present day
Automatic instead of the border guard
According to the forecasts of Australian statisticians, in the summer of 2000, during the Olympic Games in Sydney, the flow of foreign tourists to Australia will increase approximately threefold. Moreover, all this mass of people will fly and sail into the country almost simultaneously. Which can lead to queues at passport and customs control at international airports and seaports. In search of a solution to this problem, Australian experts have developed a fundamentally new passport verification system.
A technical novelty is a joint brainchild of employees of the Organization of scientific and industrial research of the Australian community and CPS. The system works as follows. The passport is placed in a special electronic scanner. At the same time, a digital camera photographs the person undergoing passport control. The computer instantly compares two images, establishing their identity. Continue reading
Sydney – Walking Upside Down
“A peasant at the Australian embassy is asked: Do you have a criminal record ?, and he answered: And what, do you still need a criminal record to get an Australian visa?”
This joke has been spinning in my head all the days of my stay in Sydney. I could not understand why the British sent criminals to this oldest city in Australia, founded as far back as 1788, rather than sending the best people of the nation there? Probably something was wrong in their head then.
You can walk around Sydney for hours. A light breeze from the ocean knocks down the heat, and numerous parks and squares make it possible to lie on pure grass in broad daylight. Although the city is large, and about four million people live in it, it is somehow not felt among the abundant greenery. Continue reading
