i was just walking along the yarra river from the train station, and this group of young girls, who really wear too much eyeliner and have too many holes in their body, shouted hey fucking asian, just keep walking fucker etc and lots of other f words in the sentence. haha the word was literally used as an adjective, verb, pronoun. i wasnt shocked/upset actually, and my lack of emotion towards that did surprise me. maybe its because they were the 'act cool punks' so you dont actually expect anything that intelligent from them or maybe its because there was always that slight bigotry in the social undercurrents?
i mean everyone in med has been fantastic. from the tutors to friends to patients. But beyond that safety circle, sometimes you just feel that there's something more beneath all the superficial niceness. Im not saying that my aussie friends/tutors arent really that nice, but hmm, maybe im in my cynical mood. But i think that could be the reason why ive never really felt comfortable in australia. no doubt its a fantastic place, free health system, quite cosmopolitan, wide variety of sports, fresh incredible food etc but there is something inherently wrong, which i cant pinpoint exactly, with this place. However, my theory is that any nation who refuses to apologize for the wrongs that they have done cant be that great a nation. yeah so what if kevin rudd apologized, just look at the forums in the papers. Majority of them were either upset he subjected their children into watching the apology for something they didnt do, or they just didnt care.
Not that i want to compare to singapore, but ive never felt looked down or discriminated against in singapore. maybe behind the scenes we have our little jokes about each races, but i believe that we dont actually believe we are better than the next race, or one religion is better than the other.
so yeah, when i took a taxi this morning, the driver who migrated from malaysia insisted that australia is the best country in the world. sorry mate its not, not when im made to feel 2nd class, not when the people arent mature enough to accept differences, and definitely not when your country isnt brave enough to face the wrongs of the past.