It had to happen sometime, I suppose, that it fully comes home to me just what a chimaera my middle-class life here is. I feel all rich and new-kitchened-up and shit, like I have lots of agency over my own life, but now my grandmother in Yorkshire is quite ill - she seems to be on the mend, but things were looking bad - and I've realized it doesn't matter how good I have it here. Australia is just too far away.
Since I'm planning the big trip to Shanghai and Europe from May to July (when I was planning on seeing her), and for a variety of other non-financial reasons, it would be very difficult to take two weeks now - realistically, that's as short as I could cut it - to see her, or go to her funeral, or help my mother and my aunt with the shitty aftermath of it all. Whereas when I was in Belgium, I could pop back to Canada for the weekend to drop off my cat at a friend's house.
This is no good, no good at all. My grandmother, who I don't think likes me very much when she remembers the basic concept of me, and who doesn't associate the basic concept of me with the me who is occasionally right in front of her, is one thing. But if this was my father? My mother? My brothers or neices or nephews? Especially since once the F-word and I breed, this is all gonna be a lot more difficult - no, fuck this shit.
I really don't want to be in Australia any more. I don't care how good the weather is and how low my taxes are. We're giving ourselves four more years here and now I'm full of errrghiness about what those four years could bring and how I might feel trapped here, on the other side of the planet from all the people I'm really into besides my old man, in a mortal world.
Visualizzazione post con etichetta Australia. Mostra tutti i post
Visualizzazione post con etichetta Australia. Mostra tutti i post
lunedì, febbraio 27, 2012
mercoledì, febbraio 22, 2012
The Australian version of excitement
We are having interesting politics in Australia these days. The system by its nature is interesting, given that it's parliamentary, proportional representation, all those good things, but in a social and media context that is downright presidential. Rupert Murdoch had to give up his Australian citizenship when he went to take over the USA but he certainly didn't give up the stupidicization of the Australian media landscape, which is far more ingrained here than it is in the US, where you have enough dissenting voices all over the spectrum for alternative viewpoints to be economically viable. Anyways, it's got to the point where people really reckon that the personality of the prime minister is dreadfully important, and that forming a coalition government is the political equivalent of being shot in the head. It makes for drama.
To make a longish story shortish, Kevin Rudd, who was serving as the foreign minister after being tossed out of the prime ministership by his own party in 2010 after pushing for a mining tax the mining companies reckoned was too high, has just quit the cabinet and seems to be mounting a challenge to the prime ministership, which is held by the woman who replaced him in 2010, Julia Gillard, who is polling abysmally. That's pretty much it.
In principle I reckon it'd be nice if his challenge worked. The transparency of the motives behind his ouster - the replacement mining tax proposed immediately after his departure, which is being implemented in July, is significanly gentler, something I don't think is at all appropriate in terms of the fiscal treatment of companies whose purely extractive business destroys the other industries operating in its vicinity and gives people long term health problems that the state will be on the hook for paying for - are a little glaring, and obviously contrarying to my pinko sensibilities.
But more dominant in terms of my feelings on the subject are my own notions of a presidential-style, republican sort of leadership, which I got infected with by watching too much American TV, no doubt. You see, when we were still living in Belgium, preparing to move here, I was actually quite keen on the personalities leading the dominant political parties - Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, and Bob Brown. They all seemed to be enormously bright and have platforms, and things. Ideas sort of people, rather than professional politicians. How nice, I thought, that we'll be living in a country with such apparently substantive politics, after the technocracy and political impossibility of Belgium. How nice that even me, as a grumpy socialist, would be able to at least have intellectual and even ideological respect for the leader of the right-wing opposition. Yay. And then, by the time we get here, Julia Gillard has taken office, cutting the mining tax to less than what, say, a supermarket company pays (a flat 30% on profits), and Tony Abbott, who won my game of "Australian or Mildly Retarded" years ago, is the leader of the opposition. I felt gypped.
All that should have warned me, I guess. Oh well. Here I am, paying taxes as absurdly low as the mining companies, so I'm not going anywhere until the house is paid off. And just watching Australians get excited about all this, and not fully understanding it myself.
To make a longish story shortish, Kevin Rudd, who was serving as the foreign minister after being tossed out of the prime ministership by his own party in 2010 after pushing for a mining tax the mining companies reckoned was too high, has just quit the cabinet and seems to be mounting a challenge to the prime ministership, which is held by the woman who replaced him in 2010, Julia Gillard, who is polling abysmally. That's pretty much it.
In principle I reckon it'd be nice if his challenge worked. The transparency of the motives behind his ouster - the replacement mining tax proposed immediately after his departure, which is being implemented in July, is significanly gentler, something I don't think is at all appropriate in terms of the fiscal treatment of companies whose purely extractive business destroys the other industries operating in its vicinity and gives people long term health problems that the state will be on the hook for paying for - are a little glaring, and obviously contrarying to my pinko sensibilities.
But more dominant in terms of my feelings on the subject are my own notions of a presidential-style, republican sort of leadership, which I got infected with by watching too much American TV, no doubt. You see, when we were still living in Belgium, preparing to move here, I was actually quite keen on the personalities leading the dominant political parties - Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, and Bob Brown. They all seemed to be enormously bright and have platforms, and things. Ideas sort of people, rather than professional politicians. How nice, I thought, that we'll be living in a country with such apparently substantive politics, after the technocracy and political impossibility of Belgium. How nice that even me, as a grumpy socialist, would be able to at least have intellectual and even ideological respect for the leader of the right-wing opposition. Yay. And then, by the time we get here, Julia Gillard has taken office, cutting the mining tax to less than what, say, a supermarket company pays (a flat 30% on profits), and Tony Abbott, who won my game of "Australian or Mildly Retarded" years ago, is the leader of the opposition. I felt gypped.
All that should have warned me, I guess. Oh well. Here I am, paying taxes as absurdly low as the mining companies, so I'm not going anywhere until the house is paid off. And just watching Australians get excited about all this, and not fully understanding it myself.
mercoledì, novembre 23, 2011
DPJ will not be writing a book on graciousness anytime soon
We have houseguests at the moment, as I believe I mentioned, and it is a little odd. Living at the end of the world, of course when people come here they have to come for awhile, even though I think generally these sorts of things should top out at a week.
It's okay. It's practice for when there are kids in the house, I suppose, since I'm not taking any time off and had been studying for the Chinese exam - just a great deal of constant fluster, dealing with moods, and not having enough sex. But I think I'm gonna tell everyone who comes here to rent a car, from now on. It'd be one thing in a city, but the L--- region really needs a car to be appreciated with. Especially now that it's started raining, and will keep raining for the next three months, and neither the F-word nor I have time to hand-hold and babysit.
Well, okay. Maybe it's not okay. Reading that last paragraph over I guess I'm getting a little frazzled. The world's leading hostess, I am not. It doesn't help that it started raining yesterday and is likely to continue for the next three months.
But fuck it. I'm going to Delhi in two weeks, and Brisbane tomorrow, and looking forward to both changes of scene. We're also thinking about Angkor Wat or Tasmania for Christmas, now the the F-word's family doesn't seem likely to come here to celebrate. My preference is Angkor Wat, since I think Australian holidays should probably be reserved for when we have children and greater imperatives to travel places people and I can understand each other, which Australians and I can do, as long as I use shorter words than usual and they actually make the effort to incorporate some lipwork into their "speech" instead of just mumbling like sleeptalking drunks.
Especially the case that I reckon we need to keep Australian vacations in reserve since there are exactly two places in Australia - Alice Springs and environs and Tasmania - that I have the least fucking interest in going to. Otherwise, I reckon we live in the prettiest part. Tasmania's pretty big, though. I reckon that'd need a good three or four visits to appreciate.
By the way, since I seem to be making it a habit to discuss other people's business on here and I feel like I'd be doing him an emotional disservice if I didn't mention it now; Squidsy is going for joint custody after all. That changes my perspective a lot. I reckon they're both still fuckups and it hardly makes things cleaner but at least he's stepping up as a parent instead of a pseudo-uncle. I reckon I'm just going to delete all this shit about other people soon because as much as it bugs me it's not my lookout. But I feel it'd be doing him a disservice, albeit anonymously, albeit unknowingly, to not point that out now.
It's okay. It's practice for when there are kids in the house, I suppose, since I'm not taking any time off and had been studying for the Chinese exam - just a great deal of constant fluster, dealing with moods, and not having enough sex. But I think I'm gonna tell everyone who comes here to rent a car, from now on. It'd be one thing in a city, but the L--- region really needs a car to be appreciated with. Especially now that it's started raining, and will keep raining for the next three months, and neither the F-word nor I have time to hand-hold and babysit.
Well, okay. Maybe it's not okay. Reading that last paragraph over I guess I'm getting a little frazzled. The world's leading hostess, I am not. It doesn't help that it started raining yesterday and is likely to continue for the next three months.
But fuck it. I'm going to Delhi in two weeks, and Brisbane tomorrow, and looking forward to both changes of scene. We're also thinking about Angkor Wat or Tasmania for Christmas, now the the F-word's family doesn't seem likely to come here to celebrate. My preference is Angkor Wat, since I think Australian holidays should probably be reserved for when we have children and greater imperatives to travel places people and I can understand each other, which Australians and I can do, as long as I use shorter words than usual and they actually make the effort to incorporate some lipwork into their "speech" instead of just mumbling like sleeptalking drunks.
Especially the case that I reckon we need to keep Australian vacations in reserve since there are exactly two places in Australia - Alice Springs and environs and Tasmania - that I have the least fucking interest in going to. Otherwise, I reckon we live in the prettiest part. Tasmania's pretty big, though. I reckon that'd need a good three or four visits to appreciate.
