Let me start with a preface: I fucking love it here Please do not misconstrue the following statements as any kind of indictment. They are just things that we are not accustomed to, strike us as odd, and require some adjustment!
1. NO UNLIMITED INTERNET ACCESS!!!
Introduction: The Internet - I live there. On my phone, in the cafe, on the ipad at home, on the computer, lots of little lookups, facebook, reading about stuff, random surfing... with no points at which we "run out of internet" and are either abruptly cut off, to give "a fair go" to others, or charged ridiculous amounts for overage. I did not know how to quantify how much I love the internet, but now I have a dollar figure. And to cap it off, people seem PERPLEXED that we would need more than 5gb a month. Just ONE HD movie download can hit 4gb.
2. COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
I'm find myself thinking a lot about our friends who are expats in France, and how they are experiencing a lot of the same weirdness we are, but in another language. Sometimes I think that must be harder, but then I think that there is a different kind of difficulty here related to *expecting* things to be the same, because the language is *sort of* the same. We find we are constantly caught off guard by things that seem like they should make sense, but just don't at all.
some examples:
- INTERNET ACCESS!?! see above ;)
- Common things that mysteriously have different names here. Bell peppers become capsicum. Instead of raisins there are sultanas. "see you this arvo" instead of "see you this afternoon". It's similar enough that your brain doesn't expect to be having to pay attention, and then you realize that three sentences have gone by and you HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE PERSON JUST SAID TO YOU!! ( see fun slang words below )
- Just when you feel that you are in a foreign country, you start to see tons of American stuff, like 7-11, Dominoes and Pizza Hut, McDonalds, etc... and then you notice that they are not quite the same... "Maccas" now has a lamb burger with a fried egg, beet root, tomato, aioli, lettuce, and ketchup... Pizzas tend to be ham and cheese, or more serious Italian style pizzas, and Xander has not found a burger he likes here ( it seems they normally grind up onion in the meat? dunno, obviously I won't try it, but something like that ) except at "Maccas", where Toni takes them when I'm not around... and thus unable to visit my vegan self-righteousness upon them
- Driving is odd. Not just the left side of the road/right side of the car bit, but the rules, and when to stop for pedestrians ( never in a traffic circle, apparently, unless you want to hear someone lay on the horn, which is otherwise sort of uncommon ) and other merging rules seem slightly different in ways that are noticeable, but hard to enumerate.... Pedestrians seems amusedly impatient when you stop for them. They are not expecting it, they think it's odd that you did it, and largely they just gesture for you to keep going, and not just sit in the middle of the road proving what a moron you are.
3. WALKING
In essence, you take a multi-syllable word, and drop everything after the first syllable and replace with "-ies". Hence brekkies and bikkies, only one syllable? just add the -ies, no worries.
- How could walking be weird?!? Well, you realize after the 50th time that you almost run into someone, that they also have a tendency to *WALK* on the "other side", not just drive. So where in the US we tend to veer off to the right to avoid running into someone, here they veer left. So, because I don't feel like diagramming this, just try to use your imagination, when you are walking towards someone, and they veer left and you veer right... kaboom. Nose collision, and awkwardness ensues.
- Escalators going your way are on the right instead of the left. This seems like no big deal, but it's so ingrained in our thought process, that I often mindlessly start getting on the wrong way, and have to back up and move over.
- Stand Right / Move Left
- Aside from the fun slang words below, there are some differences: some swearing is no big deal ( I've heard kids saying shit, damn in front of their parents, but apparently "bloody" is off limits? "you're bloody right, his dad had the shits over his whingeing on about it..." )
- NO WORD IS TOO SHORT TO BE ABBREVIATED!!!
- Whingeing - whining
- Arvo - afternoon
- brekkies - breakfast
- bikkies - biscuits
- cost big bikkies - expensive
- tradie - tradesman, ie plumber, electrician, handman, etc...
- "the shits" - upset about something. "James has the shits over some comment that got made" - safe for the working environment, apparently
- "doing" vs. "going". - here it's going. Wherever you would say "do" say "go". How ya going, mate? How'd ya go with that bloke, I heard he had the shits over some ops guys whingeing on about something in the arvo... No worries, she'll be right, I just checked in to see how you went with that bloke from the office. All good? cheers..
- yobbo - some slob. "got hassled by some yobbo at rules yesterday"
- rack off - get out of here. the equivalent you are thinking of is pretty close ;)
- piece of piss - something pretty easy. "no drama, mate, it's a piece of piss"
- no drama - no worries
- she'll be apples - it'll be fine...
- capsicum - bell peppers
- rocket - arugula
- sultanas - raisings
In essence, you take a multi-syllable word, and drop everything after the first syllable and replace with "-ies". Hence brekkies and bikkies, only one syllable? just add the -ies, no worries.
