“Oi!”
Everywhere I’ve been in the world, I’ve run into an Australian, or, more commonly, a group of them. Rude, obnoxious, “outrageous fun”, Aussies have always felt more like the skewed, comedic warpings of a caricature artist than actual people. They are full of energy, eager to explore, enjoy a good beer, and have no shame of making “right fools of themselves”.
Naturally, I decided the place where they are from should be the first on my list.
When I landed here in Sydney, a strange truth hit home for me: this is the first trip overseas that I’ve embarked on alone. This time, I have virtually no plan, much less a backup plan, and no friends within at least a thousand miles. What I do have is my phone, my passport, and my credit card, which sits in my back pocket like a dragon’s hoard of gold, and I, the very unfearsome dragon.
Fortunately, despite my lack of ferocity or ability to breath fire (wouldn’t that be convenient), I am not at a complete disadvantage here. For one, the populace, for the most part, are native English speakers. Granted, I stand out in a fairly stark manner, though it’s different than when I “stood out” in Japan. In Japan I looked different – I was a white person – and everyone knew that I was foreign and could do basically nothing without determined assistance. Here I look like a local, but the instant I open my mouth, despite my best efforts at the local lingo, I betray myself.
The other major advantage I have here is that I am somewhat experienced in world travel, and if I don’t know the way around, or what to do, I’m generally able to figure it out. This is much different than years ago when I landed in Germany with my two best friends, and we plotted our way across a foreign country for the first time. My pixel phone is also a tremendous asset, for so many reasons that it’s not worth listing.
Odysseus left the island of Calypso on a raft, and I guess that’s a bit how I feel right now: woefully unprepared, dependent entirely on my trust in the gods, if not the gods of the Greeks – in Calypso and Neptune – then in the gods of our own era: Google, Visa, and the name of the modern Zeus: the internet.
“If some god wrecks me when I am on the sea, I will bear it and make the best of it.”
Here we go.