Why I'm leaving America

Last night I was riding my bike to a roleplaying game with friends. I was in a bike lane, doing all the right things. A white ute (truck) drove past me with three black guys in their late 20s, and one of them threw a mostly empty drink container at me. (Mostly empty as in, it had melting ice left in the bottom).

After they threw it, they turned around in the cab to laugh at me.

Is it relevent that the guys were black? Is it relevent they missed? I don't know. I still felt like shit. (A slightly more racist shit, but thats another blog post).

Our roleplaying game is set in a (mostly) realistic modern setting. During the game our players were in a club and a bunch of cars outside on the road caught fire and exploded. I told everyone in the club that there was a fire out the front, and asked people to please leave via the emergency exit on the other side of the building. This was met with derision by the other players - of course people will panic if I tell everyone that there's a fire outside, and I was being irresponsible in the context of the game. The simulated people freaked out and rushed the door (mostly the front door).

Would people freak out so much? I don't know, but what my character did is exactly what I would have done in Australia. Oh, a fire. Lets tell people to leave via the safe exit. Loud, authoritative, confident. Honestly, I think australians would have quietly left just like I said.

I honestly think I made the right call. The other players in our game gave me weird looks. Do they not trust people around them? What world do they live in?

What world do I live in? Surely it would be the same in Australia? ???

Three months ago my housemate came home at 2am supporting a drunk guy who had a gushing wound on his face. She works in a bar, and that night she'd been was standing out the front with her bar manager. He was pretty drunk. Some guys randomly showed up to the bar looking for a fight, and he got punched in the face with brass knuckles. He had a cut about as long as his eyebrow. The cut went to the bone. When he closed his eye, the skin opened and you could see inside his face. I have no medical experience, but I'm pretty sure that if his face got infected he might lose an eye.

He needed to go to the hospital, but he was adamant that we mustn't take him because he didn't have insurance. I had a crappy little camping med kit with some alcohol swabs and gauze. I swabbed the wound as best I could and used some bandaids to keep the wound closed then used some gaff tape to hold gauze on top of the wound & absorb the bleeding. Apparently he went to a private medical clinic the next day (12 hours after the injury), and they held a fundraiser for him at the bar to pay for his medical expenses.

A friend of a friend had her appendix burst while she was travelling in Ireland. She was rushed to the hospital and treated, and now she's fine. Apparently if her appendix burst while she was home in the USA, she'd have had to declare bankruptcy, and as a result she'd be incapable of ever getting a mortgage or renting a home for the rest of her life.

I shouldn't worry - I have health insurance because I have a job. But I worry anyway.

Last week as I was leaving the train station someone had their wallet ripped from their hand about 2 meters from me.

...

Frankly, I'm a little bit afraid of going outside here. I'm afraid of people on the street. I have a dozen more little stories - One of my friends got shot in the leg last year, and his wife was held up at gunpoint. I've had my bike seat & bike lights stolen. I've seen 2 barfights break out into the street while I cycled home.

I keep telling myself its not actually that dangerous, and that I'm much more likely to die of skin cancer in australia than get shot or stabbed in Oakland (true!). But I know how to be vigilent with the sun. Being vigilent around people requires a certain kind of hardening that I'm really not used to.

And the sad thing is, most of the people I meet here are fantastic. The bay area has a much higher ratio of interested, interesting people doing awesome stuff than Sydney. But its a city of extremes (a country of extremes). In Sydney basically everyone is middle classed. In Sydney I don't feel like an arsehole when I walk down the street and don't give money to homeless people (they won't starve without me). I don't feel like I'm going to get mugged, or stabbed, or have drinks thrown at me when I ride my bike. Or the dozens of other stories.

I could harden up, but I don't want to be hard. I want to be vulnerable, and passionate and vibrant. I want to be able to call the police and trust that they won't beat me up. I want to feel safe when I go outside. I don't want anybody to starve on the street while I get my fancy catered lunches. I don't want to be wondering if people will pull out a gun when I walk past them at night.

So fuck it, I'm leaving. Its been a blast. I got to meet a lot of my heroes in the tech world. You're all probably stronger than I am, but I don't want to be that kind of strong.

And I don't need to put up with this crap anymore.

I've told Lever I'm leaving, and now I honestly can't wait to book my flights back to Aus. I'm aiming for late Nov. It might be much earlier.