How d'ya like Sydney?

By Fuzzy

In the early days (week 1 to week 4), when asked this question, I got away with saying, 'oh well, I haven't seen much of it to really make up my mind'. But after being here for four months people expect much more decided and clearheaded answers for such profound questions. So I sat down and thought about it and came up with, I hope, equally deep answers.

I don't like, (this I decided the first day I set foot outside) the style of crossing the road here. One has to stand on the sidewalk near the permitted pedestrian crossing areas till the red neon man on the pedestrian traffic light turns green. Or there are the white lines across the road where the pedestrians have right of way, which means that even if I pop up from nowhere, the vehicles would obligingly stop for me to cross the road. Both cramp my style so. 

You see, back home I was a celebrated road-crosser, and the Galle Road was my stage. (My fame would have spread around the world given the right circumstances, like, say, crashing into a vehicle driven by an equally pig-headed driver.) I just couldn't be bothered standing on the pavement in the maddening sun waiting hours for a benevolent driver to slow down and wave his hand regally above the steering wheel for me to cross the road. No way. When I decided to cross the road, I crossed the road. There was such heavenly satisfaction in the sound of squealing breaks and the driver almost jumping on the horn, and his furious glare which I catch from the corner of my eye as I barely escape being run over. There's no such fun doing that here. 

Back home they wouldn't stop if there was a yellow line or not, and so I would cross whether there was a yellow line or not. Whereas here, the vehicles actually stop at pedestrian crossings, traffic lights and white lines, so crossing when you shouldn't, leaves only a guilty conscience. Even if I deliberately dart across the road without a crossing in sight, they would stop and wait without batting an eyelid.

Then, I have a deep loathing for having to do my own photocopying. But then, all you smart people out there will tell me it's entirely my fault, because, well, the main reason for hating it is because I almost always forget to pick up the original from the machine after I'm done. Realization dawns only a few days later, and then it's too late. And of course I hate having to figure out the intricacies of A4 and both-sides and right side up and so on. Oh, for the days of handing the original over the counter and waiting coolly while the lady fiddled with the important looking machine and voila! Five minutes later I'd find professional looking copies, with the original, in my hands. 

Another thing that makes me writhe in disgust is weekend TV. People have been trying ever so gently to feed me this idea that weekend TV's for those with nothing better to do during the weekend, identified by the colloquial term for the posterior part of the human anatomy. As if I'd buy that. There's nothing but sports on all the channels during the day and even the advertisements are strictly for pain relievers or the upcoming racing season or some other supremely boring sports product. And if occasionally there's a movie it happens to be from the last Ice Age. I never imagined the day would come when I would develop withdrawal symptoms for 'Hindi Top Ten' or 'Rasa Risi Gee'.

Now all that doesn't mean that my life since leaving home is a series of loathings. Actually it's far from it. Occupying an honourable place in the list of good and wonderful things is the Library Lawn at university. 

As the name denotes it's the lawn in front of the library, but the total opposite of the library. Anarchy reigns there and it's the noisiest place in the entire campus. It gives a microscopic view of university life and is a place where you'd never be bored, especially during lunch. 

Trying to ignore the appetite-killing lunchtime discussion of my two companions from Fiji and Samoa on cannibalism in their respective islands, I look around. Every possible form of university life is here. There are several students sprawled on, grass, studiously perusing the bland skies above. A few of them have enough self-respect to carefully spread the student newspaper underneath themselves. Then there are some in deep sleep curled around their bags. A group is playing catch all across the lawn, getting in the way of public demonstrations of affection (deep affection at that), and pouring water down each other's necks at intervals. Goes to show that university does nothing to make one feel grown up. Then of course there's the budding rock band doing a great job at trying to make themselves heard above the general din. 

There's also that one aspect of travelling, the joys of which I cannot sing enough. That is the absence of the irritating species born and bound inseparably to public transport back home - the conductors. I cannot overstate the relief of being rid of the shrill call to 'passata yanna' or to 'ida denna', which I'm sure had a great hand in conditioning my sense of hearing since the day I first boarded a bus.

Well the list runs long. I think by now I have gathered enough solid facts to answer the next person who pops that versatile question at me; "So how do you like Sydney?" I'd say, "Pretty good maite, pretty good..."

Why, oh why, do they do it?

• What women really mean

"Why do women tend to go to the bathroom together?"

