A Pom returns: the reality of life after Australia

This is one blog I’ve been meaning to write since packing up our Aussie-born pooch and 20 foot container of ‘stuff’ and waving goodbye to Down Under. I always meant to give an update on Life After Perth, but just to be sure my rose-tinted ‘happy to be home’ goggles were now a more realistic hue of clear, and to ward off all accusations of still being drunk on rolling green hills and Tesco prices, I thought I’d leave it a respectable 6 months before giving a verdict.

But time flies when you’re busy and it has been nearly 2 years since our return. More and more people have been contacting me to ask “What happened next?” People who want to be told that returning to the UK isn’t a one way ticket to WhathehellhaveIdonesville - that I’m not just another Pom that pinged the wrong way. Or, I suspect, be reassured that I’m not sat here rocking backwards and forwards in a corner, clutching a photo of a Skippy and muttering darkly to myself how we should have never left.

Well the good news is I’m still sane, I rarely rock and I never weep at the sight of a kangaroo.

Returning to a British way of life has been an interesting journey to say the least. Unlike our hasty departure from the UK 3.5 years before, the Australian exodus of 2010 was an extremely well-executed affair, with a year of meticulous planning and quite a lot of careful saving along the way.

It started with a trip back to confirm our decision, scout new areas to live and set up schooling. This was followed by 6 months of heavy-duty moving, haggling, sorting and packing – along with the selling of whatever we couldn’t afford to ship back. I thoroughly recommend a garage sale as the most effective way to clear unwanted junk. One night of preparation, 5 hours of bargaining and several 100 people trampling over our lawn later and we’d covered the cost of shipping the dog. That may not sound like much, until you realise his First Class cage back cost more than our 4 tickets combined. Whether or not he was worth the expensive remains a hotly debated subject to this day.

Touching back down on British soil was a happy occasion for the whole family. I would have happily kissed the ground, but for the fact I had half a dozen bags and a limp child hung off my person, and the Arrivals Hall floor was in need of a good scrub. It was an epic flight to say the least, but hats off to Air Asia, they may be a budget airline with a questionable line of stomach-churning Pot Noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but the service was brilliant, and the cheap ‘Business Class’ sized seats ensured we arrived rested and with all vertebra working and intact.

There was no fanfare or line of excited faces waiting to meet us as we walked through. We took a taxi to the nearest Travelodge and laid there, all wide awake, wired from excitement and struggling to breathe in the unventilated room. After a few hours of listening to the kids flapping around on the sofa bed we decided to hit the road early (in the car we’d bought unseen on the Internet) and our get on with our new life. We rocked up in Norwich before even the earliest of birds were catching worms, and then, with hours to kill till the next Travelodge opened, spent several hours getting lost in the one-way system while looking for somewhere to eat.

A week after picking up the keys to our house (rented unseen on the Internet), and the fastest unpacking of a container in history, my husband disappeared in a taxi, boarded a plane and flew back to whence we had come. With a work contract still to complete in Sydney, I was left waving goodbye in the doorway of a new house, city and county, with no family or friends for miles around and 2 kids to look after till Christmas. Not quite how I pictured our happy homecoming.

The 4 months that followed were certainly a crash course in starting over. There were new roads to navigate, shops, doctors and dentists to find, schools and nurseries to start, utilities to organise and complicated contracts to decipher. Credit, I was reminded, is most certainly not your friend when you’ve left for sunnier shores.

During those long and lonely weeks I spent half of everyday on Skype and resorted to accosting strangers in the local park just to have some adult conversation. I endured a long running struggle with a tight arse landlord, a carpet that stank of cat wee and a shower that didn’t even work. I had to deal with a dippy, runaway dog, catch spiders the size of a dinner plate, buy and master a lawnmower with a mind of its own and battle through various strains of vomiting virus, ear infections and flu. And then, to top it all off, I had 6 long, glorious weeks with limited eyesight and an addiction to painkillers while I waited for my new eyes to work.

A walk in the park it most certainly was not. But despite all of the above, and the feeling rather lonely in my husband-less state, I loved every single day of being back. Even those when the temperatures hit -8 degrees and it took me 1.5 hours to travel an 8-minute journey in the snow. Or my car gave up the good fight and slid back down the icy hill with a boot load of shopping still to transport. Or the toilet cistern decided to leak through the ceiling and gave me a watery fright.

By the time hubby finally rocked up a week before Christmas life was in full swing. On his second day we went to collect the keys for a house I’d already bought – a run down, damp as a swamp, freezing, flooded old farmhouse in the middle of the rural Norfolk countryside. A few days into January and renovations began. Day after day we spent ripping down and building back up a shell of a house, while snow blew in through the open doors and we ate our diet of garage sandwiches whilst perched on upturned tool boxes wearing heat packs strapped to our bodies and 3 pairs of gloves.

