H

ow to become a millionaire? This is the question that has haunted me for more than four decades. I have neither become rich nor have I found the answer after all these years.

But I found that it is easy to become a millionaire in Indonesia, Vietnam, Sao Tome and Principe, Turkmenistan and Somalia. A few years back, I visited Zimbabwe, where one has to pay more than a billion Zimbabwean dollars for a loaf of bread. All of the abovementioned countries have one thing in common: many zeros in their currencies.

What I meant was becoming a millionaire in terms of greenback.

One of my friends told me it was very easy to become a millionaire. How so?

“It’s easy if somebody is born into a very rich family or is married to a man or woman who is a billionaire or a millionaire,” he teased me.

Recently, Garuda Indonesia and Visit Victoria invited a group of Indonesian journalists, including me, to visit Melbourne and its surrounding areas.

In the beautiful second largest city in Australia and capital of Victoria state, I found that there is another way to become a millionaire. In fact, our host from Visit Victoria, Tony Poletto, told me the secret, which he himself discovered recently.

“In order to become a millionaire in Melbourne, just buy some land [however expensive it may be] and turn it into a parking space here. One can easily become rich,” he told me.

It costs A$50 (Rp 500,000) to park one’s car for a few hours at the Crown Entertainment Complex, where Australia’s biggest casino and three big hotels are located. In other areas in Melbourne, normally people pay between A$15 to A$20. Tony was shocked when he parked his car at the Crown.

“I never paid A$50 for parking. It’s surprising to see that the parking space is full,” he said.

I remember back in the 1990s, the highest parking fee in Jakarta was Rp 10,000 at the famous Tanamur discotheque.

Before I left for Melbourne, named the most livable city in the world, somebody told me wine was cheaper than water. To my dismay, I found some cheaper wines cost almost the equivalent of a bottle of water. For many years, a liter of bottled water was more expensive than a liter of gasoline in Indonesia; I think it still is.

I bought a 330 ml bottle of water for A$4 (Rp 40,000) from a café. Unlike in Jakarta, “tap water”, as it is known, is free in many cafes and restaurants. In fact, there is no need to buy water in Melbourne. One can drink tap water in the toilets. Coming from Asia, people consider toilets, however clean they may be, are dirty, a haven for numerous bacteria and germs.

Believe it or not, I found a 750 ml bottle of beer costing A$100 (Rp 1 million) in one of the local bars. It was none other than Crown Ambassador, a home-grown beer, which is the most expensive beer in the country and only entered the market in 2014.

My huge dilemma was choosing what to drink: the cheaper wine, expensive water or unaffordable Crown Ambassador. My thin wallet murmured to me to go to the toilet in my hotel room, and I immediately did so because of the lure of a free drink.

Though I am a lifelong non-smoker, I have sympathy for smokers in Melbourne. One pack of Marlboro durries, as cigarettes are known locally, cost A$26 (Rp 260,000), more than 10 times more than in Jakarta. By imposing high taxes, the Australian government is determined to discourage people from buying cigarettes.

Melbourne may be the most livable city on the planet, but it is also the most expensive city in the world to have fun. Based on Deutsche Bank’s 2016 “Sin Index”, five beers and two packs of durries cost A$92 (Rp 920,000) in the city.

I was wondering how 4.8 million Melbournians cope with the expensive life.

“Compared to Jakarta, Melbourne is definitely a lot more expensive. The food, rent and transportation are more expensive,” said Leonard Nurtanto, an Indonesian student who studies at Swinburne University.

“Not to mention entertainment. But the wages are higher in Melbourne. If you work either on a part time or full-time basis, you will get a lot of money. So it balances out.”  — Veeramalla Anjaiah