Same Same but Different (and some random photos)

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Same, same but different - heard this a lot in Asia and is so useful to describe so many things/situations/actions/words/feelings/etc when comparing two countries or cultrues. Though it makes me think of being in Asia, Vietnam in particular, it's pretty apt for describing a few things about life in London.

On the surface England is pretty similar to Australia. I guess this similarity is only natural given the heritage of the majority of Australians, however there are a few cultural differences that are apparent, and even as the English way of life increasingly becomes the norm for me, sometimes things remind me that it's all quite different too. Like so many places in the world it's same, same but different. I thought I'd just write a bit about my experiences - and I note they are just MY experiences and I'm sure many other people will have had very different ones so please don't send me messages of abuse telling me I've got it all wrong!!

I'm sure to look at all the entries here my life sounds a lot more exciting than it really is. True, not everyone has the privilege of getting to travel to Morocco, Iceland, Poland, Croatia...... however most of my time here is spent doing what I'd be doing in Melbourne: sleep, eat, commute, catch up with friends, sport... and, through necessity, work. Everything is a little bit different too though. Just a little.

Sleep

OK, so maybe sleep isn't that different, but renting somewhere in which to do the sleeping can be. For a start, the percentage of your salary that goes on rent is significantly more than in Melbourne. Because of this it's not uncommon for Aussies to be found sharing houses in numbers unheard of at home. Who shares a house with eight other people in Australia? Having said this I am lucky. I share with one other person and have my own room. I am lucky enough to have a professional job that allows me to maintain the lifestyle I had at home. For those waiting tables, answering phones or serving beers though life is a lot harder in London than in Melbourne. What else about rooms? Hmm.. they tend to come furnished. There are more separate bills that at home would be taken out as income tax, for example there is a license you must have to watch TV and council tax must be paid separately by the tenant to the council each month.

Eat

Before I arrived many people warned me about British food, especially Melbournians who are spoilt for choice with regard to eating out. I must say that the food here has been fine and I can't say it's bad at all. Though there is not the plethora of Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants that there are at home, London more than compensates with the myriad of curry houses found at every turn. Fruit and veg aren't as good but salmon is heaps cheaper and readily available. I don't cook much, but I didn't really cook at home either. Sandwiches are pretty much always bought pre-packaged rather than before your eyes - not as gourmet but sensibly quick and cheap. Pub grub is great and it's not often you get a bad bangers and mash. Omnipresent is Starbucks. Small coffee shops are not to be found (maybe London rent makes it prohibitive?) and I've discovered that here I am the coffee snob of the type that I used to laugh at at home.

Commute

Lordy me, if someone had told me before I arrived that it would be normal to spend an hour getting to and from work I would have had serious reservations about the move. I used to think people who drove from Geelong to work in Melbourne were mad but here that kind of trek is the norm, not the exception. I hate commuting! Well, no, that's not entirely true - I hate commuting when a) I don't get a seat, and b) it's late after a night out with mates and I then have to spend ages getting home. A taxi from the city to my house probably costs about £40. Even though as a rule I don't convert back to Aussie dollars, that's $100 that could be in my bank account so the train always wins. Getting to and from work isn't too bad - I haven't read so many books in years and I get in my daily newspaper read too.

Catch up with Friends

The days are short, the nights are cold, the pub is the natural place to be. I'm less likely to go out for dinner here and more likely to drink beer in a lovely, dark, wooden, sausage serving pub (sipping from the ubersized vessel that is the pint glass). It takes a long time to get from one side of London to the other, the other being where most people I know live, so I tend to meet people in very Londony areas of London: Covent Garden, Soho, Leicester Square and so on.

Sport

Both to watch and to play are different than at home. To watch sport on TV you really need to have Sky/cable/pay TV/whatever you want to call it. There is little free to air sport on the free (terrestrial) channels other than the occasional major tournament football (soccer) match. Football is loved by all - I'm trying but it's hard to get enthused when I don't have a team that I love the way I do the mighty Hawthorn Hawks. Football matches are relatively affordable and accessible as long as you don't choose to support Arsenal, Man U or Chelsea. The premier league doesn't have finals at the end of the season in the way that Aussie Rules or Rugby League do; the drama comes from seeing if you finish in the top four which ensures a spot in the European Cup competition, or trying to avoid the bottom four which means relegation to the division below for the next season. Football has one up on Aussie Rules which doesn't have the unifying passion invoked by having a national team to play other countries (and that bloody hybrid whatsamacallit with the Gaelic Football doesn't count!. English international matches get everyone excited. I'm so looking forward to being here when the World Cup is on in a few months - the buzz of English support will be magnificent and I will also have the excitement of Australia being in the competition for the first time in decades (at least until they get smashed by Brazil, Croatia and Japan in their pool matches).

To play sport is simple - there are quite a lot of local comps in a variety of sports, not as much as at home but I think Australians are a bit of a world oddity when it comes to the devotion to all things sporting. Women don't play as much sport as at home by a long way. I could have played the one sport I'm half OK at - netball - but I decided to play hockey instead, mainly because I knew it to be a very social sport from seeing the involvement in it of my friends at home and enjoyment they got out of it. I play in the Kent league which means, as the most westerly team in the comp, that we can drive obscenely long distances for a match but it's usually to gorgeous, very stereotypically English looking towns and I think I get to see parts of the country that your general Aussie backpacker wouldn't get to see.

Work

Work is a bit different here for me than at home for a few reasons, the main one being that I'm doing quite a different job to back there. I'm still in the construction industry, but rather than being on site working with a foreman to coordinate the design and program and the actual construction of a particular part of a bigger construction project, here I am working in the office, being a desk bound computer user who attends lots of meetings, makes lots of phone calls, uses up ten times more paper than before. Although I still coordinate design and program the works it's all pre-construction stuff and more to do with getting budgets approved and councils to sign off things than the actual grotty build side of it. At home I wore jeans, t-shirt, hard hat and a flouro vest; here I wear heels, skirts, make-up and I brush my hair. There I worked 7am to 7pm and Saturdays; here I work 9 to 5:30-ish and I relish my two day weekends. My role is also much more autonomous and I am left to do my own thing, checking in with my manager as I need to. When site-based, the nature of the job meant that everything needed to be run past many more people and a lot more coordination was required.

Being an Australian company based in London, the office has a mix of the nationalities, something that I think works really well. While not true of every individual, there tends to be different styles of getting things done depending on which country you're from. To generalise: relative to Australians, English people are more polite, more reserved, less agressive and more methodical. The flip side is that relative to the English in the office, Australians are quicker to make decisions, louder and more "big picture" people. The two styles balances each other out well and I think it means that all things are thought of but people don't get caught up in the details when making decisions.

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Phew! A bit of a marathon entry that one. Well done if you made it through! Off to Poland to learn to ski with a bunch of other non snow savvy Aussies for Easter so will pop some pickies on here when I'm back.

Jess xx

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Photos

Waaaah!
Michelle's going away :-( Sales of Big Macs have plummeted.

Morocco Crew
Catch up dinner with the crew from Morocco at Roma's daughter's house. She recreated the tasty couscous, mint tea and tasty nibblies we had on our trip.

Dana and Julia
The lovely Dana and I made the trip to Oxford to see the lovely Julia. We ate food at a lovely pub called The Trout and celebrated Julia's PhD grant.

Clare and Anna
Hanging out with Clare and Anna while Clare's sister - my lovely friend Sheri - was in town with Andy. No photos of them for some reason though! :(