Australia: Initial impressions...

After 10 days in australia and one nerve wracking interview, I now have a job! I am working in a call centre (which sounds bad) but it's warm calls for fundraising on behalf of charity (which is good). I'm so glad I managed to get a job that's pretty well paid, pretty good hours, and doesn't make me feel like I'm entirely wasting my time. It's pretty hard to get to know the people you work with though, you spend all your time talking on the phone!

I haven't done much in the way of touristy Sydney stuff (beyond the obligatory opera house and sydney harbour pictures)...it's been really nice to just be 'normal' for a change. I have been exploring sydney nightlife in some detail, and am also becoming well acquainted with several restaurants in the area.

The highlights so far have been the Comedy Store and the We Love Sounds music festival. At the comedy store we saw Steve Hughes, hilarious guy, he's so anarchic, I think Dad would have liked him! Hughes thinks there's some kind of Evil Masterplan guiding governments into leading us all towards the 'nanny state creche mentality'...and I can totally understand what he's saying but at the same time, I find it hard to see how the Evil Masterplan exists in a quasi-literal or at least a conscious sense...but yeah, he does make some very valid points about freedom of choice vs. health propaganda...it's very, very, VERY anti-smoking here!! And I mean, yeah, I don't smoke and I don't like it when people do but at the same time there's no need to make people feel like second-class citizens for choosing to smoke, so long as they only let it affect themselves not others...the advertisements make it look like every other smoker is a tramp who hasn't brushed his teeth in years, on the operating table without anasthetic, mid-stroke with cancerous bronchioles and arteries full of mashed potato! It's pretty ridiculous.

There's one advertisement where they've staged an 'operation' and got this woman with throat cancer on the operating table. They're sticking one of those internal cameras down her throat; she wretches, in pain, and they all ignore her like she doesn't exist.

-shudder-

In some ways it's pretty frightening to be back in a western world...when you tell people you've been to Nepal they look at you with this mix of awe and fear, like you survived a plane crash and lived in the jungle with monkeys for 20 years or something...and almost everybody goes 'Wow, that's cool, I'd really like to do something like that, but...' and then they trail off because they can't think of a good reason. And then they move onto to another topic that makes them feel less uncomfortable, like movies or restaurants or the relative merits of marmite vs. vegemite.

The weird thing is that Sydney feels less like England than Malaysia did...here, I'll be running through the park, thinking 'Hmm, smells like England...' and then I'll see a parrot fighting with a cockateil over a banana and suddenly I'm back in Aus. One rainy day the bell tolled at Town Hall and I took my earphones out and pretended it was Big Ben. It's strange that it's only when you actually see or smell something that's reminiscent of England that you miss home...for that split second when your brain thinks you -are- in England...first thoughts in my head are 'sweet, I'm only 2 hours drive away from -insert loved ones name here-'. But I guess all that shows me is that it's people that make a place; I don't miss England, I miss being able to be close to my friends. But I'm making more and more friends here every day now, and it's really nice to know I'll be able to get to know somebody for more than a day before moving on. Although of course that means having to deal with the consequences of my actions as well...-sigh-...