It was about half past two in the morning when the customs officer pulled me out of the line for a thoroughly inspection. Again. Like two months before when I arrived first time from Asia, wearing a funny hair cut seems to fit the search pattern of the investigators. “Very smart”, I thought, but maybe my intention is wrong and guys like me really are the ones usually traveling with handguns and drugs. At least he asked for these two things. While digging through my backpack he seriously asked me, if I was in Bali “for drinking”. Call me to naive, but I was to perplex to have a cool reply to this prejudice. And I hate this situation of one sided dependency. Giving a rude answer in this moment brings you nowhere else then the guy in charge will make use of his plastic gloves.

Short after six o’clock I waited in the 18 dollar shuttle bus, the only public transport at the international airport in Perth, to depart. Still angry about that a one-liter bottle of water costs six dollars and my repeated customs experience. An elder man entered the bus and took the free seat next to me. “My father came to Australia when it began with Negros walking on the streets of Finland.” After: “Look, that’s my girl in the Philippines. She’s nineteen and she says ‘marry me, marry me’”, holding me his mobile under my nose. I turned to him, focused him and said “Nice!” in a way he didn’t dare to say anything else anymore. I smashed my head against the window, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Maybe fatigue, maybe just not my day, but sometimes it takes quite an effort not to generalize myself.