Homesick Earworms

I haven't been active here for a while. I know it, and am sorry, but there's been a reason for that. You see, I've been bitten by the Homesickness Bug and I swear the subsequent disease is in its own way just as annoying as any tick bite. It's certainly just as distracting, and makes it very hard to write light hearted snippets of weirdness in the North whilst having the same snatches of Aussie music playing over and over in your mind.

You see, the way this particular disease showed itself was by way of earworms; songs that wouldn't leave my head or my humming until I actively went and searched them out.

The first manifestation was when I found myself wandering around the house sadly singing, "We love football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden Cars". It's quite amazing how such a cheesy and upbeat song can be changed into a minor key dirge. "We love football *sniffle*... meat pies... *whimper* ... Kangaroos? *tears start to roll* And ...Holden WAAAAAAAAAHs!"

The Holden is the iconic Australian car, the one home-grown brand which was of course bought out by GM back before I was born. It's also one side of a deadly feud between the old style Hoon - Holden vs Ford. My family were staunch Holdenites, but of course I had to go against that and drive not only a Honda, but two *gasp* Fords. Now we own a Chrysler, so the point is moot.

This also shows off my age quite markedly. Shut ya face. One day you whippersnappers will be all nostalgic about the "Always So Good (for so little)" Swiss Chalet ads or the "Gotta Be Red" Red Rooster ads, just you mark my words. And get off my lawn.

Also, watching that ad back now just makes me cringe. A lot. 

It was about this time I started resenting the greenery here. It's all so green, like fake, plastic tree green. Aussies are used to dusty, understated khaki and brownish brackish greens, but these trees are jelly (that's Jell-O to you North American lot) green. Wow, totally green. Clean and fresh and ARGH!How dare they be so green! It was an affront to the eyes.

I would have given my left (leave it to your imagination) for a eucalyptus tree. Even a bottle of eucalyptus oil would have done. In fact, if anyone has one to spare, I'd accept it - I have some sticky tape residue from the house's previous owners I just can't shift. Ah. Right. Inflammable. *sigh* Silly postal restrictions. Just because the plane might explode and burn in midair doesn't mean I have to be without my scent enhancer.

Then came the absolute need to find obscure 80s Australian music. Well, actually at the time it was mainstream enough for me to hear it constantly on the radio (when gOLD FM started playing the music from my era, I really knew I was old), but it's nigh on unheard of over here. Well, except Crowded House. Or Hunters and Collectors. Or Men at Work. Or... oh shut ya yap, I'm wallowing here!

Anyway, it began with Icehouse, as to be expected given they were my One True Love back in high school.

Copyright 1982 Regular Records

Then it started getting a bit more obscure with the Eurogliders. It's amazing how well these words can be changed into "Can't wait to gooooo home!"

Copyright CBS, 1985

When I woke up singing "da na NA NA nana naaaa naaa OOO WEEE!" I knew it had gone too far.

Copyright Big Time Records, 1986

There's being homesick, and there's being maudlin, and as much as I love the Hoodoo Gurus, I knew it was time to go out and look at the changing leaves and appreciate where I was.

Next week we're headed to Ottawa, and we're hoping to see a moose (from a safe distance) along the way. Perhaps I may even feel stirred enough to write another entry.

There may be whinging about the snow soon, though. It's already brass monkey weather, and the snow hasn't even flown yet.

Don't Fence Me In!

 Oh give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above;
Don't fence me in!
~Bing Crosby

As I look around my adopted neighbourhood, I find myself wondering if the Canadians realise how much ol' Bing captured their way of life in that simple couplet. Perhaps not in the "lots of land" concept as high rise apartments and condensed living are quite apparent, especially in the larger cities such as Toronto and Hamilton, but certainly in the oddity of the neighbourhood fencing.

I live in a small-ish town now - about 30,000 people - and I often find myself thinking of that song as I travel around. It's disconcerting to realise that there more often than not is a lack of privacy between yards.

I currently live in a townhouse, so naturally my backyard is accessible to my neighbours. Yet more than that it's also accessible to the outside street. When I look out my back door, if I didn't have a plethora of greenery, I can see straight out on to the street, and those on my street can see right into my house. During winter when the greenery is gone, I watch the cars dash up and down my snow dusted street with the hope they're too busy concentrating on the potentially icy road than they are on peering into my private domain.

Yet on visits to other Canadian houses I have seen that fences are not what I was accustomed to in Melbourne.

It's a long long fence between you and me, baby.

As you can see, this is a very old picture. In fact, that baby is me. You may suspect that I am some kind of prodigy (and that The Husband is a perv), but you'd be wrong. I'm oooooold now. Yet this is the style of fence common between houses where I am from - 6' tall and solid wood. There are no gaps, and it's a fair climb for a little one to see over. In fact, this fence was later painted in sump oil by our next door neighbour as he tried to keep the wood from rotting. This didn't stop my sister and I from climbing it to talk to the little boy next door, but Mum was never very happy at the mess we made of our clothes in the process.

We were boxed in on three sides, our yards our own domain untainted by the presence of others. Some even boxed themselves in from the front as well to make the box complete. We only had a knee high fence at the front, but it was generally enough to keep people from tromping over our dried out lawn.

Now, contrast my first experience of a Canadian backyard.

Such a pretty backyard!

As you can see, there are gaps between the upright slats on the left side. There is a bit of privacy there, but not as much as I was accustomed to in Australia. And along the back there's only a thigh high cyclone fence! Yet weirdest of all to this privacy conscious Aussie, there are gates between the yards! That fact blew my mind when I spotted them. From the vantage point I took this from, I could actually watch those in the yards behind the house mowed their lawns and puttered about doing their yardly things.

There's a sense of community this promotes that is much more difficult to achieve when we're all separated from one another. Yet it's also nice to have a life apart from these others who simply live in the same geographical area.

This may be an oddity of the smaller town mindset as opposed to the suburban one I hail from, but it's certainly been something to adjust to since coming here. I miss my boxes in boxes.

Exotic Vermin - Thieves in the Night

I'm rapt. I saw my first live raccoon last night!

I know, North Americans are now facepalming at the thought of me bounding around at this annoying and commonplace event. They're little bastards that are everywhere and get into your garbage, but I suspect you don't know quite how awesome they are to someone who hasn't seen them before. All I got to see where I lived were birds. Birds birds sparrows blackbirds starlings Indian mynahs birds crows magpies birds wattle birds galahs cockatoos oh my gods shut up birds. When we went driving, as we were on the outskirts of the city the only wild mammalian creatures we'd see would be rabbits. Damned rabbits should never have come to my country - but that's a rant for another time.

The Husband was on a night shift last night, and as such was leaving for work at ARGH o'clock. He puttered off out the doorway and I moseyed back up here to watch more random stuff on YouTube. Well, it fills in time in the middle of the night. Don't judge me!

Yet before I'd even plonked myself back down on this couch, I heard the front door open again.

"That was fast." I said, wondering what he'd forgotten.

"There's a bunch of raccoons out here!" came the breathless reply.

I don't think my little town was quite prepared for the visual I presented in my short pyjamas and lily white legs. Thankfully the only things moving around at that time of night were the family of raccoons peering beadily at me from across our mews.

One one was out in full view, little bandit mask barely visible in the gloom as he studied me. He was scared, but I was fascinated. These things look a lot like Tasmanian Devils in the way they're shaped. They have a funny humped back and a long bushy tail, and they're so determined as they sniff about looking for rubbish.

Even The Husband was fascinated by them. Perhaps it's been too long since he'd seen evidence of them, and had never dealt with them as an adult property owner before he moved to Australia, but he was really pleased, saying, "I've never seen them this close before."

