Transcript of AE 1305 - 8 Mind Blowing Culture Shocks That Will SURPRISE You in Australia!

G'day you, mob! Pete here, welcome to this episode of Aussie English. I'm your host. Today we're going to be reacting to a video from That Johnston Life's YouTube channel. You can obviously check them out over here. Well, the link will be in the description. Top 8 Culture Shocks When Moving To Oz. Let's just get into it.

These are our top eight culture shocks when moving to Australia. Australians love their sport, but unless you're from Australia, sometimes the sport is a little bit strange. For example, football isn't football and I'm not really talking about soccer or am I? It really freaks me out to say the word soccer for me. I know what football is and for Australians they also know what football is. But when you move to Australia, just resign yourself to the fact that you're now probably going to follow the minority sport.

It's an interesting one here. Football in Australia can be multiple different sports. If you're talking to a foreigner, they're probably talking about soccer, what we would call soccer. What Americans, I guess, would call soccer. If you're talking to someone from everywhere except for New South Wales and Queensland, football would be AFL. Australian Rules Football in Queensland and New South Wales. It's going to be rugby. For me, it's always weird if someone says football or footy and they're talking about rugby because I'm like, that's not footy, that's not the real footy. Real footy is AFL. But yeah, that tends to be one that, um, a lot of people get confused by when they get here. When you start saying football and you don't mean soccer.

And also need a special subscription just to be able to watch it. Football in Australia can mean many things. Football for me means soccer, but football in Queensland means rugby league. And if you come from one of the southern states like Victoria or South Australia, then football can mean AFL. And I still don't understand how that game works, but I want to learn. You can still have a beer at an AFL game, right? But if you've come from the UK like me and you still want to watch your beloved football, then you're going to have to become a social hermit bound to the wee hours of the night just to watch your darling Premier League.

Yeah, it is one of those things if you want to watch soccer games generally, especially if they're overseas, you're going to have to stay up until the late hours of the morning. My dad does that quite a bit. Uh, he loves soccer. I love soccer. I used to actually prefer it and played soccer loads when I was a kid for school. It was awesome. It's one of the most, if not the most popular club sports in Australia, funnily enough. You know, so yeah, I think it is actually in fact more popular than rugby and footy in terms of the number of clubs and the number of people, probably mostly kids playing it.

If you don't like it, then take up one of the other many forms of football. And if you're American, well, they also kind of play baseball and stuff too, but probably not your form of football being like too hot in all the pads and stuff. Or imagine getting a spider in your helmet. The second shock that we had coming from the anti-social rest of the world is the fact that in Australia, people are actually friendly to you. I mean, don't get me wrong, like people are friendly in other parts of the world, but Australians are kind of like this weird level of friendly.

It's context dependent. I was reading something today about Finnish people, apparently Finnish people in their culture. Again, it could be apocryphal, it could be bullshit. But based on this, the deep research that I did on Facebook and a Facebook post, one of my mates shared. Apparently Finnish people don't like or participate in small talk. They would much prefer silence. Finns watching this. You guys will have to let me know, but apparently they just don't behave that way. They're not culturally brought up to want to fill space with inane conversations about the weather in Australia. We do it like crazy. You make small talk with pretty much everyone. It's kind of seen as a friendly, respectful thing to do. You know, if you're alone, sitting next to someone at a bus stop and the person isn't a complete weirdo, you're probably going to strike up a conversation with them, even if it's just, you know, how's your day going? Where are you off to? How's the weather? You know, how's your father? Whatever it's seen as in Australian culture, polite.

It's almost like it's rude if you are alone with someone else in those kinds of social situations, out and about in the world, you're stuck together for a short period of time and you don't acknowledge the person or talk to them, look at them, anything like that. Like if I get into a lift and there's someone else there, again, situation and context dependent. You're at least going to acknowledge that person and say, you know, g'day, how's it going? If there's heaps of people quite often you won't. That's the ironic thing, right? The more people there are, the less you are kind of encouraged, or the less you feel like you want to actually interact with them. I guess there's too many people.

