Us and Them

It's late Fall here, so the leaves are still pretty!

So I came to Australia with my boss a few years ago when I first started at UT and met the good people I will be working with.  That trip laid the ideas that seeded some of my research and approaches and really led to me being here now.  That was really my first time out of the country, aside from one night in Montreal to see the String Cheese Incident play, back when you didn't even need a passport to head over the border to Canada.  While Australia is on the other side of the world and there are naturally some pretty big differences over here, for the most part there may be more similarities to be honest, especially in cities.  The following are the ones that have really been clear to me having only been here a few days.

DIFFERENCES

Money - Colorful bills, smoother plasticy feel, translucent windows.  Coins are large and they have 50, 20, 10, and 5 cent pieces, no pennies, and also coins for $1 and $2, the two-dollar coins being a bit annoyingly small.  The coins mostly feature the Queen of England herself (colonial living) and the various Australian mammals we all know and love.  At least kangaroos and platypi. I'm not quite sure how I feel about the koala.  Seem a bit too secretive and scheming to me.

Coffee - All espresso based, which to be honest is a bit delicate for me as I don't take cream and am used to two big hot mugs of drip each morning.  Here I have resigned to a few tall blacks a day (shot of espresso with water) and find the caffeine levels the same, but my morning ritual has been compromised, that is for sure!  I'm just not much of a sipper, never have been, so I will have to figure out something else to do with my time.

They don't spell worldwide R&B sensation Boyz II Men exactly right, but we will forgive,

Driving - Left-side of the road.  I have yet to drive here myself and while I think I will be okay at it, walking around and crossing streets can be a bit odd at first.  I have always prided myself on my street-crossing abilities, having forged intimate knowledge of light-timing, patterns, etc. so that I could safely cross any street in Towson without issue, walk sign illuminated or not, by the time I was 12.  Well everything is a bit thrown out the window here and I am not quite a master of it, having been honked out more than a few times when crossing during what looked like a good clear window only to have a car come from a place I never even suspected was connected to my location by the rules of the road.  I have no doubt I will pick it up with masterful skill soon enough, but for now I am waiting and observing.

Tipping - They say it is not practiced here except for EXCEPTIONAL service, and I was fine to adopt this custom, ending my transaction at the payment, but I have come across several counter-service locations with what appears to tip jars (unless they are just also selling common coins) as well as receipts with tip lines on them which I feel a bit off leaving blank.  But I think I am going to take what I was told and run with it until someone makes me feel really uncomfortable for not offering more.  No need to be the free-spending Willy from America throwing tips around without care and shifting THEIR culture to support an odd custom that gifts the responsibility for customer service salary to the customer and not the shop owner.

Eucalyptus trees of so many different varieties are very common here and different types have evolved in various niches all over the country.

Language - British roots are very apparent here and I love it.  Good vocabulary is well-supported here, and people use bigger more formal words a good bit.  "Cheers", "mate", and many other words are used so commonly, and I pick them up quickly, that I have no doubt I will sound entirely annoying by the time I come home as these phrases infiltrate my regular use repertoire this summer.  Look forward to that, mate.

Food - There seems to be a large deal of cafe-type restaurants here, very casual places with a welcoming vibe where you can linger, interact, etc.  Pubs are big too, and in these you can always find chicken parma served over fries as it is basically the national pub dish, much like our cheeseburger.  Every place has it, it's pretty standard fare, filling and delicious and not that great for you.  Otherwise, there is a large proliferation of Thai, Malaysian, and Indian which makes sense geographically and which I will be eating quite a bit of.  While there are some decent places in Knoxville, it's just got to be a bit better here being much closer to the source and ingredients.

Cool courtyard at my hotel in Canberra.

SIMILARITIES

Too many to name!  The airport was full of fast-food restaurants, just different names (Hungry Jack I think was one).  I turned on the TV to find syndicated Family Guy, Simpsons, and Modern Family on nearly 24/7.  They have their own versions of the Today Show and actually air a bit of our Today Show as well (Savannah and Matt, we need not part).  There are Subway restaurants every 10 blocks.  People are really nice (is that a similarity?!?!), open, and friendly.  It's really surprising how much American culture really has penetrated here, but in reading Bryson's book ("In a Sun-burned Country") written 15 years ago, he remarked how this country seemed like such a clear cross between the States and Britain, so this is nothing new.  At some meetings with Australian Academy of Science yesterday we even learned of a few more similarities.  One, they too tire of political campaigning and are about over it themselves with an upcoming election to take place while we are here.  Two, they also have trouble with science skepticism as they have had to gather information and produce publications informing their people of the seriousness of climate change as well as immunizations, two topics we seem to have quite a few armchair scientists on back at home.  And three, they also have a tenuous and sometimes disconcerting relationship at the government level with indigenous populations, as aboriginal rights are something still of debate (ie, shouldn't we do a bit more for these peoples whose cultures and relationships with their native lands we simply brushed aside in a time when colonial dominance was the only world-view?).

I look forward to tomorrow when we will spend a full-day on guided tours of local geology, native culture, flora and fauna, and other national characteristics led by two prominent aboriginal people with high-rank in academia and government.  Should be interesting!  Stay tuned, more pics to come.

Canberra is full of cool sculpture wherever you turn!