Here I am, in Sydney. I arrived last night, after a flight from Singapore in which a chorus of children cried throughout all eight hours. I particularly felt for a man with a long-suffering expression who had, in the seat behind him, a screaming toddler, and in the seat in front of him, a shouting 6-7 year old.
I was in a middle seat but it was not so bad as I didn’t need to sleep and the people on either side were unusually polite and accommodating.
Getting through immigration was quick and easy, much more so than in Singapore, and even customs went swiftly (I told them I had peppercorns from Cambodia, and was waved through), with the only delay being in how long it took the luggage to arrive. It’s unusual these days to have to wait this long, except in Lahore of course but there it’s expected.
Anyway, here I am. I have my own room, thankfully, as the house is quite small and very overfull, mostly of tat, seashells and electronics. It’s not the most comfortable, but a room goes a long way. In the next room is an unrelated older lady who might have stepped out of Georgette Heyer, being a forthright and opinionated old woman with beady eyes, skilled needlewoman with a fondness for berating others. I find her quite amusing, though others, who have known her for longer, find her tiresome.
The first wedding event was this evening. It was a sort of dinner party held in a borrowed production studio, so basically an office in a warehouse-like building in a very trendy part of town where there was a Pride parade going on outside. It was a bit hot and stuffy in the beginning, but cooled down gradually. I met a cousin I’d grown up with but not seen in a very long time – she and I and her brother found ourselves talking in a corner and at one point reminescing, with only belated self-realisation, about our aunts and uncles going to parties and making a private little gathering for themselves.
The brother was one who had always been non-existent in my mental map of the family but turns out to do quite interesting work, designing industrial machinery, and who wants to create a YouTube channel on inspecting certain industrial systems because he feels the certification to be an inspector is a big old scam and anyone with certain types of experience can pick it up.
Another attendee was a now-retired news producer for ABC News who clearly took to me as he offered to show me around the lesser known bits of the city. I think he was impressed that i not only knew who Emily Maitliss is but had listened to her podcast. I don’t think I’ll get to take him up, between work and wedding stuff, but it would be nice to, and felt a little bit like being offered fresh air in a stuffy room.
A third person was a Pakistani in her 30s who’d been brought here as the bride of an abusive husband, left him, and now owns a chain of petrol pumps all over the outback. Quite interesting, hearing her talk about her work, negotiations with oil companies etc.
Then there was a young Swede who was clearly very scarred by the whole COVID lockdown business in Australia – it does seem to have been really terrible, and several people mentioned it. People generally do talk about it still, wherever I travel, but it’s usually about the economic impacts, whereas here people have talked about police brutality and feeling helpless at the hands of the state. Anyway, the Swede was very disillusioned by Australia, and spoke of how it treats immigrants and indigenous peoples in particular and then, without missing a beat, was full of praise for the new rightwing government in Sweden for saying it like it is about immigration.
At one point an aunt became quite tipsy and loudly and ostentatiously affectionate towards her son. This would have passed without remark, except a couple of hours later she (again, unconsciously) was chatting about the attendees and mentioned that the woman sitting next to her had lost her son of about the same age about 6 months ago. A very odd dynamic there, and I don’t think the aunt herself realised it.
The food was desi, which was nice, but there was too much of it, and it had the slightly sad quality of desi food abroad – lots of reheating in microwaves, aluminium trays and oven-baked naans.
I am fond of my hosts, but they are a curious pair, with a peculiar lack of taste, almost an anti-taste expressed in their collection of tchotchkes bought, they agree, without any discrimination and strewn over every horizontal surface; and lack of interest in good food (she made perhaps the worst eggs I’ve had in my life for breakfast, crusted with blackened zaatar – and I don’t exclude the omelette cooked in a microwave at one British bed and breakfast — while he is of a more scientific mindset and has developed his own authentic American pizza cheese). Well, it’s only for a couple of weeks and I will go to Canberra for part of it. Plus I plan to start going out to a cafe to work soon. I can’t say I’ve taken to Sydney, but it might have been different had I been staying elsewhere and come with the GF.