The one watching me sauntered away. You'd never have guessed he was scared save that he was trying to saunter as fast as he could. It was almost like, "Yeah, ya caught me, copper, but ya can't prove nuthin!"

Funny little buggers. Thank goodness we keep our rubbish in the basement, because those masks they wear aren't just for show. I think some human once made the correlation between how they looked and what they did, decided to become a thief and put on a mask. Coz that's what they are.

I hope I see them again. It's fascinating to see a whole world of animals that live around the humans without really interacting with us. We don't really have that in the cities in Australia. Our native wildlife is too fragile to live amongst our feral pets, and the thought of more introduced species messing things up is quite frankly unbearable.

I have no pictures of my encounter as my iPhone camera has no flash. You'll have to make do with David Attenborough.

Life of Mammals - ©BBC.

One day I may relate the story of my father-in-law and his encounter with what he thought was a raccoon in his garbage, but was in fact a whole lot larger.

I wonder when I'll see my first bear?

Sweets For the Sweet

I don't know if you're aware of it, Canada, but your food is really sweet.

Cookies and milk for breakfast, anyone?

It's not only the obvious, though there are a lot of sweet options on offer here. It's not just cereals or the soft drinks and cookies, but even to barbeque meats and sauces. Ribs are an iconic food here in North America, yet the marinade they've been put in is sometimes so sweet that it overpowers the flavour of the meat (given I'm not a fan of pork, I sometimes wonder if that was the point).

Yet the thing I've had to accustom myself to are things like bread. It might be that we simply haven't found the right brand yet, however so far the multigrain bread I've tried has tasted more like cake than what I considered bread. In fact, multigrain here isn't quite what I'd call multigrain - it seems to be closer to what I'd call "brown", which this six year old in a thirty-nine year old body has never liked. As an analogy to my Australian readers, often these breads taste like croissants.

However I thought I was imagining things, or alone in this opinion until I presented myself to my new doctor for a first consultation. It was more of a "get to know you" session than an actual medical consult, so there was a lot of chatter involved.

One of the things that came up through this conversation was that he had lived in Australia for a few months as a part of an exchange program, and so he immediately declared "Yes!" the moment I said, "The bread here is sweet." He expounded on this, adding that he's only aware of it having been exposed to something different, and we wondered if it might be because of the corn syrup that often comes up as an ingredient in these products.

I don't know, but I find myself wishing for more savoury savoury foods. I think I am beginning to see the attraction for bacon doughnuts. Blargh.

Hot Enough For Ya Brass Monkeys?

I write a lot about food here, I've realised. Pork, lamb, chocolate covered bacon, takeaways and take out; all these things and more have been covered in this blog. I do this because food is a commonality both Australia and North America can immediately recognise, yet with such a broad scope of differences it's a prime topic for discussion.

However despite the temptation to address it once more (and I do have some new ground to broach with it), this triumphant return to the blogging world instead will address another thing we have in common - the weather.

It's hardly fair of me to deride or mock either North America for the heat wave they're currently going through, nor Victorians for the wet and chilly weather happening there. It's got up to 39 degrees Celcius here in the last day or two - hardly insignificant in the grand scheme of things - and when you add humidity to the mix things are really sticky here. To me this is hot weather, yet when I came from a city that got to 48 degrees in the last summer I was there, it's still not the hottest I've ever been.

Nights are the worst, though. I have always been what my mother called a "Hottentot". I get very hot when I sleep. I sleep next to a bit of a cold fish, whose lower extremities I have long refered to as "Undead Feet".  I swear they couldn't get much colder if I actually did stick them in a freezer! Brr! However this is negated by the fact the cats love to swamp me. Cue me waking up at about 5am overheated and grumpy, gasping for air and clawing my way out from under the pile of cat fur.

This is a godsend in winter, though. I can go to bed freezing, and still wake up needing to throw off the blankets and chill for a while. Yes, even in the -28 degree weather I have to do this. And I know the Undead Feet appreciate my inability to regulate my body temperature, at least when the snow is falling.

There's the crux of this matter. I used to gripe a bit about the chill back home, but as we were by the ocean we never got far below zero, and usually then only at night. And there was certainly no snow. Sometimes the grass was whitened by frost, and sometimes there was a bit of rime on the windows, but nothing like I've seen here.

Yet my fellow Australians dress exactly the same for their approximately zero degree weather as the Canadians around me now dress for the depths of these bleak white winters. On the other hand, I have seen the people around me shed their clothes as soon the sun shows itself; the wools and thick, dark fabrics quickly being discarded for the thin cottons and light colours that I equate with only the hottest of days. I feel like a big black bat as I swoop around this town in my black lace, black long skirts and black long sleeved blouses amongst all these pastel and white donned sweaty Canadians.

These things amuse and enthrall me, and it makes me smile to think of how the human creature adapts to its environment. Aussies who are wondering at how Canadians can live here in the "eternal freezing cold" - you'd adapt, and it's not cold all the time despite what you might believe. In fact, it does get quite hot here. And Canucks, it's not sunny and warm all the time in Australia, though for the first winter or so I suspect you'd do as I now do, and chuckle every time they complain about the chill. You'd each get your own back every time the seasons change, trust me.

Fireworks

Here in Canada, this last weekend was a long weekend, celebrating Victoria Day. What this mostly means is that it's the beginning of the warm weather and there are lots of fireworks displays.

When I was a child, fireworks were the most amazing, "sickest", thing ever. We didn't get to see them very often as my parents didn't like the idea of bottle rockets, and even sparklers were a source of burns, but I do remember one spectacular failure.

The youngest of my three brothers was known for his defiance of authority, and one day when I was very young, he brought home a bottle rocket. These were tiny little fireworks that had a long stick so you could prop them up in a glass milk bottle - hence, "bottle rocket" - so you could light the fuse and have it go up without much risk of burning yourself.

There was an overlap in the nights my parents worked - Sundays. When my older brothers headed off to university or into the Army, this youngest brother was left looking after my little sister and I. As a result, events such as the Great Bottle Rocket Launch happened when my parents weren't around.

So with great fanfare this brother produced a bottle from one of the empties set out for the milkman, grandly placed the little firework into the bottle, and gleefully called his little sisters out to come be naughty with him. If there's one thing corruption loves, it's an innocent audience.

With a flourish he lit the fuse. My sister and I waited with baited, excited breath. It sparked a bit, there was a bit of smoke. We leaned further forward in order to better see the magic as it happened...

Then nothing. The bloody thing just sat there. It was a dud, a fizzer that in later days came to represent that brother in my mind. Lots of promise, no spark.

Later in my life there were sparklers on cakes, and those were always a thrill for me. However, things changed in Victoria after one spectacular fireworks show in Melbourne. As I recall, though research hasn't allowed me to find the actual reference yet, the last straw was when one of the grandstands at one of our big and at the time new sporting arenas caught fire from a professional fireworks display. It was a very hot summer, and a stray spark melted the seats. Fireworks were banned in Victoria soon after, with only New Year's one of the few days that you could see fireworks at all. You certainly weren't allowed to buy them for yourself anymore. Not that we were when I was living with my parents, but that never stopped my stupid brother.

