House hunting in Melbourne Diaries

Haven’t written in a while. Part of the problem is that due to various changes at work, I can’t really say much about what I do there. It’s not that I’m working on nuclear secrets or anything that top secret, but things I work on can end up in the papers so it should probably be omitted from these entries.
My main preoccupation these days, though, is house hunting, a dispiriting practice in Melbourne, where house prices are being pushed higher every weekend. The previous week I saw shacks being auctioned off for $150,000 more than their actual value, mostly because the local community are desperate to stay within that neighbourhood. Most of that community is Asian, triggering a lot of suburban racism. When I was looking at one property, some moron poked their head outside the car and screamed “I hope you like living in BANGKOK!” [well, Thai food would be a major improvement over KFC, and the children wouldn’t look so fat and stupid.] At another suburb, someone had recently graffitied “Bali Burn In Hell!” on the back wall of a petrol station – a response to two Australians who were recently executed for stupidly importing drugs into Indonesia. Not looking forward to this sort of xenophobia, which is pretty much absent where I currently live. At some of the auctions, there seems to be a lot of illegal vendor bidding, with obvious proxies pushing up the bids by $1,000 increments on the third call. What isn’t going up for auction seems ordinary – one place was alright but seemed to have been decorated by the Flanders family: sickly pink curtains, beige carpeting and religion icons. The agent was desperately trying to spruik my interest, even when I pointed out that the three – cracked and crumbling – toilets (one for each bedroom) and location right next to a primary school meant it was more for a divorced mum of four than for my own childless self.

The good news is that if I do find a place, I am in a position to bid at an auction or make an offer. This raises some awkward issues with my parents, who, increasingly isolated in their old age, want me to live in the eastern suburbs closer to them. However, I’m actively seeking a distance of separation of about 40 minute drive from their house, and have planned many of my property searches on that basis. I love my parents and am resigned to the fact that I’ll be the relative assisting them in their final years to come, but I do not want to end up in an Everybody Loves Raymond scenario where they feel they can ‘pop by’ at any time. In any case, the real estate market is cutting my options short by overpricing the properties that are near them. My parents also want to assist financially, but I am resistant to that as well. I have a cousin who did the same and now has her father living with her in a co-dependent arrangement that caused her husband to separate from her at one point (now he’s struggling to find employment, is very fat and probably depressed) – it’s partly not wanting to sponge off my elderly parents and partly not wanting to be in debt to anyone.

My brother is sending out post after post advertising his veganism and running mania. In his recent photos he looks half dead, drained of fluid. It’s amazing how faddish people have become. I’ve been jogging and doing weights for 22 years now and it would be a decade since I ate at McDonalds, yet people still feel the need to lecture on my how I’m killing myself because I drink cow’s milk, won’t take up a Zuu class, or drink kale juice (which looks like it was snotted out by a Triffid). Coconut water is a favourite one, and pretty much half my colleagues seem to subsist of it, even though a quick Google search would link it to words like ‘hoax’, ‘scam’ and ‘no health benefits at all’. Half the cafés in my street have dedicated ‘paleo’ menu sections. When I was doing my thesis of Internet politics, there was a lot of literature about the rise of the educated consumer. The reality, though, is that people with nutty beliefs like my brother (or, more correctly, his girlfriend) seek out whatever information supports their own craziness, and no matter how ridiculous those beliefs are there will be a URL link for you. As a result, this has got to be the most gullible generation in human history. At least my brother doesn’t have a religious girlfriend – he’s exactly the type to become ‘born again’ in his middle age.
For some reason I’m listening to an A-Ha album from 1985 while I write this. Pretty much every song sounds like Take On Me.