Showing posts with label relationship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relationship. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
The Reluctant Fundamentalist quote
When we have made a final decision in life about anything, we feel at ease; calm & collected. And when we feel calm & collected, we feel happy & satisfied.
Monday, June 1, 2015
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Thousands embrace sex work to fund university costs, study finds
That's how the system works all over the world:
1. Make the people believe that the more you are educated, the better your job will be & the more you will earn (merit-based society). Only after incurring a large amount of education debt & graduation, that the former student (now grad) realizes it's all about networking (which is not as easy as deluded career officers or HR people may make you believe). So, all that merit-based idea goes right out the window.
2. Anyway, so people (parents & kids, alike) are thinking high-level education is very important for securing a better future.
3. Now, if you go to a crappy university, it will cost you a lot less, but then, your degree might be worthless, too. After all, Ivy league universities are not stupid to ask for 6-figure tuition fees for an MBA. Bachelor's degrees are not cheap, either. On top of that, an Arts degree might be cheaper than a Business degree or even an Engineering one.
Universities have now become "brands", which we used to hear in consumer products. The more a brand is famous, the higher it's price in the market. So, the more a university is famous, the higher it's tuition cost.
4. So, to make your future bright, you studied hard in secondary school & went through all those entry tests, which are mindless & meaningless & don't actually help anyone in gauging your intelligence. Heck, per my experience, rich & influential people still get their kids enrolled in "brand-name" universities without all those pesky tests.
5. Now, you went through all those entry tests, & your academics, & even amassed some extracurricular activities under your belt. You applied to universities & you got offers. But, hey, education is not free. If you are not one of the few lucky ones who were born with a silver spoon & didn't find a life partner who is either, then you have 2 options:
a. Go full time & incur a large amount of student debt. Your hope is that you will find a job after graduation, which will help you, pay off this large mountain of debt (on average, a 4 year degree is costing about 50,000 ... in any currency).
b. Go part time & work at a minimum wage job (or maybe, 2 jobs). Knowing the minimum wages of servers, baristas, cashiers, stockboys etc. (about $10/hour), it won't be enough to pay off all your tuition costs for a semester.
So, your parents are poor & cannot help you financially in your education. Part time jobs are not only cutting in your study time, but the wages from those jobs are also insufficient to cover your tuition. Full time study means you are definitely going to graduate with a mountain of debt & the current economic outlook for graduates snagging a cushy job with a nice income is slim to none.
So you are left with only one option: get into a business which pays very lucratively, much less time consuming (than working multiple part time jobs), certainly much more enjoyable, & you still get your education without debt (so you can use that income which you will earn after graduation towards living your life, instead of paying off your 6-figure loan). Seems like Sex Work is the best alternative which matches all these criteria.
Now, if you are a parent, you are thinking this is not going to happen to my kid, or if you are secondary school student, you might be rejoicing or worrying about this.
For parents: worry about it a lot. Why? Education costs are only increasing. No university anywhere in the world (except a few Northern European countries & Germany) has decreased its tuition fees. It's a huge & very lucrative business for the government & private sector (esp., the financial sector, because those loans help banks after all). Education has become a private business, be it a private elementary school in South Asia or private secondary schools in North America or private universities in developed countries.
Sure, there are public institutions for education, too, but have you seen the quality of education being provided there, recently? It's abysmal. Public schools in developing countries are in abysmal conditions. Public schools in developed countries are constantly seeing their budget cut (case in point: secondary school teachers in a few Ontario areas are on strike & hence, schools are closed, & elementary school teachers are only providing minimal teaching service, as part of their strike action). Public universities do provide a good level of education but when compare their quality with the private ones, you see a stark difference.
Plus, public universities, due to their budgets cut constantly, are also increasing their tuition costs constantly, so students pick up the tab. I had a discussion couple years ago with a student of my alma mater, Brock University. He was in the same program as I was, 10 years back, & he was at the same year, as I was, 10 years back. So, me & him, were almost 10 years apart, in the same degree, in the same university. I asked him what was his tuition cost. He told me: $7000/year. Mine was $4000/year a decade ago. So, the tuition cost went up by almost 75% in 10 years; an average annual increase of about 7.5% in tuition cost. And this university is not even a "brand-name" university, like University of Toronto, or Queen's university.
Now, that much increase may not happen in every university, everywhere. But, the general consensus is that the tuition costs are skyrocketing. The next bubble to burst in US is being said to be student loan. Students have huge loans, & they are obligated to pay those off in US (or they will be jailed), & they are not getting jobs or, if they are getting jobs, their incomes have declined.
