Help to put life in perspective, perhaps?

Bad_azz

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If you have time, the linked film of about 50 minutes is well worth watching.
The sulphur miners.
It is fascinating yet very sobering.
How little so many people have yet they are smiling & uncomplaining, it maybe helpful for when we are bitching about lockdown/social distancing /COVID19 etc.

 
When I was a kid, I had friends in Jakarta who lived in a house like that. Woven bamboo walls, simple clay roof tiles, and dirt floor. They often spread sawdust on the floor to keep it dry. My parents didn’t have much, but our brick walls and terazzo floor made us look rich in comparison.

I am forever thankful for my experience living around them. Today as long as I have a roof over my head, heat when it’s cold, shirt on my back and food on the table, I feel content.

I used to camp in the woods when I was in high school. When everything you need to survive several days in the jungle has to fit in a backpack, it puts the difference between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ into sharp perspective. My true needs are few, the rest are luxuries.

Whenever I’m tempted to complain about my life, I remind myself that I could have been one of my cousins who earn in a month what I earn in less than half a day.
 
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Beginning to sound like Monty Python. "Lived in cardboard box? You were lucky. Luxury. We lived in hole in ground."


(If this displays "error" press play a few times and it will open.)

Not that I disagree. As a child in Australia the average working man had one suit, maybe two pairs of shoes, two shirts, a bicycle and a gladstone bag with which to go to work. The tiny rented house had a small ice box to keep food cool and a little, front lounge room with a display case showing the best few items of crockery. Stayed with grandparents in the bush without electricity and using hurricane lamps.

Basically, however comfortable my life became I always had a fall back notion of how to live in case things went bad again. It seems somewhat as if that time has arrived but with a small government pension my wife and I continue to live in Bali in a modest but two storey house with a little terrace upstairs to watch the sunset before dinner with no shortage of good food including a great variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. Certainly a lot better than living in a hole in the ground as in the good old days.
 
Here’s the crater from a tourist’s viewpoint.

 
I remember this. There was also a BBC video on "The worst place to be a binman" where they took one british binman to jakarta and let him stay with a local binman for a week. The bloke cried almost every night. I tried looking for the video, but apparently it was taken down.
 
I recall the show but with day to day life when we are dissatisfied we don't then immediately ask "who is worse off than me?" and thank God or whoever for what we have.

In one way or another many people feel cheated by life and feel that they were meant for better things. The kind of program you refer to can help shake people out of their preoccupation with themselves and feel grateful for what they have. Just to have a small but reliable pension for me is great when I see how many hard working family people have lost jobs, income and are in danger of losing everything. And then there are those who worked hard all their lives carefully saving for a comfortable retirement and now with collapsing markets find they have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars as shares and investments fall in dramatic market downturns.
 
When Indonesians at the bottom are feeling down, they can look at these Filipinos and feel better. Even the Ijen miner in the video could eat fresh food and send his kids to school.


I have been around some dirt poor people in my time, but I have never met one who ate recycled garbage.

Here I am sitting on my fat ass collecting first world salary working from the comfort of my bedroom. They make me ashamed to complain about trivial things, like the AC is not as cold as it could be.

As a side note: it is good to have perspective, but we shouldn’t readily dismiss somebody’s issues just because she’s financially secure. The suicide rates in Japan and USA are not insignificant, despite a much higher living standard. Everybody suffers in his own way, and mental health issues are real.
 
I remember this. There was also a BBC video on "The worst place to be a binman" where they took one british binman to jakarta and let him stay with a local binman for a week. The bloke cried almost every night. I tried looking for the video, but apparently it was taken down.
There’s a bit of it here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16722186

If you have a VPN that puts your location in the UK, I think the full video is available.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-16733269/the-toughest-place-to-be-a-binman-jakarta
 
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I have been around some dirt poor people in my time, but I have never met one who ate recycled garbage.

Isn't there a movement in the US/Europe of people digging through trash to get the food that's thrown away? Not just the homeless people, which absolutely do dig through trash and eat food that's been thrown away by others, but also people with jobs/homes.
 
Isn't there a movement in the US/Europe of people digging through trash to get the food that's thrown away? Not just the homeless people, which absolutely do dig through trash and eat food that's been thrown away by others, but also people with jobs/homes.
I saw that video a while back, it’s called dumpster diving I believe. They go for surplus food that is thrown away by supermarkets and restaurants. Good eateries use only fresh bread and toss out what’s not sold by the end of the day. I used to volunteer at the Food Bank, if a business participates in the program the surplus goes there instead. I’ve seen some sorry looking vegetables that would absolutely be dumped by stores, yet still fit for human consumption with a little wash and trim.



The food garbage in the Phillippines is several levels down. It’s not surplus, it is literally garbage.



I enjoy good food, but I’m not a picky eater. I have eaten stuff that would make most of you gag, but even I struggle with pag pag. Would I be able to eat it? I sincerely don’t know.
 
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Isn't there a movement in the US/Europe of people digging through trash to get the food that's thrown away? Not just the homeless people, which absolutely do dig through trash and eat food that's been thrown away by others, but also people with jobs/homes.
I think they're called Freegans.
 

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