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.

Thanksgiving - again.

Two years in, I'm going to repeat myself. Halloween sort of works in Sydney, even if it's out of context. Thanksgiving? Forget it. Australia should never even consider adopting another continent's holiday that falls at the wrong time of the year for celebrating harvest.

And while we're winding up for the Christmas season (unlike the US government, Australia's has more historical ties to the Anglican Church) - I've got nothing against Australians celebrating their religious holiday in the middle of the summer. What disturbs me though, is adopting winter solstice trappings for what is locally a summer solstice event (and they poke fun at POMs?!).

Australia seems only to have recently come to its senses in terms of locally appropriate celebrations surrounding winter solstice (you know - when it's cold and the days are short). Sydney's Festival of Lights is a fine beginning for what should be a season of holidays in the Southern Hemisphere, to brighten spirits on those dark days. Oh sure, I'm a newcomer here - Australia is going to do whatever the hell it wants. But my contribution to this cultural stew is to urge more locally appropriate holidays - holidays or celebrations that fit with local harvests and the solstices as they are locally experienced; not based on the opposite side of the planet. Stand up, Australia!

Sharks and bears

Yesterday, I was swimming at Bronte - two coves over. The water was wonderful. What's most amusing about the article below is Australians seem to have the same attitude towards sharks as hikers of the Appalachian trail have towards bears. They launched jetskis to shoo the shark away, and everyone was back in the water 35 minutes later. At Bronte, there were a fair number of bluebottles on the beach (aka Portugese Man of War), but I didn't see any in the water. They were also having a lifesaving club event, with about 30 participants swimming a fair distance out from the beach, with plenty of chaperones on boards. Third Shark sighting at Bondi

Guns, butter, freedom

The U.S. citizens who proudly wave around firearms as "their right!" are the same citizens who are proud that their country produces some of the finest jet fighters in the world. Their rhetoric is that they need these firearms to protect themselves against tyrannical government - as if the Queen of England might on a whim rummage through some old stockpiles and find redcoats with muskets to send to their door. They know in their hearts that their pea-shooters are irrelevant against a government with jet fighters and cruise missiles.

What they really won't say out loud is their fear is really of their neighbor, or the people in the neighborhood up the street, or across town; or of mob rule. Some of these people have never lived without the fear that the people in the other neighborhood will some day rise up and knock on their door, or fear that the country is filled with criminals just waiting for the right moment to take them out. So they can't possibly understand that "freedom" means more than needing to carry a firearm - that there might actually be freedom from the constant fear of whatever might be lurking outside ones doorstep.

These people will proclaim that they have the best democracy on earth, and their freedom to wave around a firearm is proof of it. Never mind that every evening their televisions bring them video examples of the worst governments on earth; scenes of people waving around firearms triumphantly because they have vanquished their neighbors. How alien is the notion that if democracy were truly successful, people wouldn't need firearms to protect themselves from their neighbors or the government; that the whole notion is that a compromise would have been reached towards democratic rules everyone could live with? And the government - which they elected is the one which they greatly fear? Again, it's the government their neighbors elected they fear - not the one they've happily bestowed with paramilitary equipment.

They might rationalize that the constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, it only allows for the pursuit of happiness. Yet could it not be possible for a democracy to create rules where, at the very least, firearms are not required to maintain the social fabric? There are a fair number of people who highly romanticize the frontier town; the old gunslinger who saves the town from the bully. They don't see themselves as the bully with the gun; they wait for the day they get to play hero. And they have no notion that perhaps by waving around their firearm, it just might be that they are the ones being the bully.

Proper Crow

The mewling of the Australian crows was amusing at first. But now there are a couple that hang out near our window occasionally. I've decided when they're around, I need to open the window and let them know what a proud crow sounds like. Link to American crow sounds.