I used to love going to SkyShow near Albert Park Lake on Australia Day. I think I only went twice and the crowds were horrendous, but it was a fantastic show. They'd do firework displays to music they played over the supporting radio station, EON FM (which is now Triple M and I am really showing my age here). Even when I didn't go I'd still listen in on my little radio. Ahh, the innocence of youth. Now I suppose I'd stream it online, or wait for the podcast, watching simulated fireworks on my PC.*

It's a different story in Canada, and I suppose that all this time without them in Australia has turned me into a fearful spoil-sport. When I walked into my local grocery store and saw ranks upon ranks of fireworks for sale, my first thought was not the joyful "Oh boy oh boy! FIREWORKS!" I once would have felt, but instead it was more like "OH GODS, WE'RE SURROUNDED BY TREES AND ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!" Too many Total Fire Ban Days, I suspect.

There were ranks and ranks of 'em.

RAAAAAAAANKS!

Ranks and ranks and ranks of 'em. RAAAAANKS.

The Husband and I did go to a professional pyrotechnics show over the weekend, though, down in a teeny town some ways from here. It was a small show, but lovely, set in the middle of forests and on the shores of a large lake. The setting was idyllic and the fireworks glorious. Alas, I cried through it thinking about all the cute little animals I'd seen there and what would happen to them should there be a misplaced spark.

My friends, I have become that most scary of creatures, The Old Fart. That's right. Get off my lawn.

* The end of this piece was going to be a chuckle at the expense of Australia's capital city, Canberra, which was the one place fireworks were still legal. Alas, research for this piece has found that after the last big bushfires there, Canberra too has outlawed the sale of fireworks. Ah well, at least you can still legally make your hardcore porn there. Gotta love our pollies.

Spring Sprung Sproing

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz.
I wonder where the birdies is?

Spring has arrived in this Great White North, and it's been rather a noticable change. Gone are the banks of endless white, replaced by shy buds of greenery. There is, contrary to popular outside-of-Canada belief, sunshine. Ooooh.

The difference in the seasons here is a bit of a shock to someone who is used to the Victorian climate. We fool ourselves into believing that we have four seasons, but according to our stereotype Melbournians have to carry umbrellas and coats with us on even the brightest of sunny days as those changes happen within an hour or two.

Here the seasons are quite distinct from each other, and it's fun to actually see it as we move from one to another. Victoria in comparison really only has two seasons - "Hot and Dry" or "Cold and Wet", without the (cold) extremes that happen here.

I keep getting told about how Canadians have coats for everything, and it's true. Winter coats, Fall coats, Rain coats, Spring coats. I'm sure there's a Summer coat in there as well. That being said, the moment there's even a touch of warmer weather, all coats are off and out come the lighter clothes. Weather that would make the average Victorian shiver and reach for the heater has many Canadians out and about in T-shirts and shorts. People are even barbequing in the rain.

One of the things I have discovered since being here is that zero degrees Celcius really isn't as cold as you think when you're coming back up from the deep minuses. One looks forward to it through the depths of a white winter, and even starts refering to it as a "heat wave" when it happens with tongue only partially in cheek. When zero is only the halfway point on the great journey of the seasons, it's bloody cold going down, but nice and warm coming back up. I suppose it's all relative.

We're still being asked why the hell we came back, though. These cold inured Canadians just can't imagine why we'd have left the supposed paradise of Aussieland. I should be facetious and say that it's because Doctor Who comes out a week later back home. That'd fix it.

A Prisoner Island

I think one of the best known things about Australia's history is that we were originally an English prison colony. Actually the Federation of Australia was comprised of several of them. New South Wales is arguably the best known, but Tasmania and Western Australia were quite large as well.

Victoria, where I'm from, simply didn't. Oh, I think they tried with a few small holdings, but we had nothing on the scale of Sydney Town or Van Diemen's Land. Victoria is much better known for being a goldfield - Ballaarat (now just "Ballarat"), California and later the Yukon were the big places the gold miners went to back in the 1850s.

Yet we are all known as being convicts, and Australians on the whole are very attached to their convict heritage in that weird cultural cringing way we've developed. The rest of the world may deride us for it, but by all the Gods above we're going to be proud of it! Finding a convict ancestor in your family tree is something to be cherished and gives you bragging rights over those dirty, not-true blue enough Aussies who only have scunging Free Settlers in their background. And heavens forbid you should find a trooper in your family tree. Back to England you go, screw!

So I suppose it comes as no surprise to realise that in the Australian way of things, at least the piece of it I came from, the police aren't regarded particularly highly. The underdog rules in the Australian heart, which also leads to our infamous "Tall Poppy Syndrome". If anyone seems to be getting too big for their britches or a swelled head, there's nothing more than an Australian likes to do than cut them down and put them back in their supposed place*.

Historically, there was no one better at getting too high and mighty than the troopers. Most didn't want to go to the colony. It was a place of exile for the troopers as well as the convicts, though at least the troopers could potentially go home again after their tour was done. They were usually bachelors, and often the troopers had been thrown out of their old detatchments for misconduct and so were assigned as far away as they could get them. That meant Sydney Town. These prime pieces of dross tended to take their frustrations regarding their situations out on the convicts. They also had one main escape from the harsh realities of the colony - rum. They drank a lot of it, and pity the governor who tried to stop the manufacturing of it.**

One can only imagine some of the atrocities perpetuated by these isolated fellows. After all, tales are told of how so many female convicts on the First Fleet arrived in the fledgling colony pregnant, when they hadn't been that way when they started out.

Things didn't really get better as time went on. Even in Victoria, on the Goldfields we had horrors such as The Eureka Stockade and the infamous shoot out at Glenrowan. Neither of these events shine a particularly good light on the troopers, though in the latter case at least Ned Kelly did have a reputation as a bushranger. He and his family also have a reputation for being victims of police persecution, and amongst certain circles in Australia, he is a legend for standing up to authority and not taking it lying down.

So Australia is a prisoner island, standing at the limits of an endless ocean.*** We don't really like authority, and we don't trust our police. Even today in our newscasts, if the police have dared to shoot at someone, it's immediately reported nation-wide, usually in terms of "They don't need to do this to those poor innocent people!" The Victoria Police in particular have a reputation for shooting to kill, even though I can only think of a handful of times they actually have killed someone.

I like to think I'm a rational person, and suspect that with the restrictions they have on even drawing their weapons, those people they've shot were presenting a danger to those around them. I may be wrong - I know the Australian in me is screaming, "But they probably weren't! They just shot them because it was easier!" See? The history is telling.

Why am I writing about all this in this blog? Isn't this supposed to be about my experiences here in Canada, and not reminiscences of half remembered Australian History lessons and societal issues?

The attitude to the police is quite different here. It's quite telling that one of the most famous figures in Canadian literature is an RCMP officer. I can't see the equivalent happening in Australia. In fact given Ned Kelly's iconic status, it's the opposite.

It's a thing of pride to have a family member in the police here, while I remember the worst insult one of my brothers would throw at we younger ones would be, "You're going to be a bloody copper when you grow up, aren't ya?" We were supposed to be ashamed of that thought, and the quickly spat back, "No I'm not!" indicated just how well we had learned that lesson.

The brother who said these things wasn't really the brightest spark on the bonfire, and nor was he known for his acceptance of authority, but though he was something of an extreme case and not indicative of the whole family's experience, he is illustrative of the difference between the Canada and Australia.

Australians aren't criminals - well, no more or less so than any other Western country - but there is this underlying current of distrust and fear of the police, rather than the respect I tend to see here. I married into a Canadian family who have solid ties to the Ontario Provincial Police so perhaps we go too far the other way, but the media coverage isn't as suspicious of its law enforcement agencies as the Australian ones tend to be.

Of course there are Canadians who are distrustful of the police and their policies, but on the whole, it is one of the major ways the Australians and the Canadians are dissimilar from each other.  It's been interesting to watch.

