Just call me the token American
Trip Start
Feb 15, 2004
1
11
34
Trip End
Dec 18, 2004
Randwick,
Australia
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
I love noticing the differences between Australian and American English and culture. For example, instead of saying "Maroon 5 is giving a concert" here they'd say "Maroon 5 ARE giving a concert." For bands and teams and things they treat the word as if it's plural since it's a group of people, instead of treating it as a singular collective word as we Americans do. It sounds grammatically incorrect to me, but that's just how they speak here. I've been making a list of all the different words they use here too, such as "capsicum" instead of "pepper" (the vegetable) and "jumper" instead of "sweater". One of my favourite expressions is "feeling ordinary", which means "being hung over". Then there are the great tv commercials here, like the one for tuna whose slogan is "So dolphin friendly it would lend one its wife." Or the one where there's a surfer talking to some girls on the beach, and they ask him "How's the surf today?" He replies, "Oh, I don't surf. I just carry it around to score chicks." Or the one for Carlton Draught beer where the serious-sounding announcer goes on about how it's "brewed in big metal containers and driven around by... horses! More horses! Served at pubs, poured into tall frosty sideways glasses." Ok, well they're probably much funnier if you could actually see the commercials, especially that last one.
Friday night, Kristin and I joined an International Student excursion to Govinda's, which is a Hare Krishna-run restaurant/movie house. For $19 you get an all-you-can-eat vegetarian buffet, followed by a movie in the comfy sofa-bed filled theatre upstairs. We watched "L'Auberge Espagnole" (translated as "The Spanish Apartment"), which is a great French movie that I'd already seen. I highly recommend it to everyone, particularly if you've ever studied abroad. It follows the experiences of a group of international students studying in Barcelona who are sharing an apartment. And it's not some deep, artsy, depressing, weird French movie... it's cute, hilarious, and fun. It was a good night, even though I ended up meeting even more Americans.
On Saturday I had an orientation for my job at the Randwick Raceway Easter Carnival. For 3 hours I learned more than I ever needed to know about the Australian Jockey Club and the sport of horse racing. They made us watch, and then actually tested us on, a stimulating video on health and safety. And scarily enough, we learned what to do in an armed hold-up! We were required to wear our ridiculous black pants/white shirt/black tie uniforms there, which Kristin rightly said made the two of us look like the Men in Black. I actually didn't learn all that much about what I'll be doing during the races, since as I was told I'm part of a "flexible workforce", but I did get free food and I'll be paid for the 3 hours!
On Sunday, I bought tickets to the Maroon 5 concert! The tickets are actually these credit card-like things that you swipe at the door and can recharge for other concerts. Very high-tech. Then I went to the ManRay exhibit at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which wasn't as good as I thought it would be. But it was enjoyable participating in the unchoreographed dance that always seems to go on at art museums as crowds of people slowly drift from piece of artwork to piece of artwork. I like to move around the room in the opposite direction as everyone else.
So after all my goofing off, I should really spend the entire week in the library catching up on my classwork. But I probably won't, because it's way too hard trying to make myself focus on school. Especially after my 2.5 mindless months in Breckenridge! I have this Tuesday tradition of getting coffee at one of the cafes on campus before my grammar class, because they have a special deal for postgraduates. So I went today, and the cute guy who makes the coffee put on a nice little show, flipping cups and making random outbursts like "Here's the iced mocha for the person with the obvious calorie problem!" Then it was on to my favourite class of the week with the professor who I like more and more each week. This time he made fun of the US! Apparently he's going to NY in July to give a talk on the use of modals (i.e. can/could, will/would, may/might, etc.) in Australian English. (So everyone at home, go see Peter Collins! He rocks!) When he told us this, he said, "That's right, we don't have to speak 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' English like they do in the States." Then he remembered I was in the class and he looked at me and said, "Oh, I mean speak like our American friends..." Everyone in the class turned around and looked at me, the token American. Since I don't really like being the centre of attention, all I could do was smile and laugh. I couldn't come up with a witty comeback... I think I just turned red instead.
I'll leave you with one last thought... In Australia, voting is compulsory. If you don't vote in the upcoming town elections, you get fined. Imagine if that were true in the US...
