How hard can it be?

Pause for thought at the traffic lights this afternoon. Under the railway is an ad for Puma shoes. There's an average looking Aussie kid holding a football, admiring the Apollonian image of the football hero. All this is familiar enough, except that the setting looks more like Havana, than Hawthorn. There's a Cuban looking old man sitting on the step, and the wall in the ad is worn with time that no surface in Melbourne would be allowed to acquire. Interesting that the very element that makes us look down on Latin countries -- the seeming hopelessness -- here is the source of a romantic aura. It suggests that rags to riches glory that is more possible in a country were there are still rags, than one like Australia where is seems less reason to struggle.