Sri Lankan Expats In Australia: Types And Troubles

by Kelum Wijewardena

Over the years, droves of Sri Lankans have migrated to Australia, making the land Down Under home to one of the largest Sri Lankan communities outside of you know where. However, if you speak to most Sri Lankan expats here, they will unanimously state that there is no better place on the planet than Mother Lanka. The food, the people, the culture – and even the political anarchy – makes for good theatre. As Jeremy Clarkson said, there’s no better drama than reality.

Conversely, most Sri Lankans living on in Lanka land have professed that they are dying to get out of the country. One could even say that there was a time when the most commonly used English letters among Lankan students in Australia was “PR.” Now it seems as if these two letters have made their way, perhaps by boat, to young Lankan professionals. The reasons for this are varied, but we guess it’s the Australian Summer Social Cricket Programme that has appealed to their fancy.

Therein lies the mystery of being Sri Lankan: one half dreaming of the island spell, while the other having nightmares about it.

With such a large community of expats, they have brought some truly unique nuances to Australia, and bottled seeni sambol isn’t one of them. While we may consider some of these as uniquely Sri lankan, a few South Asian friends would swear we are talking about their own countrymen.

1) The Mukunuwenna Expat

Alligator Weed: who would have thought these seemingly innocent green leaves could be the culprits behind a whole saga among Australia’s Sri Lankan community? Image Credit: blackwarriorriver.org

The mukunuwenna chapter was first documented on crazylanka.com and we thought it would be a good starter for this piece.

It’s not easy to leave your home and start afresh in a foreign land. In the off chance that you do, you try to find something that connects you to home. To most Sri Lankans who migrated to Australia in the ‘80s, this came in the form of mukunuwenna.

Mukunuwenna, the leafy green that grows almost everywhere in Lanka, but hardly finds its way to a dinner table unless you can’t afford Pizza Hut, became an overnight celebrity in Australia during the early ‘90s. This happened when an unsuspecting housewife came across the familiar looking herb growing in the backyard of a house in Australia. It didn’t take long for mukunuwenna to spread through the community like weeds. It started off on the dinner table, bringing back nostalgic memories of home, then it found its way into lunch boxes, and then to dinner parties among friends. Soon, such was the popularity ofmukunuwenna, that it found its way not only into dinner dance buffets, but also to the weekly alms-giving at the local temple.

The mukunuwenna expat would proudly boast about how they managed to grow it themselves in their ‘veggie patch,’ implicitly saying in that high pitched voice that “we have mukunuwenna, and you don’t?”  and therefore asserting superiority over those who struggle to grow it.

The story doesn’t have a happy ending, unfortunately, as an overzealous agricultural scientist by the name of Lalith identified the local variety of mukunuwenna for what it really was: alligator weed, a nasty weed full of heavy metals, and naturally, quite poisonous. All hell broke loose in the Sri Lankan community, and it was eventually the foresight of the agricultural scientist, and a certain Ministry, that brought order and the real variety of mukunuwenna. The scientist was aptly named Mukunuwenna Lalith by the community. Unfortunately, in fear of being poisoned, Buddhist monks refused to eat mukunuwenna or any othermallung at alms-givings. People stopped boasting about their veggie patches until someone cracked the code on growing karapincha.

When we first heard of this, we thought it was something out of the X-files. Later, however, we managed to validate its legitimacy, as Mukunuwenna Lalith happens to be a friend of a friend’s father. Quite the Sri Lankan Connection.

2) The Name Changer

Sri Lankans have notoriously long names. Image Credit: criclife.com

There’s a reason why Angelo Matthews is the Australian cricket commentators’ current favourite Sri Lankan cricketer – and unfortunately, it has little to do with his amazing cricketing skills. Angie is like the Goldberg Variation, in a country that boasts tongue twisters as Pragnarathna and Gnanarathna or long syllabled ones like Warnakurukulasooriya to the juggernaut of Amunugama Rajapakse Rajakaruna Abeykoon Panditha Wasalamudiyanse Ralahamilage Rajitha Krishantha Bandara Amunugama. In comparison, Angelo Matthews is like honey on their lips.

