Australian for "customer service"

Web site says for specific information, please download this brochure. Brochure says for specific information, please consult the web site.

Toll-free number says "we are currently closed. If you need assistance, please see our web site." Web site says "If you need assistance, please call our toll-free number."

In the United States, you will be asked to navigate an answering machine tree, and possibly be put on hold each step of the way before being told to contact another department, explain your problem again, and be put on hold again. In Australia, you will likely reach a customer service agent in another country who will have virtually no sense of how to solve your problem, and once they consult their computer prompts or supervisor, you will be told that you'll need to call back during business hours.

Business front

You've walked by a restaurant a few times and you've never seen anyone in it. But the menu looks good, the place is clean, and it looks like they've spent a fair amount of money making the place look nice. You wonder how long they could stay in business without customers. So you take a chance.

Your food comes, and it seems decent enough, but your order is wrong. The woman who seated you is counting receipts, but it seems odd there could be so many receipts when there have been no customers. Her appearance is such that you imagine she might have been in the world's oldest profession before getting into the restaurant business. A second woman says she will correct your order, and explains that there's a new cook. Does this mean they have had more than one cook and yet you've never seen a customer there? Things start seeming a bit more odd, and the second woman also seems that she has potentially worked in the world's oldest profession.

Your order is corrected, the food is ok, but as you are getting ready to pay, at the counter one woman is berating another for having not cleaned the toilets. The woman being berated has limited English, and is trying to clarify the multitude of tasks she's been ordered to perform. They are not kind to her. You begin to suspect that maybe the primary business of this restaurant is not serving food, but perhaps a front for human trafficking or money laundering. Yeah - I have a vivid imagination. And there are a lot of odd store fronts in the Sydney suburbs - businesses that never seem to have any customers, but somehow keep the lights on.

Sydney hostage situation news coverage

The news coverage of the hostage situation in Sydney was similar to what coverage would occur in the US with a few exceptions:

• An event of this scope would create frequent television program interruptions as the story developed, but not non-stop coverage as ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp) did - except perhaps on a local level (within the city in which it occurred).
• There were a few news bulletins about coverage of the event in other parts of the world, and expressions of concern from other world leaders. In the US, how a domestic event is portrayed in other countries is virtually never shown in US media, and there is rarely any publicity about expressions voiced by other world leaders (unless related to international relations). Of course, the United States is known for being insular and oblivious to the sentiments of other nations. But from the perspective of an American in Australia, the portrayal of the news and concern of other national leaders seemed aimed towards a sentiment of "you're not alone down there; the world knows you exist." That same sentiment, if it were expressed towards the US would seem odd. Of course, after 9/11, a much larger event, it was expressed that the US had global sympathy - but that sympathy was soon squandered. I do not recall any international commentary publicized after the Boston Marathon bombing, other than that the Russians had warned the US regarding the perpetrators.