By the way, since I seem to be making it a habit to discuss other people's business on here and I feel like I'd be doing him an emotional disservice if I didn't mention it now; Squidsy is going for joint custody after all. That changes my perspective a lot. I reckon they're both still fuckups and it hardly makes things cleaner but at least he's stepping up as a parent instead of a pseudo-uncle. I reckon I'm just going to delete all this shit about other people soon because as much as it bugs me it's not my lookout. But I feel it'd be doing him a disservice, albeit anonymously, albeit unknowingly, to not point that out now.
domenica, novembre 06, 2011
Let the record show . . .
. . . that November 6 was the first time it occurred to me that maybe we'd stay in Australia. You know. It's the summertime here. The F-word's all employed, and I'm incredibly overpaid. The birds are singing, we go to the beach a lot, the economy's tanking and I'm figuring out how to shop so things are feeling a tiny bit cheaper, I can still visit home for a couple of months at a time, and we have some really nice friends here . . .
I'm being cautious as hell with this feeling, mostly because the same practical objections exist to us living here permanently that were already in place before I felt this feeling, which by-the-by is a feeling I usually associate with my first month in a new place, not my eleventh, so it's weird. The main one is I can only be happy here while I'm incredibly overpaid and I don't know how long that will be the case. If I can stay incredibly overpaid here for the next five years, then we can start thinking about staying. If I don't, we have to leave. Simple as that. I don't think the odds are good of me staying incredibly overpaid for five years. Call me a pessimist. I don't even know if I'm going to keep feeling overpaid once we make babies.
Also, I suspect - and this is a case either of shocking paranoia or shocking egoism or both, and I'm glad I have a blog to voice it on - I suspect that our friends here, (besides Squidsy, all other couples), are on a charm offensive to get me to like it more here. Ever since I got back from Canada (during which time, the F-word told me, he'd let the cat out of the bag about our frustrations and our plans to move back to Europe eventually), they've been so damn nice. The men have been more courtly, even gently flirtatious, and the women have been so helpful and decent with kombucha starters and aloe plants and advice about reusable menstrual pads.
I understand they all have their own frustrations with the place, and many of them (they are all, by-the-by, either both non-Australians or melanges like us) have their own plans to leave eventually, if only for a few years. But I suspect the F-word in particular is a welcome ingredient in all these barbeques, etc., that we're having, and as another non-Australian who can talk about things besides reality television I'm welcome too, and that there aren't so very many of us, and now that they've got us they don't want us to leave again. Actually, I don't have a problem with that at all. Personally I'd be heartbroken if any of them left before I did. Even when Squidsy's wife did a runner, even though we didn't have much in common besides enjoying good food and abusing Australia, I was sad for days.
Speaking of Squidsy's wife and us not having much in common, I'd lent her a copy of La Cousine Bette before she left which she couldn't read because of the prose being too dense. Which reminds me to tell you that La Cousine Bette is fucking good read. Holy shit. What an awesome book. Balzac must have had some serious problems with the women in his life because they're all repellent or pitiable. There are one or two men in the book who aren't - maybe even just one - so I guess he had almost as many problems with the men. Holy shit. Such a brutal narrator. Like an entomologist with particularly good prose watching species of the most disgusting kind of insect. I bet he was a fucking joy to live with.
I'm being cautious as hell with this feeling, mostly because the same practical objections exist to us living here permanently that were already in place before I felt this feeling, which by-the-by is a feeling I usually associate with my first month in a new place, not my eleventh, so it's weird. The main one is I can only be happy here while I'm incredibly overpaid and I don't know how long that will be the case. If I can stay incredibly overpaid here for the next five years, then we can start thinking about staying. If I don't, we have to leave. Simple as that. I don't think the odds are good of me staying incredibly overpaid for five years. Call me a pessimist. I don't even know if I'm going to keep feeling overpaid once we make babies.
Also, I suspect - and this is a case either of shocking paranoia or shocking egoism or both, and I'm glad I have a blog to voice it on - I suspect that our friends here, (besides Squidsy, all other couples), are on a charm offensive to get me to like it more here. Ever since I got back from Canada (during which time, the F-word told me, he'd let the cat out of the bag about our frustrations and our plans to move back to Europe eventually), they've been so damn nice. The men have been more courtly, even gently flirtatious, and the women have been so helpful and decent with kombucha starters and aloe plants and advice about reusable menstrual pads.
I understand they all have their own frustrations with the place, and many of them (they are all, by-the-by, either both non-Australians or melanges like us) have their own plans to leave eventually, if only for a few years. But I suspect the F-word in particular is a welcome ingredient in all these barbeques, etc., that we're having, and as another non-Australian who can talk about things besides reality television I'm welcome too, and that there aren't so very many of us, and now that they've got us they don't want us to leave again. Actually, I don't have a problem with that at all. Personally I'd be heartbroken if any of them left before I did. Even when Squidsy's wife did a runner, even though we didn't have much in common besides enjoying good food and abusing Australia, I was sad for days.
Speaking of Squidsy's wife and us not having much in common, I'd lent her a copy of La Cousine Bette before she left which she couldn't read because of the prose being too dense. Which reminds me to tell you that La Cousine Bette is fucking good read. Holy shit. What an awesome book. Balzac must have had some serious problems with the women in his life because they're all repellent or pitiable. There are one or two men in the book who aren't - maybe even just one - so I guess he had almost as many problems with the men. Holy shit. Such a brutal narrator. Like an entomologist with particularly good prose watching species of the most disgusting kind of insect. I bet he was a fucking joy to live with.
giovedì, ottobre 20, 2011
The toilet that is Brussels
Or black hole? I don't know. I do know 90% of the jobs advertised in my field are there. I guess the cheap cost of living - cheapest west of Germany, until you get into places like Portugal and Spain where they don't have enough trains - and the tax regime for expatriate workers has helped them sew it up. There are the odd jobs advertised in my field in warmer places. I saw one in Barcelona the other day and almost drew tears from myself, resisiting applying. The truth is I'm not looking for a job. I have a really splendid job. I mean, I'd be hard-pressed to think of how this job I have could be improved. I don't even really want a raise. And I'm going to India soon, for heaven's sake. It's an awesome job. It's just . . . Australia and I are really not bonding.
Malcontent is an ugly word, but it's me. I have a lot of ingredients for happiness here - splendid man, splendid job, some friends - more friends than a malcontent like me deserves, to be frank - nice house, big garden. And I'm not unhappy. I have been this last week I've been sick, because being sick here feels a bit entombing, especially coming off a two-month jag of being with my family, who cluster around and fill me full of pills and concern when I'm sick. Now I'm not unhappy. But I'm malcontented.
I think if my 30s have something to teach me - and I reckon they have a shitload to teach me - one of the things will be how to live well as a malcontent. A year ago today, when I was in Italy with the F-word and we were preparing to move here, I thought moving here would teach me to be contented; that when I had a huge paycheque, a nice house, fresh air and my best man by my side I'd stop being such a bloody little strop. Well, no. Now I'm accepting it's not outside factors that are going to content me. Being a bloody little strop is just who I am and I could be ensconsed in a fucking 50 foot statue made of gold and I'd still be a bloody little strop about it.
I think I'm leaning towards returning to Europe for a couple of reasons, and these days the dominant one is certainly that Australia is too far away from my family. Europe's far too, yes I understand that, and I understand that with the life I've built for myself here I'm probably going to end up seeing more of my family than I ever did in Europe. But I can't tell you how unsettling it is to know I can't just pop home for the weekend if there's an emergency. Not because it's financially impractical, not because of the jet lag (though there's no arguing with that) - but I literally can't. The journey home is a minimum of 24 hours, if everything runs swimmingly, as it so rarely does. 24 hours is radically different from 8. My parents are getting old. The prospect of those extra 16 hours and what could happen in them just makes me want to vomit.
So there's that. There's also - okay. I haven't let go of the importance of externals. There's also just missing the piss out of Europe. During the F-word's and my time in Rome I think we were both already realizing that we'd confounded our utter impatience with Belgium with an utter impatience with Europe. Rome is dirty and uncomfortable and inconvenient like Belgium (though actually in those days I'd say it was rather cleaner, which surprised us) but people were so different, and rather warm. I don't want to move to Rome - the F-word would in a heartbeat but I won't raise Italian children - but I guess it was lovely and different enough that it was a reminder that getting sick of Europe is pretty much getting sick of life. It's all so strange and different.
Anyways. Blah blah blah. I have a lot to think about these days. And it's all thinking. We're not going anywhere for years. Except I'm going to India in December, that's pretty awesome, and we're planning trips to Cambodia and Bali soon. Yay! Why am I such a bloody little strop when life is so exciting?
Malcontent is an ugly word, but it's me. I have a lot of ingredients for happiness here - splendid man, splendid job, some friends - more friends than a malcontent like me deserves, to be frank - nice house, big garden. And I'm not unhappy. I have been this last week I've been sick, because being sick here feels a bit entombing, especially coming off a two-month jag of being with my family, who cluster around and fill me full of pills and concern when I'm sick. Now I'm not unhappy. But I'm malcontented.
I think if my 30s have something to teach me - and I reckon they have a shitload to teach me - one of the things will be how to live well as a malcontent. A year ago today, when I was in Italy with the F-word and we were preparing to move here, I thought moving here would teach me to be contented; that when I had a huge paycheque, a nice house, fresh air and my best man by my side I'd stop being such a bloody little strop. Well, no. Now I'm accepting it's not outside factors that are going to content me. Being a bloody little strop is just who I am and I could be ensconsed in a fucking 50 foot statue made of gold and I'd still be a bloody little strop about it.
I think I'm leaning towards returning to Europe for a couple of reasons, and these days the dominant one is certainly that Australia is too far away from my family. Europe's far too, yes I understand that, and I understand that with the life I've built for myself here I'm probably going to end up seeing more of my family than I ever did in Europe. But I can't tell you how unsettling it is to know I can't just pop home for the weekend if there's an emergency. Not because it's financially impractical, not because of the jet lag (though there's no arguing with that) - but I literally can't. The journey home is a minimum of 24 hours, if everything runs swimmingly, as it so rarely does. 24 hours is radically different from 8. My parents are getting old. The prospect of those extra 16 hours and what could happen in them just makes me want to vomit.
