When I arrived in Australia, friends and relatives sometimes asked me if I was used to it.
People who ask me questions like this usually ask whether they are accustomed to eating or getting used to it. Their eating habits are the same as the rustic, cross-Yangtze River travel to buy instant noodles in advance, or they will be hungry. So as soon as I heard that I had gone so far abroad, I felt that I must be drinking blood and drinking the northwest wind.
But I'm not used to losing two drops of blood in my heart every time I unconsciously multiply the price by 5. Australia's supermarket has rice meat and vegetables, buy home to remove the foreign packaging, you can stir-fry and stir-fry to make authentic Chinese food.
And Sydney has almost as many Chinese communities as train stations, and as long as it's not too remote, Chinese supermarkets can always be found. Traditional Chinese ingredients not found in foreign supermarkets, such as tofu, flat tips, wonton skins and so on, can also be bought. All this is due to decades of colonization of the wilderness. The only pity is that fresh fish and shrimps can't eat fresh water, but ice-chilled sea fish and shrimps also taste good.
So, when I came to Australia, most of the time, I ate white rice, red roast meat, tomato scrambled eggs, and I didn't change the pasta of hamburger sandwiches all of a sudden, and there was no big difference between my diet and my domestic diet. In the memory of the motherland, the feeling of the stomach and tongue is always the most lasting.
However, as the saying goes, close to the dark near Australia soil, this more than a year, I also slowly learned some soil habits with the foreigners.
Drinking tap wate
One of the complaints of the Chinese people is that there is no kettle in the hotel, because westerners do not boil water except tea and coffee. This is the same as Westerners can not understand the Chinese supermarket can not buy armpit deodorant.
To tell the truth, drinking boiled water is really a poor habit in third world countries. Our parents taught us not to drink cold water from a young age to have a stomachache in cold water. In fact, "cold" is not the key, the key is that the tap water is unhygienic, and when it burns, it can kill most of the germs (it is said that killing cyanobacteria is not a problem).
But Australia's tap water is in line with drinking water standards, it is normal to turn on the tap to drink. Parks, schools, libraries and other public areas all have water spray-style drinking water outlets, so you don't have to bring your own kettle when you go out.
Australian media reported a while ago that Australia's tap water was better than bottled water in supermarkets, but could not stop the lazy Australians from buying it in a box.
In the first few days of my visit to Australia, I carefully asked a high school student next to me in a toilet, "can I drink the water in the faucet here?" he said it was safe and safe.
So, because there is no habit of drinking tea and coffee, I went to buy the electric kettle before going abroad.
Drink iced milk
Milk is a special food, is the heart of the Chinese forever pain.
In the domestic time, although I do not like my wife to burn every time to drink, but also always have to warm up before the entrance, or the stomach will feel the urge to go to the toilet at any time.
At that time, I analyzed that either the domestic quality of milk is not passed, or I am a sad lactose intolerance, should be accurately said to be cool lactose intolerance patients.
But oddly enough, I had the guts in Australia to take milk out of the fridge and drink it as soon as I could. Every day, my stomach was quiet and stable, and I didn't even miss one more fart.
This shows that lactose has always been a good friend of mine, not to open my face at home and shake hands with me as soon as I arrive in Australia.
In addition, the quality of domestic milk is certainly not as good as Australia, but I think that after so many times of rectification, the current safety should still be guaranteed, such as Guangming Mengniu, such as established enterprises, can not produce bottles of E. coli to the shelves.
The only explanation is that the domestic long-term propaganda of "drinking cold water to have a tummy" and "Asian lactose intolerance" has (at least to me) formed a strong psychological hint-never drink Chinese milk, drink boiling milk if you want.
My mother-in-law even threat I said: someone drank milk did not burn, drinking bleeding from the stomach. There are also people hiding needles in the milk of the emotional country?
Eat vegetables raw
In addition to the occasional cold-mixed cucumber lettuce, the Chinese like to cook whatever dishes they like to eat. As my mother thought her stomach was weak, it had to be cooked and cooked.
