Category Archives: Musings

I should have been there

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Amongst all the things that I’ve gone out of my way to experience since moving to Australia, there are no shortage of events that I just missed.  One was Spencer Tunick snapping photos of over 5000 nude volunteers on the steps of the Opera House.  Gabe definitely would have attended had we known about it ahead of time.   In fact, many of his coworkers were surprised to see him at work that morning.  Luckily, I did catch what was perhaps the best part of the event.  It was a particularly chilly morning and when the shoot was done, I watched from my window as all the volunteers went racing back to where they had left their clothes on the lawn of the botanic gardens.

I did participate in Earth Hour, but was away from my own apartment so I couldn’t watch as the city center went dark.  I was actually looking forward to seeing how the birthplace of the tradition would celebrate it, especially since Time Square gave such a pathetic showing last year.  I guess it will take another blackout of the entire eastern seaboard to put out all the blinking lights on 42nd Street.

This past weekend I just barely missed the homecoming of Jessica Watson the youngest person to (unofficially) sail solo around the world.  Of course, I wouldn’t have missed that had she shown up on time.  Dang teenagers.  At first I felt a sense of guilt at missing these odd, unique and occasionally historic events occurring right outside my window, then I thought about all the things I probably missed seeing every day of my life until now.

I never once saw the New Years Eve ball drop in Time Square.  I’m of the school of thought that real New Yorkers know it’s too crowded, too cold and too touristy.  We’d all rather be drinking indoors.  I never went ice skating at Rockafeller Center.  You want how much for 45 minutes?  My gracefulness belongs on cheaper ice.  And even though we made a yearly tradition of watching the parade balloons getting inflated the night before, there was no way in hell I was getting up at the crack of dawn to actually watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

But my life is not lacking.  Something interesting probably happens in every city in the world every single day.  I won’t let the drive to experience the goings on in this lovely city die, but I won’t drive myself crazy trying to catch every event that might just happen to cruise by my window.  For every event I miss a spontaneous fireworks show occurs.  There was a lovely one just a few hours ago.  Someone must have been really happy it was Monday.

My E-Life or How I learned to stop worrying and love Facebook

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This may not seem like a topic related to life in Oz, but it is related to moving so far away from your home town that you’re not just a time zone away but almost an entire day ahead.  All forms of e-communication connect me to my life outside of Sydney.  I do not, in fact, love facebook and I probably would never have signed up for an account if hadn’t known I was going to be living in another hemisphere.  Nonetheless, facebook and all those other ways to keep 24-7 tabs on hundreds of people in one neatly aggregated news feed, have added an interesting wrinkle to my daily life.

With friends on both coasts in the US, e-mail had already become a quite a trusted friend of mine.  And then G-chat was just the icing on the cake.  Most of my online communication was still in fairly real time with friends I would have happily called and had the same conversations with (only you can G-chat topics at work that you probably wouldn’t say out loud, at least not in front of your boss).  But now the e-mails get sent with less regularity and I only have so many hours to chat before everyone I know in the US goes to sleep.  Afternoons online are quite quiet indeed.

But because of facebook, I can now not only keep tabs on those same friends but also on my childhood friends, friends of friends, classmates, business associates, former professors, bosses, and relatives I might have otherwise never knew I had.  What a weird and wonderful world we live in that I can see pictures from a wedding I would have attended had I been in the States, alongside photos of a former professors newborn son whom I’ll probably never meet.  Being on facebook is like attending a reunion of every institution and family you have ever been associated with.  But unlike the one on one conversations over cocktails that you might get at a real reunion, facebook is one where every guests grabs the mic and gives a speech at the same time.  It can be very hard to have a decent conversation over all that noise.

I love you guys, but I don’t need to see every video that amused you during your otherwise dull work week.  We probably know each other because of some common interest that we share, but that doesn’t mean I read the same extreme political columnists or listen to the same bands you do.  And it’s because I care about you that I have to tell you, the amount of time you spend playing farmville is just sad.  And don’t even get me started on those of you who complain about facebook on facebook.  If you hate it so much then just stop using it for f*^%$# sake!

