Multicultural Australia

Melbourne is a cultural mashup. At alternating times it felt like the US, Europe, or Asia. Maybe I should realize that it was Australia with its own distinctive culture. Like some other cities, there were people of varying appearance, lots of ethnic cuisine, a variety of languages being spoken and religions being practiced. There was a Chinatown as well, but it looked similar to other instances throughout the world. I often wonder if this familiar "safe" appearance is deliberate. One of the reasons I enjoy Big Trouble in Little China is its playful, campy premise that there's something lurking below the facade of Chinatown.

Looking below the obvious surface revealed a great deal about multiculturalism in Melbourne. There was a Scottish Christian church, which might not seem that unusual, but the church sign mentioned a guest sermon from an Indonesian pastor. A movie theater showcased the latest Hollywood hits, but also featured a list of Bollywood movies. One of my cousins who grew up in Bangladesh attended graduate school in Australia. It seemed like an unusual choice to me, but he pointed out that Australia's a lot closer to Bangladesh than the US. Australia feels remote because it's a 14 hour flight from the west coast of the US (or 20 hours of flying from Baltimore). But recent events have started to demonstrate that maybe the US isn't the "center" of the world anymore.

When I visited Melbourne in September, the US stock market meltdown had started. Through a combination of BBC, CNN International, Asian and Australian news sources, I managed to learn about worldwide perspectives regarding the US economic meltdown. The interconnectedness of our world became very evident as finance ministers from several countries started assessing their exposure to the US financial crisis. I also learned some very interesting facts about the influence of China's holdings in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

In a rather interesting juxtaposition of events, Australian news also covered China's first space walk mission. While Chinese news agencies showed images of the Chinese applauding the "tigernauts" (astronauts) as national heroes, US news agencies showed people wondering about who to blame. Folks in China were looking to the stars above while folks in the US were staring at the bottom line. Australia may seem remote, but by being equidistant from so many places in a flat world, at times it felt like a crossroads of the world.

A Taste of India

There are so many western influences in Japan, it's possible to forget at moments that I'm in Asia. I have heard from fellow Asians some resentment about Japan's alignment with the West, rather than the rest of Asia. The current G-8 Summit is a reminder of this tension. Perhaps hosting the conference in Japan will allow for greater emphasis on China and India. It's strange to imagine an economic consortium without explicit representation from China and India, or Brazil for that matter.

At one point during a trip between hotels, my taxi stopped in front of an Indian restaurant. Almost anyone of South Asian descent will know the moment. No matter our origins, no matter our self-perceptions, South Asians in these circumstances will often look at each other and smile. As if to acknowledge a bond that transcends national or cultural boundaries. Even the vast differences between Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis seem to disappear when we leave South Asia. I suppose we finally focus more on what is common, rather than what is different.

In this case, each of the people in the restaurant smiled and bowed slightly. One of them came up to the taxi and handed me a menu from the restaurant. I can't deny a certain comfort when I saw curry, naan, and mango lassi on the menu. He spoke to me in Japanese. When I said "thank you" in English, he must have realized I do not live in Tokyo. He made the leap to Hindi, which I also do not understand. I'm embarrassed enough not understanding Japanese, but I'm even more embarrassed not understanding Hindi (after all, my wife speaks it fairly fluently). I miss out on so much because of my poor language skills.

One language that does seem to transcend boundaries is business. I'm struck by the Asian business shows, with men in suits and ties, using the same jargon as the Wall Street pundits. It's a 24 hour a day obsession, spoken in the language of currency. It's difficult to translate English into Japanese, but it's easy to find out the latest conversion rate between the British pound and the Japanese yen. BBC Asian Business Report featured a story on malnutrition in India. The story focused on a young woman who mentioned that her four children are starving. They certainly looked that way. The report mentioned that malnutrition causes $29 billion of lost productivity in India, or nearly 4% of its GDP. India's long-term productivity might be adversely affected if "they can not tap properly into these human resources". We should feed these people only because they can contribute to the economy?

When did human misery and suffering become measured as an adverse impact on GDP?