Tag: Australia

Adjusting to a new place

People often exaggerate when talking about the difficulties of migrating to a new country. 

Of course, you don’t have any friends, and it’s painful to understand not only the ways of life, but also the regulations, policies, and many common practices that you’ve never even heard of before.

It’s been seven months since I moved to Australia, and I still have trouble understanding what the various organisations I often come across do. I can’t figure out the confusing superannuation (the employee retirement scheme), the expensive tax deductions, fluctuating supermarket prices, or the various insurances including health, dental, and ambulance. You can even get insurance exclusively to cover the cost of transporting you from home to the hospital in an ambulance. Holy sphinx, huh?

Yes—moving to a new place comes with the burden of understanding its culture and lifestyle. And it can take much longer than you anticipate.

However, aside from these significant issues that gnaw at your brain now and then, everyday life is pretty easy to adopt. For instance, I live on a day-by-day basis—I wake up, work, cook, eat, shop, walk, and sleep. That’s my standard day, with moderate modifications like meeting a friend, attending an event, or just wandering the parks because it’s a beautiful day. That’s how I’ve been living and haven’t had much difficulty adjusting to life in Australia.

It didn’t take long for everything around me to seem natural, and there’re only a few surprises that stun or destabilise me. I was in the bus a couple of days ago, and as the vehicle turned left in an intersection, I suddenly noticed how broad the streets are, compared to where I grew up. Then it hit me—I’m now so accustomed to these streets, the style of shops, and people’s mannerisms, that they’re no longer shocking as they were in my first week. At that moment, in the bus, I couldn’t believe I was living in Australia. It felt like a dream. And yet I’d lived through all these months comfortably adjusting and fitting into this lifestyle. 

It doesn’t take long for a new person to incorporate themselves into a society. We think it does because not everyone feels at home in a new place. And that’s a whole other thing.

I swear

Until March of this year, my vocabulary had limited swear words, uttered sparingly and with extreme caution. Using the F word in any gathering that’s not your bosom buddies was a thing to frown upon, and you might even get a talking to from strangers and colleagues alike. It’s not uncommon for people to mutter it under their breath, but it was certainly unsuitable to say out loud.

Seven months on, and I now live in Australia. Though my swear vocabulary is still rather limited, I hear them in conversations around me countless times a day, in varying pitches. For instance, my non-Australian housemate, who’s lived here for four years, walked into the kitchen one morning.  I was peeling papaya. He hey-ed at me, and I, him. He then opened the fridge and went, “Oh, fuck.”

That’s how we roll here. Most words deemed uncivilised and unfit, even for domestic use are casual and overused in Australia.

You hear these words in places and in situations that have no reason to have them. The reason my housemate said what he said when he looked into the fridge that morning is because there was some food leftover that he’d forgotten about. It was still good enough to eat, though. Besides, it’s not as if he worried about wasting either. Regardless, that situation warranted swearing.

My point is, swear words are so common that they’ve melded into everyday colloquialism. I knew it even before I got here, though. Refer to any website offering travel advice, and you’ll always have a note about says how heavy swearers Australians are.

It’s not just the F word. The  C word gets around quite a lot, too. Chances are, you can’t and won’t have a regular conversation with any (or most) Australians without hearing the swear words a fair few times.

I’ve been here a while now, and it doesn’t bother me as much. I’ve come to realise that in Australian speech, these—and the many other swear words I don’t recall—are meant as emphasis words. Like literally in place of figuratively. Like actually, honestly, really, very, and all other adverbs that all writing guides cast away as unnecessary.

It doesn’t bother me since I’ve been here a while now. But I can imagine how gutting it would be for someone new—like my mother, for instance. Once, ages ago, burnt out after work, I swore in front of my mother. Recalling that incident, she asked me a couple of days ago if I’ve stopped swearing now that I’m no longer under the same stress.

“Of course, ma. I don’t swear at all nowadays.”

Well, at least that puts her mind at ease.

It’s good to get lost

When I woke up this morning, I didn’t want to be around people. It just wasn’t a socialising day. Within minutes, I decided to get lost in the Australian National Botanical Gardens.

The first time I went there, I was a traveller. A high-energy trekker, equipped with a backpack full stuffed with a jacket, cap, water, and snacks. And I tried to cover the whole area in one day—because that’s what I do when visiting a new city. I crave to see everything, experience everything in one visit. As a result of that over ambition, I lost my way in the gardens, strayed from the main path every time I saw a flower or a streak of sunlight glinting through a puddle, and ended up missing a few parts of the garden.

This time, I knew better. I had a plan, a purpose. I chose a trail—the eucalyptus walk—and decided to stick to it. 

Except, I got lost again. It took me longer than it should’ve, but I went around in circles before finding my way back on to the trail. 

And you know what? It’s ok. It’s ok that I got distracted by plants, that I gravitated towards weird shaped-branches and odd-named bushes. It’s ok that I didn’t follow the trail exactly as it was mapped. Because at the end of the day, it’s not about seeing them all. It’s about appreciating what you did see. 

And I saw a lot. 

  • Lizard - Australian National Botanical Gardens
  • Australian National Botanical Gardens

How to spring in Australia

Just before summer last year, I pottered about the streets—fresh out of a shower with nothing more than a light-scented talcum powder mildly-layering my brown surface. Temperatures didn’t exceed 42 degrees Celsius, and the talc was more than enough to prevent me from turning into a body of walking stink.How to spring in Australia. Just before summer last year, I pottered about the streets—fresh out of a shower with nothing more than a light-scented talcum powder mildly-layering my brown surface. Temperatures didn’t exceed 42 degrees Celsius, and the talc was more than enough to prevent me from turning into a body of walking stink.

