I slept for what seemed like forever, because I was really tired and I felt like I was getting the flu, sore throat, nasty headache. I think it was something like 16 hours. But hopefully this will mean I am back on a somewhat normal schedule. I’ve been sleeping days and staying up nights for over a week now. If I am really honest with myself, I am a night person.
So if you’re wondering why you haven’t seen me on your blog and why I haven’t commented as I usually do, it’s because I was dreaming of being in this big bike race down a road that wasn’t finished yet with all the kids I hated from school.
While I was asleep the other half went to work and got the plans for their new kitchen sorted out, then went to the pub and won a meat tray and $40 on the pokies. Seeing as this meat tray made its way here now that we have a bbq, I have pictures for you! ;)
So on todays agenda (Yay I finally have one!) is a nice drive – possibly to check the post office box and see if there’s more fake scammer checks for my check wall. It’s pretty windy so I am not sure a beach is in my future, we might go to Warrawong and maybe visit JB Hifi instead, and spend the found $40 on dvd’s – I have a shopping list! Undoubtedly I will leave it at home. I want to get a plate set for outside which is not ceramic. I like plastic myself, but melamine is an option.. ;) Then back here to cook meat and comment on 50 zillion blogs ;) Be good ya’all.
Today we’re going to talk about travel, and music.. ;) This one is for all the non-Aussies reading this blog.
If you intend to visit Australia, you may find yourself in a “pub” (place where one drinks alcohol) at some point. In that pub, there may be a live band (a group of people with instruments attempting to burst your eardrums by the power of sound and they might succeed!) and if there is, they possibly won’t be playing their own music.
At this pub, they will be playing all kinds of music, and some of it might be from Aussie bands (the greatest music of all time) so it might be helpful to you to be familiar with the bands and perhaps even learn some of the lyrics ahead of time. So let us take a look at the top 5 Aussie bands you may hear music from.
5. AC/DC (Or, Acca Dacca)
The band has a long and interesting history which you can read about on Wikipedia. But for the purposes of today’s post, what you need to know is – they have a guitarist who does this bizzare hopping around on stage thing (look at the you tube clip. Seriously, do it!) and the singer is not the most easy to understand.
You probably don’t need to know any of the lyrics, just growling along with the music will be fine and if you take a look at how the guitarist does his thing you can choose to copy that, or just headbang (ie bounce your head in time to the beat of the music in an angry looking way) and you can pass yourself off as a real Aussie with little effort on this occasion.
4. Midnight Oil. (Or, The Oils)
The oils (read their wikipedia here) have a lot of lyrics. There’s no way you can learn all of them while not in Australia. While here you will pick a fair few of them up, most likely the musical question “How can we sleep while our beds are burning” and “If the sugar refining company won’t save me, who’s going to save me”.
However, you can get away with not knowing the lyrics if you try to dance like Peter Garrett. This is best done when you’ve had a fair bit to drink. Again the you tube video will give you some excellent insight on how to do this, but if you don’t have the time –
In order to dance like Peter Garret – imagine your feet are glued to the floor, and you really want to unglue them. Then imagine you have ingested two entire bottles of Coca Cola and you have an enormous gas bubble in your stomach, and you’re trying to expel it by burping yourself, like you would a baby.. Wave your arms in the air. Move the top half of your body somewhat wildly. Imagine you managed to step on a foot sized piece of bubblegum, pick one leg up off the floor but imagine long trails of gum stuck to your foot and you’re trying to get them off.
3. The Angels
The most likely Angels song you will hear is “Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again” – not surprisingly, this is the lyric you will need to know in order to bluff like you know this band and their music. But if you want to really make people think you are an Aussie, when that lyric is sung, you can then sing in reply to that lyric “No way get f*cked f*ck off” and people will assume you have been here since the late 80’s, even if you have an accent which says otherwise. ;)
2. INXS
Wiki here. It is really difficult to guess what INXS song you might hear. There are so many of them. Here is an official VEVO account where you can immerse yourself in the INXS.
Michael Hutchence, is pure sex on legs. See for yourself, watch the you tube clips. I believe he was the Aussie Jim Morrison. Unfortunately, he also died in a Jim Morrison type way.
Watch for the girls reaction when INXS is played. Depending on how much they’ve had to drink and which pub you’re in, there may be one or who who uncontrollably sob. This is totally normal and ok. Just act like you didn’t see that.
1. Cold Chisel (known as Chisel)
Wiki here. The ultimate Aussie band. You will likely hear several of their songs while here. However my personal favourite of all the Chisel songs is Cheap Wine. You will hear this a fair bit too. “Cheap wine and a three day growth” is the needful on this occasion – again, sing it loud.. As a tribute to this band, I put both Khe Sahn and Cheap Wine here. ;) And OMG real Aussies, check out the Khe Sahn video below- Jimmy Barnes hair! I didn’t know he had a poodle do.. there is so much about Aussie History I missed out on.. :)
Khe Sahn is very popular. In order to act like you know this song, you need the lyric “The last plane out of Sydney’s almost gone” – you need to sing this at the TOP of your lungs. You need to sing this like it is the last thing you will ever sing. You need to sing this like you want the people back where you are from to hear you. There are long patches of unintelligible lyrics to get through before you get to that bit – it’s the best bit, and they always save the best till last.. My advice, drink more beer while this is going on.
