Cross-Cultural Conversations

Observations by a Malaysian studying in Australia

It’s A Small World (and the generalisations I make of it)

Today I wasn’t in a particularly ‘aggressive-marketing’ mood, so I decided to just watch the world go by as the time ticked slowly until my shift ended. Although it means that I wasn’t going to reap a lot of profits, it gave me a rare opportunity to observe people closely, when I would otherwise be busy selling tickets to them.

From my observations, I realised just how popular those Louis Vuitton traveller’s luggage are with air passengers. Everywhere I turn I’m bound to see someone carrying those identical brown or white bags, with the ubiquitous LV logo spots all over it. So popular are these carry-ons that they seem to be the airport equivalent of plastic bags. I wondered how many of them are genuine, since Louis Vuitton is not only admired by wealthy jetsetters, but Asian counterfeiters as well.

I also noticed (and I may be making an unfair generalisation here), that Russian travellers never ever smile. Maybe the extremely cold weather back home, coupled with the dark wintry nights has something to do with it. However, the few Swedes that I met were surprisingly very pleasant, and you can’t get anywhere colder than Scandinavia.
A guy in blue punk hair was walking towards me, and I decided to enquire whether he would be interested in buying a ticket. From my experience with friends and my visits to Camden in London (the punk centre of the city), punks, and people with alternative-fashion in general, are much friendlier than mainstreamers, despite their intimidating appearance. Even if this guy wasn’t going to purchase a ticket, I had a gut feeling I wasn’t going to be subjected to a harsh rejection, which I quite regularly get from middle-aged travellers.

It turns out he did intend to buy a ticket. “Nice hair, man”, he said before leaving. I get that a lot, from children to adults, men and women. “Oh, you too”, I said, staring at his bright blue hair for the last time.

The next day I took leave as I was bribed by my mum into attending a lunch gathering of students and ex-students of Geelong schools, organised by one of the parents. I wasn’t particularly eager to attend these sort of social events, but my mum promised that the food will be good, so I figured, oh what the hell.

It turns out the food was good. As I was busy enjoying the baked potato and roast beef, a guy with blue punk hair entered the restaurant and sat beside me. Hey, how many blue-haired people are there in Malaysia? I asked him if he bought a train ticket recently. Of course, he did. It turns out he was an ex-student of a Geelong school, which happened to be my own school’s arch-rival, and is now studying at the same university I am about to attend in a few weeks’ time.

What a small world we live in. 

posted by: Tembaga2 at 17:11 | link | comments |