So much for the season of brotherly love

Well - I think it's made some of the papers in Canada, but its on everyone's lips in Sydney - the race riots on the beaches.

Basically - the feelings have been fermenting for decades... young, male on the lower end of the income scale white aussies, and young, male, on the unemployed end of the scale new immigrant and refugee Lebanese. Tensions flare... the "Surfies' vs. the "Lebs." Surfies claim the Lebanese aren't repecting the women on the beach, or connecting to the community and 'invade' their beaches, the Lebanese claim they are fighting back to defend themselves and they have every right to use the beach, and all of it is connected to under-employemnt, mis-understanding, male testosterone and ignorance of cultural issues, with a little police and government neglect to sweeten the pot.

The recent riots were touched off by the bashing of a couple lifeguards by a group of Lebanese guys - but from talking to Aussies over there, some from the rioting Shire itself, these's a lot more to the story than that. It's safe to say most people in the city are beyond scandalized, John Howard and the other Australian politicians are trying to dance around using the term "race riots" and everyone is doing a lot of naval searching trying to figure out a-how it got this bad and b-what are they going to do about it. There have been some really interesting developments. After the major riot, the "Bra Boys" (biker gang) and another Lebanese gang got together and held peace talks. Seriously! Most of the lifeguards are white-ish, so they have started a special drive to recruit some Lebanese lifeguards, who are currently undergoing training, to patrol the beach together. There is still a lot of emotions running high, the riots are being organized by SMS (text messaging), and everyone in Sydney is being warned away from lots of the local beaches.

There are a lot of blaming fingers, but it is disturbing to hear some of the fomenting factors in this race riot, are very close to what's happening in some neighbourhoods in Canada. Now we never think it would happen at home, but I was talking to an Aussie last night who said - he never thought it would happen in Australia either, until the tensions boiled over in the last few weeks.

Certainly as a traveler, it is an interesting window into the psyche of Australians... because everyone is trotting out their stereotypes and beliefs, and challenging assumptions about "what is an Australian" and where is the line between cultural sensitivity, cultural coddeling and putting up with bad behavior. It's also shedding a lot of light on their humanitarian and refugee programs, and how effectively the government supports people for the culture change of a new country, when they didn't want to leave their home in the first place, and how employment factors heavily into a community's affects its social life. Yep - I am reading a ton of newspapers - can you tell?

...On a lighter note, I am working at bank, believe it or not, and I have just had my contract extended until almost the end of January (they like me... they really like me!) OK - so it's not that melodramatic, but their communications stuff is in shambles, and I have managed to insinuate myself to put out fires over the holidays and to support their group until they hire a proper communications manager early next year. And the timing is perfect, because then I have friends coming to stay, and my parents, my sister and her boyfriend are all coming out to the Rarotonga in the Cook Islands for a delayed family Christmas in early February.

For Christmas, I have 4 Muslims for dinner (I still find it funny!) - Almira's boyfriend, her twin Jobina, cousin Sheena and a friend Imran are all going to be at our place for the holidays. We only have 2 bedrooms - I think this is going to be fun :-)

My flatmate Almira and I are determined to have a proper Christmas dinner, with turkey and pumpkin pie. And everytime I mention we eat pumpkin pie all the Aussies start sniggering. I can't, for the life of me, find bloody canned pumpkin, and I am about to give up and make it out of sweet potatoes. The Aussies eat cold meets, cold ham, chilled prawns, salad, etc. It's so hot here, it doesn't make sense to have the Canadian version, but since none of my dinner guests eat pork, and one allergy to crustaceans, Canadian Christmas it is! We had also planned to head out to Bondi on Christmas day, but with the rioting issues, we might be stuck closer to home.

That's about it - we are finding our way around all the neighborhood pubs and lounges, trying not to shop, having ridiculously long coffees at the cafe on weekends and tanning at the non-rioting beaches. Not bad for December!

Happy Holidays everyone.