Teddy Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”
I knew that moving from Sydney to New York, I’d forever have a figurative yardstick against the two cities to see how they measured up. It was inevitable that I’d start making a list of pros and cons, which would surely grow with each passing day. But, I'm not entirely sure that's robbed me of joy. It’s not the same as when I compare myself to, say, Emily Ratajkowski and end up feeling like a flat-chested berk. Instead, it’s made me fully appreciate the nuances of each metropolis and highlighted some truly remarkable parts that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.
It’s also helped me to love the mundane things that I routinely took for granted. It wasn’t until I suffered through two consecutive 4-hour stints at New York’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) that I found myself longing for Australia’s Roads and Maritime Services (RMS). The RMS is not particularly efficient—I recall a time I waited for over an hour back when it was the RTA—but it’s got nothing on the catastrophe that is the Atlantic Avenue DMV. I went there just to get my NYC driver’s license and wasted more than 8 hours of my life. The kicker was that when I received it, the birthdate was wrong so I have to go back again to fix it. I’ve been putting that off for a year.
I can safely say Australia is light years ahead of America in terms of bureaucracy and just like basic organization. That Commbank level of service doesn’t exist here. There’s also that whole universal healthcare thing. Australia has Medicare for all and America has like a million different private healthcare providers that are expensive, beyond annoying to navigate, and, you know, not really an option for the impoverished.
We all know Sydney’s beaches reign supreme and that New York serves up the best slice, but it’s when you get down to the granular details that things really get interesting. It’s easy to say a Sydney summer trumps a New York winter. Hell, I’ve spent the past few months lamenting the weather and telling my coworkers that “summer holidays are my favorite thing about Australia.” I’ve had fits of jealousy looking at Instagram stories of tanned friends back home devouring ice-cold VBs and sticky mangoes.
Yet, just this week, I experienced my first blizzard and it too was a magical experience. Scary? Yes. Cold? Definitely. One day it was -8°C but “felt like” -17°C. I still don’t know what that equates to in Fahrenheit, but we can all agree now that the metric system is far superior to whatever that convoluted shit is. Why freezing isn’t zero or boiling isn’t 100 is beyond me. Even my boss, who is a proud Californian, agrees it’s ridiculous. In fact, he was actually taught the metric system at school here because they eventually thought that would become standard. What happened to that plan? Like I said, organization isn’t the country’s strong suit.
Anyway, one morning, I mustered the courage to put my snow garb on and go and stand on the street. It was dead quiet and everything was still save for the snowflakes that were cascading rapidly. It was utterly mesmerizing and I was overwhelmed with that same joyous feeling that I get every time I’m bobbing far beyond the breaking waves at an Aussie beach.
Naturally, any food-related shenanigans have invariably prompted a deep-dive into who does it better. Supermarkets have proved to be particularly interesting. When I first got here, I thought NYC had that one in the bag, easily. I mean, they sell all the naughty shit you could ever want, like Pop-Tarts, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Hot Pockets and White Castle sliders. They even sell beer. On the flip side, they don’t sell wine—nothing you can drink, at least. That means I have to make a b-line to the wine store and in the aforementioned -17°C weather that ain’t exactly pretty.
They also don’t have gift cards or wrapping paper—that’s at a pharmacy?—cookware, stationery, or those random items of clothing. That’s what I miss about Woolies. It’s a catch-all. A supermarket, sure, but you can get fresh produce, new undies, a DVD and a saucepan in one fell swoop. Even better, if a bottle shop is attached, you can get booze, too. You may not even have to pay for it if you cheat the self-service checkout.
New York clearly dominates the food delivery game and I consider myself an expert after ordering take-out countless times over the past how every many months in lockdown. UberEats and Menulog gave it a good crack in Sydney, but you can just compete with the Big Apple in terms of scope, variety and price. Ollie and I regularly get two burritos—I say burritos, but they’re more like 10-pound newborns—for less than $20 delivered.
I could go on. I haven’t even covered subways vs. CityRail, but I’m off to drink another Manhattan with a double shot of Buffalo Trace. I can wholeheartedly say the US has Australia beat when it comes to bourbon.
Comentários