Houston Day 620 - financially better off?

A Financial Comparison Between Texas and Victoria

So I've come to a conclusion, based on some bad maths and a drive through East Texas this last weekend.  I think the average Victorian (that's my home state in Australia, for all you Yankee readers) is wealthier than your average Texan.

I've suspected this for a while.  As in Melbourne, there are a range of areas and a range of people who live in them, with varying amounts of money.  The poorest neighborhoods in Houston look a lot worse to my eyes than the poorest suburbs in Melbourne.  Is it just that Americans really know how to build ugly and boring towns and/or that having grown up in Australia I prefer the aesthetics of Melbourne? Because my drive through a different neighborhood last week, where I couldn't find the building I was teaching in for ages because barely any buildings were put together enough to have a street number, might suggest otherwise.

There seem to be so many more
abandoned houses in Houston than back home:
evidence that the GFC hit this country harder than Australia

We personally enjoy a lot more money here than we did back home, mostly thanks to an ExxonMobil salary.  And we're not alone - Houston has a lot of wealthy people and a lot of industry money and I've commented before on how that means a lot more money in the arts.

A typical house in River Oaks,
one of Houston's wealthiest neighborhoods

This subject came up again in my thoughts as Leslie and I were driving home through East Texas after an audition in Kilgore.  I noticed a surprising amount of abandoned or smashed-up houses and asked Leslie if that was normal for country towns.  She said yes, but that the houses further off the main roads would be nicer.
So I did some research.  Now we're getting into some areas that I am not naturally very switched-on about, like the difference between the average and the median, how to factor in the exchange rate, tax, etc.  But I tried.  And it seems to me that while the cost of living in Australia is astronomically higher than in the USA, you're still financially better off being an Australian resident (the kind that gets access to Medicare) than an American one, unless you're the kind of American resident that moved there to get an excellent, above-average job.
Add to that the factor that college loans and healthcare are a far greater financial burden on Americans than they are on most Australians, and I think my hunch is correct.  Anyone wanting to do the maths themselves (please, you'll do it much better than I) can look at these websites:
Texan Census
Cost of Living Comparison
Median Income in Australia
Melbourne's Worst Suburbs
A Guide to Houston Neighborhoods
Something Quite Complicated from the Australian Treasury About Tax

Houston Day 615 - Australia Day

Happy Australia Day/Happy Survival Day! Like everyone's favorite Aussie, I still call Australia home.  (What's that? ... You mean Peter Allen has not always been our historically-and-still-sometimes-very-homophobic-nation's favorite ambassador? Well, strike a light.)

I do still call Australia home, and the homesickness levels have been pretty high after returning home from our trip home.  Yes, my emotions are exactly as confused as that sounds.  Being in rehearsal this week has definitely helped.  My brain is totally fried after only three days of learning new choreography for Magic School Bus.  We ran my solo number toward the end of rehearsal today and one of the runs involved me doing the cute hip-shimmy choreography, opening my mouth to sing and then just laughing my head off because my brain froze up and couldn't remember the words.  I've been wondering why I'm so mentally tired and realising that while the aforementioned homesickness is probably not helping, part of it is not having done a musical for six months.  The director made a comment today about me being a musical theatre actress (as opposed to a straight theatre actress) and my consequent supposed ability to speak dialogue and dance at the same time....we'll see, Andrew.  We'll see.

After rehearsal I treated myself to some sweetened condensed milk and a read of A Year of Biblical Womanhood, which I'm reading for the Zeteo book club.  Brilliant book.  In particular, it has reclaimed Proverbs 31 for me into something I can read without feeling guilty or unwomanly.  Check out her blog where she touches on it here.  And then tonight I am cooking and cleaning the car and packing for my road trip to Kilgore, TX, where there's a whole lot of nothing, but an excellent Shakespeare Festival.  I think they should employ me, and I'm going to do my darnedest to convince them of that in my audition.

Houston Day 613 - all aboard the Magic School Bus!

The Magic School Bus Live!: The Climate Challenge

In keeping with what appears to be a developing tradition, starting the New Year with some kind of transport-themed show, I started rehearsals for Magic School Bus this week.  Last year was Freedom Train ("you got your ticket?"), and maybe next year I will have learned from this year's show and be taking some kind of alternative-energy-powered transport, just like we have progressed since last year and are not currently enslaving anyone in this year's show.

Right now we're learning the music, arranged and harmonised by our wonderful MD Kathy.  The confusion of learning six-part harmony/counterpoint (totally for our enjoyment only; I think the kids in the audience might not fully appreciate it) is magnified when she keeps on confusing me with one of the other cast members, whose name is Claire.  It helps (or maybe doesn't help) that, as siblings often are, I have been trained from a young age to answer to "Claire" (or Sarah, or sometimes even to my mum's sisters' names).

So it should be a good show, provided Claire and I can play the right parts. And turns out we do have a show that our family and friends can come to see, at Main Street Chelsea Market, 7pm on March 18th.  I think it costs $5.  And you will learn all about how

"We see CO2 and we see CH4,
And every day we see a little more.
Molecules are small, but they can add up fast:
Tiny stuff matters."

Sciencey.

Houston Day 607 - our trip to Australia

Ten Things I Learned on Our Trip Home

1. I will always care about my Aussie friends.
2. My sisters are two of the best people I know, and my family is pretty damn special, and my mum is a fabulous sixty-year-old.
3. About a third of my friends are significantly more pregnant or parental than they were when we left.
4. It's not Christmas without some family awkwardness.
5. Eton Mess is all the rage in Australia right now.
6. Ballarat changes, and yet it really doesn't.
7. Sausage rolls are everything they are cracked up to be.
8. These kinds of "visit home" trips are pretty emotionally exhausting.
9. Les Mis actually works better as a film than as a stage show.
10. Roger Federer's wife chooses to stay at Crown Towers.  Where my sister Claire saw her in the spa.  And then that was the first thing she told me when she came across the lobby to meet me.