8 Differences between America and Australia

Communication

In Australia the word ‘root’ is associated with the local slang dictionary and is synonym for f*ck in nearly all its senses: for example “I feel rooted”; “this laptop is rooted”; “root someone.” So if you are an American, you should be careful in using this word during polite conversations.

Toilet

If you need to go to the toilet in USA, look no further than the nearest convenience store. However Australians do not have toilet facilities in convenience store, so you need to look for the departmental store or petrol and train stations.

Eating Habit

The American involves having your fork in your left and your knife in your right when cutting your food, then putting the knife down and switching your fork to your right hand to eat. However Australians tend to keep the fork as it is i.e. in the left hand and the knife helps coax your food onto your fork.

Public Bus

As an Australian make sure you have the exact change needed for the bus fare, as American bus drivers can sometimes be impolite in fare changing issue. On the other hand, Australian bus drivers tend to more lenient in giving changes. However make sure you have small notes like $5 or $10 instead of, say, $50 for a $2 fare. Generally Australian drivers tend to be quite friendly and deserve to be appreciated so always remember to say ‘thank you’ while leaving the bus.

Driving

Like Britain, Australians drive on the left side of the road. However this is not the case in America.

Beaches and Oceans

According to an American Lauren Watson, Australian beaches are “some of the best in the world with golden brown sand and deep blue water”

Sport

Basketball and baseball is very popular in America whereas cricket is celebrated in Australia. However, most Americans don’t know anything about cricket.

And of course….

The Accent

Local Language Terms:

Refer to the word in italic

At a glance:

• Immigration is an important feature of Australian society
• Since 1945, over six million people from 200 countries have come to Australia as new settlers
• Migrants have made a major contribution to shaping modern Australia
• People born overseas make up almost one quarter of the total population

DID YOU KNOW?

The Australian city of Tasmania has the cleanest air in the world!

The Beauty of African Safari

In the Technicolor brilliance of an African sunset, I watch three giraffes sauntering towards the waterhole. They hover at the edge, glancing around nervously to make sure no lions are lurking behind the acacias.

Reassured, they flop down and lap up the water with their leathery tongues. By now the pool is as crimson as the sky and the animals are reflected in the tinted water. Breathless with excitement, I keep pressing the shutter to capture this stunning image and, as I do so, I long to tell Michael how thrilled I am to be witnessing
this scene. But what I really want is to have him here
beside me to share this magical moment, and to take
the photos himself.

This is my first journey since my husband died and I’ve embarked with mixed feelings. He was my life partner and my photographer. How will it be to travel without him, to walk into hotel rooms alone?

My friends have encouraged me, saying it will do me good to get out of my environment. “It will make you stronger,” they insisted.

Just how far I’ve come from my known environment is already obvious on the second night. There are six of us staying under canvas in the Botswana bush. As I lie alone in my small tent, I’m definitely not feeling any stronger, especially when I hear a lion growling, then the blood-curdling howl of a jackal.

Why on earth did I decide to do this 19-day African tour? But at dawn, when the sun lights up the bush and yellow hornbills and fish eagles fly high overhead, my nocturnal anxieties recede.

However, when we continue on our way, my spirits sink again. Although I’m travelling with five Aussies, they are strangers, and I feel alone and vulnerable. I don’t want to talk about my loss, but my grief becomes a wall that distances as well as protects me from my companions.

I am struggling with my new camera. Whenever I see a dramatic outcrop of granite monoliths, a boatman poling a dugout canoe, giraffes mating or lion cubs scampering in the bushes, I’m not sure how to take the shot. Should I use the wide-angle lens or the telephoto? Should I get as many elephants in the frame as possible or just the baby jumbo? But as I focus the camera, I can hear Michael’s voice in my head telling me to get as close as I can, and to always have something interesting in the foreground.

“The detail is often more powerful than the entire scene,” he is saying. “Make sure the horizon is level.”

Although the camera is a source of frustration, it is also a welcome distraction. While I am focused on photography, I can’t really think about anything else.

As we drive along soft grasslands and arid salt pans, we crane out of the van to gaze at herds of zebra and impala grazing, elephants sluicing themselves with muddy water, and giraffes nibbling the leaves of camel thorn trees.

I hold my breath when we come close enough to lions to hear them crunching a warthog’s bones. During one game drive we witness real drama in the wild: an injured leopard is trying to reach a dead jackal before the lions sprawled under the nearby mopane trees spot it and attack.

Watching wild animals from the van is exciting, but feeding one beats everything. During a visit to a guest farmhouse, I hold out a chunk of raw meat on a stick through a wire mesh fence and two cheetahs come running. I am standing so close I can look straight into the amber flecks in their eyes and count the white whiskers on their beautiful faces. While I am walking back to the farmhouse, a rapier-horned oryx trots towards me; I feel as if I’ve been transported to a mythical realm.

Towards the end of the trip, we are driving through Namibia’s Damaraland, an overpowering landscape of primeval rocks. The sun is beginning to set just as we arrive at the spectacular Fish River Canyon and the ancient escarpments of the gorge are blazing. Shafts of light are pouring from the sky; if the scene were set to music, it would surely be Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.

This is the toughest journey I’ve made, physically and emotionally. In almost three weeks I have crossed deserts and dunes, cruised waterways seething with crocodiles and hippos, and jolted over countless rough roads. There have been some tough and lonely times when I’ve had to hold myself together, not to be overwhelmed by sadness. But standing on the edge of Fish River Canyon, I am filled with awe at the beauty of the world and I feel grateful for the brief privilege of life.

That evening, at the end of a long, scorching day driving among the canyons and stone fortresses of the southernmost tip of Namibia, we pull up outside our bougainvillea-covered lodge. Hot and tired, all I want to do is jump into the swimming pool, but as we head towards the entrance, we pass a heap of stones.

