Plans for the future

The scene: a pathway along a canal on the outskirts of a mid-sized European city; trees overhanging the water, ducks paddling along peacefully. A two-year-old scampers through the underbrush along the path, discovering new things with each step.

Wife (hopeful circumvention): "Nice houses along here."

Husband (lost in thought): "Mmm."

Wife (wishful thinking): "Would be nice to have a house like that."

Husband (passive agreement): "Mmm."

Wife (innocent query): "When will we be able to afford one of those?"

The husband snaps to attention and looks at the millions of euros of real estate on the other side of the canal.

Husband (freelance writer/editor, soon to be re-unemployed): "Uh, never."

Wife (evident disappointment, quite possibly re-thinking life choices): "Oh."

The two-year-old emerges from behind a bush to chase some birds. He doesn't get very close before they fly off.

Husband: "You're not going to catch those birds, sweetie. Life's hard that way."

Life under a flight path

Even relatively small airplanes make a lot of noise when they are only a few hundred metres above your bedroom.

Mean, median, average

Banks do make a lot of money, don't they? 2006 was another record-shattering year for the world's top financial corporations. Shortly after starting work I see a story online announcing that at Goldman Sachs the average annual bonus for staff members will be US$622,000. For a moment I'm delirious and announce to the colleagues sitting around me that we're all in the money and can start planning for our retirement, next week.

A few bemused looks, a couple of blank stares.

Two realizations hit me: we don't work for Goldman Sachs, we work for some cheap-ass Euro bank; and while math was never my strong suit, I seem to recall that there can be sizable gaps between an 'average' bonus and a 'mean' or 'median' one. The guys in the mailroom maybe get $75.50 or something, while the CEO takes home $53.4 million on top of his regular salary.

We all ponder that number quietly. Some shuffle papers on their desk, others gaze longingly out the window. The only sound is the laser printer spitting out some more copy. We go back to our work as peon's of international capital.

The overseas contract

Most often, life as an expat means you live either way above your means, or way below them. My scruffy face has been on both sides of this coin – mainly the latter. Slumming as a young intellectual in the backwoods of Asia, I didn’t care that most of my friends at home were moving their way up the socio-economic ladder. I busied myself with exciting, non-remunerated tasks like learning a tonal language and spending late nights cavorting with dangerous people from the wrong side of town.

I was happy with that, and figured I could make money… whenever.

That moment came exactly three years ago, when I found out I was going to be a father. Being an expat now meant getting an overseas contract from a government or a multilateral agency. The overseas contract, if you don’t know, is the holy grail of overpaid, underworked extravagance.

Your salary? Bank it – you’ll be dining off your living allowance. Housing? Covered. Insurance? Covered. Business class travel? Check that shit off the list too.

Get yourself a big old house with a maid and a gardener, maybe even a driver if you’re lucky. Sunday afternoons by the pool, gin and tonics to keep you cool. Hey, they don’t call it imperialism for nothing.

Swell timing saw this contract come my way exactly six months before junior arrived. The next two years went by quick though, and when my wife got some low-paid but career-building work in Europe, we packed up the bags and off we went.

No overseas contract, however. Wow, Europe sure is pricy without a living allowance. I work at a bank, for fuck’s sakes, and we still come to the end of the month with a flatline for a bank balance. We live in a housing project, and I never leave home without my supermarket bonus card.

The other day I stopped to buy some veggies and almost had a coronary at the price of greens in this part of the world. I chose the cheapest option I could find – brussel sprouts.

I then went home to discover my wife had already been shopping, at a different supermarket. She had bought some veggies as well.

That’s right – brussel sprouts.

So now we had two big bags of brussel sprouts to chew through over the next week. After about the third day of eating the bitter little fuckers, it really started to sink in how far we’ve fallen.