So, more and more students are getting into sex work, as the only way to graduate with no loans. Which in turn is creating a host of other problems;
a. image / self-esteem problems in both genders (after all, you gotta be exquisitely handsome / beautiful to work as a model or even being a sugar baby; we are not talking about street prostitutes here),
b. safety & security of those kids (some may get into a prostitution ring or even become a victim of human trafficking) ,
c. kids learning to get what they want by selling their bodies
d. high chances of emotional problems, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, & perhaps, relationship problems, later in life,
e. Glamorization of sex work (porn has glamorized sex work, even though, we see a very tiny portion of pornstars making it big; most are extensively abused)
So, essentially, we humans are digging our own graves. We are destroying our own societies. Yes, some countries have avoided this problem, e.g. Germany & Scandinavian countries, where post-secondary education is free, but I am talking about the majority here. We elect governments in supposedly democratic countries, which choose to spend billions overseas with results, which are usually negative (wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya got us what ... not certainly more safety but billions of our hard-earned money got spent there with some very sketchy results).
If governments of developed countries would've chosen instead to spend that much money on education in North America & Europe, then imagine, by yourself, where would've been our education system in the past decade (that's how long these wars took)?
a. All education institutions, from elementary schools to universities would've gotten a mountain of money to spend on improving the quality of education, benefitting both educators & students alike.
b. Researchers would've gotten grants to research for technologies in environmental sustainability, energy, healthcare, & a host of other things, to avoid currently looming crises of climate change, water, food etc.
c. Those students, studying safely & securely, without any emotional or mental issues, would've gotten education without a mountain of debt.
d. When students would not be using their incomes from their new jobs towards servicing debt, & instead, would've spent on buying a new house, starting a new business, purchasing loads of products to fill that new house of theirs, travelling etc. That would've benefitted GDP of the country.
A healthy economy with our children having a bright future would've been the result.
But, hey, terrorists are coming to kill us all, so we may as well, wage wars, left, right, & center, by pimping out our own children. (sarcasm).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roughly one in 20 UK students has worked in the sex industry to earn money while at university, a new study has found. Many students are motivated by financial reasons, while others are driven by curiosity.
The study, which is part of the University of Swansea’s ‘Student Sex Work project,’ is the culmination of three years’ research involving 6,750 students.
In a climate of high tuition fees & rising living costs, over 50% of student sex workers in Britain are motivated by the need to earn money, the report said. Some 45% wish to avoid debt, it added.
The research found more men than women engage in sex work, while both sexes engage in ‘direct’ & ‘indirect’ activities. Direct sex work involves contact with clients & includes prostitution. Indirect work, however, includes modeling & phone sex.
For men, the most common sex occupations were ‘naked butler’ stripping, erotic dancing, performing in porn films & selling sexual services online. Women tended to engage in glamour modeling, erotic dancing, stripping, selling sex via phone lines & selling sex online.
The study found 4.8% of UK students have worked in the sex industry, while a fifth of students have considered turning to sex work.
A motivating factor for 56% of student sex workers was the need to pay for basic living expenses. Some 64% said they wished to fund a particular lifestyle. Avoiding or reducing debt were also major financial motivations uncovered by researchers.
Young people studying in the UK today can expect to leave university with about £50,000 of debt when maintenance loans are factored in. This figure could be larger when personal debt is included.
More than half of UK universities charge £9,000 per year for tuition fees, the maximum allowed by law.
According to the report, the findings “make it clear that for a significant number of student sex workers, sex work is embarked upon to assist with [university] fees and/or to avoid/reduce mounting student debt.”
“Thus, as long as students are expected to contribute high amounts of money to their education, & considering the rising cost of student living, it is unlikely that the number of students who turn to sex work will go down.”
Money was not the sole motivation however, with 54% of students citing curiosity as a reason for entering the sex industry. Some 59% said they thought they would enjoy the work, while 44% were motivated by sexual pleasure.
Although the majority of students reported feeling safe in their work, a quarter of respondents did not & half of those engaging in direct sex work said they feared violence while on the job.
Lead researcher, Dr. Tracey Sagar, called on universities to act on the findings.
“We now have firm evidence that students are engaged in the sex industry across the UK. The majority of these students keep their occupations secret & this is because of social stigma & fears of being judged by family & friends,” she said in a statement.
“We have to keep in mind that not all students engaged in the industry are safe or feel safe.
"It is vital now that Universities arm themselves with knowledge to better understand student sex work issues & that University services are able to support students where support is needed,” she added.
Sagar and co-researcher Debbie Jones were alarmed to discover that a fifth of students working in the sex industry sought counseling. That figure jumped to 51% for those engaged in direct sex work.
