I'm so parochial. Or Sydney/Melbourne

(For those readers from Bulgaria, the Dominican republic and whereever else: Melbourne and Sydney are two Australian cities, each of about 4 million people. Indistinguishable in most respects to the visitor except that Sydney has a natural harbour that puts Stockholm and San Fransisco to shame.)

I was on my usual QF409 this morning, SYD -> MEL. During the inflight video (by the way, I heard something about Deborah Hutton today that's ruined my life) they run these annoying ads from Australia Post. There's seven of them , one for each day of the week. They're quite nicely shot, and the voiceover is some platitudes about each day. Song is "everyday people". This would be annoying enough - because after the first two the intelligent listener realises there's a pattern and there's going to be five more - but there's two other things. For a start, the post office isn't actually open seven days a week. Also, they say that Thursday is late-night shopping night. (A bonus third: they mispronounce "Beijing", it's got a a hard J. But I've given up on that. I dread the olympics.)

Well, it's always been Thursday nights in Sydney. But in Melbourne it's Friday night. Yes, it does leak a bit into Thursday, but that's not the norm. The ads were written by someone in Sydney (probably not far from where I live, I imagine). This doesn't seem like a big deal, but Melbourne people are very touchy about this. A few years ago The Australian had a big headline "How I lured Crosswell to Norths", over an article by Ron Barassi. Of course in Melbourne it's North, not Norths. The newspaper's sub-edited in Sydney.

I could go on about the differences between the two cities, but the stereotypes were captured very nicely in a thing in Crikey by Guy Rundle. Sydney's mayor had urged all citizens to put together a "Go Bag" of stuff that would be handy if there were some sort of disaster in Sydney (two boats in the harbour at the same time, that sort of thing).

Here's Crikey's take:

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Every city should have one. But if it's going to be stuff that is essential to survival, things people can't live without, contents may vary:

Go Bag (Sydney)

* Yoga mat
* KY
* 2 dodgy eckies
* SMH Saturday property liftout ("The terrorists have destroyed Punchbowl". "How can they tell?" "It looks better")

Go Bag (Melbourne)

* Foldable espresso machine
* First issue of Dromos, thrilling new journal of postmodern architectural theory
* Film festival program, so that survivors can act out Summer of the Naked Monkey a story of culture clash from the Burmese New Wave and other now lost classics
* Winter wear (black skivvy)
* Summer wear (black skivvy)
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(translation: skivvy = turtleneck, SMH = sydney broadsheet newspaper)