Differences

In the past 2 months, one thing that I wanted to understand was ‘what is the difference’ and ‘why is the difference’. What makes one realize that he is at a ‘phoren’ city? The first thing that that strikes you is that it is a hell lot cleaner. No dust in the air. You can see further in the distance. Secondly everything seems very proper here, hardly any irregularities, -the pavements, the white lines on the roads, the buildings, fences, windows, all can be described by a set of straight lines, and even if there are curves they can be represented by simple mathemetical equations. Of course the skyscrapers are another signature of these cities.

Maybe the fact that a large part of the country lies in the temperate region, somehow helps, but majorly it is the population that matters. The population being low has both good and bad implications. It is easier for the government to manage and maintain public property in proper shape. Less people means less competition amongst each other. The common people have time and space to think beyond their selfish selves, which makes them more considerate towards their surroundings, be it people or matter. An example. Why are the streets clean? A) When the common man is done with some article, they are thoughtful enough not to throw it off anywhere. B) The government has installed garbage bins, at least one every 50 metres, to help out the people. If you think carefully, both reasons are related to population. The darker side of the low population is what happened to me.

As I already said earlier, that the average build is formidable. That they are fitter and stronger, whatever the reason, you have to admit, because the number of world class athletes this country of 20 million has produced is just unbelievable. The initial gene component (being that of criminals) might have helped.

Moving on to other areas, I have found here that the people are gullible and they easily believe in others. I don’t know if it is because they have no other option, but I don’t think that’s a reason. The large stores like Coles and Safeway, rarely have any security or checking. People can easily take stuff away from these stores, but the fact that these stores do well without security is an indicator of the fact that such occurrences are rare. Also while purchasing tickets, to claim the students’ concession, word of mouth was often sufficient.

The language well, there is a certain accent. Kartik can shed more light on this. He can predict where a person is from by hearing the English. I noticed that these guys tend to pronounce ‘a’ as ‘aye’. Plate is ‘plight’. Mate is ‘might’. Going by this, ‘brat’ is ‘bright’, but I didn’t hear anyone use it. A phrase that I found them using frequently: ‘I was like’ in place of ‘I said’, but I think it is common worldwide.

Food: I tried out stuff but mostly cooked them myself, so couldn’t test myself with the real taste of things. The fact that Pulkit and Kartik were vegetarians didn’t help neither for them or me. And although Jai claimed himself to be a pure non-veg eater, he wimped out on the talk of trying new things. By the way, there is an Isckon temple, where we went to have a free meal during one weekend with Jai's friends from Kharagpur.

My time was spent entirely in Melbourne. But I came to know some things about the other cities around. Nearest is Sydney, 800 kms odd to the W-N-West. It is an old city, and there are monorails in place of trams. The Aussies were probably confused about which of Melbourne and Sydney should be made capital. So they brought up Canberra inbetween these 2 cities, and pretty much in the middle of nowhere, to dump all the politicians.
I got the idea that Brisbane is more of a homely city. Gold Coast near it is very posh. Perth is a 2 day train journey (which are by the way far more expensive than airfares). It is a highly commercial city. Adelaide is some thousand kilometers to the west of Melbourne. I don’t know much of it other than the fact that had I gone to the Uluru/Ayer's rock (which I would have liked to go to, if time and money been by my side), I would have had to pass it.
Cairns is the gateway to adventure sports. And to the Great Barrier Reef.

Some more points:

• No concept of MRP. Even different shops of the same chain can have different prices of the same object.
• The coins have Queen Elizabeth II on them. The Australians have no problem considering them under the British even now.
• The people earn a lot, and they have to spend a lot too. But the high expenditure is more on the common items than more expensive things like electronic items or cars, which are comparitively cheaper.
• The purchasing power of the dollar being high, people can go to tour around the world at ease, without having to give much thought on money being spent in the process.
• Most of the cars are automatic, with the following gears - P,R,N,D,1,2,3
• The cars do not honk. They consider it rude.
• Everything is highly mechanized/automatic, an aspect that can often be annoying.
• There are many helicopters. I see around 5 a day.