Extreme Couponing

Grocery store coupons are not really a thing in Australia. Things go on sale at a reduced price each week and you can hunt out bargains, but grocery shopping the US is a different experience entirely.

It all comes down to coupons. You can get coupons in the Sunday newspapers and they sometimes appear in your mail box. You can also download them from various websites and you often get Catalina coupons from certain stores when you purchase something. Manufacturers also issue their own coupons, which can be used at most stores, in combination with the store-specific coupons. And often retailers will double (or sometimes even quadruple) the discount on a manufacturer's coupon. All this means that, if you're smart about it, you can get your groceries for next to nothing. I sometimes wonder how the grocery stores make their money. Also, I can't understand why everyone doesn't utilize the coupons. Sure it's a bit of a hassle and if you're making a lot you don't really need to worry about coupons, but every dollar saved on food is a dollar that could be used for something optional. And, let's face it, optional things are far more interesting than necessities like air, water and food.

The Hunt Begins

Last Sunday we started the hunt for a new church in our new city, Saint Paul. Actually, I had been doing a bit of research prior, but last Sunday was the first time we physically went to check things out. In Hobart we were part of an excellent Presbyterian Church, with great teaching, approachable teachers, a welcoming community, an earnest concern for the people of Hobart and an enthusiasm for the things of God. I don't like to define individual Churches by the denomination they belong to, because I know each Church will have it's individual quirks, strengths, weaknesses, flaws, emphases and foci. And I knew that American Churches would be vastly different to Aussie Churches. So we were willing to give most churches a chance, provided they had no obvious contradictions with the Bible.

We decided to visit a Lutheran Church, close to our new apartment. I've not had much to do with Lutherans before, but Martin Luther was pretty awesome, so we were happy to give it a go. That was a mistake. We arrived on time, perhaps slightly early, but as we entered the building, the 'welcomers' moved rapidly from the foyer into the main building, as if they had just remembered something important they had to do. They eventually gave us a bulletin, but there was no recognition that we were new, no directions on where we could hang our heavy Minnesotan coats, no offers to introduce us to a regular. Nothing. Just a bulletin. And it must have been fairly obvious we were new, because there were only about 40 people there.

But we stayed anyway. We reasoned that just because they weren't very good at welcoming, doesn't mean their not good people; it doesn't mean that this is a bad Church. We took seats towards the back. After the opening preamble, the band struck up, and the singing was OK; a bit too 'Hillsongy' for my taste, but not all bad. The weird and annoying thing was that the songs all ended rather abruptly, leaving a newcomer wondering if something had gone wrong and if there was to be another verse.

Nevertheless, we persevered. Then came the preaching. The passage was John 12:1-11, where Mary anoints Jesus with expensive perfume. The preacher's main point was something about extravagance. God's extravagant love for us or something, which is quite a poor exegesis of this passage. At one point she was asking the rhetorical question, why did Mary do this? Why did Mary pour perfume on Jesus feet and then wipe them with her hair? She offered up several possibilities (none of which were taken from the text) and then concluded that 'we don't really know why she did this'. But if this preacher had actually bothered to read the passage carefully, she would know that Mary did this to anoint Jesus for his burial (v7). It would have been really helpful to everyone, including me, if she had noted this and then unpacked what it actually means, instead of focusing exclusively on her chosen them: the extravagance of God's love. God's love is extravagant, but I don't think it''s a prominent theme in this passage.

We'd heard enough, and we left before the end of the service.

I know not all Lutherans Churches are like this. Surely they can't be. And I know there must be some good Churches in America. But this one wasn't one of them.

However, I think I now understand a little better  how difficult it is for new people to come to a church meeting. If it was difficult and weird for us, how much more for a non-Christian! It's so different from everything else we do in life and we as Christians should bend over backwards to make it easier for the newbies.

The Surprising Prevalence of the Check

With the advent of direct deposit and internet banking, I kind of thought cheques (or checks in the US) would be a thing of the past. Not in Minnesota. Unless they opt-in to direct deposit, University of Minnesota employees receive pay checks. We have to pay our rent in checks. As far as I can tell, checking accounts are the most common type of bank account. Some people even pay for their groceries using checks. It seems kind of backward for a country that is so advanced in so many other ways.

The most confusing part is in restaurants. After your meal, you ask for the check. You can then pay the check with a check. Or with a bill. And when you receive bills in the mail, you can pay the bill with a check or a bill. It seems that 'check' and 'bill' are interchangeable and the meaning must be determined by context. Why not have two different meanings for the two words? I dunno. I'll ask an American next time I see one.