* I think that ultimately that is why Australians don't like Americans very much. The bold and brassy confidence a stereotypical "Septic" has really rubs Aussies up the wrong way. Loudness as a lifestyle really gets on an Australian's nerves. "Pull ya head in" really is the Australian way of doing things.


** Gotta love William Bligh; first his crew mutinied on the HMS Bounty, then this Rum Rebellion. It's interesting how in movies about this incident Bligh is portrayed as the high and mighty English Overlord with all the privilege and arrogance that might imply, while MacArthur was the Little Aussie Battler, just trying to make a quid in an unfair world. In reality they were probably just as heinous as each other. At least MacArthur moved on to sheep after all this.


*** From "Great Southern Land" by Icehouse, ©1982 Iva Davies. Lovely imagery, but how are there limits to an endless ocean? I love this song though, so pull ya head in.  ;-b

Elections!

It's been a big week in news, and for Canada it's not quite over yet. There have been three big news stories here - the Royal Wedding, Osama Bin Laden and last but not least, the Canadian Federal Election. I think I'll address the latter one first.

It's been interesting to watch the Canadian political process at work. If nothing else, it's made me feel quite at home given we'd just gone through this same thing in Australia before I left. No matter where I go, politicians and their tactics are all the same.

It was initially quite confusing getting a grip on the different parties here. It's not the kind of big two party thing that the US is known for, it's more like the Australian "anyone can have a go" kind of deal. I'm not yet certain if Canada has Independants (people not affiliated to any party) the way we do or not. They do have a broadly similar system, though with radically different names.

Our big two parties are the Liberals and Labor (ALP - Australian Labor Party. Yes, there's a lack of "u" in it, and it really cheeses me off. Bloody sellouts).

The Liberals ally themselves with the smaller Country Party to become the Coalition. These Liberals, despite the name, are what the Canadians would call Conservatives and the USicans would call Republicans. They're the Right Wing, the ones for business and development.

The ALP are the Left Wing, the ones for the people, who are more on the side of welfare, health care and education programs. These are what the Canadians would call the Liberal Party (now you really start to see my confusion), and the USicans would call the Democrats.

How the hell the Australian Liberal Party got all turned around from the meaning of the word and from the rest of the world, I'm not certain. Probably to confuse immigrants to Australia, but they aren't allowed to vote!

Anyway, here in Canada there are obviously more than the two parties. There's also the NDP as I mentioned above, the Greens, lots of lesser known ones, and Bloc Québécois. This latter one is a uniquely Canadian thing, and even though I don't know French, I kind of get the feeling from their site that this is a party for the Québécois who would love to get away from the bulk of Canada and be their own country. I have it on good authority* they tried it a while back, but stopped the proceedings when they realised they'd have to produce their own currency and the like. I would love to visit Quebec sometime.

Every party slags off all the others. It's almost refreshing (in a sour, world-hating kind of way) to know that no matter where you go, politicians and political maneuvering doesn't change. I can't recall seeing any TV ad where they addressed their own policies directly (though I do have a tendancy to fast forward through the commercials, so I might have missed the one that did). There was at least one Liberal ad that had an address to their website inviting one to see their family plan, though when I got to the site last night it took me a while to find the link in the midst of all the pics of Michael Ignatieff and the blog posts about his life on the bus (He went to the Stoney Creek Dairy! I've been there! I wonder if the icecream quality has changed now that the manufacturing of it has gone to Montreal?).

Most of what I've been seeing reminded me quite strongly of the Australian Liberal Party's (not the same as the Canadian Liberal party! See above) campaigns. Both at a State and Federal level, these ads were all about blasting the leader of the Labor Party on a personal level, then the party as a whole, while never once mentioning their own policies.  In fact I have a dim recollection of Tony Abbot, the leader of the Liberals, being pressed about their policies, and them being released only very late in the game.

At least the Canadian ones seem to have given voters some credit and have at least addressed how things were going to be different if their party got in power, though never in any depth, and all I can seem to recall of them now was that the Conservatives believe that "The Other Parties (not us!) Will Raise Taxes" and "Michael Ignatieff Is Not A Canadian". Oh yeah, and that angry two headed coin thing. Meanwhile the Liberals hated the NDP (New Democratic Party - what happened to the old one?) even more than the Conservatives, which really doesn't seem to gel with what I know of their stances on things.

I also recall a whole hell of a lot of Maple Leaf Flags fluttering patriotically in the background, particularly on the NDP ad.

I suppose that after *cough*teen years of being of age in a country where voting is compulsory, it's hard not to get interested in the local political scene. In fact, if I was allowed to vote here I would have.  Even if you people are weird and hold your elections on weekdays instead of our weekends and you don't have to vote if you don't want to, I would be out there at the polling places with you on this one. No, I'm not telling you who I'd vote for.

If you're Canadian and eligible, go vote. If for no other reason than for me to vicariously vote through you. Gods, I never thought I'd actually want to vote. I must be going mad.

* Ok, so it was hearsay and vague memory. I dunno, I was living about as far away as I could get, ok?

It's the Cleaners!

In the continuing theme of things to get used to, there are some unusual vehicles on Canada's roads. Some of them I haven't even been able to define properly yet, they're so unfamiliar to me. Strange little cleaning machines and sweepers, as well as trucks with odd attachments and devices I just don't know the functions of*.

There are more identifiable vehicles as well, things that one can guess what they're for or know from seeing them on television and in the media. Snow ploughs for example. Or, as they spell it here, "plow"**.

Most of the ones you see around look like pickup trucks with a blade or two attached to the front, as seen below.

 

Many of the ones I see around here aren't as nice as the one in this picture, but what do you expect for a work vehicle that shovels snow and gets corroded out by salt?

The average Australian probably wouldn't think about how Canadians clear their highways. It wasn't something that really occurred to me before I started living here, that's for sure. Highways are just as important here as in Australia, if not moreso given there doesn't seem to be a passenger rail network covering most towns the way Victoria's does.

The road network here is really rather awe-inspiring, and even out here in the country the highways are lit and, as we discovered on one blizzard filled day on a trip to a town north of here, very well cleared.

That is the back of one of the highway clearers, and they're rather a sight to behold. I haven't seen a machine quite as impressive since I visited the mines in Kalgoorlie over twenty years ago. I wasn't able to get a good picture of the business end of the plough, but here's a fictional representation of what they reminded me of.

Labyrinth - ©Jim Henson Productions

Ok, so I might have indulged in a little hyperbole. Not by much, though! They may not be mine loaders or borers, but for something you just see out on the roads as a (winter) day-to-day thing, they're definitely impressive. Some have massive rotating drillheads to bite their way through major drifts, and given the amount of snow we've seen this last winter, you could see why.

These things tear through the snow and push it to the side of the road in as efficient a way as they can. They also spinkle the roads with the aforementioned salt to keep the road from becoming too covered over with rime before they can get back, as well as to give other vehicles a little more traction as they head to wherever they're going.

They're some of the scariest bloody things I've seen on a roadway, ever. Yet also, quite awe-inspiring.

One day I want to see one of the railway snow ploughs. Those things have to be huge!

*Yet. One day I shall find out and dutifully blog about them for others to peruse. It's a duty.

**Anyone else rhyme that with "snow" or "slow"? Just me? Ok.

Read all about it!

There's been a lot to get used to in these first months here in Canada; some things you just wouldn't think about until you're actually presented with them.

Case in point: newsagencies. In Victorian towns at the very least, they're the go-to place for not only newspapers but magazines, stationary, special occasion cards, and oddments along those lines. Every town has at least one, and Melbourne suburbs have several. Most shopping centres and strips have at least one, often with a Post Office tucked away at the back so you get even more services from the one little shopfront.