So there's that. There's also - okay. I haven't let go of the importance of externals. There's also just missing the piss out of Europe. During the F-word's and my time in Rome I think we were both already realizing that we'd confounded our utter impatience with Belgium with an utter impatience with Europe. Rome is dirty and uncomfortable and inconvenient like Belgium (though actually in those days I'd say it was rather cleaner, which surprised us) but people were so different, and rather warm. I don't want to move to Rome - the F-word would in a heartbeat but I won't raise Italian children - but I guess it was lovely and different enough that it was a reminder that getting sick of Europe is pretty much getting sick of life. It's all so strange and different.
Anyways. Blah blah blah. I have a lot to think about these days. And it's all thinking. We're not going anywhere for years. Except I'm going to India in December, that's pretty awesome, and we're planning trips to Cambodia and Bali soon. Yay! Why am I such a bloody little strop when life is so exciting?
mercoledì, settembre 21, 2011
Nobody to hide my credit cards
I have bought so many goodies in Canada and I really need to stop. This is getting ridiculous. I mean, I've mostly kept to the list, but I've been awfully enthusiastic about it, and I'm a little concerned that on going back to Australia I'm going to find a host of moral excuses to persist in this conspicuous consumption. Luckily there's little enough worth buying in rural Australia (besides houses, but oh yeah, we've already done that - Jeebus) but that's what the fucking internet is for, I suppose.
Money is on my mind not only because of the wads of it I've been spending but also because I've danced over my budget line because of an unexpected insurance charge and will nearly miss saving the normal amount of money this month. This counts as a budget disaster for me - not having cushioning. Sometimes I wonder where people manage to blow all their money and then I remember that enjoying drugs more than alcohol all my adult life, and spending years of it too fat to enjoy recreational shopping, has saved me a world of financial pain. And then I remember I'm overpaid. Well, not overpaid so much as undertaxed.
I wonder how long Australians will get by getting taxed so fucking little. Because they'll howl like apes if anybody touches their benefits and howl like louder, more annoying apes if they start having to shoulder developed-world tax burdens. I suppose the Australian political mainstream's multi-partisan determination to stop the national economy from being developed might serve some sort of purpose in that sense. Economically, that place is Saudi Arabia without the ban on usury and the cheap petrol.
Money is on my mind not only because of the wads of it I've been spending but also because I've danced over my budget line because of an unexpected insurance charge and will nearly miss saving the normal amount of money this month. This counts as a budget disaster for me - not having cushioning. Sometimes I wonder where people manage to blow all their money and then I remember that enjoying drugs more than alcohol all my adult life, and spending years of it too fat to enjoy recreational shopping, has saved me a world of financial pain. And then I remember I'm overpaid. Well, not overpaid so much as undertaxed.
I wonder how long Australians will get by getting taxed so fucking little. Because they'll howl like apes if anybody touches their benefits and howl like louder, more annoying apes if they start having to shoulder developed-world tax burdens. I suppose the Australian political mainstream's multi-partisan determination to stop the national economy from being developed might serve some sort of purpose in that sense. Economically, that place is Saudi Arabia without the ban on usury and the cheap petrol.
martedì, luglio 26, 2011
Awwwww, yeaaahhhhhh
Some Australians do this thing, and I'm gonna call it a cute thing, because I can't be indifferent to it and I'm already whining enough about other things Australians do . . . it's happened in my earshot a lot since I got here but this morning I'm writing about it while it's on my mind. There's a centre a bit downhill from here which I'm pretty sure is rehabby - lots of recovering-junkie looking people. I run past it most of the days I go for a run, which is most days, and it always gives me a little lift, because whether or not they stay clean for a long time, I really love to see people trying to get clean, at least - choosing a painful fight back against a disease.
I've heard some objections raised by people who have lost loved ones to cancer about using fighting metaphors - "lost/won her battle with cancer, fighting cancer," etc, and I can understand that's objectionable - like some sort of value judgement is made of a person who dies of the disease, when the outcomes of cancer treatment are determined so much more by national health care systems that detect it early and treat it agressively, rather than the sufferer "fighting". But drug addiction, due to its psychological dimension, is that bit different. Obviously your outcomes are going to be better if you provide better access to rehab programmes and better programmes and all the rest of it - but it's that choice, not just at the beginning but for the rest of their lives, the choice that recovering addicts made that is really inspirational, and the letting-go of the choice of the ones who can't take themselves out of that life which is so deadly sad.
Anyhoo. None of that is to the point. A guy standing by the door of the centre smoking said hello as I jogged slowly past. I said hello, and he asked how I was, and I told him I was fine, and then asked how he was. The answer, in a very nasal voice with a high and rising intonation, was "awwwww, yeaaahhhhhh." I felt like telling him it wasn't a yes or no question, but even at the slow, slow pace I jog, I was already a good 30 meters away. So I just enjoyed it. They say it all the time, but for some reason today it stuck on my mind.
I've been an absent blogger. It's not just the running, which continues with the standard hour a day except when I set out to get an hour of some other aerobic excercise like kayaking or bushwalking - all that fitness has pretty much replaced my blogging time (and made my ass so much firmer! It's a fucking miracle). It's also the fucking Chinese. Fuck, is it hard. Except it's not that it's hard exactly - the grammar and all that sort of thing are way easier than in European languages. It's just weird. Mandarin words tend to be monosyllabic (or else compounds of monosyllabic words), and there are a very small number of syllables you can make. I don't know how many, but you can recite them all in about four hours, and that includes the four tones you can use with them, which means you can orally recite every "word" in Mandarin in just four hours.
So that means the language is absolutely rotten with homophones to the degree that the context doesn't always make it clear what you mean when you speak. So it's necessary to know the characters too, since those are far more unique than the sounds. And of course, that's hard. It has its advantages and disadvantages for a language learner; the main disadvantage is the big mental block that needs getting over of how a language could be this fucking weird. My guess is other major Asian languages aren't quite this weird, since Korean and to a lesser extent Japanese can make use of phonetic writing, and since Cantonese has nine tones instead of four, so there's probably about a kabillion more syllables you can say than in Mandarin. But probably all that means is that they're a whole different kind of weird.
One thing I'll tell ya . . . when I'm done with the Mandarin courses that are available to me here, and after I spend a bit of time somewhere in China or Taiwan to try to consolidate things a bit, I'm learning fucking German or Dutch or Spanish or something I already half understand. I'm still having fun with the Chinese, but damn. Damn. DAMN. It's hard.
I've heard some objections raised by people who have lost loved ones to cancer about using fighting metaphors - "lost/won her battle with cancer, fighting cancer," etc, and I can understand that's objectionable - like some sort of value judgement is made of a person who dies of the disease, when the outcomes of cancer treatment are determined so much more by national health care systems that detect it early and treat it agressively, rather than the sufferer "fighting". But drug addiction, due to its psychological dimension, is that bit different. Obviously your outcomes are going to be better if you provide better access to rehab programmes and better programmes and all the rest of it - but it's that choice, not just at the beginning but for the rest of their lives, the choice that recovering addicts made that is really inspirational, and the letting-go of the choice of the ones who can't take themselves out of that life which is so deadly sad.
Anyhoo. None of that is to the point. A guy standing by the door of the centre smoking said hello as I jogged slowly past. I said hello, and he asked how I was, and I told him I was fine, and then asked how he was. The answer, in a very nasal voice with a high and rising intonation, was "awwwww, yeaaahhhhhh." I felt like telling him it wasn't a yes or no question, but even at the slow, slow pace I jog, I was already a good 30 meters away. So I just enjoyed it. They say it all the time, but for some reason today it stuck on my mind.
I've been an absent blogger. It's not just the running, which continues with the standard hour a day except when I set out to get an hour of some other aerobic excercise like kayaking or bushwalking - all that fitness has pretty much replaced my blogging time (and made my ass so much firmer! It's a fucking miracle). It's also the fucking Chinese. Fuck, is it hard. Except it's not that it's hard exactly - the grammar and all that sort of thing are way easier than in European languages. It's just weird. Mandarin words tend to be monosyllabic (or else compounds of monosyllabic words), and there are a very small number of syllables you can make. I don't know how many, but you can recite them all in about four hours, and that includes the four tones you can use with them, which means you can orally recite every "word" in Mandarin in just four hours.
So that means the language is absolutely rotten with homophones to the degree that the context doesn't always make it clear what you mean when you speak. So it's necessary to know the characters too, since those are far more unique than the sounds. And of course, that's hard. It has its advantages and disadvantages for a language learner; the main disadvantage is the big mental block that needs getting over of how a language could be this fucking weird. My guess is other major Asian languages aren't quite this weird, since Korean and to a lesser extent Japanese can make use of phonetic writing, and since Cantonese has nine tones instead of four, so there's probably about a kabillion more syllables you can say than in Mandarin. But probably all that means is that they're a whole different kind of weird.
One thing I'll tell ya . . . when I'm done with the Mandarin courses that are available to me here, and after I spend a bit of time somewhere in China or Taiwan to try to consolidate things a bit, I'm learning fucking German or Dutch or Spanish or something I already half understand. I'm still having fun with the Chinese, but damn. Damn. DAMN. It's hard.
giovedì, marzo 10, 2011
A house may be a home
So we made some offers and the vendor made some offers and we met, well, not halfway, but lower than I'd dared hope. And if all goes well over the next month or so a big lovely fucking house on a massive fucking lovely lot that is out of the flood zone next to a rainforest reserve will be ours. We have hit a big dip in the local real estate market, thankfully. This house is selling to us about $60,000 below its initial asking price, at a price that much smaller, shittier houses in the local floodplain were selling at this time last year. In fact, we're paying around the asking price of the shitty rathole floodplain rental that we're renting now, which is on the market, which is another reason to move.
