Why I have not been blogging lately -- major reason

I am trying to pass some time for me to get over the trauma I got from my recent trip to Australia. No thanks to the " very warm reception", or shall I say, sizzling reception I got from the officers of Sydney airport who welcomed me by doubting my purpose of tourism in their beloved country and rummaged through the contents of my bags, my wallet, the stamps in my passport and yes, even my mobile phone combined with interrogating me with all the questions in the world. Though they were not rude, they did were hostile and formal. At first I was still cool and thought that they were just trying to do their job but I started to get annoyed when I felt that they were trying to find any fault on me that they could use against me. But well since I am not lying when I told them I was just staying only for 9 days and I could answer them straight in the eye (but I wonder why they couldn't look at me straight in the eye) and even if they swab all of my things to check for drug traces or turn the world upside down, they couldn't get anything from me and after about half an hour they finally said "Welcome to Sydney and enjoy your stay here". Yeah right.

To make matters worse, on my flight back to Singapore, I was still, unbelievably, got picked by "random" (that's what I was told) to be checked again by the immigration officers. They swabbed my things and scanned my hands to check for any trace of drugs again. But this time it was a bit different, as the two officers were trying to be a bit more "friendly", I thought maybe to make me feel at ease. So they were being chatty and I would have been convinced that their friendliness could be sincere so I had cheerfully conversed with them until one asked if I had a boyfriend in Australia and when I said no, one jokingly said when I go back there he'll show me around and find me a boyfriend. I wouldn't have been offended have he not gave away his real thinking when he said with a wide smile "I will find you a rich boyfriend and then you can pay me 2 million dollars commission". That made the smile on my face disappear, I paused, collected my things and I said "For me, it's not really at all about the money".Then he said "Yeah, it should be about the heart, shouldn't it?". I answered "Yes, exactly." I found it truly insulting.

I really wanted to forget about those bad experiences because I didn't want it to spoil my trip. But it made a big impression on me, and it was hard to recover. It didn't even help that during the days when I was traversing the streets of Sydney by myself, I never got a warm smile or nice encounter with a local. I only got strange looks from people. Maybe I am just being paranoid when I say I was not being given the same treatment as anyone else, but I suppose when I smiled at the people sitting in the train when I was trying to pass through to sit on the vacant seat in between them and they did not bother to move and I had to squeeze myself in, there was no relation to when they moved over when a white Aussie guy squeezed in and actually even exchanged some greetings with each other?

I don't even want to write about these experiences because I don't want to speak ill about a country, especially since my friend (from gradeschool who invited me over to visit) and his family (Filipinos who migrated to Australia and are now citizens there) have been so nice to me. They have a good life there and I know that they love Australia and proud of it and I know my friend wanted me to see it the way he does but unfortunately I could not.

I feel sad to be even be writing about this actually, because I would like to remember only the good things about my travels and write only about the beautiful things (I do am going to try to do some travel blog about Australia) but I also feel that I have to voice this out to be true to myself and for everyone who has chosen to be mum about a similar thing they might have experienced. I have heard stories about Australia being racist but I still went there taking this thought away to avoid prejudice and I was hopeful to even disprove it, because they said it is like New Zealand and since I only had good memories from my trip to New Zealand earlier this same year, I also had the hopes of bringing back with me only nice stories about this beautiful land down under. But while I do confirm how beautiful the place is, I could only also say that for me, the real beauty of a place lies on how it welcomes the beholders, where it doesn't matter if your skin is not white and your hair and eyes are black.

The aboriginals of Australia are the original inhabitants of this land, thousands of years way before the British settled and conquered the land. The aboriginals have tanned skin, black hair and black eyes...but now I understand why when we say Australia we think about white people in safari and outback attires.