Bringing the (Blog) Thunder from Down Under

OK, it’s been far too long since I sat down and wrote about adapting to life in Australia (actually, I haven’t written at all) as a resident of the great city of Melbourne; pronounced Mel-Bin; like “Mel Bin Laden” but without the “Laden”. I've been slow to write anything  because I’ve been out crushing Foster’s oil cans, hunting kangaroos, putting additional shrimp on my barbie (not in that way!), and narrowly avoiding the daily shark attacks while looking for “Bode” with Keanu Reeves down at Bells Beach.

NONE OF THAT IS TRUE at all. So the sooner you can get your head around the fact that life in this Australian city of three plus million people is not like Crocodile Dundee or a terrible beer commercial—no one here drinks Foster’s, I’ve never even seen it—the sooner you’ll have a proper idea of the place. Glad we cleared that up.

In reality, I’ve been slow to put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard) because moving to another country creates an endless To-Do list that seems to grow three times as fast as things get crossed off of it. It’s been sensory overload since day one—learning to drive on the left side of the road, starting a new job, buying a new (to me) car, insuring said car, finding a place to live, insuring the contents of said place to live, setting up a bank account, and then spending money from that bank account like a drunken sailor on shore leave in Thailand while going to IKEA and Target 35 times each week (kill me, please!) in an effort to fill said place to live with items very similar to everything you just sold in the U.S. on Craig’s List for 10 percent of their original value. Fortunately, most of that is in the past at this point, aside from the 20-page employee life insurance packet sitting on my desk at home, which seems to show up weekly with more questions to answer about joint pain history and the like (they better have plenty of space in that section for this guy).

In short, I guess I sort of underestimated it all a bit. Although a move to Australia from Ron Burgandy’s San Diego isn’t exactly like uprooting to Somalia or Syria on the culture shock scale, it’s been more of a transition than I expected. It’s been frustrating at times, but also quite rewarding. I will say that everything you do in a new country takes longer. You make a wrong turn on the way to a grocery store and then spend 20 minutes finding your way back. The things you did in the blink of an eye in the U.S. now take planning. You think of things you say before you say them. You’re aware of your accent because people look at you and sort of double take every time you open your mouth at a place like the grocery store or a pub. It’s also a decidedly diffferent feeling to have it happening all the time, as opposed to when you visit a foreign country and expect it as a tourist. You forget that you sound different as you go through simple day-to-day tasks. You say something, they look at you funny, you spend the next few seconds trying to figure out why they are looking at you funny, and then you remember you sound different; it's not because you ARE funny, it's because you sound funny. It’s a weird phenomenon. On the bright side, I find myself aware of it less and less, which is a good thing. I guess it’s a sign that I’m settling in. And by that I mean I know the difference between a schooner, a pot, a pint, a stubby and a jug.

I’m finally sitting down to write about it all because my dad told me to, because it’s therapeutic, and because I’ve got six more hours to spare on this flight to Thailand (which ought to give me plenty of ammo for a future blog entry). I can’t seem to zero in on a singular topic to expound on while attempting not to spill this Singha Lager (not bad, by the way) on my laptop as the two compete for space on the tray table here, so I figured I’d just pick a couple of things I’ve observed in my first two plus months and we’ll get this party started that way. And won’t it be a party…sure it will. (No one forced you to read this anyway.)

Language barrier

I’ll dive into this further at a later date—when I have more of a clue what people are actually saying—but so far I can tell you that I was meant to be writing this blog a month ago, so it was far past time that I got stuck into it. Figured I’d have a crack. Hopefully, it will be half decent and not a shocker. 

The one thing I can say is that Aussies are very good with their slang terminology, and it's wonderful to learn. They even use it on TV in sports broadcasts. My second favorite sports lingo (that's a tease) is when a guy in Aussie Rules Football lines up a kick from, say, 50 meters out, and the announcer says: "Not sure if he's got the journey from here." They  love using slang. It's great.  

