Things we do not need, but we want them for sure.

To survive we do not need a lot of things. Water, bread, air to breathe, shelter from cold and rain. A hot stove to cook a dinner and to warm your hands after long and wearisome day. Some clothes on our back. But in reality we need more, we want more. We want something that is ours. Our car, our home.

We want things, special things, that are beautiful and unique, or just luxurious and fashionable. We want a car to move around and not to depend on public transportation, we want a house or an apartment that belongs to us, not just a rental place.

We (especially women) want nice clothes and more than enough of them, so we could change our image and look differently all the time. But sometimes that choices take too much time and money from us and we cannot resist temptation to get more than we need and pay more than we can afford to obtain that. And we end up with lots of debts and frustrations, and with plenty of unnecessary things we cannot get rid of. Or some people become sick with hoarding.

 I never even heard about such affliction in my old country where we had the only choice usually - one type of a product, one brand and probably limited so you can just buy one piece, or one kilo or one thing of it (like one loath of bread) even if you need more. It's just 2 choices - to have it or to have not, to buy it or to buy not. So you could make an instant decision without complex procedure of making up your mind what color, size or brand  to buy. Just grab it until somebody else does and be happy, and take good care of that thing or it might get ruined by something and then you have to live without it until another occasion. Is it a good thing or not when you have multiple choices?

 I guess some things are really can be more simple. We do not need 50 brands of toothpaste or 30 brands of bread or soap at the store. Or may be 100 brands of cookies or cereals in colorful boxes. They are not good nutritional product anyway. And they are basically the same, just boxes and prices are different. So far if I met a really healthy cookie, the price was usually astronomically high, so I never had a chance to appreciate the taste - beyond my league, sorry.

Well, right now so many thins are just made in China, and there is not much quality in them. You cannot expect to buy a winter coat and wear it for 10 years in such way that it still looks good on you after that. Or shoes/boots that you can wear for 5 years and be happy with it. Things are not the same now. I used to buy boots that you could wear for 5 years but they were not made in China... 

A lot of choices probably is a good thing anyway, i just do not want to spend so much time at the store, I value my time and my money. So buying a complete crap even a cheap one is not nice either.

 I bought a bed in April 2010. It is January now and I already giving away parts of it, as I am going to throw away it soon. My mattress is absolute garbage. All springs are sticking into my ribs already. And I assumed that a bed supposed to last a long time, not half a year. Do I want a new bed? No, I don't. Do I have to buy it? I am afraid I have to.

I do not like sleeping on springs. Not much fun after all. So what is sustaining our economy - our buying power, or existence of credit cards, as our buying power is close to zero, as most of us are in a survival mode anyway? Well, I am all for choices, for lots of choices - in employment possibilities, in cheap housing, in healthy nutritional food.  Wishful thinking, I am afraid, it's not going to happen. not in my lifetime.

What do we really pay for a cheap stuff?

Another side of economy. Economy and frugality are in fashion nowadays. We all want to save money, to buy cheap. We do not want to waste our money, but... There is one small problem: what in reality do we pay for cheap things?

Here is one personal example. Recently (in April to be exact) I was moving and decided to buy some new furniture. My old bed was falling apart and my son needed a dresser. I managed to save some money. So I went to the local furniture store and bought a bedroom set, quite a bargain. I paid $500 plus tax for a bed (with a mattress), 2 dressers, two night tables. Super deal. One dresser I gave to my son and another without a mirror I used as an extra storage for small household things. I found a good use for small night tables too.

But was it really a bargain? Half a year later, what do I have? My mattress is nothing but springs sticking into my ribs at night, screaming:"we are want out, we want out!" Plastic handles from my dresser break on touch, sides are wobbly and falling off the base.

So basically now, 6 months later I again need a dresser and a bed. I wasted 500 dollars, I've bought a cheap bargain, that is not a bargain, but a piece of sh***.

Should I have saved more money to buy more expensive but better stuff? How much better? It's still made in China. It's still not wood but some pressed wood-by product. Who's gained in this case? Is it good for economy? A lot of garbage that looks real, that we are buying and throwing away together with money we've spent on it and buying again and throwing away again. Is it just a furniture? I am afraid not. Same with clothes and kitchen gadgets and other things that are good for nothing. Things that you buy, use for a short time and throw away as completely useless.

Is it how our economy going to prosper from now on? We work, spend our money on worthless things, throw them away , work again, buy things again.

Should our progress teach us something? Why can't we have cheap and good things, things that are convenient and last for a long time. Can I still buy a coat and wear it for 5 years and look nice in it even after 5 years of wearing? Or boots that last more than a year? Can I have furniture, that I can leave to my children in my will? A car that's still works perfect after 5 year lease? Why do we need that constant buying and spending money? Can somebody answer that? Hello-o-o-o! I am waiting.

What do you have to lie about if you immigrated to Canada?

Every year about 250,000 permanent residents come to Canada. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

New immigrants come to seek old things: better life, more money, something better for themselves and their children.

Most of them are not rich. They saved some money, they are qualified to come and live in Canada, but most of them still facing on of the biggest problems: finding a job.

For me it was never a problem to find a job in my old country, but when I came to Canada and became immigrant, everything changed. Nobody needed me there.

To make things worse we moved to a small town south of Hamilton and there a middle aged immigrant woman with a thick European accent that betrayed you right away, without local experience and local education was completely out of place...

The worst thing was that nobody told me anything. I was walking around trying to find a job in all wrong places, places that would never in a million years hire me because they have a lot of qualified people with Canadian experience, who is eager to take the position: just pick and choose. But they never told me that and I continued to walk around, to send my resume, trying to get noticed, to get an interview.

And they would invite you , polite listen to you and very politely tell you that they will call you next week as soon as they would make a decision. And you sit and wait and they never call, because they never intended to call anyway.

That faceless politeness was more damaging than real rudeness.

It took me quite a while before I realised how everything worked, what unemployment meant to a reluctant immigrant, to any immigrant for that matter.

I was not better or worse than anybody else. It's just every employer tried to hire the best and I definitely did not fall into that category.

I needed a lot to learn. Well, if I was alone without a family, I would have left for sure and went to a big city, like Toronto, to get more chance and more experience, but I had to consider my family so I had to stay. I tought it would be better, I was wrong...

We bought a house, kids were going to school. I spent 10 long years in a small town of Brant county, without a job or education, reluctantly. Of course I was busy, helping my kids, my husband's business. Helping, helping, helping... Nothing to myself.

Finally I got some job at Tim Horton's. I had to lie about my education. I did not put on my resume that I was a University graduate, you do not need that to serve coffee and donuts, that's for sure. I learned that in order to get any small job, you have to go down, you have to forget a lot of stuff that you know in order to earn some money. You have to lie.

Now I am in Toronto. With my present employer I did not have to lie about my education.

May be because I work for a company, that was created by my compatriots, who needed me with all my education and more. But sometimes I think: what if I tried to get the same job but in a similar Canadian company, were all my bosses were Canadian born people, would I've been hired, especially if I did not lie about my education? Probably not.