Says Arjun, "Every time we go out somewhere if one of the girls in the group excuses herself saying, 'I'll just go to the toilet', almost always someone else comes spot on with, 'Hang on I'll join you'. What's the big deal about going to the toilet together? You just go in, do what you have to do and leave. I'll never understand this need for companionship." And for him the absolute limit is when someone says 'I want to go to the toilet, will you come with me?'. 

Nalin had a lot of whys about women. "I'll never completely figure them out," he says with a grin adding that the reason why women always drop hints instead of directly asking for what they want, heads his long list of things he's never figured out about them. "My sister, for example, whenever she has a party coming up, never asks my parents straight out if she can go. Days before she starts dropping very broad hints about not having gone out for a long time and it may be nice to go for a party, etc. Why bother to do that when she can easily put an end to all the 'permission-trauma' she's going through with one question. Anyway, at the end of the day, if my parents don't approve she doesn't go for the party, despite the truckloads of hints she's dropped!"

Moving on to a 'swaying' topic, Suren muses on the question as to whether the swaying of a woman's hips when she walks is deliberate or natural? Men don't have that problem, he says, pointing out that that's because men don't really have that much 'hip' anyway. "But a woman can't move without her hips swaying. It just keeps moving and that I find really fascinating."

Tracing some very traumatic childhood memories Chamath ponders on why girls have to be neater than boys. "Every class I attended as a kid was chockful of 'why can't you be neater, like the girls?'. They always managed to erase without tearing the pages or making them black, their pencil boxes never contained pencil shavings which spilled out every time you moved the box around, they pasted scraps without pasting all the other pages together and they always coloured pictures within the outline whereas I would always have a few extra lines spilling out. Why? It's really not fair," he laments.

"Three words," says Shehan, "Women. Shoes. Why?". 

"What is it about shoes that get women completely hooked to them?" 

It really becomes obsessive, not only do they buy them, but they go window shopping just to look at shoes and not to mention the amount of money they spend on accumulating them in great quantity. Who in their right mind would spend Rs. 2500/= on a pair of shoes you'd wear maximum twice a year? Really, there should be some kind of support group for these women, they really do have a problem."

On the same train of thought Nishan fumes on the amount of time wasted when on a shopping expedition with a woman. More to the point his objection is to the fact that he is kept outside shops hanging onto bags while his mother and sister pop into other shops to "look at something that caught their eye". "Why on earth can't they figure out what they want before leaving, then once they get to the shop, get the stuff in their size and then leave. But no, they just walk around looking at things, trying on millions of items and just when you think the agony is about to end, they change their minds. And to top it all, if they wanted a skirt, they'd come back home with bags of pants and t-shirts and then sigh and say, 'we'll have to get it another day'."

"Why do they scream?"

That's what I can't fathom about girls," says Chrishan. The way he sees it boys don't scream, but you take a girl who is excited or happy or surprised or thrilled or...just about anything, she screams. "It's really embarrassing in public and maybe they don't realise it but they are loud and they keep getting louder. However much you try to tell them, 'everyone's looking at us', they don't seem to mind. To add to all the screaming whenever they meet they go through the whole 'hugging and kissing routine' as well. At times like that I do my 'No, I'm not really with them' act."

"What do men hope to accomplish by staring at women?"

A woman can't go anywhere without some man staring at her? Do they get some kind of kick by doing this? Or have they been inspired by some previous success story? Has anyone ever actually picked up a woman by doing this?" comes Kishani's barrage of questions. Adamant that for as long as she lives she'll never understand this phenomenon, Kishani says that it can be tolerated only up to a point. "They really do make a nuisance of themselves and take the joy out of whatever it is we set out to do. Sometimes I stop and ask them whether they've never seen a woman before. But that's only when I'm feeling brave."

Completely out of the blue comes Sashini's unfathomable point, "How come men can sit back and drive with just one hand on the steering wheel and the other lightly placed on the gear? Most women, including me, have to sit forward and hang on to the steering wheel for dear life to get from one point to the other, even after they are accomplished drivers. Whereas men coolly cruise the roads, even when they are learning, as if they've done nothing but drive since the day they were born. I'm going to learn that art, someday."

"Why do men hate to ask for directions when lost?"