But present conditions aside - and I do have the feeling what happened to the rest of the world a couple of years ago is finally happening to Australia now - I think there are one or two things that actually attracted us to the house that probably repelled other potential vendors. First, that it's right next to a massive flying fox colony (which means netting over the fruit trees and no parking without cover since their shit eats paint off cars). I'm quite fond of flying foxes. They are fucking enormous, and they squawk like birds, and they're fucking cute.
Second, it's an old house. We're getting all the typical inspectors in of course, but during our visits we brought around an architect friend of ours to tip us off to any serious shit, and it's in pretty good shape. I think everything charming about the house is in its age, frankly; high-quality timber in the hardwood floors, handsome old windows, a decent squat fireplace, understated moldings on the ceilings - and none of it is fashionable here anymore. It's all tiles and french doors here now. People just aren't into the old here.
One of the drawbacks of this being an old house is that the toilet is all fucked up - looks like the council put it in in the 1950's just out back of the house, far away from the bedrooms and the washroom. That probably repelled a lot of buyers, certainly of the older variety. Mummy La Spliffe has said she won't come visit until we get in a new bog close to the guest room so do that we shall, stat.
But present conditions aside - and I do have the feeling what happened to the rest of the world a couple of years ago is finally happening to Australia now - I think there are one or two things that actually attracted us to the house that probably repelled other potential vendors. First, that it's right next to a massive flying fox colony (which means netting over the fruit trees and no parking without cover since their shit eats paint off cars). I'm quite fond of flying foxes. They are fucking enormous, and they squawk like birds, and they're fucking cute.
Second, it's an old house. We're getting all the typical inspectors in of course, but during our visits we brought around an architect friend of ours to tip us off to any serious shit, and it's in pretty good shape. I think everything charming about the house is in its age, frankly; high-quality timber in the hardwood floors, handsome old windows, a decent squat fireplace, understated moldings on the ceilings - and none of it is fashionable here anymore. It's all tiles and french doors here now. People just aren't into the old here.
One of the drawbacks of this being an old house is that the toilet is all fucked up - looks like the council put it in in the 1950's just out back of the house, far away from the bedrooms and the washroom. That probably repelled a lot of buyers, certainly of the older variety. Mummy La Spliffe has said she won't come visit until we get in a new bog close to the guest room so do that we shall, stat.
lunedì, febbraio 28, 2011
Here comes the great big fuck-off sun, little darling
I fucking hate sunscreen. If there's anything that so many people tell you to put on your skin that I don't fucking want to put on my skin - well, actually, perfume probably comes first. You can't switch on the damn television without seeing some shit about how your body smells fucking repellent and your personal Stygian stenches need to be masked with sperm whale turd and other expensive and disgusting chemical brews, so certainly more people are telling me to perfume myself than sunscreen myself, and I'm so viciously morally opposed to people smelling like anything except clean, and possibly like patchouli, which is horny, or other nice things like that, that I can safely say I fucking hate perfume more than I hate sunscreen.
That notwithstanding, I fucking hate sunscreen, which is a problematic thing to hate in Australia. And unlike perfume, which I can ignore except when called upon to be in an enclosed space with another human being who has some sort of complex about smelling like a human being (much less frequent now that I work at home), I can't ignore sunscreen, because I'm not a fucking idiot. Sunscreen needs to be worn here. The sun is, I think, alone in its ability to burn the shit out of you while feeling really good, and I got one fucking doozy of a burn a few weeks after arriving here on a clear, cool day in Victoria when I was enjoying wearing a wife-beater and wandering around bare-armed so much I didn't even notice I was lobstering up.
Anyhoo, the threat of having to wear sunscreen when I run is basically the only thing that has a chance of succeeding at making me move my ass out of the door and getting in my run before 8 am, since magically the Australian sun is not supposed to be harmful before 8 am. Running in sunscreen is icky. I really think it stops me from sweating properly. Also if I run too late - like I did today - I have to wear a hat, and then my head gets hot. I hate having a hot head. I have a visor somewhere, but it's gone missing, and it's one of those situations . . . basically I'm the annoying person in my relationship with the F-word when it comes to losing things, and I can't bring myself to ask him if he's seen it, because he hates all visors with a fucking passion, and when I bought mine tried to make me promise I'd never wear it in front of him, which I did, just to be a bitch, so I can't help but wonder if he's hidden it on purpose, though that would be an absurdity, right?
We've been watching too much Curb Your Enthusiasm, in case you couldn't tell.
That notwithstanding, I fucking hate sunscreen, which is a problematic thing to hate in Australia. And unlike perfume, which I can ignore except when called upon to be in an enclosed space with another human being who has some sort of complex about smelling like a human being (much less frequent now that I work at home), I can't ignore sunscreen, because I'm not a fucking idiot. Sunscreen needs to be worn here. The sun is, I think, alone in its ability to burn the shit out of you while feeling really good, and I got one fucking doozy of a burn a few weeks after arriving here on a clear, cool day in Victoria when I was enjoying wearing a wife-beater and wandering around bare-armed so much I didn't even notice I was lobstering up.
Anyhoo, the threat of having to wear sunscreen when I run is basically the only thing that has a chance of succeeding at making me move my ass out of the door and getting in my run before 8 am, since magically the Australian sun is not supposed to be harmful before 8 am. Running in sunscreen is icky. I really think it stops me from sweating properly. Also if I run too late - like I did today - I have to wear a hat, and then my head gets hot. I hate having a hot head. I have a visor somewhere, but it's gone missing, and it's one of those situations . . . basically I'm the annoying person in my relationship with the F-word when it comes to losing things, and I can't bring myself to ask him if he's seen it, because he hates all visors with a fucking passion, and when I bought mine tried to make me promise I'd never wear it in front of him, which I did, just to be a bitch, so I can't help but wonder if he's hidden it on purpose, though that would be an absurdity, right?
We've been watching too much Curb Your Enthusiasm, in case you couldn't tell.
mercoledì, febbraio 02, 2011
Free ballin'
Anyways, to carry on from yesterday's rant: Australia has a well-known problem with invasive species, and for a moment let's forget the dongo question and simply say that this problem includes legions of feral cats and dogs. When you've got few extant large native predators (even the local snakes aren't the kind you'd use as a metaphor for a good man's tackle; the amethystine python, the longest here, can stretch up to almost nine metres but it's not what you'd call girthy), this means you've got two new apex predators and that's serious. Feral cats and dogs are destructive, that's unarguable.
What is shocking and so very fucking Australian about the situation is that this destructive situation has resulted in a number of extreme, expensive, and morally questionable measures - dogless and catless communities or zones, catch-and-kill ranger policies, poisoning, trapping, etc. - but it has not resulted in any meaningful control of the pet breeding and sales industry, or even of a fuckin' subsidized desexing programme.
That's the 1) point - the first thing of the two I meant to list yesterday which has made it less likely we'll stay here. There is a real moral black hole in Australia, which allows what are essentially humanitarian and ethical issues - how do we deal with the impact of having released two new apex predators into the ecosystem? - to be dismissed by tough-sounding, politically appealing methods - we'll kill'em to keep the Aussie bush Aussie - when there is a less tough, cheaper, less bullshitty, way to deal with it that you'd need to do to let the first method be at all effective anyways - subsidize the desexing of companion animals so that the inevitable new rounds of abandonments don't simply fill up the vaccuum left by the catch-and-kill programmes.
You also see this sort of disgusting politicization of a humanitarian issue here very blatantly and disturbingly in all the party posturing over refugee claimants, but I'm angry enough over the strays today, so I won't get into it. Anyways I'm trying to make my peace with this first issue because I understand it's hardly unique to Australia.
Anyways, it seems that this lack of a subsidized desexing programme is due to a quite conscious effort to discourage one on the part of the AVA - see thier own statement about it. The lady at the shelter ascribed this to vets' desires to make sure their income streams and profit margins stay broad and it's hard for me to see that she's wrong. With all the assurance of an insane retard trying to fill in an oasis with gold bricks while he doesn't have enough money to irrigate his nearby farm, they claim with bare-faced cheek, in a country that carries out catch-and-kill programmes, that subsidized desexing programmes are too expensive and haven't worked anywhere they've been tried.
And no doubt they are believed, because of this really, REALLY Australian trait, which is quite unique, and the second thing that is making it less likely for us to live here permanently, and which I'll go on about tomorrow, having ranted all over the place once more today.
What is shocking and so very fucking Australian about the situation is that this destructive situation has resulted in a number of extreme, expensive, and morally questionable measures - dogless and catless communities or zones, catch-and-kill ranger policies, poisoning, trapping, etc. - but it has not resulted in any meaningful control of the pet breeding and sales industry, or even of a fuckin' subsidized desexing programme.
That's the 1) point - the first thing of the two I meant to list yesterday which has made it less likely we'll stay here. There is a real moral black hole in Australia, which allows what are essentially humanitarian and ethical issues - how do we deal with the impact of having released two new apex predators into the ecosystem? - to be dismissed by tough-sounding, politically appealing methods - we'll kill'em to keep the Aussie bush Aussie - when there is a less tough, cheaper, less bullshitty, way to deal with it that you'd need to do to let the first method be at all effective anyways - subsidize the desexing of companion animals so that the inevitable new rounds of abandonments don't simply fill up the vaccuum left by the catch-and-kill programmes.
You also see this sort of disgusting politicization of a humanitarian issue here very blatantly and disturbingly in all the party posturing over refugee claimants, but I'm angry enough over the strays today, so I won't get into it. Anyways I'm trying to make my peace with this first issue because I understand it's hardly unique to Australia.
