tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752611264465083204.post2945464959682292702..comments2024-03-24T17:01:24.541-04:00Comments on Crazy Eddie's Motie News: Vox explains why the drinking age is 21 all over the U.S.Pinku-Senseihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16247618351725715844noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752611264465083204.post-20187452417505471802019-08-31T20:43:34.838-04:002019-08-31T20:43:34.838-04:00I don't think a campaign like M.A.D.D. would b...I don't think a campaign like M.A.D.D. would be as successful down under as it was here for that reason.<br /><br />As for being someone who defined myself as a Californian but has been living in Michigan long enough to become native here, I can relate. Even when I move away -- my wife and I do not plan on retiring here -- should I ever do anything newsworthy, the local media will make a big deal of my having been a resident. I've seen it again and again.Pinku-Senseihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16247618351725715844noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8752611264465083204.post-26822472264307745452019-08-27T07:22:51.752-04:002019-08-27T07:22:51.752-04:00Down here, the drinking age for bee-yah is 18. Not...Down here, the drinking age for bee-yah is 18. Not sure about hard liquor. I should know that. I could Oogle with less effort than it takes me to write this sentence, but one of the many pithy sayings that I like about Australian culture is "I can't be bothered." Sure there's teen stupidity as a result. But drongos gonna drong, no matter what the age limit...<br /><br />When you wrote about having lived more than half your life in MI, it made me think. I've been in the same flat for 6 years now, approximately 10% of my life. Wow! And between my two stints in Australia, that's 10 years -- 16% of my time on Earth has been in the Southern Hemisphere. I was 47 when my then-wife and I bailed on Amerika, so I'm getting close to one-fourth of my life being spent outside the borders of the Empire, and I was no young man when we left. <br /><br /><i>(I wouldn't have been allowed to immigrate to Oz in 2005, being over 45 and therefore representing a potential burden to the national healthcare system, except my licensed bum-wiping and syringe-slinging prowess were on the national skills shortage list. So the .gov made an exception for me. One which has paid off pretty well for them so far, I might add. Productive worker and all that. Finally got my citizenship application filed a couple months ago; hoping it makes its way through the immigration bureaucracy faster than it went in Canada, where I left the country before my permanent residency was granted.)</i><br /><br />It's strange when one defines oneself as a person from "X" and then realises that they have been living in "Y" for long enough to have been more of a resident there than they were in their self-designated from-zone. Sad to say, but when I look back at where I resided longest, that would be Floriduh. One year as a yoof when my dad was stationed on an Air Force base there, and <b>16 freaking years</b> at a single stretch (1987-2003) when I went down for my last news reporting job, had to change careers into nursing, and didn't leave until my second ex arm-twisted me to move to San Francisco. Not that that was AWFUL, because Fla. had stopped being the Sun Belt and morphed into The "Florida Man" State by then. But I owned such a nice little house, free and clear of a mortgage, and had all the work I needed...<br /><br />These days, I regard myself as a resident of my ideology, not a geography. Although the East Coast American accent will always mark me.Bukko Boomerangerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02424677168216647964noreply@blogger.com