Long winded and complicated Sri Lankan names are world renowned, and Australia is no exception. These names are even harder for Aussies who are used to shortening the short. For instance, to the rest of the world the Melbourne Cricket Ground is the MCG, but to Aussies it’s simply the G. So it’s not uncommon for most foreigners making a home in Australia to have endured some sort of merriment at the expense of their names. A quick listen to the 12th man’s guide to pronouncing Pakistani cricketers’ names will confirm this. Now, whether it’s a ploy to fit in, or the sheer fatigue at having to always correct people, or in an attempt to simply get the girl, there is a subset of Sri Lankan expats who have westernised their Sri Lankan names.

This westernisation, which at times may have a distinct recipe like the malay pickle, is at other times as random as picking names from a hat. Here are a few examples: Kelum has become Kel or Kal (some instances Kal-el), Ruwan to Ron, Deshantha to Desh, and Hashantha to Hash. Very straightforward. Then there’s the Wickramanayake to Wicky, Jayammana to Jay and Gurusinghe to Grey. Some of the questionable ones, however, include Ruwantha to Jack, Yassas to Ash and our personal favourite: Siripala malli to Shane.

3) The Toyota Driver

The Toyota ? sadly, not as appreciated by Australians as it is by Lankans. Image Credit: scifleettoyota.com.au

Toyota vehicles are remarkably reliable, drearily boring, unquestionably affordable, and extremely efficient. However, in Aussie motoring circles, the name Toyota doesn’t gain you any street cred. In fact, you wouldn’t boast that you have a Toyota at all, unless you are driving a Hachi-Roku (AE86).

In Sri Lanka, however, driving a Toyota means that you are widely respected for your choice. A few sentences used to describe it here in the island would include “works petrol nicely (aney),” “very low cost to keep and no problems with the car (more aney).” As a Toyota aficionado, you are perceived as the wisest person in the village. This infectious love and respect to this brand has managed to cross seas and deserts and land in Australian suburbia. There are suburbs in Australia full of Sri Lankans, where you will find Toyota Camrys and Aurions (big brother to the Corolla), and the occasional diesel Land Cruisers parked in the driveways. You’ll be forgiven for thinking you’ve visited a Toyota employees’ housing scheme. Funnily enough, when asked why they chose a Toyota, the typical Sri Lankan expat reply is “look how much space I got for so little money (aney).”

4) The Rice Eater

We Sri Lankans love our rice and curry, no matter where we are. Image Credit: riceandcurry.wordpress.com

Growing up in Sri Lanka, rice was the staple food for breakfast, lunch and dinner… that is, when boiled mung ata wasn’t on the menu. Not a single meal went by without any form of rice in it. Our personal favourite is kiribath with a dash of raw brown sugar sprinkled on top. However, with the introduction of foreign franchise eateries such as McDonalds, KFC and, of course, Pizza Hut, all of a sudden, eating rice had became passé. Suddenly, rice wasn’t one of the cool kids any more. Locals started frequenting these places like they had been suffering from a prolonged famine. Kids stopped bringing banana leaf bath parcels to school, while dinner tables were graced with freshly baked pizzas and burgers. It suddenly became more fashionable to eat junk food, and the country embraced it.

So you would think that living outside the country would put you in a good place to become a citizen of the world and experience all types of cuisine. Funnily enough, this is not the case. It seems that the minute they step off the plane, some biological switch gets turned on, and Sri Lankans start craving and yearning for rice and curry. We have a few theories about this: perhaps the trauma of first tasting airplane food causes it, or maybe being in the tail end of the Southern hemisphere flips the brain like an omelette, or maybe you really don’t know what you’ll miss until you miss it. We remember a time when new university students were seen walking down the streets like zombies and vampires looking for rice and curry, while the established students would boast about how their parippu (dhal) curry was the best.

5) The Tax Evasion Expat

Tax evasion: an area of expertise for many a Lankan expat. Image Credit: theaimn.com

Sri Lanka, being a third world country, is heavily reliant on indirect taxes such as the infamous GST and VAT. Being a low income country, direct taxes such as income taxes form only a small portion of the Government’s tax income. Thus, most of us are not even aware of the obligation of doing a proper tax return. In developed countries, it’s a lot different. Income tax forms a big part of the system, prompting the famous expression “death and taxes.” Many a migrant learned the hard way that you need to follow certain set rules, like getting a tax file number and providing it to all income generating sources such as banks for savings accounts, all employers if holding multiple jobs, and Superannuation (Aussie version of EPF) funds. Otherwise, you not only end up paying half your income to the Government, but you also run the risk of being fined for any back taxes, or worse… being imprisoned (like Al Capone).