6 weeks later with work still in progress we moved into the house with 2 kids and dog in tow. With bare walls and floors, no backdoor and not much a kitchen to speak of it wasn’t really an ideal living environment, but we had no plans to move for at least 10 years so it seemed worth all the ongoing hard work. Fast forward 8 months and with the house finally completed, we decided there was only one natural next step for us to take. So we put it back on the market, packed up our now 60 foot container worth of stuff (no, I’m still not sure how our possessions mutated in this time) and moved back towards the city.

This time in the sticks had taught us that rural living simply wasn’t for us. Too many unfriendly villagers with humps, dead pheasants on the road to school and the smell of ‘farm’ wafting in when we were trying to eat. So here we are again, new house, new village, another new life – and NO more plans to move.

So the big question to be answered is this: having now lived both lives and experienced the reality of a life Down Under, do I still (honestly, hand on my heart) think we made the right decision to up sticks and come back? Hell yes, every single minute of every single (sometimes) soggy day. Even when its grey outside, blowing a gale and chucking it down at great force. Or the news is full of doom and gloom, the streets of London are being burnt by delinquent rioters, petrol prices have shot up again and another great parliamentary scandal has been unearthed.

The truth of it is I simply don’t miss our old life at all.

I don’t miss our nice house or the crippling mortgage we paid. I don’t miss the high salary or the extortionate utility bills. I don’t miss the BBQ or the overpriced food we couldn’t afford to buy. I don’t miss the blue skies (well maybe a bit) or the long, cold, wet winters with no insulation, double glazing or heating to keep us warm. I don’t miss the beaches or the flies that just love to swarm in your face. I don’t miss the lack of culture or anything in the slightest bit old. I don’t miss the feeling of being trapped in the most isolated city on Earth. I don’t miss being cooked alive or keeping an eye out for sharks.

I do miss Tim Tams however. Now there was a chocolate biscuit that almost made it worth while staying.

There is one thing I’ve finally realised after our stint in Perth and that is the grass is never greener. Every country has it problems, its pros and it’s cons. Every country is run by politicians who over-promise and under-deliver. Every country has crime and drugs and those people you’d rather cross the street to avoid. Every country has bad weather and days when you think you’ll never make ends meet.

For me, England definitely wins hands down. So Rule Britannia, long live the Queen and bring out the china tea cups – it’s good to be home!

East meets West

China and the US are two countries as far apart historically and culturally as East is to West. To each, the other country remains an enigma, with fact and fiction merging and misconceptions rife. ‘The Land of the Free’ versus ‘The Communist Middle Kingdom’. ‘The Communist‘ versus ‘The Communist’. ‘The Consumer’ versus ‘The Manufacturer’.

Yet here are two great nations, tied together by trade and industry, moving forward and destined to become the two tallest towers in a global economy.

The world needs to start looking beyond these labels and sit up and take note of what China is achieving. As so many other now powerful nations have proved, it is not a country’s history that is relevant in the world today, but its future, and China‘s future is indeed bright. Few countries are on a more prosperous path with apparent unlimited potential.

So are the differences as great as would first appear? Both countries are run in the same authoritarian manner, ruled by strict controls and power. In the U.S, providing Americans with their freedom requires powerful leaders – the internal power that controls voters and drives each electoral struggle and the global power used to dominate the rest of the world.

Chinese authorities also use the tools of control and power; power to enforce political constraints and to hinder social developments. A different agenda perhaps, but the same tactics nonetheless.

The U.S is undeniably the primary superpower with the largest, most technologically powerful economy in the world with a constitution to protect the freedom and civil rights of every American. The U.S imports six times as much as it exports, making it the world’s largest consumer society.

But this has produced a culture of materialism, greed and financial gain, giving rise to a host of potential long term problems. High unemployment, low wages and debt are a continuing threat to the economy; one that already has inadequate investment in its infrastructure. Living life in the fast lane is taking its toll and the U.S will require vast amounts of foreign capital in the future to sustain its economy.

China is already the world’s second largest economy – measured on a purchasing power parity basis – but it is still a developing country. Continuing to operate within a political framework of Communist dogma, the leaders are not elected, instead those in opposition risk imprisonment and the population continues to be suppressed.

Conversely, in its economy, China is moving in the opposite direction, creating optimism and potential prosperity for many. Short-term benefits and a long-term strategy have been the goals. China has concentrated first and foremost on the development of its own country and economy, rather than spending overseas.

