Costc-Oh No!
I just got back from Costco with Mom, who spent approximately three million dollars on things like soap and toothpaste and socks and ibuprofen and bandaids. You know, the things they don't have in Australia.... meh, I'd rather get it here and have more money over there. According to the talented
Jay Duncan, who recently completed a 3-month stint in
Bendigo, things are just a bit more expensive over there.
At this week's
Gather, the first actually, I had some time to chat with Jay and with John, another well-traveled man. Jay gave me some good church advice, which is appreciated. Turns out, there's one right on my street that I might want to check out once I've settled in a little bit.
I have three days left of work. I'm taking tomorrow off and it's going to frickin rule. I have to go see Howard for physio and then Dr. Stern for a follow-up on the bloody orthotics, and then to the clinic for some meds and then blah blah blah. So it's not really a day off. But I'm leaving in *cough* seven sleeps, so really, it's time to get going.
Ooooh another thing I have to do tomorrow is hunt down my cousin's husband and ask him very sweetly if he'd like to get me a deal on a
Canon A95. Bryan manages a FutureShop, so I think it'll be good times.
I'm still reading
In a Sunburned Country, and today's chapter featured the mighty mighty platypus. Part mammal, part reptile, it's evolved in its own unique and crazypants way. I think I like it.
It just screams, "Look at me! I'm crazy and wonderful and a bunch of different animals squished together and there's nothing you can do about it mwuahahahahah!!!!!"
OK. Time to unpack this crate of jumbo-sized everything. Maybe I should return it all and insist it's a
trampoline.
Tomko would never know what hit them. Wait a second....
We're in the single digits, people.
9 days.
Campus East
Located in Fairy Meadow, 10 minutes north of the Campus, Campus East is directly opposite one of the Illawara's finest surfing beaches.
I got into residence today. This comes on the heels of receiving my acceptance into the English Majors programme at UBC, both of which will make life in W'gong much easier. Knowing that I have a reserved seat available to me in many English classes back here means that I can enjoy at least one class that is unique to Australia.
People keep asking me, "are you excited?" and I keep saying, "yes". But in truth, I don't FEEL excited. I think it's because it's not sunken in yet that I'm leaving everything that I know and traveling by myself to the other side of the world. Don't get me wrong; I'm HAPPY. Just not quite excited yet.
For once I'm going to turn the attention of this blog off of ME and offer
this as the confirmation that some really cool things are going to be happening over in Aberdeen as well! Yah Dean!
Tales from Down Under
Highlights from
I'm not finished it yet, but I find it highly amusing...
ON TRAVELINGAt some unfortunate point, quite early on, jet lag asserted itself and I slumped helplessly into a coma. I am not, I regret to say, a discreet and fetching sleeper. Most people when they nod of look as if they could do with a blanket; I look as if I could do with medical attention. I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. My legs fall open in a grotesque come hither manner; my knuckles brush the floor. Whatever is inside--tongue, uvula, moist bubbles of intestinal air--decides to leak out. From time to time, like one of those nodding-duck toys, my head tips forward to empty a quart or so of viscous drool onto my lap, then falls back to begin loading again with a noise like a toilet cistern filling. And I snore, hugely and helplessly, like a cartoon character, with rubbery flapping lips and prolonged steam-valve exhalations. For long periods I grow unnaturally still, in a way that inclines onlookers to exchange glances and lean forward in concern, then dramatically I stiffen an, after a tantalizing pause, begin to bounce and jostle in a series of whole-body spasms of the sort that bring to mind an electric chair when the switch is thrown. Then I shriek once or twice in a piercing and effeminate manner and wake up to find that all motion within five hundred feet has stopped and all children under eight are clutching their mothers' hems. It is a terrible burden to bear.
ON HERITAGEWhen Australians get hold of a name that suits them they tend to stick with it in a big way. We can blame this unfortunate custom on Lachlan Macquarie, a Scotsman who was governor of the colony in the first part of the nineteenth centurty... You really cannot move in Australia without bumping into some reminder of his tenure. Run your eye over the map and you will find a Macquarie Harbour, Macquarie Island, Macquarie Marsh, Macquarie River, Macquarie Fields, Macquarie Pass, Macquarie Plains, Lake Macquarie, Port Macquarie, Mrs.Macquarie's Chair (a lookout point over Sydney Harbour), Macquarie's Point, and a Macquarie town. I always imagine him sitting at this desk, poring over maps and charts with a magnifying glass, and calling out from time to time to his first assistant, "Hae we no' got a Macquarie Swamp yet, laddie? And look here at this wee copse. It has nae name. What shall we call it, do ye think?"
ON CANBERRA NIGHTLIFE (or lack thereof)I think the last beer might have been a mistake because I don't remember much after that other than a sensation of supreme goodwill toward anyone who passed through the room, including a Filipina who came in with a vacuum cleaner and asked me to lift my legs so that she could clean under my chair. My notes for the evening show only two other entries, both in a slightly unsteady hand. One says, "Victoria Bitter--why called??? Not bitter at all But quite nice!!!" The other said, "I tell you, Barry, he was farting sparks!" I believe this was in reference to a colorful Aussie turn of phrase I overheard from the people at the next table rather than to any actual manifestation of flatulence of an electrical nature. But I could be wrong. I'd had a few.
ON POLITICSIn his book Among the Barbarians, the Australian writer Paul Sheehan records an exchange in Parliament between a man named Wilson Tuckey and the then prime minister, Paul Keating, of which the following is a small part:
Tuckey: You are an idiot. You are just a hopeless nong...
Keating: Shut up! Sit down and shut up, you pig... Why do you not shut up, you clown?... This man has a criminal intellect... this clown continues to interject in perpetuity.
This was actually a fairly tame exchange... gracing the pages of whatever is the Australian equivalent of the Congressional Record, have been scumbags, pieces of criminal garbage, sleazebags, stupid foul-mouthed grubs, piss-ants, mangy maggot, perfumed gigolos, gutless spivs, boxheads, immoral cheats, and stunned mullets.
ON THE SPORT OF CHOICE... CRICKETImagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcherand walks slowly with it out to center field; and that there, after a minute's pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt toward the pitcher's mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of a man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves the sort used to handle radioactive isotopes, and a mattress strapped to each leg. Imagine moreover that if this batsman fails to hit the ball in a way that heartens him sufficiently to try to waddle forty feet with mattresses strapped to his legs, he is under no formal compunction to run; he may stand there all day, and, as a rule, he does. If by some miracle he is coaxed into making a misstroke that leads to his being put out, all the fielders throw up their arms in triumph and have a hug. Then tea is called and everyone retires happily to a distant pavillion to fortify for the next siege.
ON WILDLIFEFlies are of course always irksome, but the Australian variety distinguishes itself with its very particular persistence. If an Australian fly wants to be up your nose or in your ear, there is no discouraging him. Flick at him as you will and each time he will jump out of range and come straight back. It is simply not possible to deter him. Somewhere on an exposed portion of your body is a spot, about the size of a shirt button, that the fly wants to lick and tickle and turn delirious circles upon. It isn't simply their persistence, but the things they go for. An Australian fly will try to suck the moisture off your eyeball. He will, if not constantly turned back, go into parts of your ears that a Q-tip can only dream about. He will happily die for the glory of taking a tiny dump on your tongue. Get thirty or forty of them dancing around you in the same way and madness will shortly follow.
Hehehe. It's a good read.