“We know through our research that some students are disclosing to University staff, but we also know that staff & support services can feel unconfident or unsure about their ability to offer the right support,” Jones said.
“This is why the next stage of the project is to develop & implement training packages for University staff & student support services,” she added.
Sagar argued it was important to include men in any initiatives. “Sex work is widely but wrongly perceived to be an occupation that is predominantly taken up by women,” she said.
“This means that males may fall through the student support net because they are not associated with sex work occupations.”
1. Make the people believe that the more you are educated, the better your job will be & the more you will earn (merit-based society). Only after incurring a large amount of education debt & graduation, that the former student (now grad) realizes it's all about networking (which is not as easy as deluded career officers or HR people may make you believe). So, all that merit-based idea goes right out the window.
2. Anyway, so people (parents & kids, alike) are thinking high-level education is very important for securing a better future.
3. Now, if you go to a crappy university, it will cost you a lot less, but then, your degree might be worthless, too. After all, Ivy league universities are not stupid to ask for 6-figure tuition fees for an MBA. Bachelor's degrees are not cheap, either. On top of that, an Arts degree might be cheaper than a Business degree or even an Engineering one.
Universities have now become "brands", which we used to hear in consumer products. The more a brand is famous, the higher it's price in the market. So, the more a university is famous, the higher it's tuition cost.
4. So, to make your future bright, you studied hard in secondary school & went through all those entry tests, which are mindless & meaningless & don't actually help anyone in gauging your intelligence. Heck, per my experience, rich & influential people still get their kids enrolled in "brand-name" universities without all those pesky tests.
5. Now, you went through all those entry tests, & your academics, & even amassed some extracurricular activities under your belt. You applied to universities & you got offers. But, hey, education is not free. If you are not one of the few lucky ones who were born with a silver spoon & didn't find a life partner who is either, then you have 2 options:
a. Go full time & incur a large amount of student debt. Your hope is that you will find a job after graduation, which will help you, pay off this large mountain of debt (on average, a 4 year degree is costing about 50,000 ... in any currency).
b. Go part time & work at a minimum wage job (or maybe, 2 jobs). Knowing the minimum wages of servers, baristas, cashiers, stockboys etc. (about $10/hour), it won't be enough to pay off all your tuition costs for a semester.
So, your parents are poor & cannot help you financially in your education. Part time jobs are not only cutting in your study time, but the wages from those jobs are also insufficient to cover your tuition. Full time study means you are definitely going to graduate with a mountain of debt & the current economic outlook for graduates snagging a cushy job with a nice income is slim to none.
So you are left with only one option: get into a business which pays very lucratively, much less time consuming (than working multiple part time jobs), certainly much more enjoyable, & you still get your education without debt (so you can use that income which you will earn after graduation towards living your life, instead of paying off your 6-figure loan). Seems like Sex Work is the best alternative which matches all these criteria.
Now, if you are a parent, you are thinking this is not going to happen to my kid, or if you are secondary school student, you might be rejoicing or worrying about this.
For parents: worry about it a lot. Why? Education costs are only increasing. No university anywhere in the world (except a few Northern European countries & Germany) has decreased its tuition fees. It's a huge & very lucrative business for the government & private sector (esp., the financial sector, because those loans help banks after all). Education has become a private business, be it a private elementary school in South Asia or private secondary schools in North America or private universities in developed countries.
Sure, there are public institutions for education, too, but have you seen the quality of education being provided there, recently? It's abysmal. Public schools in developing countries are in abysmal conditions. Public schools in developed countries are constantly seeing their budget cut (case in point: secondary school teachers in a few Ontario areas are on strike & hence, schools are closed, & elementary school teachers are only providing minimal teaching service, as part of their strike action). Public universities do provide a good level of education but when compare their quality with the private ones, you see a stark difference.
Plus, public universities, due to their budgets cut constantly, are also increasing their tuition costs constantly, so students pick up the tab. I had a discussion couple years ago with a student of my alma mater, Brock University. He was in the same program as I was, 10 years back, & he was at the same year, as I was, 10 years back. So, me & him, were almost 10 years apart, in the same degree, in the same university. I asked him what was his tuition cost. He told me: $7000/year. Mine was $4000/year a decade ago. So, the tuition cost went up by almost 75% in 10 years; an average annual increase of about 7.5% in tuition cost. And this university is not even a "brand-name" university, like University of Toronto, or Queen's university.
Now, that much increase may not happen in every university, everywhere. But, the general consensus is that the tuition costs are skyrocketing. The next bubble to burst in US is being said to be student loan. Students have huge loans, & they are obligated to pay those off in US (or they will be jailed), & they are not getting jobs or, if they are getting jobs, their incomes have declined.