And this was one of these funny things. I didn't realise how much. There's kind of like a small town effect if you're in the big cities. There's just so many people around all the time that everyone's a lot colder and a lot more kind of socially isolated. When you're out and about, you're not really acknowledging people or talking to people unless you're in those sorts of one on one type situations, you know, at a bus stop or a lift or something.

When we went on a holiday, my family and I went on a holiday to Lord Howe Island. There's only 260 or 300 residents or something of that island. Everyone would stop you in the street to chat to you. They'd wave to you. They would acknowledge you. You know, it was just nuts. How much? Because the island had such a small population of people, they were all so much used to, so much more used to interacting and talking to one another all the time, that it took a few days to kind of get used to the fact that no matter where you go, people will want to chat to you and be like, where are you from? What are you doing? You know, are you here on holiday, blah, blah blah. And it was kind of like, for me at least, it was like, man, we're missing this. We miss this. Today, community isn't as as strong as it used to be, or at least what I imagine it. It used to be.

People greet you on the street, neighbours come up to your house and welcome you to the neighbourhood. People actually offer you help. Now, for me, being the antisocial hermit that I am watching my Premier League.

It is one of those things. If you want an Australian to talk to you in the cities, pull out a map and act like you're lost and within minutes you'll have some Australians walking up and being like, Where are you off to? Why are you lost? How can I help you? Where are you going? You know, do you need directions? Do you need help? Mate, that is a stereotype that is very common in the large Australian cities, and it's probably exactly the same in the small ones too, probably more so.

People being friendly to me was a little bit weird, and it just took a little bit of getting used to. But when it happens to you in Australia. It really does make you realise how nice the world can be.

Now it is funny. I do want to mention I had friends living with me. Um when I was in Melbourne who were Estonian. I remember them coming here and being like, why does everyone smile at you like a psychopath? We walk down the street and people look at you and they smile at you, and they'll even talk to you. And I remember being like, I don't get it. What do you mean? You know, what's it like in Estonia? And he's like, if you're out and about, you just leave people alone. Don't look at them. Don't talk to them. If you smile at them, they'll think you're weird. They'll think you're a strange dude who wants something, you know? And I was just like, that's so. It's so bizarre, right?

So I would have to unlearn all of my kind of social traits and behaviours of what I see as being polite and friendly in order to not make people uncomfortable in places like Estonia. And I don't know if that's like an ex-Soviet Union type thing or what, but he would always laugh about it. And then when he went home, this mate, Mart, if you're watching, good on you, mate. When he went home, he had to undo all of those, those habits, all of those behaviours that he'd undone in the first place when he'd come to Australia, he had to relearn to be cold again when he went back to Estonia. So it was a funny difference.

Now, hey, you're going to think to yourself, people around the world are nice and lots of them are, and you normally notice it when you're on holiday. Maybe it's the weather that makes people happier. Because I can tell you that the dreary darkness of winter kind of makes people the opposite. To be honest, this is one of the best culture shocks of Australia. Calling all social recluses out there. If you move to Australia, it's going to make you a better person. No one wants-

I don't know about that.

No one wants your social awkwardness or unfriendly banter. Australians are genuinely friendly unless they don't like you.

That's, that's when we're even more friendly.

But there's no beating around the bush. I'm totally straight. Now coming from the northern hemisphere on the other side of the world, having a cold Christmas becomes a rite of passage. But here cold Christmases. Hahahahaha! Welcome to the heat, my friend. Christmas in summer. It's hot.

This is 100% true. Obviously it's summer down here in the no- ah, southern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere, when Christmas is obviously taking place. Growing up, it was always really funny watching all these movies and TV shows where it would be a White Christmas, you would have Home Alone. Um, what are some of those other ones? There's loads of these American sort of films and European films where it's all about Christmas, but it's snowing. There's pine trees.

For us. It is just normal that you have all these decorations. You have the Christmas tree, which is a pine tree. You have tinsel which is meant to represent snow. And yet we also have, like Santa sitting on a beach, you know, or getting cold beers or, you know, there's all this stuff that's kind of associated with Christmas that is also summer related for us, and it's just perfectly normal. You just don't think about it. It's sort of like cognitive dissonance or something. You just sort of never let those two things interact.

