Reflections on Things at Hand: Australia

First India, and now Australia. Why have so many images from my past come flooding back into my head lately? With India it makes sense because I'm never very far away from India - it is just in my heart. Or, to use a more classically Indian example, I'm sort of like the monkey hero Hanuman from the Ramayana. At the end of the story Hanuman pulls his skin off to show that the word Rama is etched into every bone - I think I must be that way with India. Australia is a little different I suppose in that these reflections may be a result of a series of emails I've been swapping with my good friend Sally Totman from Australia. She's been a big supporter of the Global Modules from the very beginning, and was also kind enough to ask me to write a foreward for book on Hollywood and US foreign policy. Sally teaches at Deakin University in Melbourne, but she grew up in Sydney and tends to view living in Melbourne as a punishment. I, on the contrary, absolutely loved Melbourne. It was one of those places, much like Sweden, where from the moment I got off the plane I knew I could just live there - and it was all I could do to get back onto the plane (and it wasn't simply because of the day plus trip back - which did give me the mother of all jet lag experiences - for over a week I would wake up every morning at 1:30 and be up all night, even if I had stayed up until midnight in my failed attempt to beat it). I've only been to Australia once, sadly, when I presented at a conference in Melbourne in December 2006. I found the Australians just lovely - fun and warm and just as friendly as you've been led to belief. One of the great truisms of international travel is just follow the Australians - you will always run into them because they travel constantly (which defeats the silly American excuse for not travelling because we are too far away from everything) and they always have fun. I love the Australian saying I heard on that trip - "she'll be right, mate" - meaning simply, don't worry about it, it will work out. It was strange being there during the Christmas season since it was high summer. Several of the Australians I talked to complained about how Hollywood had messed them up because of all the movies about Christmas and winter time. It was really neat to stand in line outside a department store in downtown Melbourne, much like in A Christmas Story, and watch the animated displays - including one for the Australian classic adventure of Wombat Divine. It is also a very multicultural society, and my hotel was right next to Chinatown, so I had a lot of great meals (had a really nice lunch at the Post-Mao Cafe). One of my favorite experiences was taking a train outside of town (another advantage - like the Europeans, a great public transportation system) to a much smaller town. I stood on the edge of a rocky beach, looking south, and tried to wrap my head around the thought that, after you leap-frogged Tasmania, the next stop was Antarctica.