Anyways, it seems that this lack of a subsidized desexing programme is due to a quite conscious effort to discourage one on the part of the AVA - see thier own statement about it. The lady at the shelter ascribed this to vets' desires to make sure their income streams and profit margins stay broad and it's hard for me to see that she's wrong. With all the assurance of an insane retard trying to fill in an oasis with gold bricks while he doesn't have enough money to irrigate his nearby farm, they claim with bare-faced cheek, in a country that carries out catch-and-kill programmes, that subsidized desexing programmes are too expensive and haven't worked anywhere they've been tried.
And no doubt they are believed, because of this really, REALLY Australian trait, which is quite unique, and the second thing that is making it less likely for us to live here permanently, and which I'll go on about tomorrow, having ranted all over the place once more today.
martedì, febbraio 01, 2011
Positive Cattitude
We went for an interview at the local animal shelter this morning to see about fostering cats, which we will do, both to help deal with our rat problem and to be responsible citizens and, like Dot in Raising Arizona, so that I got something small enough to cuddle. The lady who worked there was one of the more passionate charity workers I've ever met and after five minutes I realized why: she's British.
Now I make my fun of the Inselaffen, and out of all of the Germanic countries Affen Insel is far and away the most banana-republicky. But one thing I will say for them: they are bloody marvellous with animals. I understand the notoriety attached to fox hunting, which is indeed repellent, but it's important to bear in mind that fox hunters and their advocates represent a tiny minority of the population, most of whose majority doesn't even like foxes much and yet still considers the practice fuckin' barbaric, to the point of having it criminalized.
Australia, however . . . well. There are lots of parallels between Australian culture and Inselaffen culture, probably far far more than your typical Australian would dream of admitting or even imagining, but a touching and laudable concern for animal welfare is not one of them. For me there are two fiscal/legal situations that illustrate this to a degree so disturbing and repellent that I understand I'm now less likely to stay in this country than I was before discovering them.
1). Australia, as is well-known, is rotten with invasive animals, including feral cats and dogs. It is a real ecological problem. My favourite associated ecological problem, though my personal opinion is that it's more of a thing than a problem, are all of the ethical and eugenetic issues swirling around dingos, in a way they don't swirl around canines in Canada.
Briefly, if a dog in the wilds of Canada runs into a wolf or coyote, there is the biological possibility of reproduction, as genetically speaking dogs, coyotes, and wolves are all a single canine species capable of making fertile babies. However, what is much more likely is that the dog will be eaten, and the odds of sexual congress are poor for that reason. And also poor because lady wolves and coyotes in our wintercentric land only hit oestrus seasonally, which cuts down on the scope for lovin' somewhat (though my understanding is that usually these sorts of interbreeds are boy wolves/coyotes/dingos doing it with a bitch - sort of a much more S&Mish version of Lady and the Tramp).
Here in Australia, however, if a feral dog and a dingo meet up, generally the feral dog will get eaten, but there is far more scope than there is with coyotes and wolves for sparks to fly and babies to get made, especially since both dogs and dingos hit oestrus many times over the year. After all dingos, in the final analysis, amount to multi-generational ferals; they were brought to the continent as domestics, and had no one to fuck but each other, that is, other feral domestics.
The issue here, though, is that dingos are a discrete group, with cultural meanings to the aboriginal people, and recognized as fundamentally separate from other feral domestic dogs even though every indication is that they were imported to Australia by aboriginal people as domestic dogs. So there is a broad feeling that when a dingo fucks a domestic dog and they make dongo or whatever babies, this is some sort of pollution of the dingo gene pool going on. This is a particularly Australian problem as in the rare instances where a coyote or a wolf fucks a dog and makes babies with it in Canada, there's little idea of some sort of pollution of the coyote or wolf gene pool, and several dog breeds popular in Canada are very, very wolfy in their provenance; my understanding is that hybridizing wolves and dogs there for commercial purposes is illegal but in those instances where a bitch gets herself fucked instead of eaten by a wolf her babies are in hot demand . . .
Oh, how I've blathered and haven't even yet got beyond the background exposition of the first point, which is actually about subsidizing desexing. More bitching about Australia tomorrow.
Now I make my fun of the Inselaffen, and out of all of the Germanic countries Affen Insel is far and away the most banana-republicky. But one thing I will say for them: they are bloody marvellous with animals. I understand the notoriety attached to fox hunting, which is indeed repellent, but it's important to bear in mind that fox hunters and their advocates represent a tiny minority of the population, most of whose majority doesn't even like foxes much and yet still considers the practice fuckin' barbaric, to the point of having it criminalized.
Australia, however . . . well. There are lots of parallels between Australian culture and Inselaffen culture, probably far far more than your typical Australian would dream of admitting or even imagining, but a touching and laudable concern for animal welfare is not one of them. For me there are two fiscal/legal situations that illustrate this to a degree so disturbing and repellent that I understand I'm now less likely to stay in this country than I was before discovering them.
1). Australia, as is well-known, is rotten with invasive animals, including feral cats and dogs. It is a real ecological problem. My favourite associated ecological problem, though my personal opinion is that it's more of a thing than a problem, are all of the ethical and eugenetic issues swirling around dingos, in a way they don't swirl around canines in Canada.
Briefly, if a dog in the wilds of Canada runs into a wolf or coyote, there is the biological possibility of reproduction, as genetically speaking dogs, coyotes, and wolves are all a single canine species capable of making fertile babies. However, what is much more likely is that the dog will be eaten, and the odds of sexual congress are poor for that reason. And also poor because lady wolves and coyotes in our wintercentric land only hit oestrus seasonally, which cuts down on the scope for lovin' somewhat (though my understanding is that usually these sorts of interbreeds are boy wolves/coyotes/dingos doing it with a bitch - sort of a much more S&Mish version of Lady and the Tramp).
Here in Australia, however, if a feral dog and a dingo meet up, generally the feral dog will get eaten, but there is far more scope than there is with coyotes and wolves for sparks to fly and babies to get made, especially since both dogs and dingos hit oestrus many times over the year. After all dingos, in the final analysis, amount to multi-generational ferals; they were brought to the continent as domestics, and had no one to fuck but each other, that is, other feral domestics.
The issue here, though, is that dingos are a discrete group, with cultural meanings to the aboriginal people, and recognized as fundamentally separate from other feral domestic dogs even though every indication is that they were imported to Australia by aboriginal people as domestic dogs. So there is a broad feeling that when a dingo fucks a domestic dog and they make dongo or whatever babies, this is some sort of pollution of the dingo gene pool going on. This is a particularly Australian problem as in the rare instances where a coyote or a wolf fucks a dog and makes babies with it in Canada, there's little idea of some sort of pollution of the coyote or wolf gene pool, and several dog breeds popular in Canada are very, very wolfy in their provenance; my understanding is that hybridizing wolves and dogs there for commercial purposes is illegal but in those instances where a bitch gets herself fucked instead of eaten by a wolf her babies are in hot demand . . .
Oh, how I've blathered and haven't even yet got beyond the background exposition of the first point, which is actually about subsidizing desexing. More bitching about Australia tomorrow.
mercoledì, gennaio 26, 2011
The legends were true
Yesterday was Australia Day, which we celebrated in Byron Bay, which is an interesting place. I imagine it's a lot like Scarborough would have been in the 1950's, before cheap package holidays let the Inselaffen escape their grim and moldy land on their holidays, except with better drugs and more burnouts, and better music, and much more expensive, of course. Actually it's probably nothing like Scarborough was in the 1950's but I think it's no coincidence that here in Northern Rivers I'm homesick for just about everywhere I've ever thought of as home except for North Yorkshire. Topographically it is very evocative of Yorkshire here, but it's not ruined and economically bereft, and it's about 20 degrees warmer. And people's accents are a million times less awesome.
Anyways, we stuck to the beach and one or two places off the main tourist strips and went walking around, and heard some flamenco, and it was lovely, and I saw my first wild sea turtles, stingrays, and dolphins. The last especially were a revelation, as I've always suspected dolphins were actually imaginary, since all of my faith in their existence was based on hearsay. The ones we saw were a little reddish, which was a nice touch, and looked like they were having an awesome time. This was also the first time I really went into the ocean. It's the same ocean I sort of blame for M disappearing in a ridiculous anthropomorphisizing sort of way, and for heaven's sake it was on the other side of it, but I still have to explain to myself that it's not the ocean's fault, and that I'm not suddenly going to see him tumbled up on our coast here in the waves.
Anyways, we stuck to the beach and one or two places off the main tourist strips and went walking around, and heard some flamenco, and it was lovely, and I saw my first wild sea turtles, stingrays, and dolphins. The last especially were a revelation, as I've always suspected dolphins were actually imaginary, since all of my faith in their existence was based on hearsay. The ones we saw were a little reddish, which was a nice touch, and looked like they were having an awesome time. This was also the first time I really went into the ocean. It's the same ocean I sort of blame for M disappearing in a ridiculous anthropomorphisizing sort of way, and for heaven's sake it was on the other side of it, but I still have to explain to myself that it's not the ocean's fault, and that I'm not suddenly going to see him tumbled up on our coast here in the waves.
lunedì, gennaio 24, 2011
Having protested too much
The F-word is having some Pink Floyd moments these days, which I can stand better than his Frank Zappa moments, which he's not really allowed to have anymore now that I work at home, poor guy, although I will let him play the symphonic music, which I'll go into my office and drown out with J-Pop if I get annoyed. I'm not substantially a J-Pop fan but it turns out it's the antidote to Frank Zappa overexposure. Especially this version of "Ice Cream Meltin' Mellow", which is the first bit of music since I was young and depressed and enjoying Massive Attack which has made me want to visit the country the people who wrote it came from. I've also got a massive jones on for sushi (see past comments about the whiteness of this town, and the attendant shittiness of the cuisine) though I can probably take care of that just by going to some part of the nearby Queensland coast whereof Australians have spent the last 20 years being half-scandalized, half-titillated (and very open to being completely ripped off in speculative real estate 'investments' - this is the country for shysters, I tells ya) about the Japanese invasion.
