Biggest and Best Part 2

Hey there,

Sorry it's been a while. School and work are killing me. But I have more biggest and best to report on. In the paper (the Age, daily paper in Melbourne) there was an article about building the BIGGEST desalination plant in the WORLD. Yow. Here are some photos that I have taken.

You will notice this one is 'Offically The World's Best Cheese', (the word officially means it's true).

This is the 'World Famous Penguin Parade' - I never heard of it before I came.

This is apparently where they grow the 'Best Asparagus in the World'.

No but Yes or Yes but No

Communicating with Australians is a difficult task. After being here for a year and living, working, studying, and socializing with them, I can honestly say they are an indirect bunch. I explain it this way. If you ask them what they want for dinner, they will tell you they had chicken last night. So they won't answer your question directly. You have to be Sherlock Holmes and deduce what they mean. Sometimes you get it right, and other times not so much. It depends if you care or not.

I figure if the issue at hand is really important then someone can tell me in regular words, if they don't care enough to say, then I don't care either. This lack of interest in what other people aren't saying, leads to people talking behind your back. But if they would rather waste time whining (or in Australia whinging) as opposed to addressing the issue and coming to a resolution, then obviously they have too much time on their hands.

This then leads to questions of work ethic and decision making. Work ethic.... well Australia is the home of the 8 hour day. 8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure and 8 hours of sleep, which is cool, but does seem to give people a certain amount of entitlement about their work. That is if they are working, some workers don't want to or don't have the skills.

So why is that? What prevents people from pulling their thumb out and keeping their head down? This is what I call the 'No but Yes.' Things that are obvious and inevitable, when originally presented are generally given a no at first. Then with some discussion, it is turned into a yes, which is what it should have been in the first place. This is the biggest time waster, and it's boring.

Those in positions of authority buy into it with providing the whinger an opportunity to voice their concerns, rather than providing clear directives. But being direct is not something they are good at so the cycle continues.

Websites that I like

Hello,
so we are now into the fourth week of the semester and one problem that many students face is effective time management. The enemy of this is procrastination. There are a few time suckers that I encounter, and I thought I would share them.

So I talk to my family and since I don't have much money I go for the free options. These include the good-old messenger and Skype (if you don't have Skype, you should). With both of these you can use the webcam and they are free. It's good to see how fast little people grow while you're away.

My biggest new time-waster is Facebook. You can find people you haven't seen in ages, join groups and other random, unnecessary activities. A lot of Canadians are on it, but it's not as popular in Australia (part of my theory of them being less into collective activity). But apparently other students here use Hi5, which I am avoiding checking out, for fear that I would become addicted.

I also love Post Secret. Anyone can mail in a postcard with a secret on it and it could be put up there. Some of the things people share about themselves are disturbing, funny, sad, embarrassing, etc. It's very voyeuristic looking at other people's, especially strangers, secrets.

Another one is Natalie Dee, where she puts up cartoons. This is one of favourite ones, I laughed my ass off when I saw it.

Anyway, wish me luck this semester!

International Students In Australia

As you may be aware, I am an international student in Australia. I came here to study. I did not realize how large the industry is and how commodified education is here. Just so you can have an idea of the scope of this business it is worth $10 billion dollars a year and there are over 350,000 international students currently studying in Australia (The Age, March 16th, 2007, "Being ripped off is not an education").

Now this mixed with the xenophobia and racism that are here means that we are ripe for exploitation with little support from the general public and lawmakers. Some examples of the systemic problems include the fact that international student visas are the most expensive visas at over four hundred dollars each, as a visa condition we have to get private health coverage, and unlike local students we are not granted concession to ride on the trams. The list goes on, but I think you get the idea.

The other day some 60 international postgraduate students from CQU went on a hunger strike and protested at the DIC (Department of Immigration and Citizenship, finally a ministry that has an appropriate name). Apparently they are allowed to stay, but the problem of substandard education and exploitation of international students still exists. Like other problems in Australia it was fixed on an individual level, as opposed to the overall system.

Festivals

So as summer draws to an end I would like to take this opportunity to report on some festivals that I have attended. Mostly since I went to a big one this weekend, but there have been some others too.

Labour Day weekend, which was last weekend, I went to the Port Fairy Folkfest with my friend Lillian. She had been before and knew her way around so she organized everything, which was super for me since I wasn't sure what to expect and with school starting I've been preoccupied. Anyway, it was a fun time, with some good music, visits to the wine tent and a nice break.

I recommend that everyone check out Kate Miller-Heidkie. My friend and I thought she was super. Anyway, I will write more about the other festivals later despite my best efforts to do so now.

A Few Facts About Australia vs. Canada

Here is a list of a random things about Australia and Canada:

• School year started last week in Australia and it starts in September in Canada
• Labour Day is this weekend (I am going away and will write more about that later). It's not in September, when it is in Canada
• People hate cats here and call them feral
• In Australia, summer is now coming to an end, while winter is coming to an end in Canada
• In Canada you call them green peppers, here they are capsicum
• Australians don't call them shrimps, they call them prawns. So no one ever says, "put another shrimp on the barbie" - this is a lie.
• Australians do put sausages on the barbie and serve them with white bread and 'dead horse' (which is what they call ketchup, although they never call it ketchup, they call it sauce which apparently rhymes with horse. Try saying it out loud).
• Gas is called petrol and it is super expensive, $1.17 a litre
• Both Canada and Australia did nasty things to our indigenous peoples
• Both Canada and Australia believe we are superior to our neighbours
• Both Canada and Australia have capitol cities that are not the biggest cities, are a bit weird and full of bureaucrats
• We are both commonwealth countries (although Australia, like the US has a convict past, while Canada sent some nasty French rebels here)

Well, that's all come to mind right now. I will write more about my weekend away and the love of festivals. The one this weekend will be my third in a month.

What a Dick

This is a bit late but I've been really busy. Anyway, Dick Cheney (US vice-president) came and visited Australia. John Howard (Australian Prime Minister)didn't go and meet Dick's plane and didn't meet with him right away, instead he hung out with the premiers to talk about water (just as a side note, did you know that Howard was in the US on September 11th, 2001?).

Dick did give a speech and talked about how the US and Australia are 'mates' and how it's great that Australia is part of the 'coalition of the willing' (unlike those nasty Canadians who keep getting hit with friendly fire in Afghanistan and are talking about leaving).

When talking about Iraq he also said, "The Iraqi people are on the road to establishing a viable democracy. I think given the scalre of change we're attempting here the fact that we're not finished shouldn't be surprising to anybody" (Australian, Feb 24th, pg 22). Well if this is the case why was Bush standing on that boat a couple years ago with that 'Mission Accomplished' sign?

Dick is not keen on pulling troops out of Iraq and he said, "the only option for our security and survival is to go on the offensive - face the threat directly, patiently and systematically until the enemy is destroyed" (the Age, Feb. 24th, 2007). Whoa, this is a bit scary, especially when they have been willing to detain people who have not done anything, but they think maybe they could do something. So now they are applying that logic to invading other countries.

In an interview he did with the Australian he articulated the belief that "a military confrontation with Iran would be a lesser evil than an Iran with nuclear weapons" (Feb. 24, 2007, pg 22). So they did learn something, don't say there are 'weapons of mass destruction' to later be proven wrong, just say that it would be crappy if they were to get some and that's enough to invade a country.