If you don't have aircon, you're going to struggle.

That's another thing. Every house, pretty much every house, I think in Australia especially that's been made in the last probably 20 or 30 years, is going to have aircon of some kind. And I had friends in the UK and I remember asking them like, how are you guys having so many people, you know, kick the bucket during these heat waves that you guys are having in the 30 degrees or whatever. A few years back, right. There were those heat waves in Europe, and they're like, we don't have air con. A lot of our houses don't have air con because it just never gets hot enough to justify having air con. So people, you know, the elderly in particular, are in their houses and they overheat during these heat waves and they're kind of screwed.

And it was something that I was like, I just never thought that that was something you could avoid having in your house. I guess the equivalent would be our houses are relatively badly insulated, so if you were living somewhere incredibly cold, the heating and everything that we have for our houses would probably be very ineffective. They don't retain the heat the way that they probably should.

It's not dark. You and your family aren't just confined to one room watching each other open presents you probably didn't even want, wishing that the TV was on so that you wouldn't have to make awkward conversation with family members who you hardly ever see. Apart from the festive time. Wondering to yourself, is it too early to start drinking yet.

It's never too early.

The fact is that with Christmas in Australia, you get to take all of the good bits of Christmas like presents and spending time with family that you actually want to spend time with, and then add all the good things of summer, like going to the beach, spending time in the pool, having a barbecue in the sunshine. Don't hang on to your old traditions of Christmas, like your roast turkey with all of the trimmings.

You can have that. So for Christmas, for me, back in the day when I was a kid growing up, my parents would take me to my grandparents place in Melbourne. We would have the roast lamb, the roast turkey, whatever it was, you know, meat and three veg. We would have presents around the tree and then usually we would all go out and play across the street in the oval, you know, in the playgrounds and stuff like that in summer, playing cricket and footy and all sorts of fun stuff like that. That was just how it was.

I mean, do hang on to them, but don't whinge that you're doing it in the heat. Have a barbecue instead. Savour the wonder that is a potato bake. Why did we not have these in the England? Or if we did, I never had one. They're gorgeous. Make new traditions and embrace the fact that Christmas in summer is now your new life. Now, coming from cosmopolitan Europe, I was kind of used to this next one because people on the continent sometimes like to have a siesta, but at least they opened up the shops and stuff again. Now I know that this can catch out. The average Brits visiting Marbella for the first time and wondering why in the middle of the day all the shops are shut. But in Australia it goes to another extreme and shops just shut early. Want to get a coffee after 4 p.m.? Yeah. No, don't be crazy. Why would you need that much caffeine in your system at night?

That's one that a lot of people talk about, especially Europeans and South Americans. Shops shut early here and it's just a cultural thing. People get all of that stuff done early. We get up early. We, you know, you're going to get coffee at like 7 a.m., 6 a.m., you're going to be out and about doing stuff. Not every Australian. I'm a bit of a night owl. I prefer to get up at about ten, to be honest. But many Australians get up earlier and as a result, shops get shut earlier because no one's out and about. We used to have 24-hour open supermarkets. Those were the days, you know, where you could wait out the busy hours during the day and just go shopping at like midnight and be left alone, you know, be quiet. Go to Coles or Woollies. Midnight, do all of your shopping and then go home and sort it out.

They changed the laws, and I'm pretty sure now almost all Woolworths and other supermarkets all closed at around 9:09 p.m. They may do slightly later depending on the holidays. They're also closed for, you know, a lot of public holidays as well. It's just sort of how things are. So yeah, you have to get used to the timing. It was weird to when we used to go out, you know, back in my young days when we would go clubbing or you would go out to pubs and stuff, you would usually get started at like 8 or 9 p.m. when I was talking to my wife, who's Brazilian, she was always like, you don't even leave home until midnight. Why would you do that? And I'm like, man, I'm, I'm getting home by about midnight and I'm getting into bed.