You may actually be lucky enough to see the Jimmy Barnes in person at some point. My Mom ran into him at the airport. He was in town here a couple of weeks ago.
So there you go. You learnt something new today. ;) Hopefully you listened to at least one of these songs. And if you do make it here to visit us and drink cold beer while cover bands murder the Aussie greats, let me know!
Now, the other half just brought home a new stereo, so I’m gonna go enjoy that and play some pool. I’ll be playing some of these Aussie songs and thinking of ya’all. :)
We won four meat trays today, including the very first one they called out which was a bonus tray. Joy!
Other than that, I’ve got a lot of shit done fast. I’m check baiting 60 lads right now. While this will probably not equal 60 checks, it will mean a fair few.
I might take the other half to see The Departed tomorrow, depends on weather and what he’d like to do.. ;)
– where Australians attend the local pub or watering hole to purchase tickets in order to win meat trays.
During the past week, I have attended two different meat raffles at two different RSL clubs that I belong to. Membership to an RSL club is actually pretty good value.
At my favourite RSL – you get- a free membership card, said card gets you discount on drinks and meals and you swipe it each time you attend the club and it gives you special offers and prizes and things.
– Also, you put the card into the “pokie machine” when you are playing it and you earn points with it.
– There’s a bus that picks you up at home and takes you to the club, and it will also drop you home. No charge, it’s included in the membership.
– free pool and snooker plus they have tournaments and stuff
– you can play lawn bowls, if you want to.
There’s probably more benefits I don’t even know about, too. Membership is $11 per year. Seriously!
I haven’t won a meat tray for ages. I’m feeling the drought. When we were at the Sportsmans the other night, there was this guy there who had 6 huge meat trays and we got nothing!
However, I did win $30 on the pokie machines, and my other half won about the same, so it was worth the trip ;) We only ever put $5 in..
Going from a town where there’s just over a million people to one where there’s just over 23,000 is great in some ways, and in others it is the strangest thing.
For one thing, anywhere you go, it seems there’s a face that you know. When we first got here, there was this guy from the local fish shop who returned a griller to our store, and one of our staff members completely insulted him – well the thing was filthy. I ran into that guy everywhere we went for the next 3 weeks. Walking down the main street, shopping in the supermarket, they were at the next table to us at the local Chinese retaurant, and there was a local airshow, they were sitting within 50 metres of us.
The local paper only talks about local stuff that happens. So generally, when something happens, you know you’re going to find out about it. For weeks there was these loud explosions happening at night time. One day we were driving to work, and there was this kangaroo tail by the side of the road. It looked very odd, not like someone hit a roo and kept going and bits of the roo were left behind, but like it was cut off deliberately.
Two weeks later, both mysteries were solved when the local paper reported that a man had been pulled over by the police for a breath test. He blew over the limit, so the police searched the car, and they found –
– a loaded 22 rifle on the back seat – a machete – kangaroo body parts in the boot of the car!
So this guy was going roo shooting – in a populated area, at night time. Thankfully they did not give his name, if they did and then he came into work as a customer, I might have freaked out totally. He doesn’t sound like a nice guy.
We went to the supermarket one day and the woman (clearly not a local, more explanation on that next) in front of us was called out to the carpark because her car had been run into. I said to my other half “well, whatever happened it’ll be in the paper” It turned out her kids had been left in the car and one had released the handbrake, the car was on a hill, and rolled down a slope.
How can you tell if someone is a local, or not? This is absolutely impossible to explain, but you just *know*. It might be what they are wearing, it might be that you’ve never seen their face before, or it might be a Friday afternoon at the shopping centre, and this is where people go to their summer houses for the weekend. They all have city stress on their face – that’s the best way of explaining it. They also usually have expensive sunglasses, and are dressed for travelling.
Fridays, let us get into that for a minute. This town is cut in half by the highway. You don’t want to have to go anywhere on a Friday afternoon, because you will get stuck in traffic. Traffic = people driving down from Sydney for the weekend. For a people who are used to driving from one side of town to the other in less than 10 minutes, to have that same trip take 30 can certainly bring on road rage. You want to get any shopping done well before 3pm – preferably on a different day entirely. Sundays they all go back, so it isn’t a good day to go anywhere either.
Driving – most of the major streets around here are 70kms an hour. The highway drops back to 70kms an hour until it gets out of town then it goes back to 110kms an hour. A lot of the roads that take you places you want to go which are say, 10-20kms away, they will be 110kms. You get used to going faster, and when you can’t go as fast as usual, you get annoyed.
Where would people want to go? I’ll dig out some pics of our beaches for you and post them soon. There’s this stunning beach less than 10kms away from here, and it is the most incredible, unspoiled beach you’ll see. We have a local river, I stood in it fishing last summer, and it was so much fun. Fish nibbling at your toes, but not your bait.
However, me, I long for shops. I never did before when I could go to them anytime – and I rarely did go to them, but now I have to drive some distance for decent shopping, I miss them.
