Australians least likely in world to take annual leave

This little article appeared on the Sydney Morning Herald website this morning:

Poor little rich country...

According to the Vacation Deprivation survey conducted by Expedia, a company I use on a regular basis to fly me cheaply about the globe. 'Australians are the least likely in the world to take their entitled annual leave', citing financial pressures such as the credit crunch and raised interest rates. Other Australians believe work commitments were holding them back from sun, sea and surf, so the complaint goes.

Bollocks. I've read some crap in my time, and a lot of that has been grace au Sydney Morning Herald, but quite frankly I grow more cynical each day. What does this article actually tell us? Not very much.

Australians are materialistic and pragmatic. They are not deep thinkers and certainly not the philosophical type. We are hardly alone. So typical of a rich, bored nation to cite financial reasons as hindering enjoyment and the ability to take holidays. Like many other nations about the globe, Australians love working because they feel the need to buy useless crap, or perhaps two bits of crap, in different colours, to fill their homes up with pointless rubbish.

How else to you expect to pay for this consumer lifestyle without working harder every year? Australians love sinking thmemselves into debt for their entire lives, paying off houses, cars and successive extensions to properties, and such topics are bandied about freely in conversations to the point that not owning property in Australia is perceived as a disability.

The managing director of Expedia enlightens us further by announcing that 'the image of Australians being laid back and holiday-rich was a thing of the past'. My opinion is that we've never been laid back and never holiday rich. There is no such thing as a laid-back capitalist culture. It's a freakin' contadiction in terms.

The moral is this: if you want to go shopping every weekend for the rest of your life buying stuff you don't need and won't use and wasn't even available a year ago but has now become a necessity to justify the fact that you work your entire life to pay bills and thus by paying a lot of bills you feel very justified, well then go ahead. Feel fulfilled.

How about changing your lifestyle? I take plenty of holidays. I am neither clever nor more intelligent than the average working man. I am neither lazy nor hard-working. I am not under financial pressure because I don't want to buy things. I have no credit crunch.

Funny thing though. When I found the offical Expedia 2008 Vacation Deprivation Survey Results, Australia isn't mentioned anywhere in the document. I looked for past surveys but Australia is a glaring ommission. Austria, yes. Us, no. We don't appear among the contol group.

The report. And Australia doesn't seem to figure in it.

So what am I supposed to think? The Sydney Morning Herald doctors a reputable company's report? A national paper somehow analyses non-existent data and then publishes not only a false article, but one that makes me more arrogant than ever in my belief that I can never return to live in Australia again?

I've contacted the Sydney Morning Herald and hope that they can provide the data I requested. I don't want to believe they would fabricate an article, especially one that clearly plays into my prejudices with gusto.

My moral for living is simple:

Work enough to have time for your friends and yourself

Don't buy crap and get yourself into debt
Take a lot of holidays

In two weeks time I commence ten weeks' holiday. I worked and I now intend to enjoy myself.

Sydney Morning Herald, I await your response.

Rather excited

Wooh-hooh!

Today I completed my University of Technology of Sydney offer acceptance form and in exactly the time it takes the combined Turkish and Australian postal systems to safely navigate my envelope's contents into the hands of a friendly but probably slightly bored paper shuffler, I'll be officially enrolled once again as another pointless member of society who skims off the taxes of hard-working everyday Australians by becoming a student. I'm very excited. Both at the opportunity to study again, at my long opening sentence to this blog entry, and at the chance to stop shaving and arise from bed after others have long scampered from the house with their briefcase.

It's so long to Starbucks and crying into my caffe latte at 8am and buongiorno 'maybe I'll get up now before the sun goes down'. Exhilarating.

There is much to do. Stationary shops, inexplicably along with hardware stores and the Turkish bakkal, hold more than a passing attraction for me. I've forever been mezmerised by locales with floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with a multitude of products in numerous shapes and sizes and ordered in a way that makes me feel safe. Stationary store offer me a sense of security that a roof over my head cannot. I love the the lines of neatly arranged lead pencils, in descending order hardness, from 4B to 2HH. Paper organised by texture, paints by hues, sketch books by size and notebooks by binding. Stationary stores bring order, an oasis in an world of cluttered desks and office disorder. It's easy to draw the same analogy with hardware stores and the infinite possibilities of fixing, fasting, joining and adhering that can be had.

The Turkish bakkal, or deli, corner store or tuck shop a la turquoise provides the same sensory fulfillment. I always return from the local shop with more than the requisite repulsive and ubiquitous un-gratifying long-life milk that remains de rigueur in Istanbul. There is something very attractive about kuruyemiş, the unending variety of fried fruit and nuts that can be had within 500 metres of where you might be positioned in Istanbul. I like regularity and Turkish dried fruit keeps me very regular indeed.

Anyway, I'm off to the closest stationary shop to buy everything that cannot be purloined from work over the next eight days. I have also purchased a new digital voice recorder but it's such an exciting acquisition that it deserves its own blog entry. So more about that later.

I'm off to talk gsm, foolscap and spiral binder.