It's going to go dark in a couple of hours. Want to take away after 9 p.m. on a Friday? Well, you better live in the city centre. Ain't no one going to work after 9 p.m. in the burbs. You crazy? Unless you're in the major cities. Things in Australia are rarely 24 hours.

But it's all about money. Supply and demand. If no one's coming to buy any of your products at those hours, why would you stay open? You close and you open up when everyone's out and about.

People have a life. They don't want to sit there waiting in a restaurant or a shop for your convenience. Don't be so selfish. Why aren't things so convenient? Well, it turns out people don't actually want to work all the time, and you need to respect that. Get a bit more organised, enjoy a night in, realise that that thing you think you need, you probably don't need right now. I'm sorry that the shops shut early, but if you don't have that thing you want right now, is the world going to end? Probably not. And if it was that important, you wouldn't have forgotten it, right?

And this culture shock extends into the next one. And it's the work culture. And weirdly enough, most Australians don't like to work. I mean, they do. They do like to work. That's a massively sweeping statement. But fortunately for people who live here, we don't live to work. Working to live is an incredibly emancipating feeling. What's the point in going to work all day to earn money, to then not have the time to spend it. I don't want to live a life like that, do you?

It's only getting worse, too. And we're stuck in this position now in Australia, where the cost of living has gone through the roof. The cost of housing has gone through the roof, you know, groceries, bills, everything is just so expensive here. And at the same time we've got like stagnant wage growth. So I think wages in the last few years as a result of inflation and everything adjusted, they're about what they were in 2011. So we've lost like 15 years. You know, whatever it is, 13 years worth of wage growth as a result of the recent economy.

And I think a lot of the younger generation are just saying, screw this. Why would I work my butt off to still barely be able to afford to exist, to barely be able to afford to pay rent, to buy my groceries, and to go to a restaurant every now and then. So there is this definite backlash that I keep hearing about and seeing in a lot of people that they just aren't willing to sacrifice their lives working their asses off to still get nowhere. I think they're called the Silent Quitters. You know, they're sort of like doing the bare minimum, nothing more.

Especially when you have all of this fantastic weather and beautiful scenery to spend it in. Except when it's a La Nina year, like the scenery is still there, but the weather's still a bit crap and it has been for the last two years. Fortunately for most Australians, this laissez faire attitude to work extends to lots of different industries. If you're sick of the daily grind in your job, then come to Australia and you can do the same thing but not work as hard. Wouldn't we all want to just do that? But sometimes this incredibly laid back nature can lend itself to some slightly weird and potentially unsafe habits. Barefoot in public, that one takes a little bit of getting used to.

That's common. You'll see that all over the place. It's season dependent, usually. I mean, you'll get the odd freak doing it in winter, but generally it's the kind of thing where you're going to the shops after going to the beach or before going to the beach. You know, that kind of thing where we're going somewhere in thongs or we're going somewhere barefoot anyway, and we're just like, look, I'm just going to quickly nick into the shops and grab something to drink or something like that. It's not. I just go barefoot everywhere all the time because I can't afford shoes. Or I just like the feel of, you know, the earth under my feet, I don't know. There are definitely loads of people that do this, and I have been guilty of this as well. And um, prior to interacting with a lot of foreigners, did not know it was that weird.

Especially living up here in the sunshine state of Queensland. Seeing people go barefoot in your local Coles can be pretty much a daily occurrence.

Oh yeah!

Lots of people do it, especially children. It's like they've got an allergy to shoes or thongs. Just put some thongs on, mate. Protect yourself. Now for us foreigners who are used to wearing shoes anyway, just to keep our toes warm, seeing people go barefoot in public and it's not the beach or a swimming pool can be a little bit weird. But actually, rather than criticising or wondering if they've got asbestos in the soles of their feet, don't criticise. Join them. Everyone talks about that feeling where you can spread your toes in the sand and how liberating it can be.

Just be careful in summer, especially on the road, if it's like above, what, 30°C? And you walk across that road and it's your first time, you are going to get some serious blisters.

