Halfway through our meeting, bossing’s mobile rang. In the middle of the dev manager’s spiel, bossing picked up the phone & interrupted the meeting.

I was wondering if I could do that. In fact, if any of us middle management can. I doubt it. Such is life, in practice the rules do not apply to all.

After the call, which was sufficiently long and jovial, bossing said while giggling that it was his daughter & she was excited their school had a power failure & thus she was going home.

har har har

Then he went on that in his daughter’s school they have a credit-card-like method of paying for their meal (!) and that she once spent £150 (!) for a week’s worth of school dinner (!) — that’s Brit for lunch. Of course, they told the girl not to spend so much on food but her response was they want her to eat properly.

har har har sabay tumbling

Hayy the longer I work in London, the more I am faced with how different my life really is to all these Westerners. Yes, not all Brits can afford to send their kids to a private school & that having a card limit of over £150 for school dinners is not a common thing. BUT, my my my.

I can hardly afford to spend more than £5 for my lunch & I make efforts to limit my monthly allowance. I am a working class no matter how far my career goes. I don’t own the company. I don’t dictate my hours. And I certainly cannot interrupt management meetings for casual chats with my family.

I’m not sure if I blogged about it before, but there was this lady I used to work with & she moved here from Paris. Her husband’s a banker & she said it was very tough for her moving & settling in. She lamented how difficult it was to find the right (private) school, the nannies, the cleaners… She was telling me this thinking I could relate. Well, I guess yes, but in a (much) smaller scale. It was tough because my husband’s nurse wage isn’t enough. It was tough because we had to share accommodations until we could afford a house deposit. It was tough because our combined income’s very stretched with the private nursery & house let alone be able to afford a house cleaner!

While we continued on with the meeting I sat there with bossing’s children in mind. I mean how much do you think they get for an allowance? How much is their family budget? They live along Regent’s Park, you know.

Me, I live in East London. Gritty, real, pulsating & sometimes unstable. The streets are often dirty & because the fascist party BNP won a seat in the council, I’m always aware that in our area, there are a lot of closet racists.

I love my neighbourhood though. The people around us are nice. We have one or two troublemakers but they’re just a nuisance more than anything else. pogiBoy goes to a really good public school, Praise God! He’s well-liked by schoolmates, teachers, and parents. Our Pinoy friends are blooming.

But sometimes I can’t help entertaining thoughts of living somewhere much nicer. Where the streets will be clean, the views will be grand, the house cleans itself. Will I need to own my company to get there?

I hope not. We’re hoping to get there in afew years’ time. For now, austerity daw.

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If you’re not familiar with Lito Lapid & his most famous character, google it.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 4:47 pm and is filed under british nga, money matters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.