That was until the expats found out about the tax loopholes. In any system, there are loopholes: it’s just a matter of finding them. Some claim they found out about these from a man who had read a Jeffrey Archer short story, while others say an exceptional Sri Lankan accountant was told about it by an angel quite similar to Abou Ben Adhem’s. Regardless of the source, once they found out about them… exploited the loopholes they did. Just like flies at the local market.

First, it was the non-working (non-existent) spouse – all you needed was a name and a date of birth, and you could claim a tax offset. Then came the visiting parent rebate, charitable contribution deductions, laundry and uniform allowance, working from home, travelling from different work stations, work bag, shoes, coffee and cigarettes. Okay, the last two were made up, but you get the picture. They made an art form out of it.

Everything possible was claimed and they did it by paying their taxes themselves, cutting off the need for an accountant. Eventually, all expats (Lankans + non-Lankans) living in Australia were doing this, which prompted the Government to bring in new reforms and remove the allowance for unemployed spouses and visiting parents. Oh well.

6) The Tuition Expat

Most Lankans are as obsessed with tuition classes as they are with rice and curry (but not in a good way) Image Credit: movingimages.wordpress.com

Sri Lanka, for over half a century, has boasted (seems like we Lankans do a fair amount of boasting…) a free education system up to the tertiary level. The country also has schools and universities that are over a century old. Despite having a free, and an arguably decent, education system, we seem to be in love with the idea of private tuition.

Our simple theory on this is: humans value things based on explicit cost, and guess what? Free education doesn’t really cost a thing to its consumer. The other side of this is, in a competitive examination system, students, or rather, their parents, feel that tuition classes would give their children a much needed added advantage… or perhaps we really are a crazy bunch. Whatever the reason may be, we are really obsessed with private tuition. So much so that some students would go to their school teachers’ houses to pay for a lesson they can learn from the same teacher at school for free. Sometimes we should question our genetic makeup, as certain behaviours seem to be hard wired, regardless of their practicality.

Not so surprisingly, this obsession has found its way halfway across the world. Sending children to tuition classes is a new found fad among expat parents in Australia. All in an effort to ensure their child becomes a Doctor or an Engineer.

The tuition frenzy may have also been fuelled by newly arriving graduate expats smuggling in the idea that tuition classes will help you over-achieve. This creates a paradox: they go because it’s there, it’s there because they go. Some tuition classes charge up to AUD 60 – 100 per hour, and we even know a few parents who drive about 45 minutes (30 kilometres), to send their kids to a certain class. Either way, just like in the motherland, tuition classes have become a big business in Australia. In addition, they also have the added advantage of being a tax free income to the tuition master.

Coming up – the Lankan Cricket Connoisseur, the Kandos Man, and more interesting Lankan specimens from Down Under. Watch out for Part 2 next week!

7) The Lankan Cricket Connoisseur

They may have moved all the way Down Under, but Sri Lankans have not left behind their love for Lankan cricket. Image Credit criclife.com/Getty Images

For its fans it is the ultimate sport on the earth. For the rest… well, for them it’s too long, dreary, complicated, and boring. Even in the birthplace of the game, it’s played only by a select few belonging to a certain class. Down Under, people are only interested in it during the months of October and March. Yet, it can be said that in the subcontinent, and perhaps the Caribbean, cricket is sometimes more popular than any religion.

This is no exception for the Lankan Cricket Connoisseur expat, except for the vital difference that their love is only for Lankan cricket. Regardless of where they live, their love affair with Lankan cricket transcends all possibility and probability. When there is Sri Lankan cricket on, the rest of the world does not matter. Food, work and nagging spouses are just a blur – prompting the famous quote from Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chinaman: “When Lankan cricket becomes sweeter, your wife becomes sourer.”

Many of these fans have spent torturous nights unable to get any updates on Sri Lankan cricket matches. For them the birth of ESPN Cricinfo was like alien technology, the X-factor that finally saved them all. It would be near impossible to find a cricket connoisseur who hasn’t spent countless hours mediating to the commentary on Cricinfo. Many an expat Down Under would count the days to when the Sri Lankan team toured Australia. They were so eager, and ever so starved of Lankan cricket, that they would fill up even the practice matches But that is nothing, once the international fixtures start, they would march in, a sea of never ending blue, full of pride and passion, ushering in their carnival like atmosphere and home made cutlets and seeni sambol sandwiches, into the grounds and outnumber, out-cheer and out-cry their Aussie counterparts. Especially after days like the Brisbane ODI of 2013 all Sri Lankans Down Under walked through the streets with an exuberant sense of overwhelming pride, that had not been seen here since March 1996. Lankan Cricket Connoisseur expats have shared moments of cricketing brilliance and plummeted to depths of despair, all while playing their papare music and dancing away in the stands. It is fair to say that while these cricket obsessed expats may not be the coolest guys to hang out with, they have always brought a lot of colour, passion and excitement to the otherwise boring Australian cricketing summer.