It doesn't seem to be the same here. Newspapers are dispensed from machines (or delivered in a flurry of junk mail to your door, but that's no different to Melbourne. We used to call Hoppers Crossing the junk mail capital of Australia given that if we didn't keep on top of it, legitimate mail would blow away down the street as it no longer fitted in the box).

We're not unfamiliar with the concept, and have similar machines in Inner Melbourne, but you have to remember that I'm now living in a relatively small town and it's very common here.

I thnk the snow plough just went through...

I have to wonder why. I hope that those who really like to read their papers have them delivered on the blizzard days, because I can imagine how hard it must be to both deliver and purchase them with the machine buried under all that snow!

There are specialist shops around such as the Hallmark Store, and Wal-Mart and the like certainly sell a wide selection of magazines and stationary items. They also sell greeting cards for all kinds of celebrations I'd not have thought of. However there simply isn't the abundance of newsagencies we're used to back in Melbourne. It's not quite the same seeing little bunches of newspaper machines clustered on street corners as it was to go into the local newsagent. It kind of reminds me of this:

Daleks are ©BBC and Terry Nation

"YOU WILL BUY A PAPER OR BE EX-TER-MIN-ATED!"

I suspect I may watch a wee bit much Doctor Who. 

The Bone Trees

I sit here at my table, looking out on a world that is slowly waking up from winter. The grass is starting to show itself as green again after months of being covered by layers of white, and life is returning.

Over these months it has been the apparent death of things which has affected me the most. Where I come from, bare, blackened branches clawing toward the sky represent death; fire perhaps, or blight. Australia is a place of evergreen, khaki and brown, where things may turn yellow in the blistering sun but will only shed their foliage in the most dire of times and come back to life at the merest hint of rain. When things truly die, the locals mourn.

Canada is a land of contrasts, where the seasons truly change and the cycles of life are illustrated in the weather. We have been buried in white for months, broken only by the black of trees denuded by the cold. Their twisted skeletons stripped of their finery seem laid bare in death, and are a morbid reminder of what lies ahead of us all. To sleep, perchance to dream of sunshine.

It is this which has been the most depressing part of winter for me. The cold I could tolerate, and it's true when they say that after a certain point you don't really feel the difference in temperature anymore. Funnily enough it's as it's warming up now - around 0 degrees Celcius - that I'm feeling chilled again. Yet one can put on more clothes, stoke the fire and turn up the furnace until we can make believe that it's as warm without as it is within. One look at the trees, though, and you know that it's dead cold.

The highways are lined with maple trees and other kinds of evergreens, and this place is spectacular in the warmer months. Even now I can see them starting to bud, and know there is the promise of beauty in the barrenness. However, as we travelled through the winter-huddled trees,  their empty branches reaching for the sun, what I saw were hands beseeching the world to be less brutal. It was wearying after a while, deep in a part of me that quietly believes that trees only look this way when their world has ended.

I've been a long-time member of Team Winter, but I am glad the sun is coming back out again. Like the Canadians around me, I am pleased to see the snow going for another year. Bring on the squirrels.

Feeling Extra Sheepish

Canada, you've made me quite happy.

There was a whole freezer load of lamb and lamb product at the supermarket we went to! It's even local!

Now I just have to find where they keep the live sheepies. Friends and a little Googling have lead me to believe that sheep are farmed around the town of Fergus, and The Husband and I hope to travel there sometime soonish to go have a look. Well that and there's a sheep cheese co-op up there we want to inspect. The Husband does love him some sheep cheese.

Feeling Sheepish

I miss sheep. Not in the Kiwi kind of way*, of course, but where I am there is a serious dearth of the ovine.

Australia is known for riding on the sheep's back (again, not in the Kiwi kind of way*), and that's reflected in so many ways. I lived in Melbourne's Western Suburbs for so much of my life, and even there in such an industrial environment you could find paddocks with small flocks of sheep in them. When I moved to Hoppers Crossing it used to amuse the heck out of me that the big police station was surrounded by sheep.

The Husband grew to love sheep (note: not a Kiwi**) as well, and was just as joyful as me to see those woolly specs in the pastures, especially when we spotted a black faced sheepie in the herd. I've had a special affection for the black faced sheepies since I was a kid reading the Enid Blyton farm books. They're so cute!

Historically wool was regarded as the saviour of the Australian economy, and the man who introduced the merino sheep to the fledgeling colony eventually became one of Australia's richest men. John MacArthur realised that rearing sheep for wool was more economically sound than simply raising them for their meat. Wool didn't spoil on the long journey back to Europe, so he had a product that could be sold back to the homelands for a profit.

We loved him for his sheep so much that we put him (and a sheep!) on one of our bills.

We'll just forget about the part where the two dollar bill has been replaced with a coin sans sheep and move on, shall we?

Sheep are awesome, and I simply haven't seen any since I've been here. I know that somewhere in Canada there has to be herds of them, for their wool if nothing else, but I find that I'm missing them. Driving around here I see cows and horses - there's even a farm near here that has herds of bison and deer on it - but I miss seeing the silly, jumpy, woolly forms of sheep.

Vegetarians may want to leave this post there.

I've written before of pigs and the proliferation of pig product here in North America, and walking into a supermarket's meat section reflects that. Row after row of pork and bacon product extend across the walls; more if you also count the sausage shelves. Beef takes up another good third of the space, with chicken and poultry taking up another cooler. If you look really hard, you'll find one set of shelves set aside for lamb and veal, with veal the majority of what is actually there for sale.***

In Australia it's a bit different. You'll find a couple of supermarket cooler banks set aside for lamb, and you can get more than just the typical cuts of leg of lamb and lamb chops that I've found here so far. Lamb stir fry, lamb sausages, lamb rissoles, lamb steak, lamb shanks, lamb schnitzel, lamb burgers, stuffed lamb roasts - pretty much anything you can think of by way of cuts of meat and you'll find it in lamb.

Lamb and mutton have the reputation of being fatty and chewy, but when it's prepared right, they're not. It's flavourful and juicy, and can be so very tender. Mutton isn't easy to come by back home, but I remember mum buying two-tooth on occasion and the flavour was so rich that I came to prefer it to lamb. Well, that and I liked the idea of the animal living longer than just the few months lambs were permitted to live.

I miss sheep. To look at and to eat, but especially to look at. Though I could really go for a curry... I guess I'll just keep on dreaming.

Image from icanhascheezburger

* I'm dead to the New Zealanders, aren't I? But I'm an Aussie, I need to have a go!
** Ok, I'm really flogging this joke to death now, eh?
*** And what's for sale is New Zealand lamb. I guess it has to go somewhere after they've "tenderised" it.

I should note that Australians tell naughty jokes about New Zealanders - Kiwis - being sheep molesters.  This does not mean I actually believe they are into bestiality. I am just amused by the jokes.

Little Boxes

I'm not an architect, so I apologise now if I get the terms wrong or mess things up.

When I first came over for my visit in May, I was amazed at how different houses were than back home. Apart from the notion that overall they were bigger to my foreign, working class eyes, there were visual differences in overall architecture that made me boggle.

Aussies, those quaint houses you see in films and on television actually do exist. You know the ones, the high gabled, precipitously pointy rooved chalet styled houses you see in The Goonies and other New England/Canadian productions. You can see the same style up in the Dandenongs, around Olinda, but apart from the mountainous regions, you won't see this kind of building much at all.