Asks Shalini. "They'd rather drive round in circles without stopping to ask someone how to get to a particular point. My father never fails to bombard me with the need to ask for exact directions whenever I get lost going to a friend's place. He then tells me about the importance of calling up beforehand to get directions. But when he gets lost and I ask whether to ask someone whether we are on the right road at least, he comes with 'I know the way', when everyone knows he doesn't. Most of the time he insists that the last time he came, our destination was somewhere in a place like where we are lost and it takes tonnes of self-control to stop myself from shrieking with laughter at the absurdity of that statement."

For Nimanthi, it's why does a man refuse to get rid of old clothes even if they are threadbare? "My husband has some lovely shirts, all bought for him by me, of course, but there are some of his favourite shirts which he absolutely refuses to part with. And these are 'once yellow shirts which are now white' types. Just because he liked it five years ago, doesn't mean he should treasure it for life, there is a limit to loyalty. After all, we're talking clothes here. The least he could do is stop wearing them out. My heart just stops when I see him stepping out of the house wearing one of 'those' shirts.
"Why do so many partly bald men artfully comb their hair over the sections of their hairless scalps?" 

comes Minoli's query accompanied with a shout of laughter. "There's nothing wrong with being bald. It's actually very appealing. My uncle completely shaved his head when he started balding. The whole balding phenomenon becomes completely absurd when people comb their extra long strands of hair over their bald patches. If this is done based on the assumption that the general public won't notice that they're bald, they should think again. There's nothing more obvious than that, it is in fact, a real attention getter.

"Men tell us about our obsessions all the time never realising that they are guilty of the same," says Romani. "What is with their obsession for collecting things? They collect the weirdest of things. It is unbelievable. My brother collects posters from all the plays. Whenever he sees an eye-catching poster in a prominent place he lifts it. It is amusing but still unfathomable. You should see his room; it's adorned with posters of most of the plays that have been staged at theatres in Colombo. His friends are no better. They collect everything from spare parts to empty cans." 

"How come boys tend to have more discipline problems than girls?" 

They seem to be wilder than us. I don't mean that we are perfect but they really are more difficult to control," says Melanie. "My parents used to say that they weren't really too wary about me because I would be too scared to do anything they wouldn't approve of, even if they weren't around. But unlike them, my aunt is on pins because she never knows what her son is up to, for he believes in the theorem of what his parents don't know won't hurt them. Maybe the reason for this is that girls are naturally more responsible than guys are."

There are no real reasons for all these 'whys'. However, when they are thought about they provide a great source of entertainment, and some very interesting points to ponder on.

Any more, anyone?

What women really mean

You want = You want 

We need = I want 

It's your decision = The correct decision should be obvious by now. 

Do what you want = You'll pay for this later. 

We need to talk = I need to complain 

Sure... go ahead = I don't want you to. 

I'm not upset = Of course I'm upset, you moron! 

You're... so manly = You need a shave and you sweat a lot. 

Be romantic, turn out the lights = I have flabby thighs. 

This kitchen is so inconvenient = I want a new house. 

I want new curtains = and carpeting, and furniture, and wallpaper...

I need wedding shoes = the other 40 pairs are the wrong shade of white. 

Hang the picture there = NO, I mean hang it there! 

I heard a noise = I noticed you were almost asleep. 

Do you love me? = I'm going to ask for something expensive. 

How much do you love me?= I did something today you're really not going to like. 

I'll be ready in a minute = Kick off your shoes and find a good game on T.V. 

Is my butt fat? = Tell me I'm beautiful. 

You have to learn to communicate = Just agree with me. 

Are you listening to me!? = [Too late, you're dead.] 

Yes = No 

No = No 

Maybe = No 

I'm sorry = You'll be sorry. 

Do you like this recipe? = It's easy to fix, so you'd better get used to it. 

Was that the baby? = Why don't you get out of bed and walk him until he goes to sleep. 

I'm not yelling! = Yes, I am yelling because I think this is important. 

All we're going to buy is a soap dish = It goes without saying that we're stopping at the cosmetics department, the shoe department, I need to look at a few new pocket books, and OMIGOD those pink sheets would look great in the bedroom and did you bring your checkbook? 

The answer to "What's wrong?" 

The same old thing = Nothing 

Nothing = Everything 

Everything = My PMS is acting up 

Nothing, really = It's just that you're such an idiot

I don't want to talk about it = Go away, I'm still building up steam 

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