The world isn't flat Thomas, it's very, very small

One of the important things a happy expat must do to keep sane is return home and touch base with the local tribe. We all have one, and I recently flew back home and plugged into my own culture to help restore my sense of identity, which was becoming a bit faded in this far away and sometimes confusing land.

Expats in China are always called waiguoren "outside people", no matter how long we have lived here.

I found this strange because it's rude to call someone a foreigner in my homeland of Australia.

The land Down Under is one of the world's relatively younger socially developed countries with only a 200-year history of immigration. Australia is basically a country of migrants, similar to America in many ways.

At my Sydney high school, 75 per cent of my classmates came from non-English speaking backgrounds. But they were never called foreigners - they were known as New Australians.

We were a multi-cultural melting pot and my little friends were Sasko Kadiv from Yugoslavia, Dennis Lee from Guangzhou, Wee Tek Wong from Singapore, Paul Fagnani from Italy, Ali Tadros from Egypt and Steve Rogers, from English-Irish decent, who was born in Australia like I was.

Our skin colors were dark and light, our eyes were brown, hazel and blue, and our growing bodies were thick and thin.

Egyptian Ali started growing a beard when he was only 14.

But over the years, all these things didn't seem important, and we played together and developed our identity together.

We watched the same TV shows, we went to the same beach, ate sausage sandwiches at backyard barbeques, watched our fathers drink beer with their mates, we all sat in the same history class and learnt how people like my grandfather defended Australia against the invading Japanese during World War II.

We all got sweaty playing rugby during our lunch break and in summer we would cheer our Australian cricket stars as they battled England or India or the mighty players from the West Indies.

And when an Australian Olympian won a gold medal us sports crazed Aussie kids would go completely ape.

When Australia won the America's Cup yachting race in 1983, beating the United States for the first time in 130 years and ending the longest winning streak in the history of sport - the school's morning assembly became a tribute to all things Australian.

A girl from a Middle-Eastern background cried as she grabbed the microphone and screamed: "I'm so proud to be an Australian." Our hearts heaved with pride and we all cried too.

We knew who we were.

There are about 200-odd countries in the world and representatives of all these tribes are living the expat life here in China.

Living in Beijing, I feel like I'm at school again and love learning about all the different cultures.

But at least once a year, I need a good dose of my own and the friends and family that are the core of it.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says the world is flat, but I say it is very, very small. Everybody has the same problems, fears and hope for a better life.

I visited my farmer mate Mark who strongly believed that the world was running out of oil crisis sooner than everybody thought and the end was nigh.

I told him living on the new farm had turned him into a paranoid "nutter". He shrugged his shoulders and said he could now milk a cow. That's pretty cool.

Another friend Marcus has had a terrible past year. His girl friend's father and brother both died of cancer and sorrow filled his household. But the good news was his proposal of marriage was accepted and they plan to have kids soon.

In Australia, China and everywhere else, life never stops.

(China Daily 02/09/2009 page10)