There's this bloke I met who commutes from the NSW Central Coast to Parramatta five days a week.
He sat on the floor of the train I caught from Sydney to Woy Woy on Friday night at 7.38pm.
I asked him why he travels four hours by train and bus from the Central Coast (where he grew up) to Sydney's western outskirts for a job.
For one, he likes where he lives. For two, he likes his job.
He had 68 people turning up on Monday (that's today) for job training.
He works for a job agency training unemployed people.
And on Sydney's western outskirts you will find at least 71 different nationalities - people from all over the world trying to make a new life in Australia.
He loves the interaction.
This bloke was unemployed for 18 months - it was the worst time of his life. But this agency trained him and also paid for a new set of teeth for him.
So he travels to this job that he loves for four hours every day - he loves his job. He's not concerned about missing a TV program.
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So there's this other bloke I met this morning on a flight home to Brisbane - he took my bag down from the overhead locker for me just to be nice.
He was on his way to Roma to work as a locum doctor - he's a doctor from Syria. He migrated to Australia five years ago to escape the Middle East havoc.
He flies into Charleville and other little rural towns which need doctors to work for a week and then flies home to Sydney.
The tone in his voice when he spoke of how beautiful his homeland of Syria is told me how much he must miss it.
He had a photo of his son on his iPhone. And he asked me whether I could recommend any Australian books to read in simple English.
He would like to improve his English by reading books by Australians. So I recommended Seven Little Australians by Ethyl Turner and Cloud Street by Tim Winton.
I suspect his reading may be better than a lot of Australian-born people who take no interest in literature apart from Who Magazine or Zoo Weekly.
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So glad to know it is still possible to have a civil conversation with a stranger in this country - how else do you build understanding?
Nice change from the regular suspects who seem to lurk behind shop counters and office desks who think they are too good to talk to you - maybe they plan to sell their story to Who or Zoo, eh?
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