. (Do they?)

No. They have alumni associations... and sleep with corporations while married to the government.
The Koreans once gave me five minutes notice - I didn't know what to do with the extra time.

Re: Retirement
« Reply #59 on: April 03, 2017, 12:33:01 PM »
I sat for my leaving Certificate in 1962; I repeated the year before because I was too young, having started school when I was four. I had six brothers and my family was not wealthy, so I had nothing, particularly nice dresses. As a result, I was a loner and I just got through my schooling whilst making no effort to study. I was very intelligent, but didn't know it until I retired. I keep saying that most young folk today would have found it very hard to survive my teenage years. bibibibibi