Aussie pronuncations: I’ve discovered that even when the Aussies use the same words as us, the pronunciations are often vastly different. For example, today I heard the word “baths” pronounced with a British-sounding “a” and the word “patent” with the “a” sound from “wait”. *Editor’s note: For your edification, when I mentioned the word “whinger” last week, it’s pronounced like the word “win” followed by “ger” with the g like in “giraffe”.* So even when I think I’m using the same words as an Aussie, they sound different. My favorite example has to be “ketchup”, which in Oz is pronounced “tomato sauce”, with the word “tomato” pronounced “to-mah-to”.
Mars Lava: Description on the label: “Orange flavoured nougat, chocolate caramel, covered in thick milk chocolate” Tastes a bit like a very sweet Creamsicle with a chocolate coating. The chocolate caramel wasn’t very noticeable over the nougat, which just screamed out “ORANGE!” at me. I don’t think I’ve found my Aussie candy bar yet.
LASIK for Free*: *Offer only good in Australia for Australian citizens with eyesight of – 4.0 or worse.
Seriously, Medicare (the national health plan) in Oz pays for it if you meet those conditions. The topic came up at ulti the other night when Pennoes (men’s team captain) was having trouble seeing the other team without his glasses. He wasn’t wearing contacts since his vision isn’t that bad, but that prompted a discussion of bad eyesight, during which Katie (women’s captain) mentioned the Medicare bit. As usual, I win (well, really, lose) the bad eyesight competition hands down with my – 6.5 and – 7.5.
Live from Newcastle…it’s Thursday night at the Bar on the Hill! The Bar on the Hill is at the Hunter Student Union on campus. Live bands play there every Thursday night during the academic year. I went there with Paul, Felicity, Penny (short for Penelope), and Jess (the first three are ultimate players). We met another couple ultimate players, Eliza and Timmy, there. The first of the three bands was rather odd, and I just couldn’t get into their music. I really loved the second group, so much so that I bought two of their CDs. That’s twice as many CDs as I’ve bought in the last year in the US. J They’re an electric string quartet called Fourplay. Let me tell you, you’ve never really lived until you’ve heard the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” played by on electric string instruments. The last band was a French skaa band that played all kinds of bouncy music, but all the lyrics were in French.
Smith’s Roast Chicken flavor Crisps: Today’s culinary delight is a type of potato chip made right in Chatswood (that’s where LJ is living, for those of you not following his travel journal) by the Smith’s Snackfood Company Limited. Oddly enough, with the number of foods that are described as tasting like chicken, this one actually does NOT taste like chicken. I think it tastes like a weak version of an American BBQ chip. (I can’t speak to the Aussie BBQ chips yet—I’ve yet to try them.) Chips are plenty crispy enough, and are made in the style of the non-rippled Ruffles. Not a bad potato chip, but not particularly amazing, either.
I am a winner as a result of it, though. Smith’s and my “Student Service Organisation” are having a promotion where you can win a Vespa or 1000’s of instant prizes. I actually won “a FREE pack of 50g Smith’s chips”, with which I will try another flavor. To win the Vespa, I would have to SMS my entry code. Which leads to another topic…
SMS to win: Not only do the Aussies love their mobiles, they also love their SMS on their mobiles. Every promotion I’ve seen doesn’t have you register on a website, they have you SMS your entry code. I guess that the Internet hasn’t saturated Oz to the point that it has in the US. Personally I would prefer to log into a website than send a text message, since I know how to do the former but not the latter.
My first cooking fiasco Down Under: (Okay, Dale and LJ, stop laughing. I did NOT make a plastic omelet. If you don’t know the story, ask one of them to tell it—it’s funnier than when I tell it.) Tonight, I was conducting the simple process of making toast when the toaster didn’t pop up in time. I thought I had saved the situation when I put the smoking bread directly in the rubbish bin, but a minute later the smoke alarm started going off. Normally I would just pull the battery, but a) I didn’t know where it was on this one and b) Eliz. had already told me that the smoke alarm is connected into the building’s wiring, so I was worried that it would set off the sprinklers and the fire department would show up, all over a burnt piece of bread. I hit the lighted button to get it to temporarily shut off, but then it was intermittently beeping. I called the building maintenance guy, who told me it was probably just the battery at that point in time. Also, he said that the building’s alarms don’t go off unless I open the door into the hallway while the smoke is in the flat. Whew! Averted a minor crisis that time. Of course this all had to happen on a night when Eliz. was gone.
