Category Archives: Expat moments

On The Move…

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It’s Sunday again and I have been sitting here wondering what to post about.

Should I take inspiration from this week’s train reading and have a little muse about the lack of female role models?

Should I have a little rant about table manners and that the situation has become so grim that London’s Kensington Hotel has taken it upon themselves to educate the nation’s little savages with Petite Etiquette?

Should I express my incredulity that during the week, I learned (via a translated snippet from April’s ‘Emballages’, a French Packaging Magazine) that in February the French Ministry of Ecology decreed that teabags were not packaging? (It may surprise you to know that there was quite a debate at work over this.)

Or should I convey my wonderment and excitement that the sun is indeed shining this weekend. All weekend. That includes yesterday when I spent a couple of hours outside and accomplished this…

Aaaah…such pretty paws!

All riveting stuff I can assure you…or it would become so under my fleet-fingered tap-tap-tapping.

But the birds are singing and the sun is out (did I mention that it’s sunny?) and I have removed myself from my usual blogging locale in the Gidday HQ lounge room to here…

…because I have a bright shiny new laptop!

I can’t decide what I am more excited about.

That I don’t have to pedal hard to coax the old desktop into doing what I want – quite frankly, the number of times it has given up the ghost three quarters of the way through a post and made such a mess of what was saved that I’ve had to type it again. You guys should think yourselves lucky I’m addicted to sharing this blogging caper.

Or that I can surf from the comfy couch. Or anywhere in Gidday HQ for that matter (although the wifi signal did just drop out…)

Or that it goes fast. Really fast. Like 6GB fast. With lots of tabs open and stuff.

So I am tap-tap-tapping away as the birds sing and the sun shines through the french doors into the back room at Gidday HQ today…

…just because I can.

And for all of you doubting Thomases (is that the correct pluralisation for more than one doubting Thomas?), I would like to draw your attention to the date/time stamp on the photos to prove that it is really sunny today. Gloriously so…with a forecast top temperature of 19C.

So I’m off into the great outdoors again before it all disappears…

The Games People Play…

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Not long ago, I succumbed to the hype and read Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. The brief review I’d read of the movie release did enough to convince me that it was a premise I’d find interesting: the human condition and how far we are prepared to stretch our own moral truths to survive and, indeed, thrive.

And it was a great story, gritty and fast-paced. In fact, so absorbed was I that I forgot that the protagonist is only 16 years old. Her story is riveting as she grows to face an adult world of expectation well beyond her own experience in the impoverished District 12. 

But here’s what struck me most – the concept of the game.

The game is something that has grown to become part of our landscape with all the gadgets a heart might desire to make imagined worlds come to life. I remember the original Dungeons and Dragons and in my twenties, I got completely hooked on Riven and Myst thanks to a boyfriend of the time. Then life took me away from gaming until about eight years ago when a close association with a couple of teenagers (and another rather older “adolescent”) introduced me to The Sims, Runescape and World of Warcraft. And haven’t games all come a long way – so life-like. So real that the imagined and real worlds blur. And a player’s highest praise is that they can lose themselves and escape from reality.
Like all of those spectators in The Hunger Games.

But it’s not the first time I’ve found myself wondering about games of the people kind. As I read Collins’ tale, I was taken back over 20 years to another book, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. This tale follows a group of English school boys deserted on an island, their attempts at creating their own society to survive and the savage power plays that lead to  not only the deaths of Simon and Piggy, but also the “young gentlemen’s” rules by which they had always played.

At the end of the book, the boys are rescued but in reading those final pages, I couldn’t help wondering whether it had all been part of some big experiment by the adults. And in re-reading the book again after The Hunger Games, the parallels between the two “themes” seemed even more obvious – what does the veneer of society actually hide?

To my mind The Hunger Games reads like Lords of the Flies sexed up for the World of Warcraft generation. But maybe I’m reading too much into it. What do you think?

Do you think the games we play reveal something of the way we would like our future to be or more about our “deep, dark past”?

A Woman of Substance…Again!

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Here I am in the closing hours of a very chilled bank holiday weekend. Having spent yesterday in complete and utter indolence, I had decided that today should feature something a little more productive. So I ventured out for a brisk 40 minute walk around the local park this morning…

…and that’s about all I’ve managed.