So, more and more students are getting into sex work, as the only way to graduate with no loans. Which in turn is creating a host of other problems;
a. image / self-esteem problems in both genders (after all, you gotta be exquisitely handsome / beautiful to work as a model or even being a sugar baby; we are not talking about street prostitutes here),
b. safety & security of those kids (some may get into a prostitution ring or even become a victim of human trafficking) ,
c. kids learning to get what they want by selling their bodies
d. high chances of emotional problems, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, & perhaps, relationship problems, later in life,
e. Glamorization of sex work (porn has glamorized sex work, even though, we see a very tiny portion of pornstars making it big; most are extensively abused)
So, essentially, we humans are digging our own graves. We are destroying our own societies. Yes, some countries have avoided this problem, e.g. Germany & Scandinavian countries, where post-secondary education is free, but I am talking about the majority here. We elect governments in supposedly democratic countries, which choose to spend billions overseas with results, which are usually negative (wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya got us what ... not certainly more safety but billions of our hard-earned money got spent there with some very sketchy results).
If governments of developed countries would've chosen instead to spend that much money on education in North America & Europe, then imagine, by yourself, where would've been our education system in the past decade (that's how long these wars took)?
a. All education institutions, from elementary schools to universities would've gotten a mountain of money to spend on improving the quality of education, benefitting both educators & students alike.
b. Researchers would've gotten grants to research for technologies in environmental sustainability, energy, healthcare, & a host of other things, to avoid currently looming crises of climate change, water, food etc.
c. Those students, studying safely & securely, without any emotional or mental issues, would've gotten education without a mountain of debt.
d. When students would not be using their incomes from their new jobs towards servicing debt, & instead, would've spent on buying a new house, starting a new business, purchasing loads of products to fill that new house of theirs, travelling etc. That would've benefitted GDP of the country.
A healthy economy with our children having a bright future would've been the result.
But, hey, terrorists are coming to kill us all, so we may as well, wage wars, left, right, & center, by pimping out our own children. (sarcasm).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roughly one in 20 UK students has worked in the sex industry to earn money while at university, a new study has found. Many students are motivated by financial reasons, while others are driven by curiosity.
The study, which is part of the University of Swansea’s ‘Student Sex Work project,’ is the culmination of three years’ research involving 6,750 students.
In a climate of high tuition fees & rising living costs, over 50% of student sex workers in Britain are motivated by the need to earn money, the report said. Some 45% wish to avoid debt, it added.
The research found more men than women engage in sex work, while both sexes engage in ‘direct’ & ‘indirect’ activities. Direct sex work involves contact with clients & includes prostitution. Indirect work, however, includes modeling & phone sex.
For men, the most common sex occupations were ‘naked butler’ stripping, erotic dancing, performing in porn films & selling sexual services online. Women tended to engage in glamour modeling, erotic dancing, stripping, selling sex via phone lines & selling sex online.
The study found 4.8% of UK students have worked in the sex industry, while a fifth of students have considered turning to sex work.
A motivating factor for 56% of student sex workers was the need to pay for basic living expenses. Some 64% said they wished to fund a particular lifestyle. Avoiding or reducing debt were also major financial motivations uncovered by researchers.
Young people studying in the UK today can expect to leave university with about £50,000 of debt when maintenance loans are factored in. This figure could be larger when personal debt is included.
More than half of UK universities charge £9,000 per year for tuition fees, the maximum allowed by law.
According to the report, the findings “make it clear that for a significant number of student sex workers, sex work is embarked upon to assist with [university] fees and/or to avoid/reduce mounting student debt.”
“Thus, as long as students are expected to contribute high amounts of money to their education, & considering the rising cost of student living, it is unlikely that the number of students who turn to sex work will go down.”
Money was not the sole motivation however, with 54% of students citing curiosity as a reason for entering the sex industry. Some 59% said they thought they would enjoy the work, while 44% were motivated by sexual pleasure.
Although the majority of students reported feeling safe in their work, a quarter of respondents did not & half of those engaging in direct sex work said they feared violence while on the job.
Lead researcher, Dr. Tracey Sagar, called on universities to act on the findings.
“We now have firm evidence that students are engaged in the sex industry across the UK. The majority of these students keep their occupations secret & this is because of social stigma & fears of being judged by family & friends,” she said in a statement.
“We have to keep in mind that not all students engaged in the industry are safe or feel safe.
"It is vital now that Universities arm themselves with knowledge to better understand student sex work issues & that University services are able to support students where support is needed,” she added.
Sagar and co-researcher Debbie Jones were alarmed to discover that a fifth of students working in the sex industry sought counseling. That figure jumped to 51% for those engaged in direct sex work.
