"In the beginning"

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily the views of the blog management, (on the other hand, they are not necessarily not the views of the blog management).

No effort has been made to stay within the bounds of the truth in this blog as it has always been the view of the management that the truth should never be allowed to stand in the way of a good story.

Friday, October 28, 2005

All Things Oz 4.

As seen through the window at holtieshouse.


While there is no need to make comparisons only between the
USA and Australia, most of my non-local readership seems to be from there so that’s my excuse.

Different names for the same thing.

I have already mentioned “Cyclones and Hurricanes” and while the Northern and Southern Hemispheres explain why one rotates clockwise and the other counter-clockwise….
Nah… I made that up, sorry.

Autumn and Fall have also been mentioned.

We use Petrol in our cars; Gas is restricted to LPG, (liquid petroleum gas) while you use Gasoline.

You use Lumber where we use Timber, funny I don’t know of either a Lum or a Tim tree.

You use “ass” where we use a crasser sounding “arse” incidentally “fanny” here has a totally different meaning and location to “Toosh” (which we don’t use at all.)

Our date system, (no not that kind of date) is day, month, year, while you favor
month, day, year.

We drive “utilities” (utes) while you prefer pick-ups.

We have “Blokes and Shelia’s” you have “Guys and Gals” there are many more variations on both sides, but you get the idea….

We have words like colour and labour instead of your color and labor, this applies to many other words too, I argue constantly with my spell checker about such things.

A thong is not a piece of scanty swimwear, as in America, but a fine example of Australian footwear. A group of Sheila’s wearing black rubber thongs may not be as exciting as you had hoped.

We drive on the left side of the road, while you drive on the right side. (Actually I believe we drive on the right side, but that could get confusing.)

We prefer to eat “chips” instead of “fries” but thanks to McDonalds we are gradually changing.

Instead of “ketchup” we use “tomato sauce”

We have “hotels and Pubs” instead of “bars”

We use “district instead of “precinct”

While our currencies are both Dollar based ours consists of;

5, 10, 20, 50, cents

1, 2, (coins only) 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, (notes only) dollars

We have no nickels, dimes or quarters.

When decimal currency first came to us in 1966, we had 1 and 2 cent coins, 1 and 2 dollar notes, but now while everything in our “super-markets”, (your grocery store) is priced to end with 29, 49, 99, cent etc. then rounded to the nearest 5cents. In the same manner petrol is priced at 124.9 cents per litre at the moment, (equivalent to approx $4.68 per US gallon.)

This list could go on for ever, but without labouring the point, while there are many differences we do seem to be able to communicate fairly well.

I thought you might like this little farmer/decimal story to finish up on.

The Farmers story.

“It all started in the 60s” he said,

“When they changed Pounds to Dollars, me overdraft doubled.”

“I was just getting used to this when they brought in Kilograms instead of pounds, and me wool clip dropped by half.”

“Then they changed to millimeters and we haven’t had an inch of rain since.

”So what do they do next? They bring in celcius now the temperature’s usually about 20, it’s so cold me wheat won’t grow.”

“As if that wasn’t bad enough they changed acres to hectares and I end up with half the land I had.”

“So I sat down, had a think, and reckoned that with daylight saving I was working an extra 7 hours a week for nothing.”

“So I decided to sell out, but the moment I got the place in the agent’s hands they changed from miles to kilometers, now it’s too far out of town for anyone to buy the flamin’ place.”

10 comments:

Cliff said...

Good stuff Peter. Question,,,is Banjo Patterson really on one of your notes?
I have 'The Man From Snowy River' committed to memory and I heard that somewhere.

Peter said...

Hi Cliff, (no pun intended) yeah Banjo is on our $10 note, the man from Snowy river would rate as one of the best poems in any country, he was a prolific writer and has volumes of other good stuff too.
We seem to change our banknotes fairly often, anyone who has ever been anyone will adorn one at some time, possible exception, Ned Kelly, Ned was our most famous "bushranger" back in the late 1800s he was nearly as famous as "Pharlap" a racehorse of exceptional talent.

TLP said...

Hey, fun stuff! And funny joke too. Who could ask for anything more? Not me.

WordWhiz said...

I was at a friend's house one night after work. Checking her mail, she found a post card from Victoria Secrets. (Do you have those over there?) The card indicated that an item she ordered was out of stock and would be backordered. The item? "Studded thong." She picked up the phone and called customer service, arguing that she had ordered no "Studded Thong"! After a short exchange, she quietly said, "Oh...okay. Thank you. That's fine." She hung up the phone. "What?" I asked.

The "studded thong" mentioned on the card = a pair of shoes.

HA! HA!

You also seem to have a problem with the letter 'z' over there, preferring organisation to organization.

Peter said...

Let's start with the easy one first, thank TLP, glad you enjoyed.
Now "whizzer", note two ZZs, while I don't think we have Victoria Secrets, (how would I know?) here I have heard of them, Via Jeff Foxworthy I think, so I can relate to your tale of the "shoes".
I did explain that I had constant battles with my spell checker, please don't tell me I am also going into battle with you when I make a tiny little mistake.

Peter said...

Hi Bubba, you snuck, good Oz word, in there while I was writing a comment.
I enjoyed both the movies you mentioned too, as i said at the end of the post, we seem to be able to work out what we are talking about eventually.
After watching zillions of car chase scenes in American movies, "scared drunk" would probably be my choice in say NewYork.

kenju said...

Very interesting, Peter. A power outage kept me off the computer for most of the day - so I am late getting here (or early, as the case may be....it is 3:00 a.m. here). Thanks for the lesson.

Anonymous said...

In America ketchup and tomato sauce are two very different things similar only in they are both made from tomatoes.

We say 'While'. You say 'Whilst'.

I have a great friend in Melbourne who drives me insane because he goes to university or hospital and we got to THE university and THE hospital.

Also here LPG is liquid propane gas.

Davoh said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Davoh said...

That was me, wrong post ..