What your 'oil money' has bought them!

This is going to be a regular feature on the blog. I want you people to see for yourself what a lot of the money you are paying for gas (oil, etc.) is going toward in the country of Dubai. It has to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but has to be despised by the Western World. I guess one billion dollars to them is like a million to this country? That's what it seems. They do not care about how much this stuff costs. People, this is not something out of Star Wars or come computer-generated image. This is real. This stuff is really there. Google 'Dubai' sometime. You will be amazed (and pissed). I will have more on this city as time goes along. In the meantime, to see what is on the blog, look just below and 'click' on the word 'Dubai' and you'll see all I have posted for this.

This might just be 'Paradise' but none of us can afford going there, that's for sure.

Is Scavenging a big money maker?

Or should the title of this be "How I make $50,000 a year digging through other people's trash." That is something I do not wish to try. No telling what is going to bite you!!!

I have a clean-up day coming soon whereby I set out all my 'unwanteds, furniture, toys, junk, etc.' near the curb for the local Waste Management to come by and pick up. I have been doing this for years. Many years ago, our city used to have a general clean-up day whereby EVERYBODY would participate on the very same day and there would be stuff lining curbs for miles and miles around. One evening, I was coming home from work at 12:30AM (just before the pickup) and everybody had their stuff near the street. I was two blocks from home and I could not drive down the street because there were about a dozen cars parked in the middle of the street and people were racing up and down the street looking for 'goodies'. There were cars all over the place.

I thought about putting up barricades and charging a $10.00 'rummage fee' per car to enter. Or better yet, you could put on some kind of orange jumpsuit (or bright flourescent yellow so these people can see you) stick on an official-looking patch and tell these people that they have to pay some kind of $10.00 fee for environmental something or other. With your computer, you can design and print out a legitimate-looking ID badge, run down to Office Depot and buy a good-quality (if they have good quality) ID plastic/leather ID badgeholder and attach it my shirt. And I could get away with it.

Nowadays, you schedule an appointment for your own 'personal yearly pickup,' and they come by on the designated day and haul your stuff away. Much better. They ADVISE you not to put the stuff outside until the night before or better yet, the morning of the pickup for reasons I have stated above.

On regular garbage pickup days, I see people strolling the neighborhoods rummaging through the recyclable bins and removing the things they can get quick $$$$ on and dumping them in those big black heavy-duty (re-useable) plastic bags. They usually drive older beat-up cars, so either that's a disguise or they aren't making big bucks off the stuff....just meal money so they don't have to eat Top Ramen or Cup of Noodles all the time. I suppose the 'flea market people' roll in with their pickups earlier and retrieve furniture, toys, used toilets, mirrors, etc. I live on a cul-de-sac (no exit) in a decent neighborhood and these people really scour the place. Maybe somebody wrote publications showing the best neighborhoods to do your scavenging.

Okay...now my question is... Do you think that a lot of people are making decent sums of money and do you see a lot of scavengers around? I have a lot to say about all of this, but I really do not want to take up a lot of space on this blog. Some people might not be interested in reading this. So, in a couple days, I am going to have a continuation of this topic on one of my websites: Starving Vendors and you can read to your heart's content and you can provide me with your comments on this blog for all to read.