Firewalls at a Uni?: Why on earth would they make it so difficult to get out of the Uni intranet? Just because a few misguided students decide they need gigabytes of porn (or so I would guess), I have to type my username and password every time I open a new web browser, which gets really tedious after a while. At least getting to my email is simple, and I’ve been able to get to my computer back in Boulder, too.

The nicest people in Australia so far… were the group of lesbians I met playing volleyball on Thursday night. I had gone to the beach for a swim. When I got out of the water at dusk, I saw a group of a few women and some kids playing beach volleyball. I joined their game, and since I had some athletic skill while they had very little, I was rather welcome in the group. My instincts and a few none-too-subtle clues (like the short haircuts) indicated that they might be lesbians, but my guess was confirmed when I sat talking with six or seven of them afterwards, since many were paired up and one asked about the dyke bars in Newcastle. They told me that I definitely should go to the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney (world-renowned, according to the travel books).

Americans I know in Australia: Like I said, I’m still a bit homesick, so this past weekend I went down to Sydney to visit with Penny and Scott. (For those of you who don’t know them, Penny graduated from Kristi’s group at CU. She’s doing a post-doc at the University of New South Wales for a year. Her husband, Scott, came along and is working as a personal trainer. They’ve been in Sydney since August.) I was feeling like I needed to touch base with someone familiar in the Land of Oz. I caught the train down on Saturday morning to Central Station. They live in Randwick, one of the many suburbs of Sydney. *ASIDE: Sydney proper (or the Central Business District, a.k.a. CBD) is quite small, but the whole 3 million person metro area is called Sydney. Newcastle is the same way—Newcastle itself is in the thousands or maybe tens of thousands of people, but what’s known as Newcastle, encompassing Hamilton and Wickham and Civic and any number of other towns, is 400,000 people. I’ll bet the people in all the other little suburbs are pissed.* The view from their 15^th story apartment is breath-taking. I definitely enjoyed discussing the weirdness of Australia with them. They’ve been in Oz long enough to have adjusted to it, but short enough to remember what the first few weeks were like.

Sydney pix, round 1: I’ve taken the obligatory tourist photos of the Opera House and the bridge and the harbor. Note that I did NOT photoshop myself into the pictures—I really did go to Sydney. I’ll take more pictures the next time I’m down there.

Australian slang: If I were Australian, here’s how I might relate many of the events of this weekend. “On Saturday I discovered that one of my cossies had a tear in it, but luckily I had brought an extra. That night we had fish and chips for dinner and then went to a pub, where I had a schooner of Kilkenny. Sunday morning I threw on some clothes and a pair of runners and grabbed my sunnies and we were out the door to catch the bus. We had brekkie at a café, and then I caught the train back to the Newcastle CBD. My flatmate’s birthday was Sunday, so we went out to the pub, where I had a schooner of Squire and she had a midi of Toohey’s New.” I thought that by coming to an ENGLISH-speaking country, I wouldn’t have to learn a new language, but I was wrong.

What I don’t understand is why such a laidback society would feel a need to abbreviate everything. In the American South, the easy-going pace leads to one-syllable words ending up with five syllables. Here, everything ends in “ie”: sunnies (sunglasses), trackkies (track pants), brekkie (breakfast)… my spell-check is turning the entire page red. Maybe they’re so laidback that they don’t want to waste the energy with the longer words.

More Aussie miscommunications: From Tuesday at lunch, speaking to the waitress:

American English: “Could I get some ketchup for my fries?”

Aussie English: “Could I get tomato [pronounced “toe-mah-toe”] sauce for my chips?”

My broken attempt at Aussie English: “Could I have tomato for my fries?”

Superbowl XXXVIII: Carolina Panthers vs. New England Patriots (sorry that the Panthers had to beat your Eagles, OD. I know that you would be much more excited about the Eagles being in the Big Game than I am that the Panthers are in it). Watching this live at 10 am on a Monday morning in Australia is a strange experience. I’m pretty sure that I know more about football than the Australian commentators, and certainly I know more than the typical Australian spectator (not that there are that many of them at this time on a Monday morning). The station that is carrying it here in Oz does not have commercials. Normally, I would be thrilled to watch a program without commercials, but not the Superbowl! Commercials are often better than the game! Apparently, they’re getting the “world feed”, which is sent out clean of commercials. I saw the first commercial right before halftime, for Volvo, which is sponsoring the game here in Australia. The only other commercials are for the upcoming shows on this channel, SBS. Instead, I’m being subjected to the inane ramblings of Ed Wyatt, some sports guy with a sister in Texas, and Damien Lovelock, a “musician/sports commentator”. (Now THERE’S a combination.) The commentators during the game are definitely talking for the world audience, too, since they’re busy explaining every bit of the game, like how the downs work, why a team might run instead of throwing, etc.

