During my days as a university student, I found myself in the shoes of a local student and an international student.
That is, I possessed both the traits of the average Australian student and overseas student. And at times this was a tad frustrating, as I will soon explain.
Fact is, I am an Australian of Chinese ethnicity. I was brought up in metropolitan and suburbian Melbourne, paid Australian tertiary student fees and I speak the country’s language English fluently, and by right I was a local student and nothing more at university. However, I have also spent some time in South-East Asia in my teens, mingling with people of different races and immersing myself in the region’s different cultures – and this rubbed off a fair bit on my personality, making me seem like a foreigner to quite a few in Australia today.
Mabel Kwong 