Business is booming due to the more relaxed economic controls, opening the doors to increased foreign investment and a new high in foreign trade – in the region of US$851.2 billion, in the last year. Now the world’s fourth largest exporter and its third largest importer, China has built up vast foreign capital reserves, enabling it potentially to be the one economy strong enough to help the U.S in the future.

Add this to the fastest growing GDP, soaring stocks and an undervalued Yuan and it seems that, on the surface at least, China has come up with the perfect recipe to become the economic global powerhouse of the future.

The upturn in the economy has also improved social standards and expectations. Consumerism of city dwellers has soared and the man in the street is ever more demanding. More choices in how he lives, better housing, more mobiles, bigger cars and a voracious appetite for electrical gadgets to boot.

Diet is also becoming increasingly western; there are now around 800 Kentucky Fried Chicken, 400 McDonalds and 100 Pizza Hut outlets throughout China.

The Internet is also a development ‘barometer’ which indicates that China is on the brink of its own digital revolution. In the next two years, China is predicted to have the highest number of Internet subscribers in any one country – a staggering 153 million Chinese online. In the last year alone, 22 million new surfers signed up, bringing the current total to 80 million, making them second only to the U.S.

”This number is increasing by a daily average of 50,000”, said Cai Mingzhao, Deputy Director of the Information Office of the State Council, China’s Central Government. Simple maths dictate that if China continues on this path, with a current population of 1.3 billion, they will have the sheer ‘people power’ to wrest the title of ‘King of the Web’ from the U.S.

The Chinese people are revelling in this newfound online freedom, opening them up to the rest of the world and allowing more freedom of speech. A survey conducted by the Social Development Research Centre, under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in 12 major cities, shows that 71.8% of the surfers agree with the notion that “they have more opportunities to express their views online”. 72.3% also believe that “government officials can acquaint themselves with more public opinions through the Internet.”

Lu Zhongmei, deputy of the National People’s Congress (NCP) is doing just that. Using his personal, forum-based website – http://www.hongyu-online.com – he solicits proposals from website discussions on affairs of state. He believes that the openness of the Internet will encourage the ordinary citizens to express their opinions and will give them a better understanding on how government policies are implemented at the grass-roots level.

“Netizens are a special group of constituency who can express their will at ease on the Internet, and their activities will facilitate to some extent the development of democracy in China,” said Zhou.

But this openness is causing concern amongst China‘s leaders. They are concerned that the younger generation – nearly half of China‘s internet users – under 24 year olds, are spending too much time online, assisted by the countless Internet cafes that stay open 24 hours a day. The worry is that these impressionable young minds are being exposed to unsuitable political content in online chat-rooms.

Investors, experiencing a rush of excitement, are after a piece of the burgeoning Chinese economic pie and have been buying, some would say recklessly, into the Internet Stock market. Eager to invest, but limited by choice, they have shied away from the state-owned Chinese companies and have gone for safer stock options.

Privately owned Internet portals, Sina.com, Sohu.com and NetEase.com, have benefited and their shares on the Nasdaq market have tripled in value over the past 12 months. Some financial analysts are predicting a sharp drop in Chinese stocks, to match the fall of U.S Internet Stocks in 2000, but currently their words of warning are being drowned out by the noise of the stampede.

“The bubble is going to burst”, said Andy Xie, a Morgan Stanley economist in Hong Kong. “It’s going to be bad”.

The race to jump on board is not restricted just to the Internet. Gold rush fever prevails and China is currently the hottest place for privatisations, mergers and take-overs. Overseas companies appreciating the advantage of the state-controlled cheap labour and untapped markets are flocking to China in their droves, their enthusiasm hampered only by the problems caused when negotiating in an unfamiliar culture and market.

All of this is, of course, the upside which China is broadcasting to the world. Behind this success, the government still struggles to reduce corruption and other economic crimes that threaten its progress. It is fighting to sustain the large state-owned enterprises, maintain the weakening population control programmes needed to protect the future survival of its social system and endeavouring to address the growing problem of the deterioration of the country’s environment.

Success and problems aside, China undoubtedly has the capacity to become a substantially greater nation in the future. It is using this time of economic growth to assert itself, to expand and develop on what the West has already achieved and to learn from past mistakes.

With this in mind, surely it would be the right time to invite China to join the US, the EU, Japan and Canada and to give them more of a voice and a larger role in global economic management.

Without a little more thought to the implications and consequences of Chinas new economic expansion, history is likely to repeat itself, causing worldwide resentment and unease as happened, when Germany and Japan last upset the apple cart.

The world leaders needs to wake up, look around and accept that differences in ideas, principles and priorities are part of our global society and recognise that no one country holds the rights to a power monopoly.

oly.

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oly.