02/09/2024
Việc lựa chọn một vùng đất phù hợp để sinh sống và phát triển thực sự không hề đơn giản.
Mình chia sẻ bài viết của một người đã trải nghiệm cuộc sống giữa Canada và Australia. Bản thân mình thấy có nhiều thông tin cơ bản và hữu ích cho ai đang tìm hiểu và lựa chọn cho mình vùng đất phù hợp:
****
If you were free to choose, which country would you like to live in: Australia or Canada?
I’m a Canadian currently living in Australia.
Honestly, in terms of education, health care, work, making friends, etc. they are really pretty similar. There are pros and cons to living in each, and a lot of it depends on your preferences and exactly where you’ll be.
Like, everyone talks about weather, but your experience of that depends a lot on your preferences and on where in the country you are.
I’m from Alberta, where winter lasts around 6 months every year and is pretty much always below 0 degrees. Some people love it - they like cold weather, they do winter sports, or just love the peacefulness and beauty of the snow. Others hate the cold and the long hours of darkness (though the dark winters are balanced out in the summer with amazing long days). It’s often sunny in the winter. Vancouver is rarely cold enough for snow to stick around very long, but it rains a *lot* in the winter. Winter near Toronto is snowy but shorter, warmer, and more humid than in the Prairies. Summer in Alberta rarely gets hotter than about 30 degrees and even that only lasts around a week, whereas in Toronto it can push 40 and be quite humid.
It’s the same in Australia in many ways. It’s generally warmer, but in the north you’ll have constant warm temperatures (around 30–35C) and high humidity year-round, while in the south you’ll have distinct seasons and winter temps approaching 0. You have to wear sunscreen almost year-round. Sydney apparently gets more rain than London, but in the small, more inland town where my in-laws live, it hardly ever rains.
I think something important to note, too, with the weather, is that in my opinion most houses in Australia are of generally poor quality compared to what you get in Canada, inlcuding not having any insulation or central heating. So let’s say you’re looking at lliving in Melbourne and think 4 degrees in the winter isn’t that bad, especially compared to standard Canadian winters. But in Canada, it might be -20 outside, but you will be toasty warm in your house, while in Australia it’s only 4 degrees outside but it will be *at least* that cold inside. In Canada, you’ll have a heater that distributes heat pretty evenly around the house, in most Australian houses you’re stuck using individual electric heaters (most people only have one, and it’s in one room, so that room might be hot while the others are still kind of cool - and no insulation means it doesn’t stay warm well). It’s one of the things I miss most about Canada, actually (especially since, as I said, climate preferences are very personal and I’m emphatically not a high heat-loving person, so we’ll be sticking to places with cooler winters).
Otherwise, going from Canada to Australia, you trade “more large carnivores” for “more small poisonous things”, “sitting in your house in -25 weather to stay warm” with “sitting in your house in 40 degrees with the AC on to stay cool”, and “the cold air hurts my face” to “the sun hurts my face”. Beaches are lovely in Australia, while Canada is more rocky, even on the beaches. Most things in Australia aren’t open after like 4pm, while in Canada most things are open til about 9 most days. There’s more red tape around everything, and more casual work where you don’t even know your shifts (something very uncommon in Canada). Australia has more small businesses than Canada, which is pretty cool and often makes for some nice vibrant communities. Sydney and Melbourne are crazy expensive, but the rest of the country is better - in Canada, Vancouver and Toronto are crazy expensive, but the rest is better. Just like in Canada, there are some well-paying jobs in natural resources. Australia has a lot of Asian influences (especially in the cities), which I honestly love. Canada has less of that, & more influecnce from the US.
There are some cultural differences too… I’d say in general, Canadians are pretty friendly and nice, and easy to get to know. We Canadians tend to have a lot of self-deprecation, irony, and sarcasm in our humour, as well as just flat-out silliness.
Aussies are also friendly, but their humour is more irreverent, and they like to tease each other *a lot*. There’s more of a drinking culture, and they’re more blunt and less polite.
Just as examples, once at a party I was speakign with a lady, and she was like, “Oh, you’re the Canadian I’ve heard about” and I was like, “Yeah, I guess so” and she pauses and says “… Canadians are wierd” and then looks at me with this look like she’s sizing me up. I just laughed it off and she started laughing too. Or like the other day, I asked a shop assistant at a pharmacy if a certain cough syrup would be good and she said, “Yeah, sure, if you like things that work like sh*t” lol. I *couldn’t imagine* a shopkeeper in Canada saying that to a customer. That kind of talk is really, really common in Australia.
Again, whether you consider that to be a good, neutral, or bad thing depends entirely on what you like. Me, I’m neutral on it, it makes me laugh sometimes while other times I miss Canadian politeness. I know people who would hate it, and others who would feel overjoyed that calling out to your bestie down the street, “Hey c*nt” is socially normal, lol. I have an immigrant friend that had a *very* hard time adjusting to all the friendly teasing, whereas I mostly didn’t have any issues (minus some awkard times when I thought it was too much & tried to take things down a notch, but nobody else cared, lol).
I guess, for myself personally, I wanted to stay in Canada 😛 I think Canada wins out just by a small margin, though. Australia is a lovely place full of great people, and if we moved back to Canada there are definitely things I would miss about Australia.
Edit: I thought I’d add a short comment on health care. I have a chronic illness and have had injuries in both places at this point, and so having had a good amount of experience in both places’ systems now, I thought I’d say something about it. Health care varies a bit between states & provinces within each country, so this is mostly comparing Alberta to New South Wales. I’d say the quality of care in both places is very high and generally similar. However, as a patient, I’ve found that navigating the combination public/private system in NSW is much more difficult and time consuming than the straight public system of Alberta. Also, due to the private element, it seems that in NSW there is more reliance on private health insurance and I’m just not a fan of that - many find them to be kind of scammy and not good value for money. I find it also limits your choices - for example, trying to find a neurologist that *doesn’t* charge through the roof is very difficult, even in a large city like Sydney. Plus, dealing with doctors in a sensitive health situation is even less fun when they’re constantly telling you how expensive your tests & specialists will be and pushing you to get private insurance. I’ve also experienced a lot more random weirdness in NSW’s system (for example, more and unnecessary specialist referrals, and even a specialist referring me to a different doctor in the *same specialty* elsewhere). GPs have sometimes referred me to private specialists even when they know I don’t have private insurance, or referred me for things they themselves should be able to order (like MRIs, for example). If you can afford private, I think the wait times are a little shorter, but if you go get your stuff done through public hospitals, you end up with the longer wait times you see anywhere else. The one thing that really seems better in the Australian system is that their ER departments seem better organized, so I appreciate that. Though both are still pretty high-quality in terms of the training doctors get, facilities etc., because of that public/private weirdness, I’d have to say overall I prefer the Canadian system. Of course I’m sure there are people who disagree with me on this one, but it’s my 2 cents.
