Sydney Individuals: Mooncake Season edition

[highlyeccentric]

It is, in places north of the equator, mid-autumn festival. In countries that actually cross the equator, possibly the local translation of the Chinese word(s) for "autumn" makes sense. The dominant English translation of the Chinese word(s) for "autumn", however, makes no sense when applied to Australian Septemebr-October.

There are many compromises to this: eg, in Darling Harbour (the touristy bit that's closest to Sydney's Chinatown), the current festival is known as Moon Festival. I don't actually know what local Chinese groups call it, but I have picked up enough from observing Asian-Australians chatter to guess that whatever the PRC diaspora call it does not map on to what other Chinese-calendar-using Asian-Australian communities use.

I am this year particularly endeared by World Square, a shopping mall that sits in a high-traffic nexuus of the Sydney SBD, near traditional Chinatown, informal-Koreatown, the District and Local Court legal sector (not to be confused with the Supreme Court "legal district"), and a couple of well-established theatres. I remember World Square being built when I was first working in retail a few blocks further down into the CBD. Currently, World Square provides me with gluten-free burgers AND an Asian supermarket that stocks Hojicha in tea bags.

A few weeks back, World Square started decorating with lanterns, white bunny figures, and cherry blossoms, for spring. The stores therein, meanwhile, stock mooncakes, as one might expect for mid-autumn festival. Eventually, I caught sight of some corporate branding, and they've dubbed this combination "mooncake season". I love it and endorse it, even though I cannot eat mooncake.

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Some Individuals seen lately:

Hijabi, in the underground bit of world square. She was wearing... let me describe this in the order it struck me: a lavender hijab, in what I know as the standard style in Aus. Pools around the shoulders, doesn't have a built in sun visor, may or may not have an under-cap. Black button-up jacket, black flared mid-thigh skirt. Purple tights. Black docs. Black salior/police type cap with shiny buckling across the frontage of it. I beamed at her and she looked so unnerved that I had to clarify "Great outfit", and she did a little shimmy of surprised pleasure.

Two small girls, on 30 september, in red bodysuits with black spangled skirts and witches hats, waiting for a train with their presumably-parents.

Guy pracicing whip-cracking in Belmore Park

Man on a bus who jumped down to open the wheelchair ramp, but the wheelchair user in question didn't wish to board, and the bus driver had some choice words to say about the uninsured public interfering with his job. Man kept arguing he was being helpful and he "used to be a bus driver, cunt". He was baffled when the bus driver radioed for police assistance to get him off the bus, and outraged at the suggestion he had been swearing. The police, predictably, had better things to do than deal with an aggro but not yet physically violent Member Of The Public, so eventually the bus got underway again. I was fascinated by the fact that, when other passengers remonstrated with him about swearing with the bus driver, he was unaware he had done so. And indeed he had not said "shit", or "fuck", or "bloody". Had he said any of those I'd assume he wasn't paying attention, but there was method to his anti-social behaviour, and I do strongly suspect that he doesn't think of "cunt" as a swear word. FASCINATING.