“We know through our research that some students are disclosing to University staff, but we also know that staff & support services can feel unconfident or unsure about their ability to offer the right support,” Jones said.
“This is why the next stage of the project is to develop & implement training packages for University staff & student support services,” she added.
Sagar argued it was important to include men in any initiatives. “Sex work is widely but wrongly perceived to be an occupation that is predominantly taken up by women,” she said.
“This means that males may fall through the student support net because they are not associated with sex work occupations.”
Friday, May 22, 2015
As migrants we leave home in search of a future, but we lose the past
A powerful piece ... only those will understand it who have left their homeland, voluntarily or involuntarily, for whatever that reason might be.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is not a sob story. But the tears came anyhow. They crept up on me at the 70th birthday party of a friend a few years back. We were celebrating in a hotel ballroom in Letchworth in Hertfordshire & I had struck up a conversation with distant acquaintance .... We talked about the primary school she worked at & the secondary school I went to, which were just 5 minutes’ walk apart in nearby Stevenage ... & about the local council & football team. She asked me when I was going back to New York, where I’d been living for 7 years at that point, & I told her, the next afternoon.
“You’re so lucky,” she said. “You’ve done so well for yourself. Your mum would be so proud.”
And that was when my eyes started welling up. Now it could have been any number of triggers – alcohol, jet lag or the mention of my mother, who died decades ago. But what really upset me was realising that in this town, people I wasn’t even particularly close to knew me in a way that nobody else would. They knew place names that no one else in my regular life (apart from my brothers) knew. And yes, they not only knew my mother but they knew me when I had a mother.
The following day I would fly to a place where people knew a version of me where very little of any of this applied. My friends in New York knew I had brothers & had lost my mother. They knew I grew up working class in a town near London. The rest was footnotes – too much information for transient people, including myself who would soon move to Chicago, who were travelling light.
In short, I cried for bits of my life that had been lost. Not discarded; but atrophied. Huge, formative parts of my childhood & youth that I could no longer explain because you would really have had to have been there but without which I didn’t make much sense.
Migration involves loss. Even when you’re privileged, as I am, & move of your own free will, as I did, you feel it. Migrants, almost by definition, move with the future in mind. But their journeys inevitably involve excising part of their past. It’s not workers who emigrate but people. And whenever they move they leave part of themselves behind. Efforts to reclaim that which has been lost result in something more than nostalgia but, if you’re lucky, less than exile. And the losses keep coming. Funerals, christenings, graduations & weddings missed – milestones you couldn’t make because your life is elsewhere.
If you’re not lucky then your departure was forced by poverty, war or environmental disaster – or all 3 – & your destination is not of your choosing but merely where you could get to or where you were put. In that case the loss is bound to be all the more keen & painful.
In Gender & Nation, Nira Yuval-Davis describes how Palestinian children in Lebanese refugee camps would call “home” a village which may not have even existed for several decades but from which their parents were exiled.
You may have to leave behind your partner, your kids & your home. In time, in order to survive, you may have to let go of your language, your religion & your sense of self.
“You can have a lot of love for your children, but it cannot fill their stomachs,” Mercedes Sanchez told me as she stood outside her tarpaulin home in the New Orleans tent city where she was helping rebuild the city after Hurricane Katrina. She paid coyote people smugglers $3,000 to bring her across the desert from Mexico. Along the way she was stripped naked by bandits & robbed at gunpoint. “In Mexico I made 200 pesos a week. I can make that in 2 hours here,” she said. “When you walk through the desert, you think you’re never going to arrive. It costs a lot of money & a lot of tears.”
I was lucky. I come from a travelling people. Those from an island as small as Barbados, buffeted by the winds of global economics & politics, tend to go where the work is. My great- grandfather helped build the Panama canal. My parents came to England from Barbados in the early sixties. Of my 14 aunts & uncles, 9 left the island for significant periods of time. I have cousins in Canada, Britain, the US & the Caribbean, some of whom I’ve never met.
Like many black Britons of my generation, I was raised in the 70s ambivalent to my immediate surroundings. The soil I stood on & was born on to was less where I was from than where I happened to be. For several years neither me nor my brothers lived in England. My mother hung a map of Barbados on the wall & stuck a Bajan flag on the door. She kept her accent, lost her passport & told us if we weren’t good enough for the West Indian cricket team, we could always play for England. On the dinner table stood a bottle of Windmill hot pepper sauce that only she used – a taste of a home to which we were welcome but never took to. When she died suddenly, we honoured her wish to be shipped “home” where she now lays buried within earshot of the Caribbean sea.