Let’s check the Sexyland Scoreboard”

Melbourne’s winter revolves around “the footy”, that’s Aussie Rules Football, the AFL. I’ve taken in about six games now and it’s growing on me quickly. But one of my favorite parts of the footy games is when they announce the scores during a radio broadcast using the corporate sponsor of the scoreboard. In the U.S., this would go something like (insert Jim Nance’s voice here): “Friends, let’s check the Cisco Out Of Town Scoreboard and see what’s going on around the rest of the NFL on this third Sunday of the season.” In Australia, it sounds like this: “6.4.40 for Geelong to 4.8.32 for Hawthorne on the Sexyland Scoreboard.” Sexyland, of course, being a chain of adult stores that sells, I think, novelty items and the like. You can tell the announcers relish the moment they get to say “Sexyland Scoreboard”; it rolls off the tongue. It would be the equivalent of Al Michaels on Monday Night Football saying, “Patriots lead the Chargers 35-3 with 2:03 left to play in the first quarter on the Bob’s Triple X Video Store Scoreboard.” The day that happens in the U.S. is the day ESPN has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is dying for ad dollars. Sadly, I don’t see the Sexyland Scoreboard making an appearance on ESPN anytime soon. And that’s a shame.

On a side note, while driving a couple of weeks ago, I heard a radio ad throw out this little pearl: “Furgasm…that sounds like a swingers’ party for ferrets.” I don’t have a clue what they were advertising. I also can’t think of anything else to say on the subject of parties involving swinging ferrets and their ability to sexually climax, so we’ll just move along.

Australia—one big town

One thing that has struck me about living in Australia is that, despite being a country the size of Europe, the relatively small population of only 30 million people (about the same as California, I think, to give you perspective) means that this island’s inhabitants act like a small state in certain ways. It’s an odd dynamic for a place so vast. During the London Olympics, the people seemed to support the athletes as if they knew them personally, which they clearly didn’t. They refer to them by their first name in many cases and with the sense that they are on the team themselves. “Sally won the hurdles for us.” “Our swimmers must be drunk.” I think our swim team lost their arm floaties on the way to London.” “Hey, we won another silver medal. Silver is the new gold.” (They were touchy about the swimming troubles.) Even newspapers often run headlines that refer to athletes by their first names. It’s part of a pretty passionate national pride that is more evident here than in the U.S. In America, too many people are patriotic on the 4^th of July, 9/11, and that’s it. We could learn from the Aussies in that area. 

Another example of the connectedness I noticed with other parts of the country was on a recent traffic report on a radio station.  Traffic can get fairly ugly in the big cities like Melbourne and Sydney, but I’ve heard traffic updates in which the national broadcaster gives the traffic in every major city in the country. We’re talking about cities that are separated by thousands of miles. It would be like giving traffic in Chicago, Boston, New York and Denver in the same update. I suppose it’s useful, but it’s also funny when the guy skips from a congested road in Brisbane to a street in Melbourne. (They are far away from each other.)  

The one exception to all this lovey-dovey-we-are-all-one-big-family notion is that Sydney and Melbourne, which are separated by about a 70-minute flight, maintain a healthy rivalry from what I can gather. They have decidedly different feels to them. Sydney is often compared to Los Angles, whereas Melbourne would be San Francisco. Personally, I think Melbourne has some striking similarities to Boston—absolutely crazy for sports, public parks everywhere in the city, a river running right through town, and a number of sections/neighborhoods of the city with a very distinct character. Much like Boston or New York, when the weather warms up for a few days in winter, the whole world is outside running, biking or just walking around the city. It really is quite beautiful with a cool layout. Springtime and summer should be amazing…if the city isn’t under water by then.

Melbourne Cricket Ground. The MCG. The "G". Home to the footy. Walking distance from Chateau Sweeney.

To come...
With the Footy Finals (playoffs) beginning this week (while I’m in Thailand) I’ll try to sit down and relate the Aussie footy experience in a later blog. Basically, footy is king in Melbourne. I’ll leave you with these witty words from a coworker to give you an idea of how footy weaves its way into the culture of the city. This is the description my coworker gave of his friend beginning a relationship with a woman. And this line came in the regular flow of conversation:

“So he saw the opening, tucked the ball under his wing, busted through the pack and slotted it from 50.”

He was giggling like a schoolgirl as he mentioned that last part, surprised at how his rambling had found its way to comedic paydirt with a well-placed euphemism.

Let’s diagram that sentence, shall we.

The opening

The first part is pretty self-explanatory. The player sees an opening in the defense and runs to daylight, as we’d say in American football, tucking the ball away securely under his arm so it cannot be pryed loose.  
Translation: The male saw that the female was available, and moved toward the target with purpose, protecting himself from losing his footing and carefully maintaining possession of the moment.

Busting through the pack.

Translation: The female has other suitors whose aim would be to trip up and tackle the ball carrier as he advances toward the target (goal line).

Slotting it from 50.

In Aussie Rules Football terms, that would be kicking the footy through the goal posts from 50 meters out for a 6-point goal.

Translation: You can probably figure this part out for yourself.

Sometimes the language barrier isn’t much of a barrier at all.