I’m sure I read “this article”:http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/11/12/1100227579853.html about Australian ex-pats in the SMH every 6 months. It’s always kinda interesting, but I swear it’s the very same article each time. A lot of the things they say in the article apply to me, or at least so I’d like to think.

bq. They are the sort of people we all would like Australians to be. Young, well-educated, well-connected, well-paid and well-disposed towards Australia, they have everything you would want as a representative of this country, except perhaps the suntan.

And I never had the suntan. Most the people surveyed left Australia for the prospect of a better job over here. I left for the prospect of _a_ job, and stayed for the same reason. Interestingly, there are 3 new Australians on faculty at Cornell this year, which seems quite high for a country of just 20 million on the other side of the world.

But the main reason I’m posting this is to bring the following paragraph to my employer’s attention.

bq. These people do not leave Australia because they hate it. Rather, they are following job opportunities, seeking greater professional challenges and, put simply, they are becoming world citizens with Australian passports. And they seem to be well paid for their efforts. One study found that more than half the expatriates surveyed had a household income exceeding $230,000.

If I was married to someone earning as much as I was, and the US dollar fell back a bit (i.e. to where it probably was when that study was taken) and we both got pay raises, and the pay raises were substantial, well we might be making over $230,000 as well. I’d settle for $115,000 on my own! If you’re reading this President Lehman…