My first Korean drama post I think was more interesting for its description of Strathfield - or so I was told:) So I thought I might write a bit about the Australian suburbs I have lived in.
When I first moved to Sydney in 2002, I did some preliminary research on suburbs and my heart was set on Wollstonecraft or Bronte, purely for literary reasons:) And there was Glebe, where on a November day in 1999 I thought to myself one day I will live in this city. But when I saw the houses I hesitated. The rentals were high and of course that made a difference. But the charming cottages that were advertised turned out to be pocket sized and inconvenient. These were after all workers cottages in the 19th and 20th century that had gained serious cred simply by aging. Eventually I decided to be a proper Asian immigrant and take a flat in Strathfield.
Even this was perhaps a little left-field because most Indians are wedded to the mortgage and a proper house (preferably somewhere out west like Fairfield and beyond) within months of arrival. In my firm, which was predominantly white, European attorneys would move to the eastern fringes with its beaches or the north shore. In fact Sydney has a enormous deal of suburb snobbery and it can be quite amusing to see the silent judgements being made when you mention where you live. It didn't bother me, all postcodes being born equal as far as I was concerned:)
The reason for moving to Strathfield was fairly simple. It was well connected by train and it took me about 20 minutes to get to work in the city. Apart from this, it was one of few suburbs at that point that had high rise buildings and flats. There were in fact just a couple, squeezed into land along the tracks as is common in Sydney. The buildings were mediocre - I still hold that Australians cannot design high rises, plumping for impractical open arrangements with a great deal of glass (making them furnaces in summer) intended to look like advertisements for modern city living or buildings that resembled hotels with long dark corridors. Mine was the latter. But it was still better than the large expanse of suburbia that is most of Sydney. The fringes of Sydney are beautiful but its interior is the death of the soul, suddenly all the anti-suburbia literature of the West makes sense. There is a nothingness to this, as if you would be slowly numbed by these suburbs of similarly lined houses, a strip of the same shops in each centre with liquor, gambling and a supermarket predominant and a station that always led to a Railway Street. Strathfield on the other hand was an old suburb with pretty houses but the influx of immigrants and buildings with shops beneath meant that it remained lively even at a late hour. This was a big deal to me, because at this point almost all of Sydney would fade away by 6 pm. In fact everything started early and ended early, not the best situation for a night owl like me. The other factor was my father's intended visits, I did not want the usual fate of parents in these cities, the endless wait for someone with a car to take you around to show the sights. This way he could see the city on his own time.
My building in Strathfield had a formidable Russian lady as the manager who was completely intolerant regarding the rules of the building. To put it politely she was a f**king pain in the arse. There was, as can be common in Sydney, a Russian club around the corner and a few other Eastern European structures from memory. The flat itself was comfortable, I had taken a 2 bedder as my brother was to join me later. One peculiarity of the building (and later I found of every other building in Strathfield) was that the fire alarm went off every day. The building was full of Koreans and everyone blamed their cooking practices. But given the regularity I suspect there was something a little more to it, perhaps a cosy arrangement between building management and the fireies.
As I mentioned earlier, the parts of the suburb near the station were full of Koreans. There used to be minor gripes from visitors about not understanding signage etc. but it never affected me. It stood to reason that if you were an immigrant with little or no knowledge of English, you would aggregate in an area and that any services provided would need to cater to the local community. Often the lack of English meant that communication was difficult, not that many people tried. This was in fact a characteristic of Sydney, even someone you see for years may not acknowledge you-initially it feels racial till you realise that everyone has had the Sydney cold shoulder and even new arrivals slip into this mode of behaviour. A lot of folk who ran small services were however pleasant. The flower seller was a a sweet lady. There was a store that did small time repairs on clothes, handbags etc - it's a little hard to explain here that there was a joy in this because it's so hard to find in Sydney. For the most part, we didn't really eat out at the Korean places - though I always wanted to try the piquantly named Mr Dduckbocki Miss Kkochi. Instead for Asian, almost all of Strathfield, went to the Saigon Bowl - though it wasn't the best in town it set me off on love for Vietnamese cuisine. And of course there was the little clothes shop which didn't break the bank but had stylish office wear that lasted forever. For I found that all my shopping for Sydney had been for nought, nothing was proper for Sydney mores or the weather. One thing that came out of my stay in Strathfield was that to date I know when Korean is being spoken. I heard a lot of it and it became easy to distinguish (the alphabets too but that is relatively simple to differentiate) from other Asian languages.
Strathfield in fact also had an Indian presence though this grew stronger as you moved towards Homebush. There were more than a few Indian stores and towards Homebush you could also get cheap dosais and the like. In this sense, it was perfect for a newbie to the city.
I lived in two of the apartment complexes in Strathfield till I moved out in 2006. The second one had a Macedonian manager who was polite and never failed to remind me that Alexander the Great was Macedonian. He had learnt a bit of Korean which meant he was popular with the residents and was in fact planning a visit to Korea when I left. The building itself was like a plush hotel complete with indoor swimming pool. Despite all this staying in the complexes wasn't a bad decision given the fact the burglary was fairly common in Strathfield's small apartment blocks with little or no security.
In a way Strathfield was an ideal way to ease into Sydney. It had familiar Indian elements and wildly different ones. Travelling was simple. It was easy for my dad to get around. My family in Sydney was close and yet not too close. Old relos who came around actually liked the sound of trains and shops below, unlike the natives. Signs of life as it were. My decision to go neither East nor West of the city in the initial years served me well.
I had arrived in Sydney in the somewhat contradictory states of excitement and clinical depression. These ebbed and flowed, in the beginning I was anxious to return home once I got my degree. Events back home had left a peculiar kind of hurt, the reasons were insufficient to feel so much and yet all these messy emotions were there. A lot happened in those 4 years. By the time I left I was in a calmer frame of mind, I had settled into my job, I had a degree and I had decided to stay on a bit more.
