les annonces

Yay for Australia, then, that it gets your Home love!

I would like to know more about living there - affordability, niceness of people, culture shock quotient, etc. Granted, I am not the mover that you are, but it'd be fun interesting facts to keep in mind.

i hear what you sayin'. affordability varies widely by region. i'd say that prices are comparable to basically any other countries -- the large city (well okay there's only one) is expensive, often prohibitively; the medium cities are pretty affordable; the smaller cities and rural areas are cheap as you please.

niceness of people -- in general, people are very nice. there's assholes everywhere, and i find that there are more drunk assholes wandering around here than in america, but then again, there are LESS of every other type of asshole here. people don't really make assumptions because i'm american, but they do ask me to repeat words they've seen on TV that they find funny (e.g. "whatever" a la Cher from Clueless).

the culture shock quotient is nonexistent. thanks to the prime minister, every single day australia becomes a little bit more like america. the biggest difference is the accent, i kid you not. it's actually very disappointing how american australia is, because i think that's a bad move. i was hoping australia would be more british than american, and i know it used to be, but thanks to the widespread worship of american popular culture, and the prime minister's enormous throbbing boner for George W., australia becomes increasingly less australian. some people are appalled at this, others too dumb to care.

of course, one of the HUGE differences between the two countries is that australia believes that poor people are people. this gives us things like nationalized healthcare, a social security plan that makes welfare look like some kind of sick joke, etc etc etc.

You know, I think I'm in that exact same position. Once I fly over the ocean, I think I can finally find a place to call home.