I woke up this morning to the sounds of very loud wind and my boyfriend telling me to look out the window. My first groggy morning thought was...since when did we have yellow tinted windows? I soon realised that it was not in fact out windows but the whole world that was yellow! A crazy dust storm has blown over during the night. I have never seen a dust storm before so I was quite impressed. They are relatively common in the Northern territory and South Australia I think (apparently this is where all the dust has blown from...) but they don't usually make it to the coast!

I turned on the TV to try to get some news about it and also called my mum. She told me they're covered in dust too. They live 200kms away! HUGE! Sydney is even worse then here. We're yellow but Sydney is red! The news tells me it goes all the way to Dubbo and is heading up to Brisbane.

I tried to take some photos but my camera isn't great so it just looks smoggy. Here are some from google (they are not mine!)

 

and a news story about it.

The air is very yucky to breath. I'm not normally very sensitive to stuff like this but it's even starting to get to me, my nose and eyes feel weird. The windows had been open all night so the air in the house is very dusty. My boyfriend was having trouble breathing all morning. Not pleasant.

When I work up my thoughts slowly but surely turned to "Oh...maybe it's the end of the world...". You know, Day of the Triffids or War of the Worlds style...

In some places the dust storm is even worse. Someone on the net said that before he turned on the news he thought maybe we'd been attacked or nuked by someone.

Imagine waking up to something like this..

...and not having access to the Internet, radio or the TV to find out what it is. Would you think it was the end of the world? Or the start of a war? Hell risen up from the depths? 

A less immediately scary, but still very worrying, thought is that this might actually be a sign of the nearing 'end of the world' through climate change. We just experienced one of our hottest Augusts on record and now we're going into a Spring which is supposed to be  much hotter then usual too. We've been experiencing drought for a very long time, bush fires have been horribly swift, intense and tragic and weather patterns are supposed to be getting more and more extreme. Maybe waking up to a yellow/red haze will become a common occurrence in the near future?

(particularly interesting photo- normal day vs. today shot...)

Then just recently me and one of my friends went to Sydney to visit my other friend. My friend who comes from Sydney is asian (Vietnamese/Chinese) and took us to china town (a very touristy thing to do :P). We went to a bakery to get a random assortment of cakes and yummy things. Her mum had told us to go after 6pm because they have a 25% discount then.

My friend walks up to the counter to pay and as the lady was ringing up the cakes she asked, 'Do you have the discount for after 6pm?' Awkward stare from the lady. My friend looks confused..'The discount...after 6pm...?'

The lady starts talking at my friend in a language none of us seem to understand. My friend looks even more confused. The lady asks if my friend speaks Mandarin. 'No, Cantonese..'...the lady then starts saying something to my friend. We don't know what it is, she's not yelling or even raising her voice, but you can tell she not being very nice. My friend is apologising and looks very upset and embarrassed. We leave the store very confused, although we do have our cakes. The first thing my friend says is, 'I should have just said I only speak english...'

Apparently the gist of what the lady was saying was 'You should know better then to ask for a discount in front of white people, I only do that discount for Asian people.' insert more harsh telling off etc etc

My friend got an embarrassing and mean telling off for assuming she'd get the same service with her white friends as she did usually. I'm not saying that this was a particularly serious act of racism. I have nothing seriously against the shop owner reserving her discount for whoever she likes, although I don't think it's right and I probably wouldn't shop there again...but it's her shop so whatever. But the fact that she was mean to my friend and spoiled her night simply because she walked in to the shop with her two white friends...didn't like that at all.

I have white skin = my asian friend is no longer asian enough to get a stupid discount on some stupid cakes and you have to passive aggressively make her feel like shit for asking...

Sigh.