Anyways, I don't mind the Pink Floyd much, because 30% of it is nice and the other 70% is funny, and if the whole thing hadn't been ruined for everybody by Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals I might even enjoy it. Also I've noticed that when the F-word has his Pink Floyd moments it's a pretty clear indication he's generally happy, and that's nice. We're both quite happy - my constant complaining is, well, constant, and even in heaven I'll probably be bitching about something. My idea of heaven is not absolutely mutually exclusive of looking down at earth and doing this sort of thing:
Things are generally pretty decent - the job is good and is paying for my Mandarin lessons, the F-word is painting and sculpting and getting up to such shenanigans like a lunatic, and it is awesome to have a house, even if I suspect there are rats in it, and I know there are great big tree frogs in it, because I'll have to catch them and let them out a few times a week so that we don't step on them whilst stumbling to the bathroom at night - the tree frogs being more of a feature really, because they are fricking beautiful. And L---'s fucking whiteness is getting easier to take because I have two trips to China planned before the trip to Canada this southern-hemisphere winter, and one of the trips to China will be to deepest-darkest-most-industrial China, which will be exciting and will no doubt provide some strange, strange food that I never would have thought of eating before.
Anyways, I don't mind the Pink Floyd much, because 30% of it is nice and the other 70% is funny, and if the whole thing hadn't been ruined for everybody by Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals I might even enjoy it. Also I've noticed that when the F-word has his Pink Floyd moments it's a pretty clear indication he's generally happy, and that's nice. We're both quite happy - my constant complaining is, well, constant, and even in heaven I'll probably be bitching about something. My idea of heaven is not absolutely mutually exclusive of looking down at earth and doing this sort of thing:
Things are generally pretty decent - the job is good and is paying for my Mandarin lessons, the F-word is painting and sculpting and getting up to such shenanigans like a lunatic, and it is awesome to have a house, even if I suspect there are rats in it, and I know there are great big tree frogs in it, because I'll have to catch them and let them out a few times a week so that we don't step on them whilst stumbling to the bathroom at night - the tree frogs being more of a feature really, because they are fricking beautiful. And L---'s fucking whiteness is getting easier to take because I have two trips to China planned before the trip to Canada this southern-hemisphere winter, and one of the trips to China will be to deepest-darkest-most-industrial China, which will be exciting and will no doubt provide some strange, strange food that I never would have thought of eating before.
giovedì, gennaio 20, 2011
Rat-proof containers
Well, I guess in a sense it was inevitable but I still feel like a cretin for feeling it: I miss Brussels. It is a difficult emotion, because there's no doubt in my mind that in terms of people's comportment it really is the stupidest place on earth, but there are things I miss, and some of them are very big, like some sort of government accountability in terms of making sure the cost of living isn't unbearable, and some of them more localized - I'd punch myself in the face for just five minutes in Petits Riens, despite the trogladytic delivery service, and oh, how I miss MuziekPublique and other cheap cultural events . . .
So anyways, it's a difficult miss. I've never felt so conflicted in missing a thing that wasn't a noxious but lovely ex-boyfriend before. You know how it is, don't you all? There's that one, or possibly three or four but probably no more than that, ex-partner(s) who gave really magnificent head or fucked like a pro or could make you laugh until you peed yourself but was in other and ultimately much more important ways a fucking head case, who was borderline or else quite comfortably abusive. So that's how I'm feeling at the moment.
Partly this was brought on by a much more straightforward missing of Berlin and Barcelona and other places a helluvalot more easily accessible from Brussels than here. But I think much more so, it was brought on by realizing that life here is expensive to the degree that if I lose my job, we can't stay. It's as simple as that. We cannot afford any sort of decent life here without me making the absurd amounts of money I'm making, on top of the F-word's eventual re-entry into the workforce next month, and even so at the moment we can't afford to live anywhere decently sized where we don't have to put our fruit into a rat-proof container, and everything is just a non-stop gouge.
And for somebody who was planning to more or less stop working in two or three years, that's a fucking blow; and for someone who moved from Europe to this place on the understanding it was going to be easier to stop working here, that's a fucking fuck of a fucking blow.
So anyways, it's a difficult miss. I've never felt so conflicted in missing a thing that wasn't a noxious but lovely ex-boyfriend before. You know how it is, don't you all? There's that one, or possibly three or four but probably no more than that, ex-partner(s) who gave really magnificent head or fucked like a pro or could make you laugh until you peed yourself but was in other and ultimately much more important ways a fucking head case, who was borderline or else quite comfortably abusive. So that's how I'm feeling at the moment.
Partly this was brought on by a much more straightforward missing of Berlin and Barcelona and other places a helluvalot more easily accessible from Brussels than here. But I think much more so, it was brought on by realizing that life here is expensive to the degree that if I lose my job, we can't stay. It's as simple as that. We cannot afford any sort of decent life here without me making the absurd amounts of money I'm making, on top of the F-word's eventual re-entry into the workforce next month, and even so at the moment we can't afford to live anywhere decently sized where we don't have to put our fruit into a rat-proof container, and everything is just a non-stop gouge.
And for somebody who was planning to more or less stop working in two or three years, that's a fucking blow; and for someone who moved from Europe to this place on the understanding it was going to be easier to stop working here, that's a fucking fuck of a fucking blow.
domenica, gennaio 16, 2011
Culture shocking
This weekend at a local market, I came across a book about Gaudi and burst into tears as I realized how fuckin' far away Barcelona is, and how unlike Barcelona L--- is. The nature is beautiful here, and as I learn to accept all of the creepy-crawlies, only getting more so. But down there in the market, which the city holds in the parking lot of a local shopping centre, I just felt so surrounded by civilized ugliness and people who don't give a fuck that their city is a million times uglier than Barcelona that I just got overwhelmed. I'm planning to see my family and friends in Canada soon and I'm not missing most of Europe, but these days missing Spain and Berlin is just fucking gutting me.
The culture shock has well and truly hit, as you can tell, and having expected it in the abstract doesn't feel like it was actually any sort of preparation for feeling it. Oh well. Still reasonably happy to be here and even if I wasn't I'd stick it out, if only to spite the people who reckoned I couldn't and that I'd be crawling back to the crowded, dirty, annoying, but beautiful cities of Europe within a year. And of course keeping the lines of communication with the F-word well and truly open about the mental turmoil. If I can't hack it here he's suggested we try one of the cities that aren't Sydney before calling it quits on the country, which is a reassuring fallback plan; Melbourne, during my brief visit there, resembled a much prettier and warmer Toronto, which was charming. Anyways.
In other and better news, jogging is still fun. The best thing about being a winded maggot is that once you get going the payoffs are so immediate and dramatic; scarcely two weeks in and my tummy is already clefting in two in the promise of a future six-pack (I really don't want one though, I reckon they're ugly on girls - on boys too for that matter except for the ectomorph, heroin-addict types I think are just fucking beautiful during the last five days of my menstrual cycle - thanks for fucking me up in pre-pubescence, early 90's grunge) and I have more energy generally, although I'm just jogging 15 minutes a day, and that still in reps.
And another good thing about being here: the sub-tropical climate is fucking beautiful. I love it. It's perfect for me - the humidity makes my hair and skin feel like they've been let out of jail, the temperature is perfect, and I can wear sarongs and mumus all the time. And enjoy smoothies every morning - finally the right climate for it - and I've figured out that if you put some hot chili flakes into the smoothie it makes it a good bit better.
So complaining, complaining, and complaining will continue, and I doubt I've shed my last tears over the prospect of not seeing the moon over Barcelona from the Guell Park for many more years, but life is still better than a kick in the tits.
The culture shock has well and truly hit, as you can tell, and having expected it in the abstract doesn't feel like it was actually any sort of preparation for feeling it. Oh well. Still reasonably happy to be here and even if I wasn't I'd stick it out, if only to spite the people who reckoned I couldn't and that I'd be crawling back to the crowded, dirty, annoying, but beautiful cities of Europe within a year. And of course keeping the lines of communication with the F-word well and truly open about the mental turmoil. If I can't hack it here he's suggested we try one of the cities that aren't Sydney before calling it quits on the country, which is a reassuring fallback plan; Melbourne, during my brief visit there, resembled a much prettier and warmer Toronto, which was charming. Anyways.
In other and better news, jogging is still fun. The best thing about being a winded maggot is that once you get going the payoffs are so immediate and dramatic; scarcely two weeks in and my tummy is already clefting in two in the promise of a future six-pack (I really don't want one though, I reckon they're ugly on girls - on boys too for that matter except for the ectomorph, heroin-addict types I think are just fucking beautiful during the last five days of my menstrual cycle - thanks for fucking me up in pre-pubescence, early 90's grunge) and I have more energy generally, although I'm just jogging 15 minutes a day, and that still in reps.
And another good thing about being here: the sub-tropical climate is fucking beautiful. I love it. It's perfect for me - the humidity makes my hair and skin feel like they've been let out of jail, the temperature is perfect, and I can wear sarongs and mumus all the time. And enjoy smoothies every morning - finally the right climate for it - and I've figured out that if you put some hot chili flakes into the smoothie it makes it a good bit better.
So complaining, complaining, and complaining will continue, and I doubt I've shed my last tears over the prospect of not seeing the moon over Barcelona from the Guell Park for many more years, but life is still better than a kick in the tits.
giovedì, gennaio 13, 2011
You're the condensed milk in my coffee
Singapore gave me the best culinary week of my life; fuckin' beautiful memories, and a real motivation to keep my job so I can make more trips there on the company dime, and hopefully eat much, much more. Also would like to reserve the option of moving there for work if the F-word ever dumps me. Australia is good in many ways but if I can't have him I at least want fuckin' unlimited Asian food, and this place, as mentioned, is so. Goddamn. Caker.
