My First Trip to Foreign – 6
Supermarkets, Paddy’s market, attitude towards customers, Hillsong and school visit.
While shopping at Supa News, Erina Fair, I observed that fashion, lifestyle and gossip magazines occupied 3/4ths of the bookshelf. Only 1/4ths contained magazines on business, current affairs, news and the like.
Erina Fair is a huge shopping complex. But the good thing that they have touch screen directories in several spots. Even their website has a printable map. I think of those touchscreen directories fondly every time I’m in Spencer Plaza (yep, I still go there and I still get lost, but at least I know the directory is near the staircase) or Express Avenue (this place is a test of your sense of direction in which I always fail and the husband passes with flying colours).
We drove to Sydney to Paddy’s Market. Oh wow! Never expected to see such a crowded place in Sydney. It felt like being in India. We had fun. Fresh produce, fresh sea food, and colourful vegetables and greens. It was a rush of sights, sounds and smells. With my mother around to cook for us, we bought crabs. They were huge. We met a man with a huge moustache, who happily posed with the husband.
I observed that most vegetables and fruits are quite big compared to their Indian counterparts. The average Australian onion is about 3 times the Indian onion. Even the coriander herb is much bigger, not just the size of the bunch, the plant itself.
On the way back, we ate pizza at… yep, Pizza Hut. We were too hungry to bother. I was impressed with what happened here. The guy who took orders misunderstood our order and gave us a wrong pizza. Oh no! not again. I was ready to get defensive. But surprise, surprise! when we let him know, he immediately apologised and took the name of the right pizza and let us have the wrong pizza free of cost. Now in most restaurants in India, we would have to fight to convince the guy that he had indeed heard us wrong. It’s so unpleasant to have to fight at a hotel. I hate it and yet sometimes I have to do it just to get what is rightfully mine.
The next day, we drove all the way to Sydney again to Hillsong church. It was a wonderful time in God’s presence. Apart from the sermon and worship, we were impressed with the facilities and the infrastructure. The husband got excited and took many photos, some of which I’ve put up here. You can see that he’s happy to see clean toilets anywhere. (They are innovative – they had displays in the toilets!) We have photos of toilets from so many towns, countries and highways. I have some photos of dirty ones too, which I usually send to the concerned authorities.
The road between Gosford and Sydney is part of the Pacific Highway. I remember it as one of the routes on Road Rash. I used to fall into the water now and then. Incidentally, I taught my nephew to play Road Rash on my laptop. The whole time I was with them, this is what he played. He enjoyed it much.
One day, we went to Central Coast Grammar School. My nephew was going to study there that year. The teacher was surprised when she met us. We were a huge Indian family for one small boy. They didn’t expect to see the uncle and aunt, apart from the mother and father of the child. Anyway, we went for a tour around their beautiful big campus. Their library made me want to become a student again. And I loved their carpentry workshop.
The smaller kids had shoes with velcro. The head teacher remarked that they made these shoes because it is too difficult to teach such young children to tie their shoe laces. And oh! the little girls has hideous shoes, except one or two. I was reminded of my own childhood. We had the normal Bata school shoes, while some of our friends (Humeira and Chelvini) had beautiful “foreign” shoes with decorative toe areas and slight heels.
I observed that this country is conscious of its water resources. Even the school parking area had a rain water drainage that runs into a creek.