Your arguments reminded me of a pleasant yet insanely astonishing story, atleast for myself and some of my friends.
I was working on an assignment (socket programming during my Masters at RMIT university in 2001) when a friend of mine asked me to review and eliminate an error for his Australian friend's assignment on Advanced Programming (C++). I went through the debugger, identified the problem to be analytical, solved it and then stated how ch**** the Australian was as he was unable to resolve the minor issue, I actually said a few words to my friend Deepak as well for not being able to solve it on his own.
Anyway, time went by and the Australian 'Chris' became a very good friend of mine too, he often asked me to help him and on many occasions I made fun of him in Urdu with Deepak. We used to hang out, discuss assignments, sports, girls, we used to go out together and so on. Ofcourse the group grew with time. Finally we all graduated and began job hunt and so during that time we went on a picnic, Chris, Deepak and many other guys were drinking....Chris had one too many and during a conversation he suddenly blurted 'Mei Ch**** nahi hun'!! For a moment the rest of us were in shock.
Again he repeated the same thing and so Deepak said 'who called you a chutia?', and he pointed towards me and said, he did. Anyway finally that day he told us how he could fluently speak hindi and how his mother was Indian and all. I was quite embarrassed and he was having the fun of his life reminding us of all the times we had made fun of him and how he had to keep a straight face despite being able to understand everything. It was actually a moment of truth for me and ever since, I have been careful of those whom I think may not understand me but just might do.
Cool story bro. Needed more dragons.
Didn't bother reading most of this thread.
Yeah I'm an Indian naturalised citizen of Australia. I'm about as Australian as it gets but also very proud of my Indian heritage (or I wouldn't be here).
Etc etc
It's ADF policy to never state on social networking websites, forums etc anything that may compromise your rank, posting etc.
Have been on many exercises, have studied at the Royal Military College Duntroon. I wont state which branch of the ADF I'm a part of, won't state my rank, won't state where my home baseis etc.
I will go out there and say it, when you first come to this country, you will stick out like a sore thumb. The Indians here (or atleast the ones I know) are a very vibrant and diverse community, however as mentioned earlier, there are the Indian men that are coming straight from a village in Punjab and have never seen women in short skirts etc that stare and generally make all Indians look bad (don't do this.)
Try to retain some sort of class when you come over, we're a minority here, you are representing your people etc etc
Being proud of your heritage doesn't mean you have to be lewd, only ever make friends with other people from India/Pakistan/etc, only eat traditional food, only ever speak in your traditional language.
You're in a different ******* country for god's sake, act like you belong. When in Rome and so on.
