After about 18 years of leeching off this country, sucking it dry and milking it for all it's worth, I can now finally do it without the scorn of xenophobic monkeys frowning at my yellow-ness. For as of Friday night I am (at long freaking last) an Australian citizen. Why it's taken this long is a looooooong story, the likes of which a trilogy can be made out of it. And for the purposes of sanity, I can't be arsed describing it. Just be glad in the knowledge that there is now no reason whatsoever to question my loyalties and suspect me as some sort of Chinese spy, waiting for the order from my superiors back in my ancestral land of China to commence Operation One Earth, One China.
The citizenship ceremony is pretty black and white. Speeches by the Mayor, various parliamentary figures subliminally telling us to "Vote Labor/Liberal", and a native Aboriginal who ended up being absent. Then, in separate groups we'd go up and recite the pledge, before receiving a certificate, a badge and a little plant...I got a shitty plant. Not happy Australia! The night is then capped off with the anthem followed by a chowfest of sandwiches and pies in the foyer. All in all, whilst an experience for sure, ten hours of work beforehand takes its toll. I also felt sorry for the emcee that had to call out all of our predominantely Chinese/Indian names. Certainly a candidate for the 'toughest job ever'.
In other sadder news, I'm sure everyone's heard about that train crash last week. Two little girls and their mother that died in the crash (the one in the news) came from my church/parish/primary school. I was at church tonight and was listening to the priest talk about it, and how the poor unfortunate father was now left to pick up the pieces. It was a subtly surreal service actually. The priest talked about how the school was coping, and how the kids were told of it. Imagine being the teacher telling the class that one of their classmates died. In the words of the priest, "don't ever let anyone tell you that teachers don't earn their pay." Such a sad thing. By the sounds of it though, everyone is banding together and lending support to one another, not just within the broken school community either. Apparently offers of help for the parish have come from the police, the CFA, local churches in the area (that aren't necessarily Catholic) and the council. At least there's something to smile about out of all this.