I fell in love with an American & here we are. My sense of loss is primarily cultural. Tapping a football to my son in the park & watching him pick it up ... ; asking why there’s an armed policeman in his elementary school (“It’s a good question,” said my wife. “But that’s not particularly remarkable here”); seeing nieces & nephews grow up on Facebook; returning for a holiday to find all the teenagers you know wearing onesies & using catchphrases from shows you’ve never heard of; seeing or hearing something that reminds you of home, your first home, & realising you lack too many common reference points to share it with those with whom you share your life now.
Migration is a good thing, so long as it is voluntary. I believe in the free movement of people. But that’s not to say it doesn’t have a price. I have choices that most of the world’s migrants don’t have. I can go back. And I’m happy where I am.
This is not a sob story. But every now & then, when I least expect them, the tears come anyhow.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is not a sob story. But the tears came anyhow. They crept up on me at the 70th birthday party of a friend a few years back. We were celebrating in a hotel ballroom in Letchworth in Hertfordshire & I had struck up a conversation with distant acquaintance .... We talked about the primary school she worked at & the secondary school I went to, which were just 5 minutes’ walk apart in nearby Stevenage ... & about the local council & football team. She asked me when I was going back to New York, where I’d been living for 7 years at that point, & I told her, the next afternoon.
“You’re so lucky,” she said. “You’ve done so well for yourself. Your mum would be so proud.”
And that was when my eyes started welling up. Now it could have been any number of triggers – alcohol, jet lag or the mention of my mother, who died decades ago. But what really upset me was realising that in this town, people I wasn’t even particularly close to knew me in a way that nobody else would. They knew place names that no one else in my regular life (apart from my brothers) knew. And yes, they not only knew my mother but they knew me when I had a mother.
The following day I would fly to a place where people knew a version of me where very little of any of this applied. My friends in New York knew I had brothers & had lost my mother. They knew I grew up working class in a town near London. The rest was footnotes – too much information for transient people, including myself who would soon move to Chicago, who were travelling light.
In short, I cried for bits of my life that had been lost. Not discarded; but atrophied. Huge, formative parts of my childhood & youth that I could no longer explain because you would really have had to have been there but without which I didn’t make much sense.
Migration involves loss. Even when you’re privileged, as I am, & move of your own free will, as I did, you feel it. Migrants, almost by definition, move with the future in mind. But their journeys inevitably involve excising part of their past. It’s not workers who emigrate but people. And whenever they move they leave part of themselves behind. Efforts to reclaim that which has been lost result in something more than nostalgia but, if you’re lucky, less than exile. And the losses keep coming. Funerals, christenings, graduations & weddings missed – milestones you couldn’t make because your life is elsewhere.
If you’re not lucky then your departure was forced by poverty, war or environmental disaster – or all 3 – & your destination is not of your choosing but merely where you could get to or where you were put. In that case the loss is bound to be all the more keen & painful.
In Gender & Nation, Nira Yuval-Davis describes how Palestinian children in Lebanese refugee camps would call “home” a village which may not have even existed for several decades but from which their parents were exiled.
You may have to leave behind your partner, your kids & your home. In time, in order to survive, you may have to let go of your language, your religion & your sense of self.
“You can have a lot of love for your children, but it cannot fill their stomachs,” Mercedes Sanchez told me as she stood outside her tarpaulin home in the New Orleans tent city where she was helping rebuild the city after Hurricane Katrina. She paid coyote people smugglers $3,000 to bring her across the desert from Mexico. Along the way she was stripped naked by bandits & robbed at gunpoint. “In Mexico I made 200 pesos a week. I can make that in 2 hours here,” she said. “When you walk through the desert, you think you’re never going to arrive. It costs a lot of money & a lot of tears.”
I was lucky. I come from a travelling people. Those from an island as small as Barbados, buffeted by the winds of global economics & politics, tend to go where the work is. My great- grandfather helped build the Panama canal. My parents came to England from Barbados in the early sixties. Of my 14 aunts & uncles, 9 left the island for significant periods of time. I have cousins in Canada, Britain, the US & the Caribbean, some of whom I’ve never met.
Like many black Britons of my generation, I was raised in the 70s ambivalent to my immediate surroundings. The soil I stood on & was born on to was less where I was from than where I happened to be. For several years neither me nor my brothers lived in England. My mother hung a map of Barbados on the wall & stuck a Bajan flag on the door. She kept her accent, lost her passport & told us if we weren’t good enough for the West Indian cricket team, we could always play for England. On the dinner table stood a bottle of Windmill hot pepper sauce that only she used – a taste of a home to which we were welcome but never took to. When she died suddenly, we honoured her wish to be shipped “home” where she now lays buried within earshot of the Caribbean sea.