They're everywhere here, and they almost did my head in when I first visited. Canada and Australia are very similar in a lot of ways, but seeing those buildings showed me more than anything else - even driving on the wrong side of the road - that I was Somewhere Else. That I wasn't in Melbourne anymore.

Tangent Time!

When I was in my teens, one of my most beloved teachers introduced me to fantasy novels. Amongst those was the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey. In those novels there is a marked difference in the climates of the two continents; the North being colder and mountainous, while Southern was more tropical and flat, being covered with jungle.

Through the course of these novels, the Masterharper, Robinton, nearly dies, and so it's decided that he will retire to Southern. The Smithcrafters design a house for him that will make the most of the breezes that come in the afternoon. They include wide verandahs around the outside of the place and make sure the ceilings aren't too high to trap the heat in.

I always read the passage describing Cove Hold and saw the architecture reflected all around me. Australian houses often include verandahs, particularly in our cultural consciousness as featured in our "true blue dinki di" ads. They wouldn't show up in commercials if they didn't stir some recognition in us. If we don't have a verandah, we often have a widened eave - the roof doesn't directly meet the top of the wall.

Have a look at my old house as an example.

You can't see it here, but the house was also quite open plan, allowing breezes to flow through the place. Evaporative coolers (known as swamp coolers, at least in certain parts of the US) worked well here except on the most humid and hot of days owing to this airflow potential.

The house pictured above was a relatively new place - I only had it built ten years ago. Before that I lived in a 1950s house that didn't look too much different to the place above. It was weatherboard, not brick, wasn't open plan and originally had a porch and a trellised area, but in broad strokes it was similar to the above.

When I was first thinking about living here I didn't know if I could ever wrap my head around the alienness of what I was seeing around me. Could I live in a suburb that had such different overall looks around me? Or a town with such? This sense faded when I went out to stay in a riverside cottage, but I still remember that sense of being out of place.

It wasn't until I came back and things were getting colder that it all made sense. It all comes down to something we didn't get and Canada (not to mention mountains) gets in abundance - snow. Snow on a flat roof would sit and get heavier and heavier and heavier until the underlying surface gave way, making a hell of a mess beneath. I've already seen this in the prefabricated shopping malls (which do look like the ones back home) here. So I realised that the sharp angles were for the sliding of snow! I'm so clever.

Well, this footage may have helped.

footage from the Associated Press

It's a major urban clue indicating that you're not in Australia anymore, and is quite picturesque or jarring, dependant on one's state of mind when looking at them. It gives the place a European kind of feel, and makes this place almost magical after the flattness of Australia. I now live in a town dotted with little chalets, and how is that not amazing?

Right is Wrong, U-Turn

Further to my prior post, Right is Wrong, I have now driven on these icy roads. No one died. There was only mild panic; mostly from me. No blood stains, no odd dents in the sides of the car. I even backed up the driveway and didn't hit the garage door.

It's still all arse-backwards, but I did it. Yay!

Car Bin?

Every locale's population has their own ways of refering to itself, be they Sydneysiders, Novocastrians or Melbournians. Yet it should be fairly self evident how the city or place name itself should be pronounced, one would think. After all, in English at least, there is an agreed upon way to pronounce the given syllables in a word, accents and inflections aside. One would think that when given a particular word with a given, agreed upon way to pronounce the syllables within that word, there would be no deviations from that given way of pronouncing it, right?

It takes a whole heck of a lot to keep myself from snickering when I hear a local pronouncing the name of the capital of this province, Toronto. You see, I pronounce it "toe-RON-toe", but whenever I hear a Canadian pronounce it, I seem to hear it as this:

My dear Ontarians, this is the image I get in my head when you refer to "toe-RAH-nah". That's a Holden Torana, a car synonymous with the late 70s and what we like to call hoons. These cars are done up to the nines, lowered, given mag wheels and "hotted up", and are often clocked going waaaay too fast in residential areas.

I know it's my comprehension of Canadian tones that affect how I hear the word, but I still can't help but giggle when people refer to living in what I hear as "toe-RAH-nah". Even the newsreaders seem to pronounce it this way!

How many Canadians can fit in a Holden car? 5,555,912 according to the last census. Ba-DOOM tish!

Australians aren't like this, obviously. We don't have any kind of weirdness like that, right? We call a spade a spade and there's no confusion in how we pronounce our city names!

Drat, foiled again by my own hubris.

One of the things I always cringe at when I hear non-Australians talking about my home city is the way so many of them tend to elongate the second syllable, making it "mel-BOOOOORN". Some of them even manage to pronounce the "e" on the end of it. One of the things I liked about The Husband before we got together was that he assimilated to saying "mel-BIN" very quickly, despite how it's actually spelled.

Sorry Canadians, but I don't think I can pronounce "Toronto" the way you guys do. So I'll make you a deal - I'll not wince when you refer to Melbourne if you don't make fun of me and my foreign interpretation of Toronto, ok? I am not sure I can promise not to titter at "toe-RAH-nah" every time, though. I'm only human, after all.

Right is Wrong!

I don't know if I will ever get used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Heck, it's taken me a while now to get used to sitting on the wrong side of the car as a passenger, and in moments of tiredness or vulnerability I still go to step around to what you northerners consider the driver's side door.

"Oh, you want to drive?" comes the chirrup, and I go pale.

"No. No no no no no." is usually what I stammer, and beat a hasty retreat to the side of the car there really should be a steering wheel on.

I haven't dared actually try to drive yet. Everything about driving is backwards to me, save the pedal positions, I'm told. Even the wipers and indicators (we call 'em "blinkers" coz they, you know, blink) controls are on the opposite sides of the steering column, and I know I've experienced at least two periods where The Husband would be driving and the wipers would come on instead of the indicator signal - once when he was accustoming himself to driving in Australia and again when he was reacquainting himself with driving here.

I have a whole plethora of excuses I can rattle off in case anyone actually does ask me why I haven't driven yet. It's too icy, I've never driven a 4WD before, OMG snow, moose! However what it all boils down to is this:

We're going the wrong damned way!

I know this looks perfectly normal to someone from up here, but trust me, this is strange to those from my part of the world and is a scene that belongs on television or a film screen. We're familiar with the scene, but it's not quite right. Northerners, go watch Neighbours or Coronation Street (or any Australian, New Zealander or British television show) for the same sense of weird.

I know we don't wave swords at each other anymore, but it sounds more heroic to say that we left drivers do that because we predominantly right handed warriors needed to be able to get access to and use our weapons rather than the rather boring reason of "we used to ride on the back left horse of the dray team when hauling freight as it was easier to pass on that side".[1] Left side drivers are warriors, you righties are teamsters. Which seems more impressive?

I think what it all boils down to is that I'm terrified I'll be driving along and suddenly realise I've just gone past ones of these:

Pic from freefoto.com

I've heard of so many foreigners going up the off ramps in Australia. In fact, I believe I'm related by marriage to at least one of these. I don't want to reciprocate here. Yet worse, I know that sooner or later I'm going to have to deal with one of these:

Pic from freefoto.com

And I thought roundabouts were bad. *shudder*


[1] http://users.telenet.be/worldstandards/driving%20on%20the%20left.htm

Paranoid Piggies, Redux

Over on my Facebook page, one of my friends responded to my Justifiably Paranoid Pigs post with this comment:

For the record, to my knowledge, we do not have that bacon wrapped donut anywhere in Canada. That's something the crazy Americans have thought up. There is a fine line between American food, and Canadian food. If you wanna see bacon, head to the states, where everything comes with a side order of grease.