8) The Mercedes Driver

The icon of the elite, the symbol of the Sri Lankan who’s graduated from the Toyota days. Image Credit: wikipedia.org

As much as we hate to admit it, Sri Lanka seems to have a bit of a ‘boasting’ culture. We sometimes like to show off what we have; either to make us feel good about ourselves, or others feel bad. We are all familiar with the story of the naya (snake) in the house. For our younger readers, it goes a bit like this: a housewife in a startled voice would say, “Aney mey, a big snake got into our house the other day, noh! It went from room to room, over the TV, then the Buffers and VCR, over the kavichchi, through the dining room, past the microwave, fridge and finally… maara thing, it went outside over the AC!”

The expat version of this infection is the Mercedes Benz expat. Now, cars are fairly expensive in the island, and you have to be above quite a few pay grades to afford a Honda, let alone a Merc. While cars in Australia are a bit more expensive than in the rest of the developed world, they are still more affordable than in Lanka.

So this particular breed tends to use a Mercedes car as their medium to express to the world that they can afford the best of what Europe has to give. It doesn’t matter what class or model it falls under, as long as it has the Mercedes badge on the front. This somehow gives them a sense of accomplishment, the feeling that ‘I am driving a Benz noh, I made it.’

They also have guerilla tactics to reinforce this point. This involves washing the car almost every day in their driveway, (which, by the way, stopped after the Victorian Government brought in new water usage restrictions during a heavy drought period) and wearing Mercedes branded clothing and accessories, implying that they received it with the purchase of the vehicle. It should be noted, though, that this particular expat is in every aspect the polar opposite of the Toyota Driver (covered in our previous article).

Additionally, this has led to a few more subsets of boastful groups, particularly the CK Underwear, Ralph Lauren Polo Shirt and Tag Heuer Watch Wearing Expat. Show us someone who has all four, and we will show you a unicorn.

9) The Kandos Man

One of the more unconventional cravings of Sri Lankan expats in Australia. Image Credit: kandos.lk

After years of disdain, and the Mukunuwenna saga, the Sri Lankan community here has performed wonders in getting everything from home available at the expense of a 10 minute drive. There are quite a large number of Sri Lankan groceries that trade almost everything from back home. This is not just limited to food: these stores stock everything from spices to dried fish, to string hopper making apparatus, to pittu boilers, to clay pots, and even DVDs of Lankan dramas. But the one item that seems to be impossible to find in shops here, the forbidden fruit, the holy grail, is Kandos chocolate.

Now you may ask, why would anyone indulge in Kandos when they have an unlimited selection of hand crafted artisanal drops of heaven at their fingertips? This is something that has baffled us as well. However, we cannot deny the fact that there are quite a few expats here who regularly crave the taste of Kandos. The Cashew Nut and Orange varieties to be specific. They wouldn’t even look at another chocolate, but the sight of Kandos makes their mouths water and their legs buckle. These expats regularly ask travellers from the island to bring as much Kandos as they can stuff into their suitcases. Sometimes they even ask interstate friends to bring some and post it to their homes.

But the supply is still insufficient to feed the demand. Incidentally, no one can seem to answer the question as to why Kandos is not available in Australia. If there ever were a Sri Lankan X-Files, this would be in the thick of it. To add to the mix, there are rumours of a Sri Lankan expat living in Melbourne who has a pipeline to supply Kandos to those who have a dire need of it. Recently, however, a batch of Kandos saw its way to the customs bin at the Sydney airport. If Kandos was cocaine (to some Sri Lankans, it clearly is), this is what the news story would sound like:

Sydney – In a major contraband bust, Customs officials at Sydney Airport claimed to have seized a sizeable amount of Kandos Cashew Nut chocolate from a passenger returning from Sri Lanka. The items were seized from a Singapore Airlines flight which landed at the Sydney airport shortly after midday, on 6 January. The suspect was detained and questioned but later released. The estimated street value of these is roughly around AUD10.00.

