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Saturday, November 19, 2011

A Quick Experience...#1

It always interests me how the rest of the world perceives a place like Australia, which is so physically isolated to that larger areas of the globe. This is not a bad thing at all, but just a geographical view of where Australia is placed compared to other places. I had a very strange encounter with a new arrival to the Perth shores today…

He wasn’t very happy, and this was evident in the way he was looking around as he spoke. He complained about the Australian people (not all, but about most) and the apparent arrogance and rudeness that they were made of. It took me by quite a surprised to hear someone so uninterested in learning about the culture, and the way things work and how people react. Australia is now a clearly multiculturalist society where a huge mix of different races and cultures have been created over the recent years. Personally, I believe it is quite fortunate to have the chance to meet people from all around the world in one place. It’s very rewarding to have a society that is so mixed and influential, and full of people willing to learn from each other. However this person seemed to immediately become defensive with his own homeland in the United Kingdom.

I’ve been to the UK about three times, and his experiences over there seemed to differ to mine. He told short stories about the kindness of the English, but yet had to also explain the rivalry between them and the Welsh. A topic that I haven’t discussed much before and something I questioned more. He didn’t answer much about it, and instead used that rivalry as fuel to continue his argument against the Australians. He mentioned poor driving  abilities and the inability to accept new types of people, which is obviously generalised to the extremes. His experience immediately of Perth was a place that was defensive, rude and clearly ignorant. Its interesting how that differs to my experience of an accepting place full of people who were happy you chose Perth to visit or to live.

Interesting developments, what do other people get from arriving in Perth? 

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