Perth, in respect to SF.

Being in SF and in America has put a lot of things about Perth into a respective. Now that I think about Perth, I see it as a clean and tidy city with no homeless people, or maybe some, but they never were in your face. People there dressed nicely, but not necessarily with class though, as everyone who I'd still call girl (people up to my age) bared a LOT of leg.

As probably mentioned before, Perth is a wealthy city making most of its money with mining. This leads to a situation where many relatively uneducated people become wealthy and even people in WA joke regularly about the tastes and the classlessness of their upper class. Somehow their working class men have become the rich, and just as in many other countries, the favourite past time of this type is drinking too much beer on Fridays. Although binge drinking appeared to be a huge problem in Perth, it seemed to be very clean with regards to other drugs. The word on the streets was that the Perth underworld was mafia-run and they were dealing crystal meth to people fallen off the honest/working life to keep them good addicted customers.

The contrast of Perth with SF couldn't be bigger. It seems to me that everywhere in SF it smells of weed and people openly talk about having access to marijuana for medical reasons (to relieve stress, anxiety and depression!?). And then there is a lot of homeless people on the street and they are in your face, asking for spare change, continuously. I haven't yet seen drunk people on the streets yet, but I haven't really been out after nine at all. Daytime everybody dresses down as dirty t-shirt and jogging bottoms seems to be the top fashion. Somehow I feel that people dress down just not to attract attention to themselves, but honestly, you could at least wear a clean shirt from this millenium!?

I think I just now felt my first earthquake! Eek! To be sitting in a basement internet cafe and suddenly imagine the whole weight of this building on top of me...

It seems that this post ended up being a drug-related one. Well I guess it tells something of the attitudes and the demographics in these areas so similar in climate but so different in economics. Four days is a really short time to say anything yet about SF, but it definitely can clear my thoughts about Perth and how safe it felt! Already a few times in SF I've had a bad feeling of someone; the way they look, their facial expression, just the general air. Then I've looked him twice: he's wearing a gun... as he's the private security man assigned to my train or bus. I hate the feeling of thinking that someone's a threat already (feminine sixth sense?), but realising that that person is also carrying a gun makes me dizzy!