We'll just go barefoot in public, mate! You get that feeling all the time. Except when it's the middle of summer and you step on that black tarmac. Maybe put your thongs on, then.

There you go. Oh my God. Oh my God, show me that again. Jesus. Oh my gosh. No way that was from the heat! My God. Yeah. Don't do it guys.

Now, if you thought going barefoot in public was rather informal or slightly offensive, then wait until the average Australian speaks to you. Don't get me wrong, most of them are educated, eloquent individuals.

I don't know about most.

But the average Aussie does love a swear. They even do it on the radio. The first time I heard it on the radio in the morning, I was wondering if my driving was okay or if someone was shouting at me in traffic. No, it was the person on the radio. I've even heard them drop the odd wanker, which can be wholly confusing to some of the people-.

You just bleeped out wanker? Surely YouTube wouldn't even know. Youtube is an American company. They're not going to know what wanker is. That's still our secret. Come on!

But watching this, they don't even know what a (bleep) is. They can say (bleep) on the radio. Yes. I'm cursing enough.

He's even blurred out his mouth!

What a beautiful country we live in. Now, don't get me wrong, they don't go for the hardcore stuff like (bleep) or bugger. Like, bugger isn't really that bad, is it? I've buggered this up. But most Australians will drop the C bomb at you as a term of endearment!

That's again. So we swear quite a lot. Generally it's going to be with people, you know, and it is us being informal. And we do that culturally. Culturally, that informality thing. We embrace informality as a way of showing that, yeah, we're friendly. And so if you use informal language with a stranger, whether it's swearing or not, often, depending on the context again, it's that you are trying to show it's a relaxed interaction. You're a friendly person, right?

So if you go to a shop and the lady there is selling you something and she calls you love or darling, you know, How are you going, love? What can I get you, darl? She's not trying to be offensive. She's trying to be friendly by being informal. So that is something very Australian that we do. And you'll even notice, you know, the Prime Minister referring to people as mate or getting referred to with his nickname. You know, if you talk to Albanese, I'd probably walk up to him and be like, G'day, Albo. I'm not going to call him Mr. Albanese or Prime Minister Albanese. And if I did, he would probably be like, what is wrong with you? Why would you do that? Ew, ew.

But yeah, with swearing, it depends. The c-bomb? On people I don't know? Only when I'm angry. I'm not going to just whip that out. That's, that's in the back pocket at all times. But it doesn't get drawn unless it's a serious, serious, serious problem. And you're looking to potentially get punched in the face as well, right? So yeah, we're not just throwing those around willy nilly at random though. There are some Aussies who just don't give a shit and they will swear at everyone. You know, we've all seen them in the street, and they're the kind of people that you would avoid anyway, no matter what country you were in.

But most Australians will drop the C bomb at you as a term of endearment. How's it going, (bleep)?

Yeah, so with really good friends! And I mentioned this in the previous video and it was funny, the people that took offence seem to be older women, people of the older generation. And it's like, No shit, Sherlock. Of course you're not going to be dropping the C bomb probably in any situation. I'm a young millennial. I grew up with other boys. I'm obviously, you know, a man, and we would drop the C bomb on each other all the time. You know, you would be saying things like ringing them up and being like, sup? I would just say, 'Sup, cunt? You know, How's it going, cunt? Again, we're not being rude to one another. It's kind of like this is about as informal as you can get. And we're doing it as a kind of tongue in cheek joke, you know? So, of course I don't expect you. You know, Mildred, who's 85 years old from the east suburbs of Sydney, to be calling up her mates on the phone and saying, What's up, cunt? No da, no da.

I know that for lots of people, when they watch Game of Thrones, dropping the C bomb was a big taboo. And if you don't like that word, sorry. Australia might not be for you.

Brits use this all the time as well. This is what I don't get. Have you guys watched any Ricky Gervais? As he said, have you watched any Game of Thrones? They use the C bomb like crazy as well. And a whole bunch of other words that we find hilarious in Australia because they just seem cute, right? I'm looking at you, twat and bellend.