I fell in love with an American & here we are. My sense of loss is primarily cultural. Tapping a football to my son in the park & watching him pick it up ... ; asking why there’s an armed policeman in his elementary school (“It’s a good question,” said my wife. “But that’s not particularly remarkable here”); seeing nieces & nephews grow up on Facebook; returning for a holiday to find all the teenagers you know wearing onesies & using catchphrases from shows you’ve never heard of; seeing or hearing something that reminds you of home, your first home, & realising you lack too many common reference points to share it with those with whom you share your life now.
Migration is a good thing, so long as it is voluntary. I believe in the free movement of people. But that’s not to say it doesn’t have a price. I have choices that most of the world’s migrants don’t have. I can go back. And I’m happy where I am.
This is not a sob story. But every now & then, when I least expect them, the tears come anyhow.
Monday, May 18, 2015
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Criminal Minds, S1E7 (quote)
I don't completely agree with this statement that you have to be cunning with cunning people, but then, I also understand that yes, you have to lower yourself to their standards when you are dealing with them, because otherwise, you will be taken advantage of. I guess, one just have pick & choose the moment when to lower one's standards & when not to ... sort of we all need to pick & choose our battles.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Criminal Minds, S1E5 (Quote)
Never love something more than it should be loved because obsession is never appreciated & healthy for anyone. Be it loving your religion, your work, your spouse or significant other, your family, or any of your material possessions.
Everything in moderation. (that's what Islam also teaches us).
Everything in moderation. (that's what Islam also teaches us).
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
A Dark Truth, Quote 4
A very important line for today's world. Now, everything is up for sale; be it tangible, i.e. anything from internal body organs to the lives of living beings (humans, animals & plants), & anything existing outside in our surroundings.
Or be it intangible, i.e. our spiritual & secular beliefs, thoughts & opinions, or our feelings ... they are for sale; be it the religious leaders in the world who change their positions depending on the buyer & sale price or scientists & politicians who change their positions depending on which lobbyist or industry is giving them money & votes or a wife's love for her husband, depending on how much jewelry & money he is giving her for her shopping.
Or be it intangible, i.e. our spiritual & secular beliefs, thoughts & opinions, or our feelings ... they are for sale; be it the religious leaders in the world who change their positions depending on the buyer & sale price or scientists & politicians who change their positions depending on which lobbyist or industry is giving them money & votes or a wife's love for her husband, depending on how much jewelry & money he is giving her for her shopping.
Everything in this world, indeed, has a price but are we willing to sell it?
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Using Facebook to spy on your 'friends' can cause depression
This news or study is not telling something new. It's old news that social media is causing depression in people, all over the world.
But what is astounding here is that most people still take what other people post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media site as the proof that those friends of theirs have a much better life than their own; a great house, travelling to exotic locations, having great food; essentially, living the luxurious life.
Then, if they are single, they go into depression & stress. If they are in a relationship, then they not only go into depression themselves, but also start to create a rift in their relationship by constantly fighting with their partner that why aren't they are living the luxurious life.
What those people forget that what their friends are posting on social media is without context & only half-truth. They are not posting anything negative about their life. Nobody does. Frankly, if everyone is living such a luxurious & beautiful life, then world should be a lot more enjoyable place; we wouldn't be constantly hearing about divorces, runaway kids, people being laid off from jobs, people not protesting against austerity, minimum wages, & debts, etc.
We may think that people should use common sense when they see things (pictures, status, comments) on social media by their friends & realize that it's only tiny side of the whole picture. But then, like a colleague of mine once said to me in 2008, "common sense is not as common as you might think."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Using Facebook to spy on friends in order to compare their achievements with yours can lead to depression & may have a detrimental effect on mental health, a new study from the University of Missouri has found.
But when Facebook is used to see how well an acquaintance is doing in terms of their finances or to see how happy one of your friends is in their relationship, then this behavior can cause envy among users.
“Facebook can be a very positive resource for many people, but if it used as a way to size up one’s own accomplishments against others, it can have a negative effect,” said Duffy.
Facebook users should be aware that it’s important to have social media literacy, said Edson Tandoc, assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, who coauthored the study.
“Users should be self-aware that positive self-presentation is an important motivation in using social media, so it is to be expected that many users would only post positive things about themselves. This self-awareness, hopefully, can lessen feelings of envy,” said Tandoc.
But what is astounding here is that most people still take what other people post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media site as the proof that those friends of theirs have a much better life than their own; a great house, travelling to exotic locations, having great food; essentially, living the luxurious life.
Then, if they are single, they go into depression & stress. If they are in a relationship, then they not only go into depression themselves, but also start to create a rift in their relationship by constantly fighting with their partner that why aren't they are living the luxurious life.
