Musings on Australian habits

There are two Australian habits that I've become more and more aware of lately. (Seriously, sometimes I wonder at my observational capabilities--it seems to take me so long to put two and two together these days!) First, is their massively long-period socializing. I'm used to spending a few hours at a time with a group of friends or even more preferably, a, singular, friend (I much prefer one-on-one time) but then I go home and and that's that. No FOMO disease, nothing like that. Happy to be home. And maybe it's a me thing, but I just don't really like socializing for hours and hours on end. It may have something to do with the subject matter that takes the stage when socializing, though, too. More often than not, it's chatter about nothing. Little depth, very superficial, friendly chitter chatter and banter. But I hunger for intellectual conversation. One time, we had a group of friends over and we were sitting out back, kicking back, having this senseless chit chat when Marcus broke in with a question about ...what was it, stem cell research? It was some political topic that is fairly controversial, and everyone just looked at each other and there were a couple of "Oohs" and "Ahs" before the conversation topic was turned to something more light-hearted. It's as if people don't want to talk about these things. Marcus and I will talk about anything and everything, but in a social situation, other people simply avoid any heavy topics. Naturally there are exceptions to this rule--I've had lovely conversations with Aidan's girlfriend, Jenn, on different socially aware topics and I've had a few good conversations with Aidan (my favorite was talking about biodiesel and about the environment on a grander scale). I've also had good political discussions (mostly about the US President) with one of my coworkers. It was my first day at the Audit Office and I went out to lunch with the girls. Well, Rosie had one glass of wine and she was all over me about "Barack Obama" and how she thinks he's a terrorist and how she'd vote for McCain and how we were all going to be sorry if he came into presidency. Oh, we'd see. Yes, I suppose we will. :)


That's a pretty general overview of the social situation here. At least my experience of it, and Marcus has agreed (at least in part, I don't know that he fully agrees with my perspective). I'm not saying that it's bad or that they're bad people because of this phenomenon, it's just strangely different than what I'm used to. It has nothing to do with how informed they are of what's going on in the world. No, they're very aware and there's lots of news reading (and reading in general!) done here. It has nothing to do with intelligence levels, because most of the people we spend time with are college-educated and bright. I think I have to attribute it to the laid-back culture. Does that make me uptight, then? I don't think so...


The other phenomenon I've noticed about Aussies? Their obsession with beverages. Not just alcoholic ones, nay, with ALL beverages. People must always have a beverage with their meal, and it's very rarely a water one. Beer, wine, juice, soda, tea, coffee, smoothie, frappe...it's amazing! I'm quite happy with a water at any occasion, though I am aware that I'm an incredibly easy person in this regard. But the amount of beverage consumed never ceases to amaze me. I suppose it could be attributed to the generally hot weather? It would make sense that the inhabitants of a mostly desert country would want to keep the fluids flowing and stay hydrated. Then maybe this became a habit, even as people mostly settled in places that weren't 100% desert and did, in fact, have variation in their weather. Because certainly I have witnessed this phenomenon progress from winter to summer. Is this an exaggerated assessment, though? Hmm. I do recall copious amounts of beverage being consumed at my old office...multiple cups of coffee...diet coke...snapple...I don't know, maybe I'm wrong on this one, but I just see so many beverages consumed and I see loads of them in my refrigerator so this supports my case. Well, I'll think more on this one.