Because in Australia lots of people like to swear and everyone's a (bleep), so you better get used to it. I don't think I've ever used that many bleeps in a video before. I really hope I bleeped all of those out.

Man, thank God he blurred his his mouth. I would be really offended if he hadn't done that.

Now, the last one is something that's awesome, but also one of my little pet peeves. In Australia, they have some of the best containers for sauce in those little foldy things that just squeeze out perfectly. What an invention! But in Australia, if you want the privilege of sauce, you have to pay for it.

Yeah, but by the way, with those little those little things that he just showed, I don't even sauce packets. There's videos online I've seen of foreigners being given those by Australians and being told to work out how to open them. If anyone ever does that to you, do not open it with the sauce label facing your face. It will explode and you will get covered in sauce. So you're meant to pinch it like this. And the two pockets of sauce push against one another and they kind of viciously come out. So aim it down at the food and then squish it. For the love of God, do not do it at your face. You will end up covered in sauce.

And yes, he's about to talk about paying for sauce at takeaway shops. It's so irritating, man. And we have this culture now, I think of going to get fish and chips or going to get takeaway and you just ignore the sauce. You don't buy any because it's overpriced. It'll be in a little tub like this 50ml or something, and it'll be like $4 and you're just like, really? How much was the container? The sauce would have been like $0.10 worth. So quite often for the same amount of money, I always just nip off down to Coles or Woollies and just buy a bottle of sauce, and then you take it home and finish it over the next week or two.

Want some tomato sauce, mate? Yeah, that could be $0.15, please. Or $0.30 if you want two, because they're like really small packets.

It's more than that. For those little sachet packet things that he's talking about, yes. But if you see them in the containers and this is what they clued on quickly, right. A lot of these takeaway shops worked out. People want sauce. Those little sachets are $0.15, $0.30 a pop. But we can buy tomato sauce from Coles and Woollies. We can buy the little containers from Coles and Woollies and we can combine these two. This like $5 bottle of sauce and these, you know, 30 cent containers and we can make 50 of them and sell them the whole lot for hundreds of dollars. So yeah, it's a rort. It's a massive rort. And they do it with all those different sauces and toppings. It's so irritating.

Now, don't get me wrong, not everywhere does charge for sauce. Thank the Lord, but lots of places do. And it's pretty common practice. If you're like my wife that just loves to slather everything in tomato ketchup.

Yeah, that's me. That's me right there.

Tomato ketchup. They're not only calling it ketchup is going to be weird in Australia because it's tomato sauce.

Ketchup is different. Ketchup tastes different. I don't know if it's got like more sugar and salt in it or something, but it definitely has a different flavour to it. You can get Heinz ketchup in Australia. Generally we call it tomato sauce. Or if you want to use rhyming slang, dead horse, you can call it dead horse. I'm going to have some dead horse. I don't tend to hear younger people saying that. They may get confused.

Because it's tomato sauce, as I've been told many times when I get that confusing look asking for ketchup. But like going to America and having to pay for something and then add on the sales tax. If you want sauce, you're going to have to pay a little bit more. But the good thing is we don't have to tip because everyone gets a fair wage. And Medicare. And gun laws. What a beautiful country Australia is.

Yeah. So anyway, it's interesting to mention there too. We don't have that whole adding GST after the fact or the sales tax, all that sort of stuff after the fact. So I remember being culture shocked with that when I went to the US, and I would see the price of the thing and I would get my money. You know, this is back when I was a little kid and we went on a holiday there and I'd be like, okay, we're getting this thing and it's going to be $5.55. I'd get it out. You'd get up there and they'd be like, that's $6.13. And you'd be like, What? Am I dyslexic? Did I- like, What? And they'd be like, Oh, the tax gets added on afterwards. You're like, just add it into the price that you put on the bloody wall. Geez. But yeah. So we don't do that here in Australia. So yeah. And you don't have to tip either. But people will ask you to because they know a lot of foreigners do and they get, they get extra money effectively.

Anyway. That's probably enough for today guys. Hopefully you enjoyed this one. Youtube reckons you're going to enjoy this one next. And I'll see you next time. Tooroo!