An airport spokesperson confirmed that Mr. K Kumara Saramaasse (name has been changed to protect identity), had pleaded guilty to bringing in the banned item to the shores of Australia. What the authorities were unable to get out of him was the item’s intended final destination. When questioned he simply said, “Sir, that is for my many girlfriends, who all like the best chocolates from Lanka noh.’ Given the sincerity of his nature, and the inability of authorities to confirm that a serious crime may be committed in the near future, Customs services decided not to press any charges and released him with a stern warning and zero goodies to take home.

Our sources from deep within the inner sanctum of the Sri Lankan community in NSW have also confirmed the news. Another source from within the community revealed that these chocolates were intended for the infamous Kandos Man, though it has not been revealed which Australian state the final destination of the item would be. Some other notable Lankan delectables were also taken by the authorities, though it has been confirmed that they fall in the lower spectrum of the most wanted items list.

While it has been suspected that the Kandos Cashew Nut variety has regularly been making it past our closed borders, this is the first time authorities have been able to pinpoint any and make a definite bust.

Authorities admitted that they got lucky with this catch, as it was the breakage and leakage of a bottle of home extracted extra virgin king coconut oil that lead the resident exotic food detection specialist’s trained nose to the culprit’s luggage. The oil spillage had covered a rather large portion of the suitcase, which also included a sizeable package: snuggled between packs of dodol, kokis, cake and chilli paste, were the much sought after Kandos chocolates.

Whether the intention of the chocolates was to woo (or woe) the ladies, or whether they had a secret sinister motive, one thing is for sure: someone somewhere is missing their new year’s Kandos.

10) The Sinhala Speaker

The beloved language that many a Sri Lankan expat refuses to part with. Image Credit: luc.devroye.org

For the longest time (about 133 years), Sri Lanka was an English colony. This, of course, has left a bit of Britishness in us. However, as everyone knows, until a certain overzealous Prime Minister made Sinhala the national language, we were speaking a fluent version of the Queen’s English. Ever since that day, the quality of English in the country has kept dropping and it’s now come to a point where a majority speak a localised version of the empire’s tongue. (Although linguistically speaking, we at Roar are amused as much as we are proud of this brand of Sri Lankan English). There is, however, a culture within Sri Lankans to use some type of English vernacular to exert a sense of superiority over others. There are instances where speaking in Sinhala is laughed at, or considered ‘godey,’ while the use of even broken English is revered. In some circles, young children are even told that Sinhala is to be used to communicate with domestic aides. Now, while we promote the mastering of English, we also find it extremely sad that Sinhala is degraded in such a way. Growing up, kids would regularly laugh at incorrect English spelling, while people hardly noticed poor Sinhala spelling. Our theory for this behavior is that it comes from an inferiority chip on the shoulder of people who try to deride others at every given opportunity.

Now the funny thing is, it seems that when a Sri Lankan lands in a foreign country, as always, they do a complete 180 and start to embrace all the things they distanced themselves from when they were back home. Just like reverting to eating rice, expat Sri Lankans living in Australia started conversing more and more in Sinhala. Down Under, conversing in Sinhala is the fashionable thing, including the unfiltered use of expletives. We even have a friend whose one time favourite hobby was shouting Sinhala expletives to others, while walking through supermarkets. There are also quite a few older expats who shed a few tears that second and third generation Sri Lankan Aussies don’t seem to speak or read Sinhala.

This passion is such that in Sri Lankan dominant suburbs, you can easily find a few infamous Sinhala tuition classes. The obsession over Sinhala is so much so that in Australia, getting into the Pahana, the local Sri Lankan community newspaper, is as prestigious as getting into the Hi!! magazine back home.

And last but not least, and what is probably the most common type of Sri Lankan Expat:

11) The quintessential Kalu Sudda

The non-Sri Lankan-Sri Lankan has varying degrees of transformation. Image Credit: Gappiya: Kalu Sudda (The Foreigner)

The term “Kalu Sudda” has a rather negative undertone to it and doesn’t do justice to the effort required to be a true chameleon, so an apt description would be ‘The Aussie, The Britisher and/or The American.’ This type of expat is extremely common, and one can generally identify a number of varying degrees to them. (To be fair, you can spot a few of these types even in Sri Lanka.)

This noteworthy type prides itself in being notably non-Sri Lankan. That is, they seem to go out of their way to distance themselves from any association to the motherland. Now, as mentioned above, there are varying degrees of this transformation.

