Since I've been here for a week and not really written a whole lot about what Perth is, like I figured it's about time I did. So here are the basics about Perth, according to the locals the most isolated city in the world. Personally I'd like to disagree with this claim, since imho isolation cannot be determined by distance alone, but it certainly sounds cool.

I mean, Perth is a rich city in a rich western country with all the goodies that come along with that, so I think it's a bit cheesy to call it isolated. But yes, if there was no electricy and no cars, planes and trains any longer, Perth would be pretty far away from anything else. In fact, Perth is closer to Singapore then to Sydney - and Singapore is five hours by plane away! Still I think it would be unfair to call Perth the ass of the world - unless you are thinking about a rather tasty bum. After all you have tons of pubs and nightclubs here, a harbour, the beach a university and a lot of other things that make this a nice city to be in. A night out will easily set you back 30 AUD though, so keeping track of where your money is going is a pretty good idea.

Australias gateway to Asia?

What I find quite interesting about Perth is that the city has a quite big Asian population - in fact, Asians are by far the majority in the internet-cafe I normally use. Of course that makes a lot of sense considering that Perth is closer to Asia then to anything else. But I still find it noteworthy - after all the Australian Government didn't allow non-white people to move to the country until the 1950s and they still had restrictions in place until the 70s. So all these kids and their parents must have arrived quite recently. But they seem to be way better integrated then most immigrants back home. For one thing they all speak Australian-English without a trace of a foreign accent, something you couldn't say about a lot of second- or third-generation immigrants back home. I also found that I find the Aussie-English quite sexy when spoken by girls of Asian descent. Damn, I found that I've started to think of Asian women as being rather sexy full stop. And I said I found them unattractive before going to Asia.

The "problem"

While the Asians seem to have found a home here, it seems like the people who really were at home here are not. I am of course talking about the Aborigines, they who are exclusively simply being referred to as "a big problem". I haven't really seen a lot of them so far, but those I saw were in a sorry state. Bums, really; and unfortunately that seems to be rather common. I mean, I have not see a single Aborigine waitress, banker, cashier or anything. Apparently they really live outside the society - which of course doesn't have to be bad. But what I saw so far unfortunately was.

On the web:
The White Australia Policy