While I do agree for the most part (as much as I can, given I've only been in the States once, for two months, and spent most of that time on a Girl Scout camp where we were fed all manner of turkey product), I suspect that the Canadians don't realise just how much the USicans have infiltrated their cuisine, as I spotted this little gem at a local town fair over the weekend:

Sweet, sweet piggy.

Aussie Etymology

Words fascinate me, and it worries me that a lot of the old Australianisms are dying out in the face of television and other media. I remember my Mum and Dad saying to me, "It's Zed, not Zee!" when I was watching Sesame Street, and "Don't use contractions, it makes you sound like a Yank*!"

Of course, I use contractions all the time now, but there are words that Australians know and use that the rest of the world just don't get (except perhaps the Brits, who we may had nicked some of them from), and I believe these should be celebrated. In fact, I named this blog after two of the more colourful sayings, "Don't come the raw prawn with me" and "Mad as a cut snake", but I'll explain those in time.

With no further ado, here's a quick glossary of some of the terms you may read (or more pointedly, not read) in this blog.

Raw Prawn - from "Don't come the raw prawn with me". It means, "don't try to fool me (I know what you're up to)". Apparently it was from World War One, where raw prawns were substituted for cooked ones as pranks. I chose this as part of my blog title as I didn't want to be bamboozled by North Americans. I'm on to you guys, and I'm chronicling it here.  ;-)

Cut Snakes - from "Mad as a cut snake". It means, "Insane, mental". When a snake's head is cut off, it can thrash around uncontrollably, like it had gone insane. I chose it as the second part of this blog title as, well, sometimes you North Americans seem a bit mental to we poor reserved Aussies.

Root - also "rooted", "rooting". It means "to have sex" or "the sexual act". So when you Northerners talk about "rooting for your team" or (for WoW players) "I just rooted him so he didn't move!", please excuse the smirks on the Aussies' faces. We're trying to quash the Debbie Does Dallas style images that just popped into our heads. The brand name of "Roots Canada" just makes us feel really tired, or like we want to cross our legs.

Note to Aussies - this is not a brothel.

Fanny - means "vagina". Sorry North Americans, particularly USicans, but when you talk about "fanny packs", most Aussies near you will laugh, as was witnessed 13 years ago at a certain Girl Scout Camp in Ohio where one Aussie counsellor was trying to find the fanny pack of their campsite over their walkie talkie and had both themselves and the two other Aussies on camp gasping in hysterical laughter. Of course, we call them "bum bags". "Fanny pack" sounds like some kind of feminine hygiene product.  For those ultra ultra heavy days!

Norgs - also "Naugs", "Nawgs" and "Norcs". It means "breasts". So, North American girlies, if some Bogan tells you to get your norgs out, you have my permission to either hit them or stalk off. Or get them out if you like the person. I've included this because of a conversation on Twitter where a US lassie was left a bit confused by an Aussie's reference to "norgs". That conversation was also the catalyst for this post. Apparently this term derived from an advertisement for Norcan Milk back in the 1950s, which had a cow with a rather large udder featured as its focal point.

Bloke - a man. Sometimes it means a particularly Australian man, exhibiting many of the stereotypes, but usually just to reference an adult of the male gender.

Shiela - a woman. This term is the female equivalent of bloke, but is falling out of favour now as it can also be a fairly derogatory term for an uncooth woman.

Bogan - I mostly addressed this in my last post, but these are essentially the equivalent of Rednecks or Chavs.

Berk - silly person, idiot. This one is probably derived from Burke of Burke and Wills fame - a pair of well known explorers who went up north trying to find the Gulf of Carpentaria, then got lost on the way back and didn't pay heed to how the natives prepared their seeds for eating. The poison in them nullified Vitamin B1, so the explorers contracted beriberi and died. Only one of their entire party made it back to Melbourne.

Dag - see berk. A dag is also the piece of faecal material stuck on the behind of a sheep; one of the worst jobs in a shearing shed was to be the dag man, or, the one left clipping off the dried lumps from the sheeps' bums. I have it on good authority that the phrase "To shake one's dags" means to leave - ie, the last thing they'll see of you is your bum, and they'll see your (metaphorical, hopefully!) dags shaking as you go.

Nicked - stolen. It can also mean "arrested by the police". It can be used in the forms of "nick off" (go away) or "get nicked" (a more vehement go away).

Divvy Van - Most famous for the chant of, "You're going home in the back of a divvy van! (clap, clap, clapclapclap, clapclapclapclap, clapclap)", it's a police transport vehicle most identified with taking drunks to the local police station for the night. It's short for "Divisional Van".

Thong - other places in the world seem to call these "flip-flops", and are a kind of strapless sandal. Thongs are for wearing on your feet in Australia, not up your bum crack. Those very thin panties are called "G-strings".

If there's any I've missed, or anything you are curious about or would like defined, just leave a message in the comments and I'll make another post another time.

* My apologies to my Southerner readership, but my parents were older people who lived (and fought, in my Dad's case) through World War II. All the American GIs were refered to as Yanks, no matter where they came from. This has tended to stick in the Aussie consciousness, not to mention my own. One day I might even post about the rhyming slang that made "Yank" even worse.

Ugg!

Where I come from, Ugg boots are considered gauche by many. "Uggies" and "moccas/moccies" (that's "mocassins" to those of you who don't read Aussie Short Form) are often associated with a particular kind of Western Suburbs denizen, the Bogan. Also known as the Westie, the Bogan is considered rough around the edges, and the worst of the working class. Stereotypically they are known for being unemployed, is usually uneducated, hard drinking, sometimes drug addled, have high rates of single motherhood and are given to spates of violence. I think that to the English the term for these people would be "Chav". The closest term I can find for a North American to best understand would be "Redneck".

Their winter dress code consists of a t-shirt (often AC/DC or some heavy metal band) with a flannelette shirt thrown over the top of it, incredibly distressed jeans (often skin tight) or "trakky dacks" (tracksuit/sweat pants), and as I noted above, the Uggs - sheepskin cuff turned down and showing over your pants, of course!

There's something about Uggs that make one who is trying to escape the stereotypes of the West cringe. They're so quintessentially low class that despite their quality construction and beautiful materials, they are just to be avoided at all costs unless you want to be considered One Of Them. The boots themselves are rather big and clunky, and even in the context of a typical Melbourne winter, bloody stupid to wear unless you like walking in pools of your own sweat.

I was a young thing when I swore I would never buy a pair of Uggs. I was, like all my family, encouraged to aspire to more than we were, and to never, ever dress like a slob. Well, I may not have achieved that last goal, but at least I never wore Uggies while I lived in Australia.

That being said, I know you're now waiting for the other boot to drop (see what I did there?).

We were at Kingsford Smith Airport in Sydney, waiting for our connecting flight to Vancouver. I was feeling nostalgic because I was going to be leaving the country of my birth; for all intents and purposes, forever. Everything was seen through this weird glow (dressing for the wintery country you're going to whilst in the summery country you're about to leave will make the blood pressure rise), and you may understand that I was more than a little teary.

In this haze I set eyes on the Merino store in the Duty Free shopping area.

I haven't mentioned before how much I love sheep. Not in the Kiwi way, of course, but there's something so very Australian about seeing sheep on a hillside or in a paddock that it often makes me smile or declare, "Sheepies!" while flailing like a dickhead at said flock. It's a good thing that I married a bloke who feels the same way, as this tendancy of mine to gesticulate wildly at random animals might have been a deal breaker.

So here I was, teary, hazy and not entirely wanting to leave, and before me looms the Merino store. Out the front there was a massive display of the dreaded Uggs.

