Culture lessons from Perth
Written by Lasse Gejl 542 days ago in category: perth
I’ve been thinking. Actually I’ve been experiencing. I just moved to Perth, WA from Denmark in Europe. Naturally things are quite different down under – here’s a few things I noticed.
Bigger!
Everything is bigger. Some good – some bad. Example: A Coca Cola is 500 ml. in Denmark vs. 600 ml. in Perth. And every fastfood chain has free refill. I guess it’s the sad influence of American “bigger is better” tradition?
Also – there’s a lot of space, thus the distance between locations is awfully large when you’ve grown use to tiny little Denmark. It’s fascinating to experience all that space outside Perth, but when going from A to B in Perth – it’s a challenge.
TV commercials suck!
I see the same thing happening in Denmark. But this is crazy. They’re all over, and they’re pretty damn “act now” oriented! Get a free “useless crap” when you buy a “more expensive crap”. Special offer! Buy today!
Interruption sucks, interaction rocks
I never seen that amount of crappy advertising. Not crappy as in “not working”, but crappy as in “I can’t stand it”. Obviously they must be working? But I can simply not understand why? It’s all noise. If someone interacted with the potential customers, they would have a significant better chance of standing out among competitors.
Left/right issue
I know – it’s obvious. But I’m going to comment anyway. First of all people drive in the other side of the road(left). That’s cool – but I’m still looking left instead of right when crossing roads. I’m a traffic accident waiting to happen.
The left/right issue kind of follows me around. Busses stop on the opposite side of the road, people walk/stand on the opposite side of the escalator and I tip-tap dance with people on a daily basis when we walk against each other. What a thriller!
Everybody have a car
You’ll need a car if you want to go anywhere. Public transport is great in Perth, but too slow when things are so far apart.
Do not hitchhike
As a side note I can reveal that it’s not recommended to hitchhike in and around Perth. It’s much to hard. One of the reasons is that the roads are build like highways for fast traffic without places to stop, thus making it hard to actually find a good spot to hitchhike from. Also – people are either a) too afraid to pick someone up, or b) too “busy” to pick someone up.
Broadband internet
For some reason all broadband suppliers delivers through the telephone landline. In Denmark it’s mostly delivered through the TV cable network. I talked to a sales guy at iiNet who said that the reason was that Telstra owned all the cobber/fiber optics throughout Australia, thus not giving access to other companies.
Telstra is nice to newcomers
Most suppliers want you to sign a 12/24 month deal, but iiNet and Westnet both offer separate broadband deals without a monthly commitment. This is cool because Telstra will let you open(and install on address) a landline for free. After that you can order any broadband internet connection.
In Denmark broadband internet is bundled with cable TV and always on a plan i.e. a lot more binding. In optimum conditions you get a nice deal through your owners’ association etc.
The people
The people is truly the greatest resource of Oz. They are in general more friendly, polite, open and interested than people back home. There’s a reason that Australia has a great reputation.
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