Thursday, February 23, 2012

Because I needed a little laugh after the last post...

Signs you've been in Australia too long:

·      Thongs is something you wear on your feet
·      $2 is an good price for a liter of milk
·      Getting coffee or taking the bus with a surfboard under your arm is perfectly normal
·      You start every conversation with "how you going?" - even with the girl at the check-out counter in the supermarket
·      You instantly say "no worries" when someone apologizes
·      You no longer have to think twice to understand words such as Chrissy, prezzy, brekky, cozzy etc.
·      You have as much swimwear as underwear
·      You know that Teddy's, VB, New, and Blonde are beers
·      You order schooners, middies, and nips in stead of pints, half-pints and shots
·      Being drunk means you will be refused entrance to bars
·      Backpacker is another word for tourist
·      You no longer notice the cancer clinics lining the main streets of every city
·      You are no longer surprised at cyclists on the motorway
·      Names like Woolloomoolloo, Bulahdelah etc. seem perfectly natural
·      You have a havaiana tan on your feet
·      You no longer start the windshield wiper by accident when wanting to use the indicator in your car
·      Roadkill is spelled k-a-n-g-a-r-o-o
·      The sound of the Australian Raven is no longer amusing, but makes you want to get a shotgun
·      You can name at least 20 different toys for watersports
·      SPF 30 is your second skin
·      You no longer put salt in your food because you get your rdi from the ocean
·      Your sunnies cover at least half of your face
·      You call “mate” everybody: Very convenient when you forgot someone’s name
·      You are no more surprise when a perfect stranger is calling you “mate”
·      You say “G’day mate” with the right accent
·      You eat Vegemite for breakfast and kind of like it
·      You’ve got your Australian name and get surprise when someone is using your real name
·      You’re saying “I reckon” instead of “I think”
·      You know what AFL means and you picked your team
·      You know that a “bloke” is actually a “man”
·      You know that Holden is not a cheap Asiatic brand for cars
·      You know now that internet contract with data cap STILL exist.
·      You admit that France doesn’t have the exclusivity of good wines production but don’t know why the Australian white wine is giving you a headache when the French one doesn’t.

FUZE Week 50

Honestly... The past 4-6 weeks have blurred together a bit and many of the themes and weeks have started overlapping or dissolving into a to-do list of packing, emails, paper work, travel arrangements, and last visits with friends. 

Two weeks from today I will be landing in Tokyo.  Six weeks from today I will be back in the United States.  My excitement for Tokyo meets so many unknowns about that culture and leaves me in a place in non-emotion.  My joy for getting to see family and friends in the US again meets the sickening heartache I feel at the thought of not being here and again I'm in a place of non-emotion.  There seem to only be extreme highs and equally extreme lows on this journey with very little in between.  "Middle ground" seems to be a self imposed place of total neutrality that serves to keep me from looking like (and feeling like) I'm schizophrenic.

This week as I booked plane tickets and set up meeting and coffee dates to say goodbyes and farewell party plans were made I shed a lot of tears... n: fluid appearing in or flowing from the eye as the result of emotion, especially grief: to shed tears.

This week I also moved out of my studio and started packing at my house.  There were tears shed in this process as well.  I was more struck by the sensation of tearing... v: to pull apart or in pieces by force, especially so as to leave ragged or irregular edges. rend, rip, rive. mend, repair, sew.  In August of 2009 when I first visited Perth I gave it a part of my heart and leaving then was hard.  Now, after having lived here a year, Fremantle has my whole heart and I have it's.

Tear, both the noun and verb, is the theme for this week.  And I have a feeling the next few weeks as well.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012