When foreign fast food entered China, we knew lettuce could be nibbled directly into bread.
In Australia, I found that most Westerners eat vegetables are not heated, supermarkets are bags of washed and chopped vegetables on the shelf to sell, take home to put in white bread or bread rolls, or add some ingredients to Vegetables Salad.
In addition to the tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots that we Chinese can also accept, the lettuce I've eaten has spinach, celery, onions, peppers, and some strange vegetables that can't be named. Every time I eat, I can't help but stretch my neck and have the illusion of a giraffe.
My former roommate from Chile even ate mushrooms raw, chopped them up and chewed them up, which I never dared to try.
Reduce frying
Some of the vegetables that Chinese people often eat, such as green vegetables, cabbage, empty cabbage, and so on, I still find it difficult to swallow without going through the christening of boiling water in an oil pan. I still find it difficult to swallow in my hometown, which is called "green spirit". Therefore, stir-fry is still my most commonly used way of cooking.
But there is a huge impediment to the Chinese frying in Australia-the range-gas machines are internally circulating.
I'm afraid friends at home have never heard of a range gas machine and internal circulation and external circulation, and it's not an automobile air conditioning. How can you pay so much attention to it?
The so-called internal circulation, in fact, is that there is no flue to the outside, all fumes are digested by the machine. The power of this smoke machine is generally very mild, compared with the domestic roar of external circulation cigarette machines like mosquitoes.
This is certainly enough for Westerners who do not have the habit of stir-frying, but as soon as they meet with cold oil dishes, they will be in trouble with countless Chinese people among deaf people, and oil can be sucked away with a little bit of personnel. Smoke walked in the belly of the machine or puffed back my face, circulating again in my respiratory system.
So now I try to use less frying non-stick pot, also do not wait for oil hot to pour, otherwise it is equivalent to smoking oil smoke haze.
Multi-purpose oven
Over the years, the use of ovens in domestic households is increasing, but it is still not the standard for domestic decoration. Australia is different, almost every day to use the oven to cook food.
When I first came to Australia, I cut the large pieces of pork and beef in plastic packaging, which I bought, into shreds or pieces of beef, and then fried or braised them like domestic ones. Later, I checked the instructions and found that all of these were used for baking in whole pieces. Finally experienced the Qing Dynasty said in the siege coffee as a snuff, foreigners add seasoned tea to eat the feeling.
The Australian supermarket has a lot of ready-to-eat food at home, frozen pizza, hot dogs, spring rolls, French fries, chicken wings, fish steak, beef pies, cold and fresh foods like whole chicken, beef, pork chops, sheep legs, and some in advance. Buy it and drop it in the oven according to the time and temperature on the packing instructions. It's easy.
Grilled food not only has a raw flavor, but also reduces fumes and minimizes the amount of time it takes to operate in the kitchen, which is the same as steamed food in China.
Fill the refrigerato
Australia does not have a farm or trade farm near every community as it does at home. It goes to the supermarket in the shopping center to buy food. Every time you buy a dish, you have to drive up and down, and you don't have time to go back and forth every day. So you usually buy it once a week, and every time you take the refrigerator as your stomach in the cafeteria, you have to fill up and stop.
The Australian people's request for freshness of vegetables is not as persistent as that of the Chinese people. Not only are vegetables kept in cold storage for a week, but they often buy all kinds of frozen vegetables and frozen fruits, sometimes making me think that I am not in Australia. It's in the South Pole.
In addition, vegetables in supermarkets, even if not packaged salad, is usually washed in advance and can be put directly into the refrigerator, unlike every domestic purchase home after picking dead leaves before rubbing mud and then washing pesticides necessary steps.
So people in Australia use super-large refrigerators. The landlords of my house used to keep two refrigerators at home, and they had to work around to save them from being crowded out.
