Actually, I've got my rose-coloured lenses on for both sides of the Tasman.

I thought I might balance out yesterday's one-eyed but very satisfying rant with a little rave about just one of the things that makes Melbourne a bloody marvellous place to live (Noo Zulland will always be 'home' but the fact that I am living by choice in Melbourne speaks for itself). And that is (discussions about appauling immigration policies and latent racism aside for the time being), the fact that Melbourne has so many incrediblly vibrant cultural layers (and if you look at Melbourne's immigration history there are definite 'layers' or 'waves' of immigration over quite distinct time frames) co-existing and even, at times, blending, in a reasonably civil way that makes this city really quite special.

After getting up suitably late in the day today I went for a wander through my home suburb of Flemington to get some bribery bones for the dog who we will be leaving with a house-sitter for a week when we're in Noo Zulland (I doubt that he'll notice we've gone actually but we feel guilty nonetheless).

So I wandered past the Ethiopian restaurant full of taxi drivers mid-shift, past the Vietnamese & Malaysian food hall, past the Chinese doctor's surgery, past the Halal butcher (noting that they are now authorised Australian Camel meat purveyors as well) and into the 'authentic Australian' butchers - established in 1974 by the same Italian bloke who is still running it today. The butchers is before the KFC and McDonalds which are on the same side of the road, and which are also, bizzarely, Halal certified.

I got some extremely nice bones for the dawg and wandered back, past the cool old eccentric lady with the dog that can get dozens of sticks into its mouth by loading them up its leg (our dog often says hello and looks envious), and past a young woman from the Horn of Africa who was clearly on her way to or from Tae Kwon Do lessons (the white Tae Kwon Do outfit that beautifully complemented her headscarf gave it away).

I went to a lecture by Geert Hofstede last week, a 77 year old Dutch cross-cultural research pioneer who looks bloody good for his age and is still touring giving seriously entertaining lectures. This dude produced a piece of research so mind-bogglingly difficult to replicate about 30 years ago that he can still reasonably legitimately rest on his laurels and refer to it in his lectures - something all of us wannabe academics should aspire to!

Anyways, one of the things he reckons is that in an immigrant family, the first generation 'belongs' to their homeland (the place they emigrated from), the second generation is caught in the middle of the two countries and cultures so to speak and the 3rd truly becomes 'Australian' or whatever country they're living in. I think, in general terms, this is probably correct - the mates I know who have been 2nd generation Kiwis or Aussies have definitely struggled at times with their cultural identity and the family pressures that might accompany it.

But it was interesting to see it so fabulously demonstrated in the young woman coming from Tae Kwon Do who was, I'm willing to hazard a guess, either a 2nd generation Australian immigrant, or who immigrated with her first generation parents. Although with her there didn't seem to be any signs of struggle - she was just getting on with being fabulous on a beautiful Saturday morning in my fabulous suburb in my fabulous city :-)