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Terrigal Towel Hat Tournament:
You can call me Studette: I love going from being a small fish in a big pond to being a medium fish in a much smaller pond. I’m speaking of the relative strengths of Ultimate in the US and Australia. Granted, a great deal of the difference comes from the stark difference between college ultimate in Boulder, CO, USA (established and high-level) and Newcastle, Australia (still in its formative years), but aside from that, Ultimate is much more entrenched and played at a higher level, on average, in the US than Oz. The Studette reference: this weekend I was listed as a Studette for the Terrigal Towel Beach Tournament. Stud/Studette was the 2nd highest of the 5 categories available.
The tourney: I had a blast at the Terrigal Towel Hat Tournament. The tourney is an annual fundraiser for the Newcastle Ultimate club. Beach ultimate is so different from regular ultimate. We played 5 on 5 on really tiny fields, probably 10 meters wide and 20 meters long, with 3-meter deep endzones, just as a guess. The softness of the sand means that it’s much harder to cut and to jump, but it’s even more spectator-friendly because of the highly increased numbers of layouts.
Thanks to my years of training on the CU women’s team, my carload was practically the first one there on Saturday morning. (Unfortunately there wasn’t a good reason for it.) The hat tourney was divided into 5 levels of player: Beginner, Rookie, Experience, Stud/Studette, Legend. I was classified as a Studette. Legend was reserved for players who had played in Worlds, while Stud/Studette was for anyone who had played in Nationals. Teams were picked, after much delay for everyone to show up, by drawing from each level of player from Tupperware containers. (Maybe it should have been a Tupperware tourney. *grin*) Most teams had a legend—if they didn’t, they had extra Stud(ettes) or no beginners. Our Legend was Karstan, a Worlds player from Denmark, who’s been in Oz for only a week. (He’s traveling around with his girlfriend and spent a great deal of time in NZ recently, but had seen and signed up for the tourney online.) Our team also consisted of Claudia, Chris (a Brit), Glenn, Terry, Timmy (the Newcastle player mentioned above), Jarrod (NZ) and me. We chose (or, more accurately, I pushed for) turquoise shirts. We tried to come up with a name involving our color, but since four of us were from overseas, we ended up naming ourselves Foreign Legion. I really enjoyed playing with the team. I’ll be honest—I didn’t have high hopes for us at the beginning, but we had a great run. Jarrod had never played before, but he was a quick study and picked up a viable forehand in only 15 minutes of throwing and teaching from the rest of us. During the games, Tim and Karstan and I ran some really nice give-and-go’s and handler cuts. Chris and Glenn also cut really well, as did Claudia. Terry was out of shape, but still made some great grabs. And Jarrod, our newbie, started laying out by the end of the tourney.
The tourney was run with 27-minute long games with 3 minutes between games. On Saturday, the fourteen teams were split into two pools of seven for pool play. From the pool play results, the teams were split into two pools, with the top eight and the bottom six. We went 4-2 in pool play, losing to Dark Blue, James’ (NU player) team, and Purple, Pottsy’s team (Pottsy is Jonathan Potts, the AFDA president and Sydney player that LJ has met). We ended up third from our pool, which put us against Orange, the team John Bates (yet another NU player) was on. (ASIDE: for the Boulder people, John Bates plays a lot like Bobby Lee—John’s another short Asian kid who can jump like mad). We lost to them by two—I think it was 8-6—to put us at 6th overall in the reseeded pools. We had a rematch with Dark Blue in quarters. We handily beat them 8-2, mainly because they had two players out with injuries, dropping them down to a single sub. (I gave James the option to forfeit before the game—in jest, of course—but he didn’t take it. J) In the semis we lost to the eventual winners, Off-white, by a score of 7-3.
