The foretelling of culture clash

[changeling]

It's easy to forget that the US is, geographically speaking, about the same size as Australia, and not three times the size. It has about THREE HUNDRED AND SIX MILLION people to our twenty-one million. I mean, it has FIFTY states. We have SIX (plus two major territories).

Our friends told us to go to Newark Airport, because although it was in a different state, it was easier to get to than the New York airports. I can't even conceive of driving to a different state just to pick someone up. Unless you were right on the border. To get to, say, from Melbourne to Albury-Wodonga, which is straddles the Victorian–New South Wales border, would be about a 7-hour round trip (according to Google. That sounds about right). And I live in our second-smallest state.

One of my favourite bloggers was talking today about how big Texas was, and how you can drive a whole day and not leave the state.

So? I thought. Out of curiosity, and because I was constantly told to "look it up" as a child whenever I asked my parents anything, I did a half-arsed Google search to find out how big Texas is.

Apparently it's 696,241 km².

That sounded pretty big. I chucked in New South Wales (our moderately sized state) as a comparison.

801,600 km².

In fact, pretty much all of our states and territories except Tasmania (apparently roughly the size of Scotland, according to The Internet), Victoria (a third of the size of Texas) and the ACT (roughly the size of a medium-sized car) are bigger than Texas. Western Australia makes it into the Fucking Massive category, being just over 1 million square miles, or 2.5 million sq k.

Australia. It's Bigger Than Texas^TM.

Comments

[avaaricious.livejournal.com]

bwhahahahah. not a bad bit of detective work.

It's interesting that nsw is actually bigger... I guess the fact the population is so much larger makes a bit of a difference.

I think the Big Texas (tm) thing comes from the fact that it is really so much larger than any other mainland US state (i'm not including alaska, of course); kind of gives texans bragging rights. The shape is so distinctive and well-known as well... it is instantaneously recognisable.

Having been to texas a number of times, it seems to me that the people often fall into one of two categories; either very embarrassed to be texan, or more often than not, fiercely fiercely proud. I remember seeing this dude once with a big gold ring with a big gold texas. And i remember thinking at the time 'dude... i could never imagine having qld on a ring like that...' It falls into line with that 'texas is so recognisable' thing from above.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

Yep. And I can understand the "Texas is a big state" from a country that packs 48-49 states into a mainland approximately the size of Australia.

But it will still take me a lot longer to get used to the idea of 49 states about the size of Tasmania (or Victoria), where NSW would be considered enormous. Does that make sense?

[avaaricious.livejournal.com]

that totally makes sense to me. i think the flight from west coast LA to the easternmost point of texas takes about 2 hours. And when you consider you fly over the rest of CA, Nevada and Arizona in that time, it's weird. a 2 hr flight would maybe get you bris-melb on a good day. or bris-not quite nth qld as well...

[youraugustine.livejournal.com]

I have this issue with the "Texas is huge" thing allll the tiiiiime . . . because, um, my province is 944,735 square km.

We drive across it regularly!

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

Wow, your province is big. I think that's about the size of Queensland. Certainly the size of SA, I think ...

[chennpug.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine lives in Alaska with part of his extended family. The other half lives in Texas, and are big "We <3 Texas, it is a big bad mofo" types. The Alaskan half of the family spent all their time teasing them about how small Texas is in comparison to Alaska. Their favorite "consolation" line was, "Ok, ok, Texas isn't THAT small. If you cut Alaska in half....well, each half would still be bigger than Texas."

I still have no real understanding of how big the countries are in Europe and parts east that are not China. But I'm going to blame that on my sub-standard schooling. :)

[winikoff.livejournal.com]

You guys do know about happy cow?
http://www.happycow.net/north_america/usa/new_york/new_york_city/

Last time daharja and I visited NY we ate our way around in a valiant (but futile) attempt to visit every vegetarian restaurant ...

The map view of NY with veggie restaurants marked is scary ... so many! I'm very jealous!

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

I didn't specifically, but I knew there were lots of vego restaurants.

Thanks for the reference; that'll be useful.

[cupiscent.livejournal.com]

...and the ACT (roughly the size of a medium-sized car)
I had this comment all ready to go about how, when I was at college, we used to drive to another state just to get McDonalds (at that stage, the nearest all-night Maccas was in, like, Yass), and then you totally pre-empted it with this sparkling piece of wit. I POUT.

I was also all prepared to be really blah-blah-whatever-I'm-a-city-girl about the US, but then there were SO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE HOLY GOD WHAT?! It's huge shopping centres in apparently small towns, it's central NY being the size of the whole ACT (or so it felt), it's huge self-contained cultures all over the place that are completely independent. It's just... it's flabberghasting. Seriously. I had never had my ghast flabbered like it was for my entire stay in the US. Actually, no, not the whole stay - when I went to Wyoming, that felt good and normal and right.

[watersusurrus.livejournal.com]

Work Colleague notes that we have at least two cattle stations bigger than Texas.