Following up on the Gold Coast post and McDonald's Happy Meals
Learning to be like an Aussie and Speak Aussie
Last Saturday we went to the Gold Coast on a bus trip with our local Surf Life Saving Club to celebrate the end of the Nippers season, where children are schooled in the fine art of surf life saving. This was the final bash to reward the kids for all their hard and fast running, paddling and swimming over the season. For someone like me, who doesn't like bus trips, this was a brave move. Travel by bus makes plane travel, with it's opportunities for walking round people watching and star spotting, seem positively enviable. Yes, five hours on a bus was a brave, some may say foolhardy move. Still, I have to say it all went well and was worth the trip.
We spent the day at White Water World, a kind of aquatic adventure park and the only hiccup was that my kids didn't want to go on any of the rides. I have to take some of the blame here. I have raised them on a small island in New Zealand and in the jungle of Costa Rica where the only adrenalin rushes are provided by nature. So, a vast theme park with thousands of people running around squealing may have freaked them out a bit. We went straight to the Temple of Huey where there were some short tubes for people to whizz down in inflatable rings. It looked like great fun and all the other pleasure-seekers had smiles plastered on their faces. Not my four year old though. She screamed, she yelled, she cried, she clung to the edge of the tube and refused to let go. The helpers and I cajoled, pleaded, ordered and finally prised her fingers away and pushed her off into the tunnel. “Wheeeee” I whooped.
“Again, again.” Small cried when we got to the bottom. Phew! Meanwhile Medium, aged seven was having the same problem and weeping inconsolably at the top of the ride, so I had to go through the same scenario all over again with the same predictable end result. Sometimes you really do have to be cruel to be kind. Surely Large, aged ten was having a blast, I thought. But no, he was skulking around at the bottom and refused to even climb the steps to the top of the ride. This time the usual cajoling, persuasion and ordering failed and sadly, I had to resort to bribery. Yes, I am sorry to have to say that I had to pay my son a dollar to go on the ride. It makes me wonder what is wrong with my children in these kind of situations and by extension what is wrong with me. Any comments on this are welcome...maybe.
Anyway, after all that nervous excitement, we really did have fun and spent six hours wooshing down slides and around bends. On the way home we stopped at 'Maccas' just as one of the other mums had told me we would. “What's that?” I asked “McDonalds.” She said, without even rolling her eyes. Our kids, who have been deprived of such things for a few years were delighted to be reunited with the 'happy' meal, especially Small who was over the moon with her Hello Kitty watch. Combined with an unexpected meeting with Dora the Explorer things can't get much better than this when you're four.
Australians love abbreviating words to create new ones like 'Maccas', 'avo' (avocado) or 'arvo' (afternoon). There are so many examples I'd like to compile a list of them. But wait, the thoughtful people at Koalanet have already done it for me, so if you want to learn to talk like an Aussie and be in the know if you come across a bogan, a hoon or a jillaroo try Koalanet.
Small and Dora the Explorer
Bad News: Skin Cancer, Oil Slicks, and Sick Trees
Good News: Hot, Hot, Hot Surfers, doing what they do best
Some of the beautiful people, and Thomas Meyerhoffer, launching his radical longboard design
The people sitting on the beach must be hot, and ignorant of, or choosing to ignore, the dangers of the midday sun, whose ultra violet rays are so strong here in Australia. Under the shade of a pandanus tree, with its roots growing in a cone to support its trunk, it is cool, chilly even with the off-shore breeze. Laguna Bay is glittering as far as the eye can see, like a million tiny mirrors catching the sunlight. From the shoreline the white surf and gauzy green shallows darken gradually to deep velvety blue on the horizon. Noosa National Park is hidden around the leafy headland, but the white sands of the beaches and dunes of Cooloola National Park are clearly visible across the bay. Yet this paradise on earth conceals many hidden dangers, and it's not just the sun which is posing a serious health risk or only humans who are in peril. On land there is a mysterious insect infestation which is killing the iconic pandanus trees. At sea, an oil spill has blighted beaches only twenty kilometers from here, and along much to the coastline further south towards Brisbane, causing untold damage to plants and animals at sea and on land.
