Relationship struggles
SURE, WE HAVE A FEW ISSUES, WE’RE A BIT NEEDY, WHILE OUR PARTNER IS QUIET AND FORMAL
If we were to imagine Australia’s relationship with China as between two people instead of two countries, what kind of relationship would it be?
Until last week, we would probably have described it as one of those slightly awkward couplings where we, “Oz”, are head over heels with “Xi”, while family and friends aren’t quite as impressed.
Sure, we have a few issues, we’re a bit needy, while our partner is quiet and formal, but he’s CEO of a huge company, owns superyachts called “Barley”, “Seafood”, “Steel” and “Beef”, plus a ton of properties and businesses, including the shipping port in Darwin.
We’ve been staying in his penthouse, and really love the view.
Even so, it’s an unlikely romance.
Xi isn’t exactly the life of the party, he’s not into current music or movies, can be domineering, has somewhat extreme political views, and doesn’t approve when we bag our bosses at barbecues after a few bevvies.
Still, nobody’s perfect, right? What he does have is connections, so it wasn’t surprising that some of our close mates started meeting with him for coffees, yoga, lucrative investment opportunities and economic partnerships.
We were very happy about this, because we wanted everyone to get along, it made social gatherings much easier to navigate, and everybody got to go on the boat.
But then.
Xi had a crisis at his company headquarters.
Our mutual mate Donald told everyone how well our guy Xi was handling the situation.
But not long after, Donald found himself facing the very same crisis, and when people criticised him, he blamed the problem on Xi, and their bromance soured.
Oz (that’s us), also got caught up in the exact same drama at our work.
We handled it pretty well, but discovered that Xi hadn’t been totally upfront, so like many suspicious partners, we called close mates, including Donald, to discuss an intervention to look into Xi’s version of events.
Our mates were a little surprised, but most said they’d back us up.
All except for Donald, who’d already started his own feud with Xi, over Xi’s mate, Hua, who works in IT.
Donald had banned Hua from office drinks, preferring the company of old mates Goog, Appl and Amaz.
We weren’t too sure about
Hua either, whispers of security concerns meant our office manager had declined his generous offer to wire up our office security system.
Anyway, emboldened by the support from our mates, we told Xi that we wanted to go to counselling.
We didn’t want to point blame, just get an “impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation”, to learn from mistakes so we could do better.
Almost immediately, Xi bought the counsellor a Lamborghini and changed the keycode on the penthouse security system.
We’re not that keen on huffy. Some mates said we should break up, but others are saying, “you’ve ruined it for everyone!”
For now, it’s complicated.
Xi’s not talking to us, we’re locked out of the penthouse, and we hear Donald’s hitched a ride on “our” boat, “Barley”.
Wow – that hurt.
But hang on, is that Narendra? Forget “complicated”, make that “single”.
“Heyyyy, Narendra, Facetime us! K, byeee!”