After being tempted by the final film in my current LoveFilm trio this morning (Inception, and by the way, it was absolutely brilliant) I kept the telly on in the background while I sat down to tap-tap-tap away. That’s when all my good intentions flew out of the window.

One of my favourite books as a teenager was Barbara Taylor-Bradford’s A Woman of Substance and guess what’s showing on the telly – the whole series from 1984, back to back.

So I’ve climbed to the Top of the World (in the book this is Ramsden Crags on the Yorkshire Moors) and I’m just flitting about at the opening of the new Harte’s department store in Leeds. I can’t wait for the rest of the adventure to unfold…again!

Bliss For The Worker Bee…

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This weekend is a Bank Holiday Weekend meaning some celebration of British-ness has given we worker bees next Monday off.

True to form, the skies have opened, the temperatures have dropped to single figures – 8C is the high for today, THE 5TH OF MAY (yes, that’s me shouting) – and the forecast is not filling me with the hope of any improvement.

As usual.

But a damp-on-the-outside weekend can hold many joys.

Like a cover-to-cover reading of my beloved Saturday Times…


…some inspired planning for my Roman Holiday… 

  …or a few choice flicks (thanks to a free trial from those kind folk at LoveFilm)…

…from the fabulous cosiness of the Gidday HQ couch.

But best of all?

I have nowhere I have to be and I have 3 lovely days in which to do whatever I please.

Now THAT’S worth celebrating.

Your 2012 Five A Day – May

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What is it about jokes of the ‘bodily function’ variety that reduce one to a giggling adolescent?

 
As an Aussie making her life in the UK, I cannot tell you the amount of times I have let it slip that I got my pants wet stepping in a puddle on the way to work. Or that I left my thongs at the door to avoid getting your carpet dirty.

Yes, trousers and casual summer footwear take on a whole new meaning on the other side of the planet.

But this month’s Five A Day reminded me of another Aussie twist on the English language…with the word root.

Here are few definitions from Merriam-Webster. It’s an Encyclopedia Britannica company so it must know:

1a : the usually underground part of a seed plant body that functions as an organ of absorption, aeration, and food storage or as a means of anchorage and support and that differs from a stem especially in lacking nodes, buds, and leaves b : any subterranean plant part (as a true root or a bulb, tuber, rootstock, or other modified stem) especially when fleshy and edible
2 a (1) : the part of a tooth within the socket (2) : any of the processes into which the root of a tooth is often divided b : the enlarged basal part of a hair within the skin—called also hair root c : the proximal end of a nerve; especially : one or more bundles of nerve fibers joining the cranial and spinal nerves with their respective nuclei and columns of gray matter—see dorsal root, ventral root d : the part of an organ or physical structure by which it is attached to the body
Nothing odd here. Long, complicated and a bit boring (actually I ‘switched off’ about two lines in). Just what you expected, right?
But in that land Down Under (you know, where women glow and men plunder), root is another word for having sex.
Yes that’s right.
Sex.
So when you ask us to root around and find that information, we suppress a childish giggle.
And when you ask us which route you should take, those fresh off the boat may let an adolescent snigger escape. (The rest of us are sniggering on the inside.)
And heaven forbid when you Americans say you are rooting for us…
*snort*
*blush*
So what cross-cultural euphemisms have caught you out? Go on, you can tell me.
It’ll be our little secret…
*wink*
*chortle*

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Five A Day Back catalogue
April
March
February
January

The Good Book…

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Lately, the e-book has come in for a bit of schtick.

At the end of February, Stylist columnist Lucy Mangan said said ‘E-readers are representative of our mindless embrace of all that purports to be ‘progress”. Then a month later fellow blogger Russell Ward described the Kindle as ‘cold and calculating in its determination to deliver the electronic word seamlessly to you’.

Ouch!

Admittedly I was a slow convert, clinging on to both the physical and the ritual around my serious book habit. And I still love a good book shop browse. In fact last week I had an hour to kill before meeting A-used-to-be-down-the-hill and I spent it wandering through Foyles at St Pancras Station, perusing the latest dust jackets, dipping into travel guides (I’m off to Rome for a little city break soon) and flicking through the pages of Titanic-themed tomes in the special event section. Lovely stuff.