For the football ignorant: here’s some Ozzie explanations:

Missing the first field goal was described as “missing a penalty kick in soccer”.

When the quarterback is “knocked back, it’s called a sack”. “A sack is when you tackle a quarterback behind the line of scrimmage.”

The offense and defense play “a cat-and-mouse game” to draw people into the neutral zone.

The game has 4 fifteen-minute quarters.

The biggest New England Patriot weighs 166 kg (365 lbs.).

A “fair catch means that if he raises the arm to catch the ball, then he can’t run with it or be hit.”

“Americans like points in a game. No matter what the sport, they want to have high scores.”

After the first touchdown, “something we’ve become familiar with, the over-the-top celebration by the American athletes. At least he’s not pulling out a mobile [pronounced “moe-by-ul”] phone.”

They described the dive of the Carolina Panthers’ player into the endzone to get to 16-21 as a “rugby-style dive”.

Did they show the streaker at the start of the second half on TV in the US? They told us that “we’ll tell you what’s going on, but we won’t show you….A guy that didn’t need to be scantily clad.” The commentators said that they don’t want to encourage that sort of behavior, so they refuse to show it world-wide.

If I had to watch a Superbowl without commercials, this was the game to watch. Too bad Carolina couldn’t pull it out.

Shopping night: Most days of the week shops are open 9 am-5 pm (grocery stores MIGHT be later, but not necessarily that much), but on Thursday night all that gets thrown out the window. Thursday night is shopping night. All the stores stay open until 8:30 or 9 and have tons of sales! What fun. I’m so used to the American consumer economy, where you can buy a big-screen television at 8:30 on a Tuesday night, that I just can’t get used to the idea of having to confine my impulse purchases to a single evening.

Half-flush or full?: Toilets here have TWO buttons: one with a half-circle on it (half-flush) and one with a full-circle (full flush, or what we would think of as a flush). Nifty water-saving idea, even if it is a big strange that using the facilities takes higher brain function.

Jet lag: I have a bit more jet lag than I thought. In the last week, I’ve woken up many a night at 2:30 in the morning, or 8:30 in the morning Boulder time. Last night I woke up at 3:30 am, so I’m hoping that I’m getting more towards a reasonable hour. It’s possible that I’ll be a morning person while I’m living here, just because I won’t get past adjusting to getting up at 6:30 or 7.

Short skirts: When I say short, I mean that I’ve owned belts that have more material than the skirts that these women wear. [Neil, drool is NOT good for a keyboard.] Seriously, these skirts are much shorter than the skirts that the CU women’s ultimate team wears (any ladies remember Chels’ skirt? These are shorter than that), and we wear spandex underneath our skirts. Women here also seem to wear skirts more often than in the US. Of course, it could just be the area—it is a beach town, after all.

Work ethic in Australian universities: Or, should I say, laidback lack of a work ethic. It’s 8:15 am and I’m the only one here. Not even the Asian post-docs have made it here. The typical graduate student works a 40-hour week. I think they’re just expected to finish less to get a degree here. I know that Penny told me that at UNSW the graduate students finish a Ph.D. (with no classes included) in 3 years. Wow, three years… that would mean I would have finished over 1.5 years ago. It’s highly possible that I could be the first one in and the last to leave on a regular basis, even if I work only 8-5. I could get used to their working hours, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m expected to finish as much work here in a day as I would in Boulder.

Would you like chips with that?: You would. Even if you wouldn’t, you really have no choice. Chips are the side dish for EVERYTHING. Even in a nice restaurant that serves grilled fish at $20 a pop, the side dish is chips, or what we in America would call fries. Here in Australia fries are only the really skinny fries, like Burger King (or Hungry Jack's) would serve. (With apologies to the “Pulp Fiction fans: “What do they call a Whopper with cheese in Australia?” “A Whopper… they just sell it at Hungry Jack or Burger King.”)

Desperating seeking jelly: Grape jelly. Of all the foods in all of America that I could be missing, right now that’s the one. Standing in the grocery store last week, I found strawberry jam and apple preserves and plum conserve (whatever THAT is), but no grape jelly. Today I brought that up at lunch, and a guy who had spent some time in the States said, “Grape jelly? Oh, that purple stuff.” Yes, that purple stuff is my comfort food, when slathered on a piece of bread slapped together with another slice covered in peanut butter. I’m salivating just thinking about it. Luckily LJ is sending me some in the care package he’s mailing. Kool-aid is another American food that I’m missing, even though I don’t drink it often.

Keep sending those emails, folks. Even if I don’t reply immediately, I still appreciate that you’re thinking of me.