The first impression of big city Australia that you get is how similar it is to US. Most of the TV programs, ads, newspaper editorial seem very similar to one you would see in United states. The only redeeming point really is Australians play cricket and they absolutely love it. The current Australian team seems to be amazing bunch of guys were out of top five batsmans atleast two guys give solid performance in every innings and team is not built on just 1 or 2 guys.

Watching television and reading newspapers its clear that Australian society is much similar to American, driven by credit. This is far more evident in big cities where news papers have pages and pages of auto ads with car dealers offering no money down 5 year loans on BMWs and Audis. Australians have debt of about 720 billion, 608 billion in mortgages, $112 of person debt. Average credit card debt is 2248.14 up from 794.14 10 years ago. Households in Australia spend A$225 more than they earn per quarter compared to net savings of A$500 per quarter, 10 years ago. Most of the M&A activity in Australia is centered around mining companies and supermarkets. Not many high tech job ads in the newspapers. Most of the engineering jobs in the newspapers were related to construction, structural engineering type jobs. Of course there are usual IT related jobs. Most Australian companies seem to be migrating call center jobs to India. Overall just like US dollar Aussie dollar and stock market appears to be overvalued, moment China's economy actually slows down it will be time to short Aussie market and currency.

Most of the major cities in Australia have fair number of immigrants and its easy to find Indian, Chinese, Korean food. Most of the shopping malls have American style food courts where you can sample different types of food. However overall I found food in Australia is expensive a loaf of bread was AUS$2.00, even in non-tourist area sandwich for lunch would cost you A$8-$10 plus extra for drinks. Only cheap place I found to eat cheap sandwich was Subway.

In the newspapers just like in US you will find fair share of people complaining about immigrants taking away the job but at the same time Australian govt is finding it difficult to attract professionals to work in remote parts of Australia and thinking of offering incentives for immigrants to move country side. Australia also has tons of folks coming over from UK to work for year or so, actually in most hostels I found that reception, cleaning staff was from UK. So obviously when you ask them for directions, what can I do around city, I very rarely got very good information.

One thing that surprised me about Australia was number of skin cancer clinics in big cities particularly in Sydney, Perth. In Bondie beach about 100 met from the beach there is skin cancer clinic, one wonders if people going to beach get screened there after full day in the sun? Newspaper have substantial number of ads with clinics offering specifically skin cancer screening. Australia has many days of sunshine but still people find it necessary to go out and lie on the beach in hot sun? Just don't get human obsession with skin colour. People that are white want to get tanned, people that are dark want to get fair skin!! Although while in Australia read number of articles where people are trying to get schools to educate kids about exposure in the sun etc. But there is such a big industry around going to the beach & sun I wonder if these efforts will go anywhere..

Overall folks in Australia are friendly in general but at the same time very much money minded, but not as friendly as say folks in NZ. I found Australia just like the guy I had met on flight from Auckland to Melbourne, 20 years in future from Zealand. I hope NZ stops its race towards materialism.