Games alternated between pools, so that we played for 27 minutes and sat for 33. Since the games were so short and so close together, there was a 30-minute lunch break to give everyone an hour to eat (the break, plus the half-hour the other pool was playing), but, since our bye was around then, we ended up with two hours off. That bye gave us plenty of time to go for a swim at lunchtime in the brutally cold, seaweed-infested water.
Aussie tournament fees usually include lunch for both days and often dinner, too. I will happily pay more for a tourney if it relieves me of the effort of finding my meals. (For $60, we got a T-shirt, lunch both days, dinner Saturday night, and all the fruit we wanted. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.) Apparently one of my favorite food choices is a very Aussie thing (maybe I was switched at birth). Pork was one of the meat choices with dinner (along with roast beef) in the buffet line. At the end of the line were bowls of sour cream (for potatoes), mustard seed (for the roast beef), and applesauce. When I asked what the applesauce was for, Kendal told me it was to put on the pork. That’s something that I’ve been doing since I was five. Once again, Mom, you’re the one with the weird food tastes (just like the peas and mashed potatoes situation). J
The party Saturday night was heaps of fun. The really sweet buffet spread included roast beef and pork, carrots, peas, baked potatoes, rice salad, and greens salad. Desert was cheesecake or apple strudel—yum! Drinks were reasonably priced, with beers, ciders and Red Bears (a definite Red Bull and vodka knockoff) for 2 for $5. I managed to snag a couple free ciders from James, but I bought him one later, leaving me up one for the night. I danced forever that night. Since many of the people knew each other, the party was much like any other ultimate party I’ve been to, with the exception of the Pajama Jam. (Nothing can compare to your Pajama Jam, Evans house boys.) I did some swing dancing with John. It’s been so long since I’ve done any swing—I really miss it. Kendal and I (we were staying at the YHA together) left about 11:30 and got a long night’s sleep.
I played with my Digital Rebel quite a bit over the weekend. I got a few good shots—nothing that’ll land on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but some good ones nonetheless.
At the end of the tournament, prizes were awarded. The overall losers (Yellow) got wooden spoons, while the middle winners (not sure how that was decided—I think it’s the top of the lower six, which was Blue) got plates. I don’t understand either gift. The winners, Off-white, get their picture put up with the Terrigal Towel, a beach towel with Terrigal Beach Tourney embroidered on it and kept in a Plexiglas case, along with hand towels with the tourney logo that they get to keep.
Pictures: At some point I’ll try to make sure I put up pix of all the people I keep mentioning, so you’ll have a visual reference. Some made it in this round of photos.
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The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire: Seriously, the roof of the Shortland Union was on fire this morning. The fire started in the Thai restaurant in the Union—maybe they put too many chiles in the food and it spontaneously combusted. (I’m only making fun because no one was seriously hurt in all of it—just two people with smoke inhalation and minor burns.) I was headed over to the library when I saw the smoke billowing out of the place. I decided that it was photo-worthy (and I had forgotten my library card) so I came back to the office to get my wallet and camera. At last count there were at least 11 fire trucks and related vehicles there, along with a TV new crew and photographers.
The wonders of the Internet, or how to do your taxes in a foreign land: I’m really glad that I can access almost everything I need on the Internet. I had my roomies send me my tax stuff, like my W2 (thanks, Eva and Jen). I can fill in all the forms online and do all the payments electronically. I’m sending a big shout out to all my networking friends (you know who you are) for making this stuff work.
Advertising: Too much of Aussie advertising reminds me of the used car salesman in the US. “WE HAVE A HUGE SALE THIS WEEKEND! EVERYTHING MUST GO!! BUY WHATEVER YOU WANT, NO PAYMENTS FOR A FULL YEAR!!” They frighten me sometimes. J
We have Roadrunner, they have Dodo: In Oz, one of the “high-speed” internet providers (still dial-up, not broadband) is called Dodo. So, our high-speed internet is named for a fast desert-living bird, while theirs is named for an extinct bird. Seems fitting for a dial-up service in our broadband world.