"Everything was the opposite when I first came to Australia in 1987-.
These were the words which came from my dad who migrated to Australia in January 1987 from Korea. He came here to study to become a professor of commerce. My dad came with a student visa but he had to stop studying two years later because my grandfather passed away and there were financial problems. The Australian government gave migrants the opportunity to lodge for permanent residentship in December 1989, so through this my dad became a legal migrant in Australia from 1990.
My dad came to Australia and he thought, everything was the opposite to Korea. He said "big land, no people, good views and fresh air". He meant that there were massive area of land but not many people occupying it. If you saw the top view of Korea, you would see black dots everywhere but no green bits meaning lots of people but no extra land. My dad remembers how he had learnt American style English in Korea so he had difficulty with the pronounciation of words and understanding it. Words such as doctor were pronounced as "dactor", fast as "fest", lunch as "lonch" and instead of pronouncing the T's, it was pronounced as D's. So daughter would have been daughDer.
In korea, people are called "white collar" or "blue collar" depending on your job. If you sat in an office and did paperwork then you were referred to as a "white collar". If you did technical work you were referred to as a "blue collar". White collars earned heaps more money but when my dad came to Australia he realised it was actually better to have a special talent or area of skill. In Australia there is no snow in winter and my dad said Australians had a "unique smell" which he could smell at first. He found that a lot of Australian homes grew their pets inside. .
One striking difference was the fact that you were allowed to wear shoes inside the house. .
Once there was an incident when someone came over to his house.