What those people forget that what their friends are posting on social media is without context & only half-truth. They are not posting anything negative about their life. Nobody does. Frankly, if everyone is living such a luxurious & beautiful life, then world should be a lot more enjoyable place; we wouldn't be constantly hearing about divorces, runaway kids, people being laid off from jobs, people not protesting against austerity, minimum wages, & debts, etc.
We may think that people should use common sense when they see things (pictures, status, comments) on social media by their friends & realize that it's only tiny side of the whole picture. But then, like a colleague of mine once said to me in 2008, "common sense is not as common as you might think."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Using Facebook to spy on friends in order to compare their achievements with yours can lead to depression & may have a detrimental effect on mental health, a new study from the University of Missouri has found.
But when Facebook is used to see how well an acquaintance is doing in terms of their finances or to see how happy one of your friends is in their relationship, then this behavior can cause envy among users.
“Facebook can be a very positive resource for many people, but if it used as a way to size up one’s own accomplishments against others, it can have a negative effect,” said Duffy.
Facebook users should be aware that it’s important to have social media literacy, said Edson Tandoc, assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, who coauthored the study.
“Users should be self-aware that positive self-presentation is an important motivation in using social media, so it is to be expected that many users would only post positive things about themselves. This self-awareness, hopefully, can lessen feelings of envy,” said Tandoc.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
"Matrix" Quote
This is one of the primary reasons of all this chaos & discontent in the world on the international level & depression & stress on personal levels. We all sane adults know the difference between right & wrong, but we still deliberately choose something wrong to do because we gain something, in the short term, at the expense of someone else or even the society.
Be it the war vets (i.e. American Sniper) suffering from PTSD (mind & heart are in conflict; mind says all that killing was necessary, heart says otherwise.), or scores of educated people unemployed due to managements' cost cutting when top bosses' bonuses & perks cost more than laid-off employees' payroll (poverty & elite's wealth, both keep increasing) or hiring based on connections (networking) instead of merit or partners in a relationship cheating on each other or etc. etc. etc.
Ironically, this chaos in the world is due to the actions of "educated" & "civilized" people, regardless of any racial, ethnic, cultural, regional, or linguistic characteristics. The majority is choosing the wrong path (when confronted with a choice) in whatever capacity it can, whenever they can, wherever they are in this world. It's starting to seem that the most honest is that guy in the deep rainforest in the Amazon or in the middle of an African desert who has no education of any sort. To me, it seems like the world has not developed at all.
Always know both right & wrong paths, but always walk on the right one !!!
Be it the war vets (i.e. American Sniper) suffering from PTSD (mind & heart are in conflict; mind says all that killing was necessary, heart says otherwise.), or scores of educated people unemployed due to managements' cost cutting when top bosses' bonuses & perks cost more than laid-off employees' payroll (poverty & elite's wealth, both keep increasing) or hiring based on connections (networking) instead of merit or partners in a relationship cheating on each other or etc. etc. etc.
Ironically, this chaos in the world is due to the actions of "educated" & "civilized" people, regardless of any racial, ethnic, cultural, regional, or linguistic characteristics. The majority is choosing the wrong path (when confronted with a choice) in whatever capacity it can, whenever they can, wherever they are in this world. It's starting to seem that the most honest is that guy in the deep rainforest in the Amazon or in the middle of an African desert who has no education of any sort. To me, it seems like the world has not developed at all.
Always know both right & wrong paths, but always walk on the right one !!!
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Alcoholism: Social & Personal (biological) Poison
I watched 2 movies in succession in the past week & coincidentally both on alcoholism.
One thing I don't understand how people all over the world (esp. in Western countries) willingly & happily ingest this poison (scientifically proven that alcohol is a poison). Besides being a biological poison for your own body, it's also a social poison where it creates problems (family breakdown, assaults, drunk driving deaths causing grief for another family too). But still, alcohol is the central to everything is done in the Western world, from professional (e.g. wine & cheese networking) to personal.
Frankly, it seems that people who don't drink are much more resilient & bold. They face problems without drowning themselves in booze. They don't wait for booze to lower their inhibitions to do something.
One thing I don't understand how people all over the world (esp. in Western countries) willingly & happily ingest this poison (scientifically proven that alcohol is a poison). Besides being a biological poison for your own body, it's also a social poison where it creates problems (family breakdown, assaults, drunk driving deaths causing grief for another family too). But still, alcohol is the central to everything is done in the Western world, from professional (e.g. wine & cheese networking) to personal.
Frankly, it seems that people who don't drink are much more resilient & bold. They face problems without drowning themselves in booze. They don't wait for booze to lower their inhibitions to do something.
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