Brisbane and Home Sick for Toronto

Hi,
Anyone living in Brisbane or elsewhere who came to OZ, also home sick?
I have been living here for over 3 years, and I have come to realisation that I miss home terribly. I compare everything to Toronto.

Brisbane is such a little sleepy town that shuts down at 5pm. The weather here is great, but if you dont have anyone to share it with, whats the point?
I moved here with my partner who is aussie but he works alot and meeting new friends has been hard. I miss my family and friends and sadly I think I regret coming here...does anyone feel the same way?

Nah, no homesick stuff for me.
I came here 4 years ago and I too have an Aussie partner (wife).
Theres plenty of Canucks here so it shouldn't be difficult to find some accents your familiar with.
If you and yours wanna bbq and tell a few lies sometimes, let me know.
We have two girls and it's a family thing, plenty of beer though! LOL
Catch you later!

I'm in Melbourne and I easily stay in touch with people from Canada via Skype and e-mail.

The Melbourne transport system is generally better than Toronto (as much as people in Melbourne like to complain about the public transit system, they don't know what bad really is). Only criticisms I have about Australia is that Internet, television and the sports down here are a joke compared to North America, but overall, I enjoy living here more than I did in Canada.

Is Internet really slow in Australia?

Torontoguy, if you are able to get a DSL2 connection and able to subscribe to any ISP other than Telstra, then it's fast. I'm on iinet, and usually have a 15 mbps connection.

However, the problem here is that availability isn't guaranteed, even if you have money to pay for it. You could be in an area without DSL2 access, or even if you are, there might not be any free ports. Or you may have a dodgy phone line where DSL2 isn't possible. Let's just say that the wired infrastructure here isn't as advanced as North America, and unlike Bell Canada which is pretty much required by regulations to ensure you have a fast Internet-capable line if you live in a city, Tel$tra can do whatever they want. There are also download quotas here. However, these have been improved greatly in the last six months, and (as long as you have DSL2 connectivity access to any ISP other than Telstra) you can easily get 100GB download per month for $49 a month (50 GB "peak" for general use while you're awake, plus 50 GB "off-peak" from 2 am - 8 am for "acquiring stuff"). The other issue is that unlike Canada where you can generally get your Internet connection already setup as soon as you move in (or within a day or two), in Australia it takes at least a week and in a worst-case scenario, up to a month.

On the TV side, the subscription TV service (Foxtel) isn't treated like a utility in the same way that Rogers/cable TV is in Canada, so there's also no guarantee that it's available at the residence you live at, no matter how much money you have. In Toronto, everywhere is wired for cable TV as required by CRTC regulations, so you never have to worry about having access to it. That's not the case here, there was never any widespread or enforced deployment, so it's possible to move somewhere and find that to get Foxtel, you need to have them literally run cable from the street. If you're renting and the place you're in is not already wired for Foxtel, your landlord or "body corporate" (like a condo corporation) does not have to allow its installation (in contrast to Canada where you have a right to access cable TV in the same way that you have a right to access electricity, gas, water, and phone - i.e. it is illegal in Canada for a landlord to block access to cable). And trust me, the free over-the-air channels here in Australia are so bad that after about six months of only having those channels in a house where I couldn't get Foxtel installed because I was sharing the place, as soon as I moved into my own apartment where the unit was already pre-wired, subscribing to the service was done very quickly.

Um yes, I feel that way. What a mistake.

Especially if you are coming from Toronto or like me, from Montreal, Brisbane just falls short. I'm here for school, but even then it has been hard to make friends for some reason.

I am certainly looking forward to going back to Canada in a few years. You definitely realize that some things are taken for granted once they are missing.

Meetup.com might be helpful for you if you are wanting to meet more people. Or hey, if you are a hockey fan, another Canadian and I might try to meet up to watch some of the next round of the playoffs. Go Habs!

I am not in Brisbane but I know how you feel. It's been a little over a year now since I moved from Toronto. I never liked Toronto that much but I do miss it. I used to live in the Spadina/King area and I loved the fact that there was always a lot to do, restaurants featuring all types of cuisine (cheap!) and cafes that would be open late. I always felt safe walking around at night as there were tons of people milling about.

Many Australian cities are suburbs that do not offer much in the way of local activities as Toronto -- with the exception of Sydney. Truth be told, there are many differences between the 2 countries and it does take a few years to settle in. The country is in a time warp of sorts and is far from being on the cusp of much innovation. One could view it as a second world country!

Peaches, Toronto isn't quite as safe as you recall. I was recently assaulted at 5:30pm in the College station by a guy who was clearly from the Caribbean or Africa. The ambulance attendant told me I was lucky I just had a broken nose, because he sees a lot more gunshots and stabbings these days. Since this is an Australian site, I'll drop the normal Canadian hypocrisy and point out that the GTA has managed to import an afro-caribbean underclass in the past 20 years and this has not been to our benefit. I visit my wife's family enough in Australia to know it's a lot different there. If you want a laugh at the idiocy of Canada's criminal justice and immigration systems, google "Lucky Moose Toronto." Nice example of a Chinese immigrant shopkeeper in Kensington Market who gets fed up with the Jamaican crack addict who keeps stealing his plants (the cops did nothing of course), so the shopkeeper performs a citizen's arrest on the guy the next time he enters the store. Canada's criminal justice system came down like a ton of bricks - on the shopkeeper of course. He's facing serious charges.

Add to that Toronto's basic inability to build infrastructure - check out the St. Clair streetcar fiasco or the botched rebuild of Bloor from Church to Avenue Road, the brutal climate, the army of homeless people, traffic gridlock especially in 905, and the general dirt and shabbiness, and Toronto doesn't come off as much of a prize. True, we're building a lot of 600 square foot condos, but what do you want to bet most of them look like St. James Town in 30 years? We're not Buffalo yet, but we certainly are an increasingly unliveable city in a declining region of North America.

You're all better off in Australia.

Metroman:

This thread was started by a member who was homesick. I,along with some others, chose to point out their personal feelings of how they/we missed our native country.

I am sorry that this topic might be hijacked by my quasi-rebuttal to your blanket statement that Toronto is rife with black criminals ( presumably Jamaican) and the police along with the Canadian justice system are ineffectual. This will not be my intent.

Again, speaking from personal experience and from the few words mentioned of how I felt safe in my neighborhood was far from being a talking point. You chose to do a 'drive-by' and rant about the city; that was your prerogative but it's not mine and doesn't lend much to the topic of how difficult in can be to adjust to a new country. Don't compare apples and oranges. Australian cities have as much crime as Canadian ones; there are gun crimes here, many robberies, petty crimes and aggravated assault like anywhere else. I live in a middle-to-upper-middle class beachside community yet robberies occur as they would in Rosedale or the Jane/Finch corridor; it's the degree of force used or the weapon brandished or the colour of skin that may be different. It's a bit disingenuous to think that Australia is an idyllic place to live. In fact, in many aspects, it's rougher. Certainly, if one can make a conscious choice to seek trouble then this decision will result in being a victim; however, we can choose to walk away and not add fuel to a threatening situation. We can view the glass as half full too and not focus on the negative aspects.

I am sorry but I have no desire to compare two different societies, cultures and their mores. Not only have I ever been a victim of crime but I have compiled and have controlled access to stats that would prove otherwise to your assumption that Toronto is more dangerous than any city here.