But here in Noosa, the Festival of Surfing must go on and a good time is being had by all. The pro-women's surf competition is underway and the only drawback visible to the naked eye are the waves, which are so small, it's a wonder anyone can surf on them at all. Lucky that these people are professionals who can surf on any wave, big or small. On Sunday pro-surfer Julian Wilson was surfing in the family competition with his dad. If the local press is to be believed, twenty year old Julian, is one of the best surfers in the world. Despite the obvious bias of the local press towards this Coolum surfer he has beaten Kelly Slater several times already so it may just be true. Julian and I flew to Brisbane together from Los Angeles in November. I'd never heard of him then, but like me, he is a poor flier who prefers to roam the plane and loiter outside the toilets for hours at a time, while other people are sleeping soundly in their cramped seats. His carroty tan and woolen hat pulled down low over wild straw-like hair made a lasting impact on me. I had no trouble recognizing him a few weeks later when I read saw him featured in a magazine. So you see, me and Julian go way back. Fortunately for him and the other pros I have decided to stick to surfing at an amateur level this year, and I can't help noticing that Julian looks much better in his board shorts, with no beanie and with wet hair.
Writing and Renting in Australia
Well, yesterday was a momentous day in my writing career. After all I've read about writing, the one thing that seems clear is that you have to be prepared to get many, many rejections before a piece of your writing will be finally be accepted for publication. This is a truth universally acknowledged in writing and everyone knows the story of famous authors suffering multiple rejections, before finally someone showed an interest in their work. Knowing this, I thought I'd better get the ball rolling and actually submit some work to someone so I could start ticking off those rejection slips and start this writer's rite of passage. So yesterday, for the very first time, I actually sent a stranger, in this case the editor of the local rag, an article I'd written. Sure enough, I got an instant result and within hours my very first rejection was emailed to me. This is what it said:
“Hello Annabel
Many thanks for your column idea. We are always on the lookout for new ideas and ways to brighten up our publications. At present we are not in a position to add any extra columns, but we would be happy to revisit your column idea at a later date.
Best wishes”
(Name and address withheld)
Wow! I am really pleased with it. Especially because it didn't contain the words “that sucks” or “you loser” so all in all I think it bodes rather well for my writing career. If he actually read it that is.
Changing the subject now, here are a few thoughts on being a tenant and renting a house as opposed to being the proud owner of your own home. I think we actually got a bit spoilt renting in Costa Rica. We had a lovely Italian property manager who would go out of his way to make sure we had what we wanted in the way of furniture, house keepers, gardeners and pool maintenance people, and all for a price which we found acceptable. How things have changed. Here in Australia, we actually had to beg a property management company to allow us to stay in one of their houses. We had to provide references and copies of our bank statements, rental history and career progression. Of course, these all needed a bit of tweaking before they were accepted by someone. Now we pay through the nose to stay here, and are obliged to do all the cleaning, gardening and pool work all by ourselves. What's more, we are treated as second class citizens by the press, who are forever making snide comments about how no one wants to live in areas where there are a lot of renters and little things like that.
Meanwhile, our property management company is coming to conduct a property inspection tomorrow. This sounds quite reasonable and they kindly gave us a few weeks notice but with that notice came a letter that would strike fear into any mother's heart. It said that the property had to be neat and tidy, the garden free of weeds, it listed the items they would be checking and requested that we do a few obscure things like “clean the grout” in the bathrooms. The timing of this is bad. It comes, just when I am really getting into the flow with work and have gleefully lowered my standards when it comes to cleaning to avoid exactly these pointless activities that they are now asking me to perform.
So I have to go. Today will be devoted to tidying, cleaning, scrubbing, hovering and mopping ready for the clean test tomorrow. Actually, maybe I should just forget the cleaning and carry on as normal. Is it really that much of a sin if my house isn't 100% clean? After all, it's not a total health hazard or anything, we do perform a standard clean on a regular basis and, anyway, I like a home that looks lived in, not like a museum. I wonder what punitive action there will be if I don't make reach their expectations. Actually, it would be quite interesting to find out....
