Autumn part deux

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Geo: -33.8261, 151.199

Middle of autumn April 08

It's the middle of autumn so you know it's autumnal. But we lasted til the 17th to put a duvet on the bed and truthfully I was looking forward to it but I think our Danish one might be tad too warm for here, but it is snugly. It is 19 degrees and rainy and no humidity (hurray) so it is colder than before and one day this month with wind chill it was actually 3 degrees, I didn't know what hit me!

At least this means there'll be no more oul lads in shorts out in public with their knobbly knees and veiny legs, or stupid looking giant teenage boys in their posh Prince Harryesque school uniforms that involve gabardine shorts and straw boaters, yuk. It's an affront to the eye I tell ya & how could they ever possibly look cool at this important time for coolness in their lives in that get up? And what is the deal with leaf blowers, they are mad into them here! Like a leaf vacuum I could understand but leaf blowers?

So most weekends this month have consisted of two separate activities:

1. hanging out the kids and/or F&S
OR
2. going out on the lash.

Picture us in a park play-ground on a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon with hoards of kids not 100% sure how to rebuke other kids who looked crooked at our lot, eekkk. On the 2nd and 3rd Saturday of each month they have a market (mostly good food) really near us so F & the 2 of the kids came down for one for a shop & a face stuffing, which was fun.

We had a great healthy start to the month (not) by getting uproariously drunk 2 nights in a row first with the Irish connection (C&A) and then with the aussie connection (P&A) whom we repeated it with a week later (but at least each time went for dinner 1st) and again the following Weds and again on the 19th as it was P's birthday, almost felt like we had mates there for a minute but actually I am half poisoned.....

Interestingly C&A were saying they have no Aussie mates to speak of and they are here nearly 4 years and my sister knows Irish people who have said it takes years and years to make good friends with an Aussie, so maybe it's being Irish is the issue or an Irish couple at any rate. She also said a Russian and a Scot and herself all agree it took them at least 4 years to feel at home here, don't know if I can last that long though.

They have daylight saving here which seems unnecessary but when the clocks changed on the 6th autumn came with a bang - rain for most of the week bar miraculously Saturday, no humidity and darker evenings immediately. Like Fri. 4th I was walking into the sunset home from work (which was kinda blinding really) and Mon 7th I was walking along in darkness and it was only an hour's difference.

Work news:
Tues 8th
Work is mental busy as we merged with another company and now we are the 4th (or 2nd for broad band)largest Telco in Oz, which is a big deal in some quarters, not sure if I am so into all the change or attitudes (like restricted internet access) but I hate hate hate doing interviews, so catch 22.
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Oh my God 30 mins after I typed the last sentence the work project I have been on for the last 6 months was pulled, outside firm escorted off premises!
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Wed 9th
It is the next day and at 12:30pm I finished a meeting with the project manager who when went I went to update at 4pm I found had also been relieved of his employment at 3pm, good God.
Fri 11th (evening)
There was nothing for it but go on the rip with the 'let go' people. Where I found out my team lead has trained his cat to use the toilet like a human (bar the wiping his ass bit)!
(But thank God I got home in time for the last showing of the day of Eastenders as it was the Christmas Day 2007 episode - Max & Stacey get rumbled Oh My God great t.v.!)
Mon 14th
IPods banned at work!
Fri 18th
Mutiny in Perth office over job losses.... Plus there is a crazed gunman on the roof of the building opposite them!

Meanwhile back in the real world on Saturday 19th we went to an annual record fair in Glebe with C&A, which involved getting up earlier than I do for work, d'oh. It was entertaining for a change, well people watching for me & C spending a small fortune, culminating in yummy vego brunch in 'Badde Manors' café which was the main event for me.

25th was Anzac day and a public holiday, it's now a memorial day for all their world war dead but it started as the anniv. of Australia & New Zealand Army Core (ANZAC)landing in Gallipolli on 25th Apr 1915, but back here it's basically their version of St. Patrick's day, so of course that involves alcohol and a game soldiers used to play in alley's during the war called 2-Up - according to C some may remember it as a game you would've played on a boring summers day when you didn't even have a tennis ball to occupy you. But anyway I never saw or played it before and our bro-in-law invited us to join him in his local with his mate, so I was delighted.