My colleague lives in Blue Mountain, where there was a fire, a power outage, and the insurance company's compensation included $500 in refrigerator food costs. When I was in China, I usually put some leftovers in the refrigerator, and it was worth 50 yuan.
buffet lunch
There are always ready-made meals in the cafeteria at home, and lunch hours are unlikely to exceed 12:00.
In Australia, the first Skillmax class was startled, and the morning class didn't break until 1 o'clock. Of course, everyone opens their own lunch box, and some people don't even eat anything hungry.
In addition to the Chinese food is usually meat and vegetarian with not tired, the rest of the people are almost perfunctory. Some are milk-soaked cereal, some are sandwiches with two bread grips, or some toast is buttered. The teacher also brought bread coated with Vegemite, an Australian sauce that few Chinese are used to eating, and a carrot.
I also brought sandwiches for a long time, stuffed with eggs and tomatoes, and each time I brought two, but I felt hungry every 3 to 4 p.m., so I brought another fruit. Now the company has a microwave oven to heat, also casually stuffed with a box of leftovers last night just, no longer pay attention to what three dishes and one soup neat.
Still, I'm curious: how do some Australians eat so little during the day and never get hungry?
No more naps.
In the past, in China, lunch and lunch are usually accompanied by a thunderous lunch break, everyone takes a nap in the office chair, or take a comfortable nap with the recliner, work in the afternoon will be full of blood resurrected.
But since I arrived in Australia, I have not closed my eyes from morning to night, and I have never felt that afternoon dullness has affected my productivity.
This shows that everything is just a habit. And the habit of getting sleepy in the afternoon without a nap is the same as "getting sick after drinking warm milk" and "getting sick if you don't sit on a moon", all of which come from the growing psychological cues of people around them, not related to the physical differences between the East and the West.
In addition, I learned from foreigners' neighbors and colleagues that the reason why they are energetic during the day is that they go to bed early at night-going to bed like children from 9 to 10:00. Some of them are my peers, some younger than me, but they don't have the same habit of staying up late browsing on social app as young Chinese.
In the 21st century, as in the farming society, there is no nightlife in the same way that the sun comes out and does not rest. Do you say that the earth is in Australia and the earth is not in the earth?
Apply sunscreen
My own skin is not white, and I don't care to be tanned. I always wonder which day can be the second place in ancient times, so I have never thought about the need for sun protection in my life before.
But walking under the sun in Australia, like using official accounts to spread false news by a large number of media to dispel rumors, all the time feel the hot face. With all the Australian legends of skin cancer, I realized the need for sunscreen to be a must for life.
According to the Australian Cancer Council, 2/3 of Australians are diagnosed with skin cancer before the age of 70, and seven hundred and fifty thousand are treated for skin cancer every year. As soon as I saw my skin tight, I couldn't help but shrink my head into my collar.
So in my opinion, going out without sunscreen on a sunny day in Australia is just like going out without a mask on a haze day in China, a tempo you can't live with.
Flush toilet pape
At home, there is always a toilet around a good friend who never abandon the shit to pee, that is the wastebasket.
But in Australia, the toilet is all alone, no matter what to eat or drink alone. The water company's promotional materials also show that there are 3p pees, Poo & Paper. flushing down the toilet.
My neighbor had told me that paper was soluble in water, so washing it down would not cause sewers to clog. I am very confused about this. Is the toilet paper in Australia not the same as that in China?. Is Australian toilet paper made of sugar?
Therefore, I do not know whether this is because the sewer system in Australia is less picky, or whether the Chinese people have a stronger sense of garbage separation. However, according to feedback from some travel forums, there are not many countries where toilet paper can be flushed directly down the toilet. In addition to Australia and New Zealand, there are North America, Britain, Japan and a number of Nordic, Central European countries.
In any case, cleaning up toilet paper is a real hassle: the legacy of feudalism that evolved from an old inverted toilet to a flush toilet, like the appendix, is a product of incomplete evolution.
Everyone washed the dirty past clean, clean and clean without a trace, how good.
Friends who have already emigrated might as well say in a message, what are your habits and habits about emigration change?