Dangerous Weather Alert

Minnesota is one of the coldest states in the US. The record low temperature is -40 degrees. Fahrenheit or Celsius? It doesn't matter. When it's that cold, they're both the same. The weather patterns in Minnesota are perfect for producing large amounts of snow. There was at least 30 cm of snow before we arrived 2 weeks ago and there has been at least that much since. For us, snow is a novelty.

And a lot of the Minnesotans seem to enjoy it too - ice fishing and riding snowmobiles seem to be popular in this area. But the weather here also seems to be somewhat of an inconvenience  It blocks the roads and footpaths and makes just about every surface slippery. For life to continue fairly normally, the snow must be ploughed, salted, sanded, and sometimes even carted away and dumped in the Mississippi.

But the weather here is more than just an inconvenience; it's also a health hazard. If the temperature gets above freezing during the day, the snow will melt, but then it freezes again when the temperature drops overnight. So in the morning there's a layer of ice on footpaths and roads, which has led to many serious injuries. And then, when the conditions are just right, you get freezing rain. Water droplets freeze as they hit the ground, creating a layer of ice on everything. Slick, frictionless, treacherous ice.

But this all begs the question, why do people live here? Which settlers got to Minnesota and thought 'Yes, this would be a good place to live. That snow and ice and freezing rain is not annoying at all.'? This kind of weather really makes me appreciate the Aussie climate, where you can go up a mountain into the snow and enjoy it if you want to, and if you don't, you can go about your business as usual.

Why I Bought a Dumbphone

Before coming to the States, we contemplated unlocking our smartphones and locking them into an American network once we got here. This turned out to be an economically unsound plan. So, yesterday I bought new mobile phones for Amy and myself. When I say new, I mean it only in the sense that they are new devices in our lives. The phones we bought were dumbphones; that is the opposite of a smartphone. These phones are basic. You can call, text and play games. You can also browse the web, but the screens are so small and the resolution so terrible, you would never bother. This is a big change from the Samsung Galaxy Ace smartphones we had in Australia. Why the change? Well, for a start smartphone plans are much more expensive in the US compared to Australia. But more than that, it was a chance to overhaul the way we use our phones. Over the past year or so since I've had a smartphone, I've noticed myself becoming increasingly detached from the world and the people around me. I would be checking facebook and interacting with people digitally when there were people right there with me to whom I could be talking. I would be replying to emails instead of talking to Amy or playing with Micah. I pretty much became the guy in this cartoon (someone who is not me drew this cartoon).

This had to stop. And that's why I bought a dumbphone.

The Ultimate Mall

Today we went to the Mall. Of America. This place is not so much a mall as a indoor city, complete with restaurants, sporting goods shops, clothing shops, book shops, coffee shops, hobby shops, sweet shops and even an aquarium. And the whole 'mall' is built around an amusement park. This place has every kind of shop you could want. It's huge. And I've got to admit that it's pretty awesome. I found a few shops that I liked, including an old school shaving shop called The Art of Shaving and also a games shop. But despite all it's huge awesomeness, 2-metre tall Lego statues, aquarium, restaurants, amusement park rides and many departments stores, it's still just a shopping mall. It's still hard to find the things you want, the food is still mediocre and there's still an inordinate amount of people making it very hard to actually buy anything. And ultimately, it's just one more extravagant shrine to consumerism.

The Benefits of a Central Beaurocracy

There are certain things that one must do in order to work at a university in the USA. Well, at the University of Minnesota anyway. First one must check in with the International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS). Then one must ask HR in the relevant department for an email account and internet access. Then one must go to the Social Security Administration Office and wait for 2.5 hours to get a Social Security Number. Next one must apply for a University ID card. Next one must visit the payroll office for an I-9 appointment. Finally one must enrol in the university's health and dental insurance. Now this would all the fine if all of these things were in one place. But they're not. The UMN campus is huge; it sprawls across the twin cities like a rapidly expanding spider. Fortunately it's connected by a free bus but there were some places I needed to go that weren't even close to the bus route.

This is why I think UMN could benefit from a Central Bureaucracy. It would be like a massive HR department that handles all your bureaucratic needs. Think Centrelink on steroids. It would have all the forms you could ever need. It would house files on everyone in the University. It might have to replace the TCF Bank Stadium to accommodate all the forms, files, cards, stationery and bureaucrats. But it would be worth it. All of the relevant forms and personnel would be in one convenient location.

While this would be awesome in a lot of ways, the drawbacks are pretty obvious.