(And Australians care about food the way cakers do, which is, they fuckin' don't. Their national dish is fuckin' 'meat' pies whose fillings are guaranteed to be at least 25% flesh, and if there's anything less fucking suitable for this climate than those disgusting little hockey pucks, it's roast lamb - the other national dish. And don't get me started on their fucking desserts; if all you saw of Australia was its dessert tray you'd reckon you were at a fuckin' church social in the Hebrides or one of the poorer parts of Scandinavia after the local Nokia factory packs up and moves to China. Well. Anyways. The Australian cities are apparently way better, with enough Asians and olive-skinned types in them to get to that critical mass where the food is really good, like in Toronto or Vancouver. But being babied and cosseted in Singapore after the annoyances of Brussels, etc., may have ruined me for any other urban conglomeration.)
Anyways again. Now is not the time to speculate on Plan Bs in the event the love of my life breaks my fuckin' heart and consigns me to a cold-hearted but pleasure-saturated life of lascivious gluttony, wherein I jog along the sterilised beach all morning so as to eat all afternoon and get a little work done in the evening in a country where almost everybody loves food as much or more than I do. Now is the time to tell you that one of the more tangible gifts Singapore gave me is putting condensed milk into my coffee - I thing I learned from the Vietnamese restaurant close to my boss's old office, Viet Express, which is one of only two restaurants I made two trips to during the week, it being so fucking good*.
The Spanish do something similar, I know, though I didn't try it when I was there - a cafe bonbon or bombom or however you say 'candy' in Spanish, which is half espresso, half condensed milk. At the Viet Express, they served a sort of strong, espresso-ground drip coffee, with a dose of condensed milk next to it - not quite half/half but almost. As for me, I just add a big oozing tablespoonful of condensed milk to the equivalent of three shots of espresso and that makes my afternoon fucking magnificent. The coffee gets exactly the right sweetness with an added caramel velvetiness. I recommend it strongly if you're a sugar-in-your-coffee sort of person.
*The other was the Thanying Restaurant, a fucking delectable Thai restaurant in Amara hotel which honestly - my family's finer efforts excepted - debatably served me the best food I've ever eaten. Ever. And I have eaten a lot of food. We took a business contact there for lunch and I nearly died of pleasure, so I took the F-word back in the evening. Going there also gave my boss the chance to deliver one of the funniest bits of attempted cultural education I'd heard since 2003: "Thai people are the nicest, warmest, gentlest people in the world, until they start hitting you."
(And Australians care about food the way cakers do, which is, they fuckin' don't. Their national dish is fuckin' 'meat' pies whose fillings are guaranteed to be at least 25% flesh, and if there's anything less fucking suitable for this climate than those disgusting little hockey pucks, it's roast lamb - the other national dish. And don't get me started on their fucking desserts; if all you saw of Australia was its dessert tray you'd reckon you were at a fuckin' church social in the Hebrides or one of the poorer parts of Scandinavia after the local Nokia factory packs up and moves to China. Well. Anyways. The Australian cities are apparently way better, with enough Asians and olive-skinned types in them to get to that critical mass where the food is really good, like in Toronto or Vancouver. But being babied and cosseted in Singapore after the annoyances of Brussels, etc., may have ruined me for any other urban conglomeration.)
Anyways again. Now is not the time to speculate on Plan Bs in the event the love of my life breaks my fuckin' heart and consigns me to a cold-hearted but pleasure-saturated life of lascivious gluttony, wherein I jog along the sterilised beach all morning so as to eat all afternoon and get a little work done in the evening in a country where almost everybody loves food as much or more than I do. Now is the time to tell you that one of the more tangible gifts Singapore gave me is putting condensed milk into my coffee - I thing I learned from the Vietnamese restaurant close to my boss's old office, Viet Express, which is one of only two restaurants I made two trips to during the week, it being so fucking good*.
The Spanish do something similar, I know, though I didn't try it when I was there - a cafe bonbon or bombom or however you say 'candy' in Spanish, which is half espresso, half condensed milk. At the Viet Express, they served a sort of strong, espresso-ground drip coffee, with a dose of condensed milk next to it - not quite half/half but almost. As for me, I just add a big oozing tablespoonful of condensed milk to the equivalent of three shots of espresso and that makes my afternoon fucking magnificent. The coffee gets exactly the right sweetness with an added caramel velvetiness. I recommend it strongly if you're a sugar-in-your-coffee sort of person.
*The other was the Thanying Restaurant, a fucking delectable Thai restaurant in Amara hotel which honestly - my family's finer efforts excepted - debatably served me the best food I've ever eaten. Ever. And I have eaten a lot of food. We took a business contact there for lunch and I nearly died of pleasure, so I took the F-word back in the evening. Going there also gave my boss the chance to deliver one of the funniest bits of attempted cultural education I'd heard since 2003: "Thai people are the nicest, warmest, gentlest people in the world, until they start hitting you."
mercoledì, gennaio 12, 2011
The waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flavour
I don't know if I mentioned but a few months ago I dreamt there was a blight on garlic; that almost overnight, all of the fucking garlic in the world shrivelled up and rotted away, and the fucking day dawned bleakly on shops emptied of their fucking garlic. It was the closest I've ever come to encompassing an idea of Armageddon in my head, and I spend a lot of time thinking about Amageddon, and I actually woke up screaming. It was one of those nightmares where you wake up believing it's real, and you have to sort of come to realize how unlikely it is, how somehow the world is still turning around you, etc., so it must have been a dream . . . and then gradually calming down. Previous to that, I think I'd only had those sorts of nightmares about having murdered someone.
Anyways, the F-word and I had a good laugh about what fucked up priorities I have if I'm having a fucking brutal nightmare about something so unlikely. And then we moved to Australia, and the fucker started flooding, and the other day we went to a huge grocery store and THERE WAS NO FUCKING GARLIC. Nor was there any at the grocery store on the other side of the shopping centre*. It's because of the fucking floods. The farmers can't get the garlic dry enough to ship. And for the first time in my life I had a vision of what it's like when your nightmares come true, it was like a fucking slasher movie.
There's still no garlic if you're unlucky, because Australians are awfully rah-rah-rah in a hideously cringeworthy way about things being made in Australia (although all the garish nationalistic labelling on the products has those sorts of vague, Body-Shop-"Against Animal Testing" type compositions that mean nothing, like "Proudly Operated in Australia!", which could just mean that an Australian truck driver takes the product from the port to the supermarket), so the stores haven't just buckled and ordered it from China like everyone fuckin' should.
It is bloody horrible. Bloody horrible.
*Australians have two principal supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths, basically indistinguishable in terms of prices and product range, which each occupy opposite sides of almost all the shopping centres, and are both fucking overpriced suck factories, and then they call this thing that walks, quacks and fucks like fuckin' cartel "choice".
Anyways, the F-word and I had a good laugh about what fucked up priorities I have if I'm having a fucking brutal nightmare about something so unlikely. And then we moved to Australia, and the fucker started flooding, and the other day we went to a huge grocery store and THERE WAS NO FUCKING GARLIC. Nor was there any at the grocery store on the other side of the shopping centre*. It's because of the fucking floods. The farmers can't get the garlic dry enough to ship. And for the first time in my life I had a vision of what it's like when your nightmares come true, it was like a fucking slasher movie.
There's still no garlic if you're unlucky, because Australians are awfully rah-rah-rah in a hideously cringeworthy way about things being made in Australia (although all the garish nationalistic labelling on the products has those sorts of vague, Body-Shop-"Against Animal Testing" type compositions that mean nothing, like "Proudly Operated in Australia!", which could just mean that an Australian truck driver takes the product from the port to the supermarket), so the stores haven't just buckled and ordered it from China like everyone fuckin' should.
It is bloody horrible. Bloody horrible.
*Australians have two principal supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths, basically indistinguishable in terms of prices and product range, which each occupy opposite sides of almost all the shopping centres, and are both fucking overpriced suck factories, and then they call this thing that walks, quacks and fucks like fuckin' cartel "choice".
domenica, gennaio 09, 2011
Spending money
Uggggggh. I hate spending money, and we're spending so much of it getting set up here. It is fucking painful. The only way I can reconcile myself to it is by spending the bare minimum humanly possible to get exactly the things I want without going to Ikea, and it's at times like this I realize how important it is to have a life partner who has the same priorities as you beyond simply the lots-of-high-quality-orgasms (both cheapskates, both sybarites, both Ikeaphobes). We went into one store three times today, and went on a 40 minute drive in the pounding rain to pick up a Freecycle offering. All of the other men I've ever carnivally intercoursed with would have spasmed with impatience.
This is the first Ikea-free house I'll have lived in, by the way, since leaving my parents' home, which is still Ikea-free. I don't object to Ikea in principal if I think about it rationally, and considering how fucking expensive Australia is, it would probably make a lot of financial sense for us to go on an Ikea run. But I find it such a draining, miserable consumer experience to go there; I feel so anticipated somehow, which you'd think would be a good thing but somehow it isn't.
And less rationally and more emotionally, I do object to Ikea in principal. It's this sort of vision of a Soviet Russia without shortages . . . they might not be starving you, but they've still murdered all the mencheviks and are betraying and undermining international anarcho-syndicalists at every turn.
Not to mention they won't knock off $30 or $40 if you haggle. I've never considered myself a haggler but living in Australia now, it seems that I am. I never buy a big ticket item without asking for a discount because of some insignificant flaw, offering to pay in cash or asking for delivery to be chucked into the ticket price. So far it's worked, of course. It's like getting laid. Everybody wants to strike a deal, you just have to make it clear you're on the table. Or something.
But apparently, from discussions I've been having, women don't try to get prices down here. I hope the people who've been telling me that are wrong because that's crazy. But I've been told there's some sort of social conditioning going on involving a strong, strong desire not to seem like a cheapskate, and it just being sort of rude and forward to ask.
