The Australian ‘paradise’
I occasionally find myself biting my tongue when some English person excitedly tells me about their plans to emigrate to Australia. I think I should be pointing them all to this article:
More than 20 per cent of employees work 50 hours or more each week, and more than 30 per cent regularly work on weekends. When these measures of long work hours and weekend work are combined, Australia ranks as the most work-intense high income country. About 2 million people now lose at least six hours of family time to work on Sunday, and those hours are not fully compensated for during the week.
There’s very little “throw another shrimp on the barbie” going on…



When I lived in Europe, the fourth most common* response to me admitting I was from New Zealand was “Oh, New Zealand is a paradise! I’ve always dreamed of moving there.” People became quite belligerent (I was destroying their dream!) to hear that the main reasons I had left were lack of employment opportunities and unaffordable university fees.
___________
* The three most common responses were:
(1) “New Zealand? You’re so lucky: I just love kangaroos”
(2) “New what? Never heard of it.”
and most mysteriously:
(3) “Isn’t that in the former USSR?”
Comment by styleygeek — March 6, 2007 @ 12:12 am
Mmm, I can sort of understand the kangaroos, since it is only the breakwater off Sydney heads (joke, joke, only a joke!), but USSR suggests a curious sense of geography. Mind you I have met Americans who are exceedingly hazy on the Austria/Australia division…
Comment by Natalie Bennett — March 6, 2007 @ 12:15 am
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Pingback by Info Bulletin » Bookstore-guide.info — Daily News Feed — March 6, 2007 @ 2:01 am
From what I understand, Austria doesn’t have as many sharks. But that’s just common knowledge in the US. Also, many of us wonder who “Lian” is.
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