I am leaving Sydney today for the nth time. I am leaving a place where the many trees and grassy areas in wide, open spaces make me green with envy. Taking a brisk walk beside a wide expanse of greenery, breathing in the clean unpolluted air under a bright blue cloudless Sydney sky, I think sadly of my beloved Manila and its suburbs where developers see every empty space as an opportunity to widen a road, build yet another condominium, mall or a tree-less subdivision.
There are parks everywhere here. This child-friendly country invests in creative playgrounds that develop not only the physical strength of its children, but also their imagination. The vast Olympic Park where the 2000 Summer Olympics was held, remains a play area where on weekends, families let their children loose in the playgrounds while they prepare a barbie (barbecue) nearby.
I am leaving a place where travel is predictable, where buses and trains will take you where you want to go, and on time. What they call traffic here is nothing compared to the mess we have on EDSA on a daily basis. Vehicles can be backed up on the motorway, but most people follow the rules and there is always someone in charge untangling the mess. On an earlier trip, on our way to the airport to catch my flight to Manila, we met up with a humungous traffic jam on the motorway due to an accident. My heart was in my throat as we inched through the heavy traffic, but someone was in charge and we made it to the airport on time.
No matter how many cars and trucks you see on the road, the air in Sydney remains clean and unpolluted. There are few smoke-belchers and once detected, they are taken off the road.
The roads are good and efficient and they lead to wherever you want to go. We took a road trip to Canberra, over 400 kilometers away, which took only three hours — about the time one would spend on EDSA driving home on a rainy night.
Unlike Manila where the sun sets softly, like a painting in progress, its colors bright but easy on the eyes, Sydney sunsets are golden and fiery, it is difficult to stare at them for long. I figure it must be because in Sydney, the nightly performance is unfiltered by dust and other particles that pollute the air. Still, the sunsets here are glorious.
This country is so big, there is enough room for its 25 million population, and then some. There was a time many decades ago when Australia preferred white people to settle here. But today, living here is a multicultural experience. In the supermarket, mall or train station, you hear different languages spoken by adults of different color, dress and accent. They look and sound like they come from the Middle East, Africa, South America, South and East Asia and the Pacific Islands, but their children speak and dress like regular Aussies. It seems like the regular Aussie today is a person of color, making for a rich blend of cultures and traditions. On the train, I once heard a Filipino office worker on the cellphone with someone at home, giving instructions in Tagalog on how to cook adobo.
On one visit, the family decided to meet the New Year in Sydney Harbor where the Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge would be lit up with fireworks at midnight. We took the train to the city with picnic mats and baskets of food in hand and set up camp near the water to wait for midnight. As the evening progressed and the place filled up, it was like being at the tower of Babel where everywhere I turned, another language was being spoken.
It would be such a pleasure living in this country if it was not so expensive. I would stop multiplying everything by 40 (the exchange rate hovers at P40 to an Aus dollar) if I earned in Aussie dollars. Here, a Coke is cheap at $2 a can and bottled water costs even more. Bargain sales are not really at bargain prices. I walk through the malls admiring things and remind myself to look for the same stuff at home, in Greenhills or Divisioria.
Nobody really dresses up here. In fact, people seem to dress down. As spring turns into summer, shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops are de rigeur. When we went to watch the matinee of Wicked at the Capitol Theater in Sydney, like a proper Manila girl, I made sure I was properly attired. Well, most people were in shorts, tank tops and flip-flops. And waiting for the curtain to rise, the place was like a baseball stadium where vendors went about selling popcorn and drinks. Our Cultural Center habitués would have raised more than their eyebrows at the sight. Thankfully, once the show started, the usual theater rules applied.
There is much to like about Australia. But Australian English is not one of them. It is not easy to understand. For starters, colloquial Australian gives nicknames to everything. Breakfast is brekkie, barbecue is barbie, mosquito is mozzie, a swim suit is, inexplicably, a cossie. A possie is an advantageous position, rellie is a relative, and brolly is an umbrella. Arvo is afternoon, Seppo is an American and Filo is a Filipino. Troppo is a mentally disturbed person (presumably from spending too much time in the tropics), yakka is hard labor and yarra means stupid or insane. The language is also peppered with aboriginal words and high English. But the most difficult part of Australian is the accent that stretches a simple “a” sound to “aieee” so that mate sounds like mite, bait sounds like bite, and day sounds like die.
I wish I could stay longer in this, my happy place, but, to channel Robert Frost, I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. One promise I intend to keep is to return to Australia again and again — to recharge my mind and body and refill my heart with the love of my Sydney family.