Australia, Queensland
Apologies for not being able to update this blog the week before. Just a week before I departed from my country of residence, Jakarta, to go to Australia. Specifically, the Australian state of Queensland. I was hoping to find a few wifi source or some gateway onto the internet. Unfortunately it required the user to pay, something that my father would not do for me due to the absurd prices. However, I wish to portray my expression of Australia to my readers as it has been a long time that I have been to a country so highly influenced by the west. Once again please do not take my interpretation of Australia as a fact for it is, as said before, only an interpretation.
The people of Australia are affable and not at all taciturn. They are, in general, very carefree and relaxed people. What I did notice about the residents of Australia however, is that a large proportion of them are corpulent. I am not implying that the whole of Australia is obese, rather the people that I saw was rather pudgy and it could be a mere coincidence that most of them were concentrated in the area of which I was present, however unlikely it may be. After doing a quick analysis and spending a few days in Australia, I finally understood these people were so... beefy.
Australians generally value their labour very highly. Therefore food prices in restaurants soar, despite the fact that the cost of ingredients is relatively low as they are locally generated goods. In many places, the towns in Queensland are wide rather than tall. Many of the towns often lack buildings even four stories tall. Therefore one would have to travel for a long time to reach their place of work or their destination to tourist attractions for leisure purposes, of which the latter applied to me. In many instances, the restaurants were a monopoly as it was the only one there due to the geographical location of the place. Such examples are those along the motorway, of which only few stop to have their meal. In many cases the meals served by these monopolies were mostly deep fried and contained monstrous amounts of french fries and, because it was a monopoly, consumers had no choice but to consume the good.
As an Asian with the concept of saving instilled into my brain, I became very aware of the prices of the food. Because I am highly price sensitive, it dawned onto me that a second scoop of ice cream or a refill of soda was much cheaper relative to the first scoop or the first cup of soda. For example, the Ben and Jerry's ice scream sold at Movie World, Australia had the first scoop set at $5.99. However, the second scoop was $6.99. The price of the first scoop was so much more expensive in relative to the second scoop that even the least price sensitive person would pick two scoops as the price per scoop drops an extreme amount with every additional scoop. This is one of the many instances I experienced on the trip.
Why not pack their lunches? Well as said before, my interpretation of Australians dictates that they value their labour very highly, and would much rather buy food in a restaurant rather than spend a few minutes a day making their own packed lunches. Out of the hundreds I have seen, I have only seen one family do such thing, and I was absolutely sure that they were an Asian tourist family.
Perhaps if someone were to step in and try to encourage healthy food, or install a policy of which every restaurant should have a healthy choice, as seen in Singapore, perhaps something could be done to the portly people of this wonderful country.
The people of Australia are affable and not at all taciturn. They are, in general, very carefree and relaxed people. What I did notice about the residents of Australia however, is that a large proportion of them are corpulent. I am not implying that the whole of Australia is obese, rather the people that I saw was rather pudgy and it could be a mere coincidence that most of them were concentrated in the area of which I was present, however unlikely it may be. After doing a quick analysis and spending a few days in Australia, I finally understood these people were so... beefy.
Australians generally value their labour very highly. Therefore food prices in restaurants soar, despite the fact that the cost of ingredients is relatively low as they are locally generated goods. In many places, the towns in Queensland are wide rather than tall. Many of the towns often lack buildings even four stories tall. Therefore one would have to travel for a long time to reach their place of work or their destination to tourist attractions for leisure purposes, of which the latter applied to me. In many instances, the restaurants were a monopoly as it was the only one there due to the geographical location of the place. Such examples are those along the motorway, of which only few stop to have their meal. In many cases the meals served by these monopolies were mostly deep fried and contained monstrous amounts of french fries and, because it was a monopoly, consumers had no choice but to consume the good.
The following is a picture of a beautiful building along the streets of Queen Street and George Street opposite the Victoria Bridge. This photo has been uploaded to Instagram under my username, "Prosia960"
As an Asian with the concept of saving instilled into my brain, I became very aware of the prices of the food. Because I am highly price sensitive, it dawned onto me that a second scoop of ice cream or a refill of soda was much cheaper relative to the first scoop or the first cup of soda. For example, the Ben and Jerry's ice scream sold at Movie World, Australia had the first scoop set at $5.99. However, the second scoop was $6.99. The price of the first scoop was so much more expensive in relative to the second scoop that even the least price sensitive person would pick two scoops as the price per scoop drops an extreme amount with every additional scoop. This is one of the many instances I experienced on the trip.
Why not pack their lunches? Well as said before, my interpretation of Australians dictates that they value their labour very highly, and would much rather buy food in a restaurant rather than spend a few minutes a day making their own packed lunches. Out of the hundreds I have seen, I have only seen one family do such thing, and I was absolutely sure that they were an Asian tourist family.
Perhaps if someone were to step in and try to encourage healthy food, or install a policy of which every restaurant should have a healthy choice, as seen in Singapore, perhaps something could be done to the portly people of this wonderful country.
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