I thought I'd reached my pinnacle of amazement with the length of Australian holidays ages ago. Nope. Set a huge new record tonight: in casual conversation, an Australian mentioned she'd once gone traveling around the world on holiday (are you ready for this?) for
three years. Evidently she'd picked up the occasional odd job here and there, but aside from that, she didn't work for
three years. Seeing as we'd just met, I really couldn't ask "How the heck did you afford that?! And if you could afford it, how the heck did you
justify it?!" The conversation then turned to Morocco (go figure).
Asking a relative stranger how she could afford a three-year-long 'holiday' would have been a perfectly acceptable question, particularly to keep a conversation flowing. That is, of course, if she's an Australian - most of us would see that as a legitimate question. The answer might have been something along the lines of, "I was saving for a house deposit but after my boyfriend and I broke up I decided to head overseas instead."
ReplyDeleteHowever, we would be puzzled by the idea that we had to justify it. People do different things with their lives - she's decided to see the world for three years rather than work in a 9 - 5 job for that period.