When we decided to come here, the F-word and I would warn each other often that moving back to an Anglo-Saxon country, we'd have to stop being rude Eur0-style cunts who drop their money on the counter, don't respect other people's personal space, and get pushy when they're crowded - you know - the normal social behavior of urban Europeans.
But one thing we're grateful for that we picked up in Europe, where it is a truth universally acknowledged and borne out in the unfriendly, unobsequious behaviour of salespeople, is an understanding that salespeople are not your friends and you don't have to pretend they are. They want you to pay a lot, and even to buy things you don't need; you want the opposite. Your relationship, by its very nature, is an oppositional one, and they are certainly haggling with you, if they're doing their job well.
This is the first Ikea-free house I'll have lived in, by the way, since leaving my parents' home, which is still Ikea-free. I don't object to Ikea in principal if I think about it rationally, and considering how fucking expensive Australia is, it would probably make a lot of financial sense for us to go on an Ikea run. But I find it such a draining, miserable consumer experience to go there; I feel so anticipated somehow, which you'd think would be a good thing but somehow it isn't.
And less rationally and more emotionally, I do object to Ikea in principal. It's this sort of vision of a Soviet Russia without shortages . . . they might not be starving you, but they've still murdered all the mencheviks and are betraying and undermining international anarcho-syndicalists at every turn.
Not to mention they won't knock off $30 or $40 if you haggle. I've never considered myself a haggler but living in Australia now, it seems that I am. I never buy a big ticket item without asking for a discount because of some insignificant flaw, offering to pay in cash or asking for delivery to be chucked into the ticket price. So far it's worked, of course. It's like getting laid. Everybody wants to strike a deal, you just have to make it clear you're on the table. Or something.
But apparently, from discussions I've been having, women don't try to get prices down here. I hope the people who've been telling me that are wrong because that's crazy. But I've been told there's some sort of social conditioning going on involving a strong, strong desire not to seem like a cheapskate, and it just being sort of rude and forward to ask.
When we decided to come here, the F-word and I would warn each other often that moving back to an Anglo-Saxon country, we'd have to stop being rude Eur0-style cunts who drop their money on the counter, don't respect other people's personal space, and get pushy when they're crowded - you know - the normal social behavior of urban Europeans.
But one thing we're grateful for that we picked up in Europe, where it is a truth universally acknowledged and borne out in the unfriendly, unobsequious behaviour of salespeople, is an understanding that salespeople are not your friends and you don't have to pretend they are. They want you to pay a lot, and even to buy things you don't need; you want the opposite. Your relationship, by its very nature, is an oppositional one, and they are certainly haggling with you, if they're doing their job well.
giovedì, gennaio 06, 2011
I'm one of them now
If you had told me even a month ago, I wouldn't have believed it, and I probably would have thought you were a fucking wanker into the bargain, but I've started jogging and I fucking love it.
Starting the day with sexual congress, a nice latte, an eighth of a watermelon, a little porridge, and then a fucking jog of all things feels fucking magnificent. Even when it's muddy out. Especially when it's muddy out. I'm one of those fucking jogging wanking perverts now and it is so weird. Of all the things I never thought I'd get into, jogging was right up there with golden showers and accountancy.
There are a few things that pushed me into taking my first jog - ugh - so weird to even write it - but I don't care. The first is that Australia is, as I've pointed out before, fucking expensive. Basically everything is expensive here, and gym memberships are fucking ludicrous. Only a fucking sucker would pay for one, but Australia, as I've come to realize, is full to the fucking brim of fucking suckers.
Get an Australian going about how his or her country is going to the dogs - easily done - and they'll give you a fucking spiel alright, but it'll be about drunk Aborigines or evil Muslims or China taking over the world or some other frankly secondary sort of background thing like that, and not about how this fucking place is more expensive than fucking Switzerland, because these poor fucking suckers have swallowed everything their crooked press has given them with the alacrity of a hungry infant being spoonfed caramels. Anyways, I'm digressing. My point was actually that I refuse to pay the exorbitant fees Australian gyms charge. And it hasn't been timely to buy a kayak yet. So I jogged.
The second thing is that we were staying at a house with a dog and if there's anything dogs like better than rolling around in their own excrement, eating, and being cossetted, it's being taken for jogs. The first time I dipped my toe into the world of jogging, I took the resident dog, who nobody walks, with me, and every morning thereafter I had this slavering lunatic barking and running around in affectionate circles at me every time I went anywhere near her leash. It was really charming and made it a matter of course that I'd just keep going.
And that went on long enough that I'm now dogless but at the point where I feel sort of shitty all day if I don't get a jog in in the mornings, and really happy and rosy and whatnot if I do.
It's fucking shocking. I don't know how I feel exactly, just that I feel good. I think this is a microcosm of what it feels like to finally start fucking your own gender after a lifetime in the closet. Anyways.
Starting the day with sexual congress, a nice latte, an eighth of a watermelon, a little porridge, and then a fucking jog of all things feels fucking magnificent. Even when it's muddy out. Especially when it's muddy out. I'm one of those fucking jogging wanking perverts now and it is so weird. Of all the things I never thought I'd get into, jogging was right up there with golden showers and accountancy.
There are a few things that pushed me into taking my first jog - ugh - so weird to even write it - but I don't care. The first is that Australia is, as I've pointed out before, fucking expensive. Basically everything is expensive here, and gym memberships are fucking ludicrous. Only a fucking sucker would pay for one, but Australia, as I've come to realize, is full to the fucking brim of fucking suckers.
Get an Australian going about how his or her country is going to the dogs - easily done - and they'll give you a fucking spiel alright, but it'll be about drunk Aborigines or evil Muslims or China taking over the world or some other frankly secondary sort of background thing like that, and not about how this fucking place is more expensive than fucking Switzerland, because these poor fucking suckers have swallowed everything their crooked press has given them with the alacrity of a hungry infant being spoonfed caramels. Anyways, I'm digressing. My point was actually that I refuse to pay the exorbitant fees Australian gyms charge. And it hasn't been timely to buy a kayak yet. So I jogged.
The second thing is that we were staying at a house with a dog and if there's anything dogs like better than rolling around in their own excrement, eating, and being cossetted, it's being taken for jogs. The first time I dipped my toe into the world of jogging, I took the resident dog, who nobody walks, with me, and every morning thereafter I had this slavering lunatic barking and running around in affectionate circles at me every time I went anywhere near her leash. It was really charming and made it a matter of course that I'd just keep going.
And that went on long enough that I'm now dogless but at the point where I feel sort of shitty all day if I don't get a jog in in the mornings, and really happy and rosy and whatnot if I do.
It's fucking shocking. I don't know how I feel exactly, just that I feel good. I think this is a microcosm of what it feels like to finally start fucking your own gender after a lifetime in the closet. Anyways.
mercoledì, gennaio 05, 2011
Talking Australian Part 2; Intoning, subsection 1
Australian Question Intonation is something that I first experienced culturally second-hand via Brits who were addicted or overexposed to Home and Away and Neighbours, two examples of how similar nationalities almost always manage to produce their own special brands of fucking dime-store dreck which can travel to their sister nationalities.*
Many of the people I meet here are absolutely bemused by how much British people love their shitty soapies, but of course the British people who I spoke to about it aren't confused at all. Neighbours/Home and Away are full of images of warm beaches and sun and healthy young people who aren't in the early stages of rickets or scurvy - three things that are painfully lacking in British society. Those two shit-parades of drossy television between them have made the British media's endless quest to present Australia as a barren and miserable land full of nothing but floods, fires, and man-eating creatures (so pretty please don't move there because if you've got enough money for the ticket and visa Britain can't afford to lose you) more or less futile.
So the upshot is that I've been exposed to so many Brits who use the Question Intonation after overexposure to shitty Australian television, despite the finest efforts of Stephen Fry, that moving here didn't make me bat much of an eyelash; not to mention the Question Intonation was one of the few perversions of Australian speech the F-word maintained during our years with the European Savages, while he was teaching them English.
It is making me a touch twitchy though, for reasons that will be explained in a future post, when I've wrangled the carpet pythons out of our living room; they were driven there by the flood water. Sigh.
*Canadians foisted dramatic heart-wringers The Littlest Hobo/Degrassi Junior High onto the world; the US manages all those awesome blowdried daytime soaps with the devil and incest and amnesia and whatnot; the Brits play some sort of perverted voyeuristic class-fantasy game wherein they pretend to spectate the torrid, disgusting lives of blue-collar types in Manchester and London via Coronation Street and Eastenders.
Many of the people I meet here are absolutely bemused by how much British people love their shitty soapies, but of course the British people who I spoke to about it aren't confused at all. Neighbours/Home and Away are full of images of warm beaches and sun and healthy young people who aren't in the early stages of rickets or scurvy - three things that are painfully lacking in British society. Those two shit-parades of drossy television between them have made the British media's endless quest to present Australia as a barren and miserable land full of nothing but floods, fires, and man-eating creatures (so pretty please don't move there because if you've got enough money for the ticket and visa Britain can't afford to lose you) more or less futile.
So the upshot is that I've been exposed to so many Brits who use the Question Intonation after overexposure to shitty Australian television, despite the finest efforts of Stephen Fry, that moving here didn't make me bat much of an eyelash; not to mention the Question Intonation was one of the few perversions of Australian speech the F-word maintained during our years with the European Savages, while he was teaching them English.
It is making me a touch twitchy though, for reasons that will be explained in a future post, when I've wrangled the carpet pythons out of our living room; they were driven there by the flood water. Sigh.
*Canadians foisted dramatic heart-wringers The Littlest Hobo/Degrassi Junior High onto the world; the US manages all those awesome blowdried daytime soaps with the devil and incest and amnesia and whatnot; the Brits play some sort of perverted voyeuristic class-fantasy game wherein they pretend to spectate the torrid, disgusting lives of blue-collar types in Manchester and London via Coronation Street and Eastenders.
Iscriviti a:
Post (Atom)