Seven things I learned in the first seven months of dating a foreigner...
1. Australian's are professionals at "nonversation" (AKA completely worthless conversation, or small talk). While America tries it's hand at this every now and then in Starbucks, Australians really are the experts. Whether it be at the grocery store, a coffee shop, in a pub, in a department store, at the markets, on the bus, in the elevator, over the back fence, or even just wandering down the street; Australian's seem to have a deep desire to conduct the most superficial discussions with any human that crosses their path. In fact, "G'day mate, how's it going?" has become the national greeting, so much so that it's barely even a question anymore. But you're still expected to answer. Just not in any great detail, or in fact any detail at all. At the end of the day, it seems there's nothing worse to an Australian than silence. Which leads me to my next point...
2. Australian's can't cope with silence. This became apparent after I observed my parents interacting with my boyfriend. Although he was completely comfortable sitting and sipping his coffee without uttering a single word, they were most distressed that he was bored or uncomfortable, or even more worried that they themselves were boring people. The thing is, where he's from, you only speak when you actually have something to say. Which means when people do speak, there's probably more likely a necessary, interesting, relevant and coherent series of arguments. And when they don't, well, they just enjoy the company and the coffee. To us, however, silence is awkward. Silence indicates dissatisfaction, disinterest, disengagement. Silence, or more accurately awkwardness, needs to be dispelled; and what better to do that than inane bullshit about the weather or sports.
3. Australian wildlife is simultaneously bizarre, terrifying and largely absent from everyday Australian life. It is always the question I enjoy most when travelling - "do you ride the kangaroos?". To which I'd answer - "yes, everyday to school and back". Of course, had these people ever seen a kangaroo, they'd realise that there are many problems inherent to their question. For example, (1) kangaroos aren't domesticated and hence you'd need to be rather animal-savvy, have a large tranquilliser or be very good at boxing to get on the back of one; (2) they jump freaking high, good luck holding onto the relatively short fur and small neck of a kangaroo when they're bouncing along, hello adductors; (3) kangaroos all look fairly similar, and given their ability to jump, a kangaroo parking lot would be a nightmare. But what are kangaroos, I mean they kind of look like a T-rex, crossed with a rat, with the super bouncing ability of a bunny and a tail like no other. Just like platypuses, echidnas, emus, kookaburras, wombats, tassie devils, koalas... While mostly adorable and very unique, they're all rather bizarre and messed up creatures. As for the arachnids and reptiles, there are just too many to name, and all of them could at best seriously injure you, but thankfully they rarely interfere with the humans.
4. Australian sports are equally as bizarre as the animals. If you have ever tried to explain AFL to someone who's never seen it you would get this 100%. It's essentially a cross between basketball, volleyball, touch and soccer, played with the most horribly shaped football, on a cricket field with 4 posts at each end, over four 25+ minute quarters. Watch it though. It's a good game. And it's hilarious to watch fully-grown, exceptionally-fit men run around trying desperately to pick up a ball and dispose of it before being pummelled. Also, this "Australian Football" is really "Melbourne and select pretentious private school's football" so has been endearingly termed "GayFL" by the country folk who prefer rugby.
5. Australia is very far away from everything and everything in Australia is very far apart. In Europe, you can easily travel through 10 countries in two weeks on a bus and still have some time to chill. In Australia, you'd be lucky to get halfway around the coast in two weeks on a bus, and that's without stopping for anything but sleep. It would take longer to circumnavigate Australia than to drive to Finland... If that was possible. Everyone thinks that they've travelled for a long time to get places, but Australian's are just forced to laugh at most. The Belgians thought it was a "long way" to Amsterdam (~2 hours by train); where Brisbanites think Melbourne's basically next door (~2 hours by plane) and Singapore's pretty darn close too (~8 hours by plane), Europe and America are fairly far, but totally doable for a 2 week holiday (~18-24 hours by plane + stopovers). To a European that all just sounds utterly insane. Australia is basically on a different planet. Actually, that's probably accurate not only in terms of distance...
6. Australian's are okay with pseudo-nudity in context, but no more than that. Summer on the east coast means a great deal of very close to nudity on the beach front. In most places, however, it's frowned upon to carry that liberalism any further than 50m in land. Unless it's a pool. That's okay too. Mark my words though, full nudity is a very rare thing to us and such freedom is reserved only for the bed & bath rooms. We don't tend to have open slather change rooms where everybody communally gets their gear off - even the swimming pools will tend to have cubicle showers. It does seem a little silly though sometimes... I mean we're okay with seeing people in a skimpy bikini or the old budgie smugglers (I'm personally not 100% okay with this, but you get the point) in one location, but not okay with it in another; we're not at all okay seeing people in a bra and jocks even though it's basically the same thing made out of cotton instead of whatever togs are made from; and then full-on nudity is just never okay. We're a weird society. We have a very narrow range of acceptable amounts of clothing, take note.
7. Australia's weather problems are not unique, they're just upside down. You know you're in an Australian summer when your car turns into an oven and the seatbelt turns into a branding iron. The air-conditioner never works fast enough. However, it's safe to say that in Finland or anywhere up at that latitude experiences the same problem, just inverted, with the damn heater. We have the perfect temperature indoors during the summer yet freeze ALL THE DAMN TIME for two weeks in winter. They have the perfect temperature indoors all through the winter and then boil for two weeks in the summer... On that note - we think it's freezing as soon as it's below 25 degrees, they think it's boiling over 15. Sigh. As well, while we have a fire danger scale that starts on medium and goes to catastrophic, I'm sure the same could go for snow. I guess the only difference is that snow doesn't usually directly kill people. Often.
Nevertheless, it's been an eye-opening experience dating someone from such a vastly different culture. I highly recommend it. Not only do you get to go through the joy of bipolar in the form of a relationship (together 24/7 or nothing but Skype)... You'll also learn things about your own country that you never knew... You'll visit places on your own soil that you've never seen... And you'll experience Australia in a way that makes you understand why people want to come all the way down under for a visit.
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