Australia

[tangofiction]

Okay, jumping on the current bandwagon.

You've lived too long in Australia, if...

You've lived too long in Australia (Sydney), if:



* You describe the weather as "freezing" if it's less than 20 degrees C outside; less than 15 is "bloody freezing".



* It would never occur to you to add a "+" sign before the temperature.



* You know that all the people sunbaking on the beach under the midday sun are tourists; you also know that tomorrow they will be in hospital with third degree burns.



* You live 10 minutes away from the beach, but travel to Bali for a tropical holiday.



* In January.



* When asked "had a big night?", you know they are talking about beer and not your love life.



* Vegemite starts to taste delicious.



* Cricket scores make sense.



* When faced with a woman in full make-up, immaculate dress, heels, perfume, jewellery and perfectly styled hair, you know she is a man.



* The year's best party is the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.



* You start to notice that people in movies drive on the wrong side of the road.



* You address every male, regardless of age or relationship to you, as "mate".



* Long pretentious words like "football", "biscuit" and "barbecue" automatically become "footy", "bikkie" and "barbie".



* You understand that a magazine feature about "Fred and Mary" refers to the Crown Prince and Princess of Denmark.



* Kangaroo steak is not a moral outrage but a lean and healthy dinner.



* You have no trouble keeping up a social conversation about real estate prices.



* You never leave the house without a bottle of water.



* When asked what you would like for lunch, you reply with a nationality (Italian, Thai, Turkish...).



* You like to eat with chopsticks.



* You take it for granted that people around you will be speaking in a variety of different languages, all of which you tune out with ease.



* But you can hear an American accent at 50 paces.



* Jeans and a singlet are perfectly suitable evening dress for a woman at the theatre, especially if the singlet is embroidered with sparkly sequins.



* You refer to your place of residence as "Oz" and to the inhabitants as "ozzies"/"Aussies".



* You no longer associate the cry "Oy! Oy! Oy!" with a painful injury, but with the cheer, "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oy! Oy! Oy!"



* You talk to strangers as if you have known them for years.



* The oddest thing about travelling overseas is meeting people who do not smile when they say "hello".

Comments

[Juxian]

Have you written it yourself?! It's terribly cool! Very funny. But the one I liked the most was:

* When faced with a woman in full make-up, immaculate dress, heels, perfume, jewellery and perfectly styled hair, you know she is a man.

Great!!!

[tangofiction]

Juxian

Thanks! Yeah, I wrote it myself, it was too tempting.

[Долли Обломская]

All those temperature "ifs" are unbearable!! *teeth-grinding*



And what does kangaroo taste like? (После Гришковца потянуло на экзотику)))))

[CryBaby]

Респект!

[Стэн]

[tangofiction]

Долли

Sorry about the temperature "ifs"! (If it helps, I get jealous of snow.)



Kangaroo tastes like a cross between beef and liver. It took me a long time to bring myself to try it, but it turned out to be delicious.



CryBaby

Стэн

Thanks!

[Гость]

Very funny, Tango!



It's been unseasonably warm here this week, and we're juuust about at "freezing!" according to your scale. Oh, summer, wherefore art thou?



(While we're on the subject of nationalities, only British people are allowed to misquote Shakespeare whenever it suits them. :P )



The food sounds right up my street... I love trying out different stuff. My current forced dependence on the university dining hall is a source of great anguish.



Jessica



PS: Can I offer you a bribe to register me a user account on this site? I don't understand any of the navigation, obviously, but I'm not a fan of being known as "guest." Name your price.

[Гость]

What's the matter with you? Of COURSE Vegemite tastes delicious. Makes the perfect toasted sandwich. Have only had roo once - on a roo-kebab no less! I thought the buffalo-kebab (buff-kebab?) was nicer.



AS for the weather....I cannot WAIT for it to qualify as "chilly" again (15-18 degrees). Means I won't burn my hands on my steering wheel on the way home from work anymore! Having wintered in Wagga for many long years and recently in Canberra has taught me to esteem the single digit temperature far more respectfully, and pushed my "freezing" threshold a little more toward the extreme end of the scale. I'm so brave. I'm also rambling and avoiding assignments. Shazam!



Name without a face.

[tangofiction]

Ah, Lyndal, but there are places where single-digit temperatures are not an extreme, on either side of the zero. Re vegemite -- it took me about five years to acquire the taste.

[Гость]

True, true. But I've heard that Moscow is delightfulin Summertime. Not so much St Petersberg, what with all the bugs from the river. But I'll go there eventually anyway. I hate bugs. But I like fancy architecture.



...



Saw BBM on the weekend. Very good but in need of some judicious editing - we all thought that it started to drag about two-thirds of the way through. I thought the acting and the chemistry between the actors was outstanding generally, though Anne Hathaway was made to wear some pretty fugly wigs. They could have done a better job there, considering they aged Heath and Jake pretty well in comparison. Score was a bit repetitive and for some reason keeps reminding me of the score Baz Luhrman used for his Romeo + Juliet (along with the Des'ree song that went with it), though obviously in guitar not piano. Liked the basic themes of the score but to use the same cue over and over again....I guess one could say that its constancy was like that of the characters and aspects of their lives... I dk. Also not a fan of repeating the title of the film over and over again in the dialogue, but that's pretty nitpickish. Classic tragic romance.

[tangofiction]

Moscow is horrendous in the summertime. Dusty, polluted, and choking on the smoke from the fires outside the city (I don't know what those swamps are called in English, but they have a natural oil-like fuel that burns with a thick black smoke *gag*). Moscow in early autumn, on the other hand, is lovely, and for some people (like me), it's even better in winter. In moderation.



BBM: I agree about the pace, it did slow down a bit 2/3 of the way through. It didn't bother me because it all came together in the end and it felt like the slow bits were non-gratuitous. I can't think of what I'd have cut, anyway. The repetitive score: I can't even remember the music... I am the sort of person who doesn't notice it unless it plays a vital role in the story itself (eg, Krystof Kiezlowski's "Three Colours: Blue"), or it evokes a powerful emotional response in me ("Gattaca"). The score in BBM seemed pretty average, suitable country music and some instrumentals, nothing remarkable really. It's definitely not a music-driven film.



What I loved was how restrained it is. All the lushness and poetry is in the scenery, and all the unspoken things are in the body language. There are so few ways to make a screen romance really *work*, and this movie passed with flying colours for me. A classic tragic story of forbidden love -- your reference to Romeo and Juliet is spot-on as far as I'm concerned. While I wouldn't put BBM in the same class as the aforementioned "Blue" (my favourite film of all time), I still thought it was a terrific film. I haven't decided yet if I'll get the DVD, but I'll probably go and see it at the cinema a second time if I get a chance.