How some truths tends to stay the same.
Hell yeah! The article linked below triggered many surreal memories of months and months of lining up for work with other migrants at
the dollar wall in Traiskirchen, the Viennese refugee camp. Although in Sydney one had to travel from Villawood to Flemington at 4 am for a prospective heavy lifting yakka, the longish trip seemed to be generally lot more productive than the short side walk in Traiskirchen. Even if the pay was pathetic the fruit from Queensland was just divine ... and the Greek and the Italian lessons were always free!
As bloggers of broken English, we metaphorically line up along the cyber-wall and most days we get a satisfaction of being part of some kind of human experiment whose little joys include a simple comment here; a thoughtful link there; and building hope everywhere. There is even that prospect that one day we might enjoy a hearty multicultural lunch accompanied by home made grapa which will allow our conversations to puncture the surface with amazing stories about survival skills ...the perils and wonders of exile are embedded in our destiny. While the possibilities might be infinite, they can make the bravest man feel scared. We all know too well that an imperfect beings cannot make perfect decisions.
The wailing immigrant wall, is not a topic that has been explored too often in literature or movies. It's a place that reinvents itself almost on a daily basis, especially when the surreal (de) inflation hits. Who, living in the Villawood (Our Australian Hollywood) Hostel in September 1980, would disagree with the young character, a Lady to be, Mary Wein, whose parents migrated to Australia from Poland in 1920s. In her memoirs Lady Fairfax wrote,
I came home to my father one day. I was the youngest, at 22, single, female, wage-earner in NSW. Dad I have found out about money. It is lovely stuff, it makes you free. (Ach, according to my Irish spies that Lady Mary will soon feature on the cover of their very own Vogue magazine.) Through the lenses of my favourite paper, the Fairfax press, I learned about Frank Lowy, Czechoslovak-born Australian, who emerged as a successful entrepreneur whose rags-to-riches story one might have expected to google on the screen of the real Hollywood.
By sheer coincidence, it was John Newman, the Australian Yugoslav, who spread the word of various job opportunities in the Slavic pub at Cabramatta and during the October Fest of 1981. Newcomers piggybacked on tips, networks and contacts over a beer. In the life of a migrant, the big news event is not who came in first in the Bass Hill election. It was the paying job for me and for my friends. The Slavic pub, situated opposite the rail station almost next door to the Austrian Club where my Bay St, Croydon, neighbour Frank used to play on Saturday nights, was not far from a home where John Newman, the member for Cabrammatta, would be shot fourteen years later. As I later learnt the area around the pub was practically the Grand Central Station of the Sydney drug trade, where on average one person a month overdosed. [My next big dream is to examine in more details the story of migrant experiences in the 1980s so if you know of any souls who happened to cross their paths with hostels at Traiskirchen or Villawood or Coogee please let them know about it.]
Invisible Hands & Markets: Brick wall is all many Poles find in London
They call it the wailing wall, but the only act of devotion on this west London street corner is to mammon not God.
Dozens of young, newly arrived Polish men line up here every day, often all day, waiting in vain for the promise of jobs in the new Europe to materialise.
They look like a ragtag collection of heavy-set male prostitutes.
For many the days are turning into weeks as optimism turns to desperation, dreams to poverty and squalor. London was not supposed to be like this.
Back home the papers had told them by joining the European Union on May 1, hard-working Poles would be welcomed in Britain with open arms. There were tens of thousands of well-paid, legal jobs.
But the truth is the opposite. There are jobs ads at the wall, the window of Mr Patel's newsagency in Hammersmith just down from the Polish cultural centre. And, as members of the newly expanded 25-nation EU, the Poles are free to work in Britain. But most of the jobs are either gone, non-existent or so poorly paid (about $9 an hour) that they barely cover rent and food. The day's best outcome is for a builder's van to pull up looking for workers. Then, witnesses say, there's a mad scramble. But that is if the employer actually pays them.
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The local Polish newspaper, Dziennik Polski, has been deluged with calls from Poles who say they were dudded after a week of hard labour and sacked with a minute's notice [link first seen at
Isn't it really terrible to be an adult in the Free Speech Zone? What ideas are we willing to live and die for? ]
• · Chilly Puritanism defined by H.L. Mencken as the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time:
Dancing in the Streets: Revolution with a Smile
• · · James Hardies and Ethics:
Duties to rich clients
• · · · See Also
The IMF says its policies crippled Argentina
• · · · · On postmodern slogans and the difference between
Christian practice and a Starbucks purchase
• · · · · · · Prague Post has a photo and a story which has over 200 links on Google this morning. One and all news agencies are covering this story as athletes from different countries are heading to Europe for the Athens Olympics
hand grenade exploded outside a casino on Na Prikope, a street near Wenceslas Square;
Scotsman: A car exploded injuring at least 16 people in a crowded shopping area in Prague
A Man Without a Country