I was in Chennai, a south Indian city of over 6 million people. 

This time, I’m in Canberra. It’s springtime, and people smile at the sun, women gliding about in beautiful spring skirts, men waddling in khaki shorts trying to balance two beers in one hand, and more people in singlets of every colour and pattern. I’ve seen all kinds of ankles, knees, and arms. Temperature can reach up to 25 degrees now, and 42 degrees in summer.

I don’t have talcum powder anymore.

Instead, 

I have sunscreen. 

Moisturiser.

Petroleum jelly, because I’m still recovering from winter dryness.

I have lip balm.

Deodorant.

And I’m nursing chapped, cracked, and chipped skin. 

Welcome to Australia—the sun loves us so much that it ripped the ozone, earth’s face mask, away  so it can kiss us more fully, purely, with love as mother showers upon her 18-month baby, except more harshly.

18 degrees, an idealistic dream in Chennai, burns in Canberra. 

Normal. 

The sun has a way to hurt you, and you have a way to deal with it. What else are conglomerates for? They churn out cream after cream, all-purpose ones for efficiency and portability, and more specialised, individually focussed line of products for a more complete skin care. Variantly priced to suit your comfort.

And yet, it’s not just about lining rows and rows of supermarket shelves with liquids and creams people may or may not want. It’s not the unrestrained dance of the capitalist banshee, wasteful.

It’s necessary. 

Australia has one of the world’s highest skin cancer rates. Although tanning has been huge crazy (why, I’ll never understand), our unnatural behaviour has led to natural exposure to excessive UV rays, and that keeps this country a hot bed.

No one goes out without synthetic protection hugging their skins. The more clothes you shed to cope with the rising heat, the more you need to layer up on creams. 

I’m glad I got my transition glasses just in time—my eyelids would fry otherwise.

And that, my friends, is how you spring in Australia. Wonderful time for picnics and lounging on the grass with a book—just as long as you’ve got your layers on.

Another Country

I went for a movie last night. Not the fast-past, steamy, nail-biting, popcorn-munching kind of movie. Nope—it was the first time I’d been to a cinema theatre in Canberra and it was for a movie about Aboriginals. It was Another Country.

To put it the words of the narrator, “This film is about what happened my culture when it was interrupted by your culture.”

And as soon as the echoes of that resounding statement died down, the screen flared up with young Aboriginal men, dancing to rock and roll music, shaking their hips, faces contorted in concentration, and enjoying, apparently, the westernisation that had crept into their veins, pulsating through their feet.

With gut wrenching grace, the film touched upon many issues that Australian natives endured during the initial stages of colonisation. 

“Then the white men came. With their cattle. If we didn’t do exactly what they told us to do in our own land, they would shoot us or poison us.”

As I heard the unwavering voice of the narrator, gliding over emotional scars and scabs oozing with fresh blood and pain, I shuddered. It was normal. And that was scary. As the audience, every moment of revelation was a gasp of shock, while it was everyday reality for the voice that told the story.

The more I watched, the more I understood how Aboriginals have been isolated in their own land. The documentary revolves around one small town in Northern Territory, emphasising the lack of everything there. When the government built a school, a store, and basic medical facilities, Aboriginal people from neighbouring lands had to move into a single town, where they were given periodic pension money to spend on supermarket-grade food that were ferried across or flowing into from other parts of the country. Since the town was devoid of everything else, including amiable weather, adults had no jobs to earn from. They were given money to buy things that the government intended them to—and as I watched kids and adults gulp down bottles of teeth-rotting Coca Cola and other carbonated, sugary drinks as if it were water, I cringed.

Alcohol is banned in the town. But soda that’s just as disastrous to health is abundant, encouraged, and in a sense, shoved upon these people. With nothing to do other than sit around, play cards, and participate in traditional celebrations, young men with a mischievous spark are punished. Possession of alcohol and kava are enough to land them in jail. About it the narrator says, “They get sent to jail, to Darwin, for doing things that other Australians are allowed to do.”

As if these youngsters aren’t Australian at all, just because they’re Aboriginal.

It was abominable to think of it that way. But it was more shuddering to realise that that’s how the rest of the world’s treated Aboriginals all along.

What a load of rubbish we are for looking down on fellow humans that way. Rubbish—the film covered that too.

When you think of it, the native people use nature’s elements to make baskets, tools, and almost everything else they need for living. When these things die, they return to the earth and people make new ones. However, the outskirts of the town are lined with garbage, broken appliances, and products used no longer. As the camera panned over piles and piles of old stuff now replaced by newer, shinier stuff, you can’t help but feel claustrophobic. And to imagine people living with all of that in their backyard—shame on us.

“We never had rubbish. Everything comes from the bush; everything goes back to the bush. […] We’re choking on rubbish. That means we’re choking on your culture.”

This documentary was eye-opening. It’s an assertive stance against the unfairness that’s become so internalised and normal in today’s Australia. And even though millions of people try and consciously avoid harming the essence of Aboriginal culture, or be patronising, it feels as if rules that require least 3 Aboriginal students in the opera club is also a way of enforcing the western culture in them.

This movie’s made me think—what’s happened between these two cultures isn’t a simple matter of right or wrong. And as we try to solve it, we will run into polarising problems. Finding the right balance will take time and and open minds. Question is, do we have that luxury?