Obviously it's not played in an alley way outside the pub now a days but they drew out a big square with white masking tape on the floor of the pub and someone throws up two 20c coins, that are 1st placed on a little wooden thing (always facing heads up) and then they are flipped up in the air but must spin 3 times to be valid and everyone has a bet whether it will be 2 heads or 2 tails that will land and the spinner keeps going til it's one or t'other.

How the betting works is you shout out into the group an amount on heads or tails (if you say $5 on tails you mean you bet $5 that 2 tail's will come up) and then someone sees your bet and bets the same amount that it'll be 2 of the opposite and then puts both of your money on the ground under his foot before the spinning starts and then who ever wins gets the cash.

There's loads of these bets going on between any 2 people and some were going at it with $100 bets and all, personally I bet $5's & had an overall loss of $35 (mainly to C). And the pub rule was if you spun 3 sets of heads in a row you got free beer. So it started at midday and was fairly subdued but by 2pm it was mad, like a trading room floor and they call a halt to it by 5.30pm as people could be pure thick with the drink by then as we'd say at home. But the people around us were a good laugh and it was fun and a very aussie thing to do, as is it being over by tea time. But I forgot the bleeding camera so the photo quality is not great.

Weather check 28th April it is actually cold, need to find my coat, and it snowed 5 weeks early for skiing season (yes they have a ski season) in the Alpine region in Victoria this weekend.

Am reading Aussie author Tim Winton 'Cloudstreet' and could understand a few more Australianisms when I read the pdf they have for the citizen test (for which we need to serve another 16.5mths before we can do it), did you know the national flower is the golden wattle, well you do now. Some of the commentary on the original Irish migrants is pretty funny and bizarrely they never mention all the prisoners were not actually hardened crims (as I learnt in Port Arthur some were sent for stealing a head of cabbage say) which seems a bit weird as surely they couldn't all be proud of being descendants of repribates (apparently in the 1960's it was cool to admit to having criminal ancestors after many years of covering it up and some were even disappointed to find they were not descendants of what the Brits would call the lower classes). They reckon they don't have a class system here now so where the elitest fee paying schools fit in I haven't quite figured out yet.

Back in my realm my sister gave birth to another son on the 30th, all very exciting for me (about which some of you are sick of my emails I am sure, C says I am like one of those boring parents who never shuts up about their kids, so sorry all!)and she was the same room as Cate Blanchett two weeks earlier, oh la la.

Since we left Ireland in Sep 2005 for Denmark 23 of our friends and relatives have given birth (mystical total), 10 have arrived since we been here, so congrats to the parents of Donnacha MacM, Kaydi O'D, Scarlett F-E, Hannah D, Mikkel A, Miriam O'R, William T, Sèan Óg O'M, Layla F., and now little Aidan H. Plus there is a Cuban-English bubby due any day in Dublin and I just heard about 4 more on the way! Keep up the good work y'all.

Movies of choice:
*The Weeping Camel (which you may only appreciate if you are interested in Mongolia but I loved it);
*The Thief (dir. Pavel Chukhraj, Russian, art house I guess & v.g.);
*My Life as Dog (Swedish '85- which used to be given out free in Galway from the video shop of a friend who thought everyone should see it - I had totally forgotten what happened though and it is good);
*To catch a thief (Hitchcock again with a 50 yr old Cary Grant supposed to be 35 playing the love interest of a 27 yr old Grace Kelly, he should have been copping off with the mother if you ask me, no wonder I always thought those male actors looked ancient when I was kid, they were!);
*This is England (UK set in 1983 made in 2005, why I am not sure but it was actually good).

And on our movie channels was:
*United 93 (US, set on a 9/11 plane, way less puke making than you'd think);
*North by North West (dir. Hitchcock - set kinda bizarrely at Mt. Rushmore);
*Chinatown (classic '74 Jack Nicolson);
*Charlotte's web (I was expecting some dark teenage thing but really it's Babe III only with a helpful spider);
*The Pursuit of Happyness (surprisingly good, was a bit gut wrenching really - but after the interview with the producer or whoever, was going on about how it shows anyone could do this, but I disagree cause in my humble opinion the guy Chris Gardner had above average intelligence & an awful lot of determination, and speaking for myself if this was my story I might have gone under);
*An Inconvenient Truth (Al Gore, v.g. only he doesn't mention the most obvious thing to abate global warming/climate change that can have an effect not in 70 years but now - vegetarianism).

Plus we just finished 'Deadwood' season 3 and therefore learnt a new cuss word (really!).

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