In the Larval stage, we see them make subtle disassociations with what makes them Sri Lankan. This involves the shortening of long-winded complicated names, and the abandoning of divine cuisine from the island. This stage is like the chicken and the egg: what changes first is a mystery. It is enough to know that both their name and choice of food changes. As covered in the previous article, under the ‘Name Changer’ type, out goes Siripala Malli and in comes Shane, or, in a weird twist, someone whose nickname among friends is “Mutchalinda” (a reference to the snake in Buddhist scripture and the ‘snake in the house story’) ends up as “Mutch,” which the guilty party no doubt thought was similar to Mitch or Butch.

The cuisine change first makes its appearance at the workplace. Out go the aromatic rice and curries, and in come tuna sandwiches. Team lunches at the local curry house changes to the local pub. Chicken curry is replaced by chicken parma.

At the Pupal stage, things are a tad bit harder to pull off, to some at least. This involves changing their English accents to fit the country. As Mahela Jayawardene put it recently, the biggest exponent of the accent change is none other than Kumar Sangakkara (no, really). We say it is hard, because, as comedian Jimmy Carr said, pulling off the perfect accent is merely not just pronunciation. It also involves timely usage of colloquial terminology.

Unfortunately, the budding Sri Lankan expats don’t seem to heed this golden advice. Not knowing who Jimmy Carr is, might have played a part in it. Here Down Under, apart from a very select handful of punters (Aussie slang for a betting man), they overwhelmingly forget to incorporate typical Aussie icons such as “Ripper,” “Tucker,” “Ridgy,” “Didgy,” “Crickey,” “fair shake of the sauce bottle,” “fair dinkum,” “bloody oath” and the granddaddy of them all…“G’day mate,” into their vocabulary.

The final stage of this transformation has always been a mystery, and only a select few who have succeeded have ever known what the actual methodology behind it is. With painstaking effort, however, we’ve managed to enlist the help of a few inside men, who at personal peril have confirmed for the first time what this final stage entails. As it goes: The Mossad is widely known as the world’s best intelligence organisation. One of the reasons for this is the elaborate nature of their spy network. There are 3 levels to this:

At a basic level, their spies just have falsified documentation and the identities are made to be short term, usually less than 72 hours.

The second level is a bit more thought out and the identities are to be used for anything from a month to a year and are conjured accordingly.

The last and final level is the more elaborate one.This spy network is permanent. These spies grow up in the community, fit in with others and live a normal life running their businesses and doing their 9 to 5, unbeknown to anyone but their handlers, that they are Israeli spies.

The last level of the Aussie transformation has the precision of a permanent Mossad spy. The incumbent now has the western name, shortened to fit Australia.They have mastered the Aussie cuisine, consisting mostly of meat pies, sausage rolls and tomato sauce. This stage also involves carefully drowning bottle after bottle of Victoria Bitter, while dressed in a singlet, board shorts and wearing slippers decorated with the Australian flag. This camouflage will gain them access to many a male group. While without ever having known the significance of Feb 4 1948, or May 22 1972, the cocooned caterpillars would get up at 4 a.m. and go to the Anzac day dawn service at 3 degree temperatures to commemorate Australian and New Zealand war heroes of World War I. The newly formed butterflies can also be seen supporting an Australian rules football team (if living in Victoria), or a Rugby league team (if living in New South Wales or Queensland), and are covered in green and gold during the cricket season. They will call everyone under the sun ‘mate,’ start putting shrimps on the barbie, do their weekly shopping at the expensive supermarkets, or the local convenience store instead of the practical weekly markets, and drink Red Bull instead of a well brewed orange pekoe. But the cherry on top, the konde on the kavum, the ruse that would fool the most Australian of Aussies, while also being the most un-Sri Lankan thing in the world to do: is the usage of a barrage of sheep related jokes to make fun of the Black Caps and the All Blacks.

Whether you choose to believe this piece, or whether you dismiss it like an X-file, we can guarantee you’ll run into a few, if not all, of the above types in Australia. While you may wish to avoid some of these types, most of them are harmless, and can be very good company to share a curry, ginger beer or conversation. So the next time you go out for a stroll, keep your eyes and ears open and with some luck, you just might see a unicorn.

Source: https://roar.lk/srilanka-life/sri-lankan-expats-australia-types-troubles-part-1/

Source: https://roar.lk/srilanka-life/sri-lankan-expats-australia-types-troubles-%E2%80%92-part-2/