I’ve been in Sydney for 4 weeks now. As is my norm, I want
to write about the place, the people, the culture and everything in between. So
here goes…..
Honestly speaking - there isn’t a lot of soul to the place. The
place is steeped in history – both old and new. New history would be the
European settlement – that’s just a couple of hundred years old. The old history
is really old - Aboriginal people are the oldest people after Africans. Inspite
of this, neither history really comes alive or has a place of its own in
Sydney. Everything seems new. Everywhere you look there are banks and hotels. There
are a lot of Asians in Australia – Indian sub-continenters, South East Asians,
Chinese… they are everywhere. They actually are everywhere..so no surprise that
they are found dime a dozen in Sydney. Australians I have met till now are
neither snobbish nor warm. I guess they are very “big city folk” like – you would
expect the same from people in NY or Mumbai. The one big surprise is their occasional
disregard for traffic signals – mainly the pedestrians. And the best part is
that, its not always the Asians breaking the law.. its normally locals. So you
would see people jay walking, jostling each other when in line etc. You even
hear honking fairly regularly. The trains are not clinically hygienic, they are
sometimes crowded. Safety is not too much of a concern. I live at Potts Point,
near Kings Cross. For the uninitiated, Kings Cross is Sydney’s so called red
light area. Four weekends here including a Christmas and no untoward incidents
of any kind. We sometimes see crazy folks on the train.. guys who are either genuinely
crazy of high on something. Hey, we are Indians – we are used to all kinds of
crazy.Lots of options to eat – for once I won’t starve, maybe reduced to
begging due to the prices, but won’t starve. I’ve had samosas, dal chawal and roti
subji and all very close to what they would taste back at home.
All in all, an Indian would feel quite at home except for
one thing – the prices.
Have you ever tried googling – Why is Australia so… and the
first option that comes is “expensive”. The main reason documented reason is
that they are too far from the rest of the world, so they have high importing
costs and as they don’t have as many illegal immigrants as US of A, their
labour costs are high. So a normal meal costs around 8 bucks, coffee costs 3
bucks, prices on boxing day after 50-80% reductions are in 3 digits (so they
are all “fraud sales” as a colleague articulated). Public transport is
reasonably priced. The good thing is that shops close at 5pm. Considering that
we don’t get out of office before 6, we really don’t have much chance of
spending any money as it is.
The two things that stand out about Australians is sense of
style and their healthy lifestyle. Both the men and women in general are drop
dead gorgeous. They are tall, slim, muscular, well groomed, even better dressed
and basically put us to shame with their bearing. And they all exercise. It is
very difficult to find an unfit Australian – if there are obese people, they
would be Asian, Italian or Spanish. A lot of folks jog to work, jog back home,
cycle up and down the street, swim, surf, hike, walk and pretty much do a lot of stuff that
we are unused to. They spend a lot of time with family. Go to any beach and you
would see the entire family out – a mom, a dad, 3-4 kids of varying ages, their
regular baggage et al. But still they enjoy themselves. It is a common sight to
see a mom teaching swimming to a baby girl, or a dad teaching a young boy to
surf or for young boys playing rugby or football on the beach.
It’s a refreshing
change after seeing our families where we don’t have time for each other – don’t
have time to talk let alone do something fun or “outdoorsy”.
