Our cultural upbringing determines a lot of how we perceive things too. We see the world through our cultural glasses; rose coloured or otherwise. I knew the theory of all this but my first personal encounter with cultural perspectives that were significant, was when we left New Zealand for the first time and headed to our nearest neighbour, Australia. We can be deceived into thinking we are not all that different. Don’t you believe it. After we had been there a while, a friend asked me what my first impressions of Australia were, since this was my first time in Aussie. I replied, “Coming into Melbourne and flying over the city I was struck by the sameness. The uniformity. Similar coloured tiled rooves, mostly brick homes with various shades of brown but still mostly brown”. He asked me what was it like in New Zealand. I told him, “Houses are made from a variety of materials, brick yes, but also stone, cement, wood, etc. And there are varieties of colours of paint used”. Certainly not the uniformity I had seen when coming into Melbourne. His response: oh yes, Australia used to be untidy like that but now there is more uniformity. I was speechless. That is perceived as untidy! Mmmm.
