Personal Space
Having recently discovered the delights of the “Blue Travel 10”, I’ve been catching buses a lot lately. In preference to walking and trains, I’ve been making use of Sydney’s bus system, which I’ve found to be fairly good by and large. My favourite part about living and working close to the city is that if the first bus that comes along is overly crowded, I can catch another soon afterwards.
That wasn’t really the case tonight, though, when I caught a bus from Railway Square to Surry Hills (Cleveland Street). The bus was very crowded and I had miscellaneous bottoms and crotches in my face. It was then, I realised, as a result of having lived in Sydney for over 12 years, my “personal space bubble” has contracted. Having lived most of my life in the country, it would have nearly killed me to be in such close proximity to others. And now it doesn’t worry me anymore…
I used to teach English as a foreign language and it was fascinating to watch different nationalities interact with eachother. The Japanese have a large personal space bubble, and the Spanish don’t understand the concept at all – standing right in your face when they talk to you. Get a japanese and a spaniard talking and they would unconciously foxtrot around the room – japanese back two steps to make more space, closely followed by the spaniard to close the gap again. All entirely without thinking about it.