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as they say in the old country - what a load of bollocks
australia is australia. full stop.
and australians are australians.
can we get back to what australians are best at - bleeding edge
innovation in the face of insurmountable obstacles. xml seems like a
great test of our abilities.
;)
rick marshall
ps don't be fooled by the domain - i'm in australia and as australian as
anyone
On Fri, 2003-06-20 at 20:12, Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@comcast.net>
>
> > Rick, does an Australian count as a "Westerner"?
> > If not, what is the best term, since it surely could not be "Asian"?
>
> Call us whatever you like: we don't care :-) Some Asians think we are
> Asian, some think we are not, too.
>
> The further one gets from one's home country, the more unnecessary
> is all that detail on maps! The other side of the globe should always be a
> comfortable blur. (I suspect most Australians would not be able to point out
> Washington D.C. on a map.) Actually, there is a growing trend here to have
> the South at the top of maps, rather than the North, to protect our youth
> from northern-centricism or slights to our continental dignity.
>
> Over here, our rough mental geography is probably less based on hemispheres and
> more based on oceans: Pacific Rim countries (amiable, but prone to stealing our fish),
> Mediterranean countries (nice weather and old things, bad plumbing), Atlantic countries
> (good tennis tournaments, but what's with the power/class/success trips?), and
> Indian Ocean countries (saved us from British cooking, but don't drink the water dear).
>
> I think generally Australians would be happy to be considered just part of the South
> Pacific, with Fiji, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Tahiti, Tonga, East Timor,
> New Caledonia, etc.: the other countries with indigenous aboriginal,
> polynesian or melanesian populations. "Australasia" or "Oceana".
> Geographically fairly Southern, economically fairly Eastern, culturally fairly
> Western and ethnically fairly Northern: your call.
>
> In the long term (when Australia joins son-of-NAFTA, after the Euro takes over
> from the US$ as the top trading currency, after oil-producers adopt the Euro to punish
> US imperialism and after the East Asian countries run out of funds for stockpiling
> US$ to protect their exports), I expect we will become even more American
> and hence less Asian geo-politically, even as our population become more Asian.
> Think Vancouver with kangaroos.
>
> Cheers
> Rick Jelliffe
>
>
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