Australia.....

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”.