According to the sign, this is Haiseb’s grave. It’s a memorial to the nomadic Nama people who once inhabited this land.

As they wandered from place to place, they would kneel beside their roadside shrines and place stones, twigs or a few drops of honey to propitiate their gods and ensure a safe journey. And when they continued on their way, they were warned never to look back.

This ritual moves me. It reminds me of the Jewish custom of placing a stone on a grave whenever we visit to show we remember the dead, a tradition that links me to the Nama people.

I have covered 5000km on this journey, from Livingstone to Cape Town, and while every step I’ve wanted to share with Michael, the longing as persistent as the ache of a phantom limb, the splendour of Africa has helped me reconnect with the wonder of the world.

So I place a stone on Haiseb’s grave, ask for a safe and successful trip, and resolve not to look back but to continue on my life’s journey.

Source: This article was written by an award-winning Australian author named Diane Armstrong. Some aspects of the article has been amended (title, extra photos, italic words) so as to enhance reader’s understanding of it and also be able to form a mental image of the whole story.

Local Language Terms:

Refer to the words in italic.

At a glance:

African Safari should be on the top list for ’10 Things we must do before we die’

DID YOU KNOW?

Elephants are the most intelligent animals of Africa!

Travel Guide: South Asia

Once known as East Pakistan, Bangladesh won its independence in 1971. The country is located in South Asia just beside India. Despite poiltical upheavels and impoverishment, the country is developing rapidly and is regarded as the Next 11 economies to watch out for. Here are some useful facts about the country:

• Shopping: Home to one of the largest shopping malls in Asia and plenty of bazaars or (‘bajar’ if you want to pronounce it perfectly in local voice with mixture of Local+English tone), the country is surely among the best places for bargaining and low price deals.



• Food: If you are a food lover and like spicy food such as biriyani, grilled chicken, tandoori, shik kabab then you are on for a feast



• Clothing: For some reason girls tend to be lot smarter here than guys in terms of dressing sense. However, strong conservative female clothing such as salwar kameez is part of the tradition here



• Communication: You might find English communication here a lot better here than compared to say China. However as a tourist, the trick is to spot the manoosh who looks a bit well dressed (chances are they are educated) and doesn’t look like any ordinary or poor person that are plenty in the street (look at the photo below; please note the purpose is not to discriminate anyone but provide insightful information). You might also be surprised to hear how often local people use English words while talking in their own language.



• Sight Seeing: The country has got quite a number of good places for visit and sight seeing that includes Cox’s Bazar deem to be the world’s longest natural sea beach and the hill tracts in Rangamati which is truly magnificent.



• Religion: Home to the worlds highest number of mosques, religion by far plays the biggest influence among people.
• Road and Crowdedness: A tiny nation with 160 million population no one can escape the congestion and density of the main capital Dhaka city, probably one of the worst aspects of the nation. A 10/15 minute drive can take you hours, so PATIENCE is the key for any traveler



• Gain Celebrity status: if you ever wanted to become famous and popular, then this is the perfect destination for you. But there is a pre condition: you need to have a skin color other than Brown (local ethnicity) like White, Black, Hispanic or Chinese, then chances are you will draw lot of people’s attention, which is kind of funny I guess. However the drawback is, taxi drivers and street side vendors might exploit you knowing you are not well acquainted with the local fare and prices of goods

Local Language Terms:

• bajar: A market consisting of a street lined with shops and stalls
• biriyani: Indian dishes made with rice, highly flavoured and coloured with saffron or turmeric, mixed with meat or fish
• tandoori chicken: is a popular Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani dish consisting of roasted chicken prepared with yogurt and spices.
• shik kabab: a dish consisting of small pieces of beef, mutton meat threaded onto skewers and grilled, generally over charcoal
• manoosh: person

At a glance:

A challenging travel destination, not for the faint hearted but fabulous for someone who loves to explore new culture and does not mind the dirt here and there

DID YOU KNOW?

Most people of older generation don’t even know gay or lesbian sexual orientation exists in modern world!

8 Reasons why Japan is a strange but must-see country

• Taxi doors open automatically: As a passenger you don’t have to worry about opening the taxi door to come out of the car. The door is controlled by the driver who opens the door with the push of a button
• Barrage of vending machines: The country is dubbed as the land of vending machines because they can be seen almost anywhere. Normally most countries have vending machines located in enclosed places that sell canned, plastic drinks, chocolates or crisps but Japanese people have taken it to the extremes by even selling meats and green vegetables



• Capsule Hotels: If you are a budget traveler looking for inexpensive accommodation, then capsule hotels (first photo) is the best deal for you in terms of cheap and overnight stay
• High Tech Toilets: Installed in almost 72% of Japanese households, these electronic toilets provide bidet washing for spraying on your backside, seat warming, and deodorization

  

• Free Tissues: If you’re walking down the street in Tokyo, there’s a pretty good chance someone will stick their hand out and offer you a packet of free soshiki. This is part of an advertisement policy from marketers. There are foreign people who say they never buy their own tissues, and others who say they get so many of these free packets that they don’t even need to buy toilet paper
• Touch-screen menus at bars and restaurants: Japan is renonwed for its technological prowess so it might not come as a surprise that they have bars and restaurants with touch-screen facililties



• Communication: Not many people in Japan eigo o hanasu so it is difficult to communicate with people as a foreigner
• Safety: It is so safe you can go walking around in the middle of the yoru with no problem. The country is highly ranked for domestic safety and security

Local Language Terms:

• soshiki: tissue
• eigo o hanasu: speak english
• yoru: night

At a glance:

Japan is the world’s third largest economy with one of the highest per capita income

DID YOU KNOW?

There are around 1,500 earthquakes every year in Japan