What people seem to forget when they are using short form, instant e-communication, is to consider what they wouldn’t say if they were broadcasting on a different forum.  Over the phone, you might tell your friend about an interesting thing you saw on TV that week, or whinge a bit about how you’re feeling sick.  But would you call the same friend every five minutes to give them an update on the latest topic that was running through your mind?  Probably not.  So does your ex-boyfriend’s, co-worker’s, roomate’s cousin really care how many avocados you ate on Tuesday?  Probably not.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the internet has blessed my life with Skype.  I may be drinking my coffee while my friends are sipping glasses of wine, but we are still having a conversation over drinks just like we would in person, rude gestures and facials expressions included.   I not only get to have my weekly conversations with the parents but I can also see that they’ve never fixed the clock on the stereo in the living room.  Those little things add such a pleasant touch of home.  And no one on Skype bothers to tell me how many times they went to Starbucks that week.  They know that would be a waste of bandwidth.

So when communicating through the wonderful interwebs, that has blessed our life with such an abundance of information both exciting and mundane, interesting and dull, relevant and very much not, stop to consider this; does my friend living on the other side of the world, having her breakfast a full calendar day ahead of me, really care about what I’m about to post?  Or, would she perhaps like to hear about that crazy blind date I went on last week, that promotion I got at work, that I’m getting married, having a baby, getting a sex change or any number of other things that cannot be communicated in 200 characters or less and probably shouldn’t be broadcast to 300 people at the same time.  Maybe, just maybe, since she’s such good friend that I have her e-mail address, skype name, phone number, home address and enough information about her personal life to keep her from ever running for public office, I should have a chat with her instead.  Yeah, she’d probably like that.

How to Speak Australian Part II

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This installment of my impromptu online class discusses some of my favorite Aussieisms (that’s a Margaretism).  A few of these have found their way into my regular vocabulary so be sure to take notes.  My accent might not confuse you but my casual SoCal drawl, occasional New Yawkese combined with a few Aussieisms just might.

whinging = whining.  I like this because it can never be confused with wining and dining, something I would never whinge about.
flat out = busy as hell.  This is a personal favorite of mine because it conjures of the image of being flattened by a steamroller, which is how being busy as hell can feel from time to time.
full on = intense, holding nothing back.  If work is full on you might feel pretty flat out, but try not to whinge about it.
rug up = layer up.  Winter is coming so I’m going to have to rug up.  Since most of the housing in Australia lacks insulation, I’m even going to have to rug up in doors.  That is something I will whinge about.
rock up = show up.  It’s pretty much the opposite of bounce, the way New Yorkers say they want to leave.  I haven’t adopted either, so I’m not likely to rock up and then bounce from anywhere.

There are also a lot of words that Aussies use in ways that Americans tend not to use them in.  I believe it was a former boss (the same one who hated the expression “no problem”) who pointed out how rude it sounded to start your statement with look or listen.  Not that I ever did that, just a lot of other people I had to listen to him complain about.  I became quite sensitive to it after that.  It does, in fact, sound like you are starting your sentence with “look, dumb ass.”  But it’s very common practice in Oz.  Not only do you hear it in interviews, on news programs and in casual conversation, but politicians also use it during debates and press conferences.  Of course, to their opponents they may very well be saying “look, dumb ass.”

Americans also tend to think that scheme means something bad.  People are always coming up with hair-brained schemes on sit-coms, which tend to go very wrong.  In the States, criminals and crooked politicians scheme.  But in Oz, a scheme is quite literally “a plan, design, or program of action to be followed.”  Thank you dictionary.com.

And for our last lesson of the day, when an American might say knock on wood and Aussie will say touch wood.  I won’t get into why that would be misunderstood.  Just know that I’ve adopted that one too, so try not to laugh when I say it.