"Hey, it's cold in Canada" the little voice in the back of my head whispers. "Reeeeeeally cold in Canada. And you want a bit of Australia to take with you, right? Why not a lovely warm pair of Ugg boots, made in Australia with real Australian sheepskin?"

"But Uggs?" I counter, feeling the cringe. "I'm not a Bogan!"

"Bah!" says the voice in my head. "You don't have to buy a tan pair; look, they come in black! Also, don't fold the cuff down, and you can wear them beneath your pants! No one will ever be the wiser!"

I walked out of that store with my first ever pair of Uggies. However, I made the Husband carry them, coz there's still a certain standard to uphold, you know?

I have to say, though, that here in snowy Canada my Uggs have been a godsend. Here, away from the sun blasted streets of West Melbourne, Uggs make sense. They belong here. They make walking through snow drifts (and even sinking kneedeep into same) so much easier. In them my toes are snug and warm, and I am much less prone to slipping over on ninja ice patches as I am when wearing regular shoes.

But I still won't turn the cuff down. And I'm not wearing them over my pants. There are certain standards to uphold, you know?

Footing the Footy.

So tonight in North America there was some big football game on or something; this attracted about as much attention from me as the Grand Final did when I lived back in Victoria. In commemoration (or perhaps in distraction) I played a new World of Warcraft alt (dwarf enhancement shamans, represent! \o/) and watched geeky stuff on TV. Star Trek movie marathon? Make it so!

Sport isn't my thing, but it amazes me the different permutations of activities the word "football" gets added to. So here it is, an Outsider's View of Footy.

Aussie Rules: A bunch of guys get together and jump on one another's heads, trying to kick a vaguely elliptical ball through four sticks at opposing ends of a grassy oval. Blood flies, balls bounce and much skin is shown, whether it's intentional or not. Teams are often, but not always, named after animals, and it seems that those who play this game have knee reconstructions incredibly early in their lives. No running with the ball unless you're bouncing it, and this is the game with high flying marks and kicks.

Rugby League/Union: I wish I knew. I don't even know the difference between the two codes. These forms of the game are popular further north than I come from - well, apart from the Melbourne Storm - but I know little about them save that they are allowed to carry the ball at times, there's a lot of bum sniffing going on, and not as much jumping around as in Aussie Rules. The teams pack together in tight "scrums", pushing and shoving each other until someone can manage to flick the ball out from under the dogpile and get it moving toward the big "H" at either end of the field. Lots of blood, lots of grunting and the ball seems to be a tad fatter than that of Aussie Rules.

Gridiron: I'm still working this one out, though of course images of it have been disseminated to we lowly Aussies for years through TV and various other media. It seems vaguely similar to what I know of rugby, though with less bum sniffing (but more dogpiling) and more armour (probably because of said dogpiling), with "yard lines" they need to get the ball past to ultimately get a "touchdown". The sheer amounts of padding and helmetting worn by these guys tells me this has to be a very physical game, but I have no idea as not much of the players actually shows. Their "oval" is actually a rectangle, so they don't call it an oval at all. There's a lot of pushing and shoving going on in it, and a whole lot of grunting. These guys can pick up the ball, as long as they can push their way through the flying bodies of tackling others to get to the goal line.

Soccer/English Football: I'm going to be killed for this, but I can't tell if there's any difference between soccer and English football at all. No hand holding at all, it's all fancy footwork, and their goals are big nets. The ball is round and it doesn't seem to matter where the ball gets handled, as long as it's not by a hand. Heads, feet, knees, chests - anything goes in the wacky world of Soccer.

So there you go. I'm so dead, aren't I?

Dudley Dundee

Australians don't tend to be a flashy mob. Though we are, like most of the Western world, influenced by the all-pervasiveness of the US, we still retain a certain reserve as a national characteristic. "Pull yer head in" is a common saying amongst the Aussies, usually addressed at someone thought to be "crowing". Braggarts and "those who blow their own horns" are generally looked down upon by Aussies.

Ours is an understated culture. We have a wry, self-effacing and rather earthy humour, and one that I know can either rub others up the wrong way or be completely missed as attempts at joking at all. We aren't known for our passion, though we are known for our generosity. Aussies are a giving people, but we don't tend to like having attention drawn to it. Those who do are derided as being having big heads that need deflating.

On the other hand, Canadians have a reputation for being polite to a fault. The character of Dudley Do-right is as iconic to them as Crocodile Dundee is to Australians, giving the impression that Canadians are uptight and polite, honest to a fault and are incredibly naive to the point of idiocy.

  Dudley Do-right and associated characters © Jay Ward Productions

If you believe this is the absolute truth for every single Canadian, Aussies, then go back to your buffalo hypnotising and brandishing your big knives around.

 Crocodile Dundee ©1986 Paramount Pictures.

Back home we often wondered how our fellow Colonials deal with their louder downstairs neighbours. Do they try to ignore them, or do they sigh, turn up their own music and join the party?

It's hard for the Canadians not to be affected by their proximity to the US. Here in Southern Ontario, people travel across the border into the US as a matter of course, some to work, others to shop or holiday. Historically the closest states to here were also British colonies before the War of Independence, so the foundation peoples of both countries were similar types.

Compared to Australian understated tastes, even the Canadians like things bigger and brighter. This isn't to say that Australians don't want big things and the newest toys, but things that many Canadians take for granted are technologies that were things which made me gawp like some kind of yokel when I got here. Houses I would have considered large are called small by those who live in them, and in living here I finally understand why the Husband considered my house back in Australia so tiny.

All that being said, Canadians are friendly and close enough to Australians for me to be comfortable amongst them. And while I may be mistaken for having a British accent by them, at least I haven't yet been asked what language we speak in Australia, unlike when I worked at a Girl Scout camp in Ohio 13 years ago...

Justifiably Paranoid Pigs

Back home in Australia, we do enjoy the odd bit of pork. Bacon is a common addition to hamburgers and pizza. Pork chops are the bane of children a good meal choice, and hams are often featured as not only as part of a Christmas feast, but are often the filling of sandwiches.

However I don't think that the addition of bacon to a chicken wrap would do this to us:

Bacon Chicken Wrap commercial from McDonalds, posted by rsemailinbox.

North America, what is it with your love affair with pork products? The stuff is everywhere, and in so many forms! Ribs, burgers, pork sausages of all kinds, pulled pork, pork sandwiches, pork chops, pork loin, pork roasts, pork rinds, pork and beans, hams, Spams and bacon bacon bacon! So much bacon! Streaky, back, Peameal, smoked, pepper, maple flavoured, hot, cold and tepid. So much bacon, so little time.

Now, the list above isn't complete by any means, but most of these are recognisable to an outsider. Pork and bacon is savoury, and definitely accepted by the Australian, even if we don't quite have the plethora of pig related foods in our everyday cuisine.

However we then get into the realms where Australians go, "WTF, mate?"

Image is from Wikipedia 

That is a maple bacon donut. When a friend first introduced me to the concept of bacon being added to sweet things such as this, I was flabbergasted. Surely this was a very specialised taste?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon_mania 

It doesn't seem to be. More and more I'm seeing references to foods like this, where the very sweet is tempered with the salty meat.

I haven't dared try it yet, but I have to admit that once I got past my, "You're joking, right?" reaction, I have become quite curious. I've found food here is somewhat sweeter than I was accustomed to back home, even bread. I can imagine that the saltiness of the bacon would cut through that sweetness and make a nice counterpoint to it. After all, chocolate covered pretzels are rather good!

All this being said however, if I was a pig here in North America, I would be terrified. Here's hoping they don't seek revenge.