Somehow I have forgotten how tall everyone is in this part of the world! For the last 13-months, I have always been one of the tallest people in the room and now here I am, amongst actual giants. I guess I’m not in South East Asia Anymore…
As our quarantine bus is pulled over to the side of a busy street in the middle of Sydney CBD, I begin people-watching from the bus window. Maybe it’s the two large buses in the middle of a small one way road. Or the police on motorcycles chauffeuring us. Or because everyone I’m on this bus with, including myself, is wearing a mask and from what I can observe, we almost seem to be the ones. But I have taken note that every person in passing decides to look and make an observation of their own. Two young gentlemen that I gather understood who we are and what we are doing here, decide to take their phones out to “discretely” take a video of the situation. I look in the opposite direction although really watching with my peripheral vision as to not get in the way of any action they were planning on doing. I am always disappointed when someone second guesses or doesn’t commit to something they want to do just because somebody is watching. Another lady walks up and just frowns in pity of us, which I kind of enjoyed. More people whipping out phones and of course just the usual stares. We now have a news reporter getting in on the scene of us about to depart the bus. More than anything, I am thoroughly entertained by the people who don’t notice us at all and who frankly don’t notice anyone noticing them. They are who I like to watch. The disgust of a silver haired, deep lined, tall, white, bussiness man as he passes the two young men gentlemen who are clearly vocal about their thoughts and are just carelessly smoking in the middle of the street. A flamboyant gentlemen with enthusiastic arms catches my attention as he proceeds in a strut down this business like street walk, with a flick of his hair complimenting his over the top black and white matching attire. Ah, it’s good to be home.
Another thing I have now noticed is how beautifully diverse the people are. This is something I always say but it’s nice to be reminded again. Growing up in Sydney, I have had the pleasure of knowing and growing up with people of backgrounds from all over the world, which I know isn’t exactly the case in other parts of Aus and of course the rest of the world. An interesting thing I have picked up on over the years is because I live in such a diverse city, there are a lot of mixed races and because of that, it has become somewhat of thing to ask people what their background is or to try and guess. As my head is leaning on this bus window while a police officer at the front of the bus is reading out something I’m sure is important but i’ll figure out later… I begin trying to guess everyones ethnicities outside of the bus. A few fairly obvious guesses but then there are the ethnically ambiguous. Me being one of these ethnically ambiguous people, I find it even more fascinating and kind of don’t want to know. I’ll leave it up the imagination!