But the thought of finding more space in my already full bookshelf, packed with old theatre programs, illustrated coffee table books – for which I have no coffee table – and those volumes dubbed with ‘re-read me status’ or acquired in youthful nostalgia (my hard back Jane Austen set and the 7-book Chronicles of Narnia being a couple of these) before my Kindle conversion, holds little allure.

On the other hand my Kindle – christened Audrey for her stylish simplicity – goes everywhere with me. There is nothing cool or calculating about immersing myself in a few quick chapters while on the bus, waiting for a friend, in the boarding lounge and even before lights out at night. Audrey is always at the ready and the Kindle shop only a few clicks away. Apart from my favourites, both old and new, I’ve discovered authors I would never have come across and been able to support the burgeoning efforts of a couple of budding writers in my blogging circle – just check out 2011’s Book Nook numbers 51, 55a and 57.

Granted a Kindle is not the be all and end all. After all, there is nothing like a travel book for sitting on the plane, standing on a street corner in a new city or sipping espresso in a funky cafe, marking the places to be seen with folded corners and scribbled annotations and plotting my next adventure(s).

And I haven’t quite managed the conversion of my magazine or Saturday Times newspaper habit yet but let’s face it, the only way to conquer the Samurai Sudoku or the cryptic version of the Jumbo Crossword is curled up on my couch, pen in hand, steaming coffee at my elbow.

But villifying the Kindle and all its counterparts seems a little extreme. Like laptops, smartphones and iPods, the e-reader is just another symbol of our increasingly mobile lives and to my mind, something that encourages the consumption of the written word in every place or space. And that can only be a good thing.

Books still have their place in my life. But for me the power lies in the storytelling.

And I get to take that everywhere.

I Feel Pretty…

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I was out and about earlier and while there’s still a nip in the air, there are blossoms everywhere, leading me to believe that Spring might have finally arrived.

Early in March I was delighted to see some scattered daffs under a tree in nearby Victoria Park…

Then we had a couple of weeks of gloriously sunny weather (remember that time when we were warmer than you beloved Melburnites?) We were all delirious over here and there was even a breathy mention or two…could this be the year that we have a ‘good summer’?

Then it rained for a few weeks and I had to resort to bringing the outside in…

Bunches of daffodils are cheap here at this time of year and last between 10 days and two weeks

But today’s blue skies and spring-like 14C (I know, my expectations have lowered considerably on the temperature front over the last 8 years) have brought forth a veritable tour-de-force of blossoms…

I was crossing the High Road in East Finchley today when I snapped this glorious spread behind my bus stop
I noticed these buds on my side fence from the kitchen window last weekend which are now in bloom. I don’t know what they are so if any less horticulturally challenged than me can advise, I would not look stupid in my own garden be grateful
These are growing in random plastic buckets in the back garden. Haven’t a scooby what these are either. They live without much input from me. This makes me look good happy.

London is so unbelievably pretty in the Spring – I actually think it’s one of the things where it beats Australia hands down.

Even Google is getting in on the act!

Google 22nd April 2012

But lest you be misled, I should let you know that after a glorious t-shirt and light jumper walk this morning, it’s now raining…

Yes indeed, Spring has definitely sprung.

Oh What A Night…

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How could a post about the fabulous Jersey Boys be called anything else? It was a night to remember indeed.

To celebrate A-use-to-be-down-the-hill’s birthday a couple of weeks ago, I decided to spring for a girlie night at the theatre. Jersey Boys has had such great reviews during its London run and you never know when these things are going to finish or get all expensive so I grabbed a couple of tickets and off we went.

Fuelled by a couple of glasses of wine over dinner beforehand, we climbed the stairs to the Grand Circle of the Prince Edward Theatre, squashed any vertiginous tendancies and squeezed into our seats to be greeted by a bird’s eye view of the entire stage. Then the music started and we were away.

I’d heard of the Four Seasons and Frankie Valli – although I did get him a little confused with Ritchie Valens before the show began (it’s sometimes good to feel too young to know these things for sure) – but with the first note, I realised that I knew every song. Some of the time I remembered the later cover versions – I particularly remember bopping along to The Spinners’ version of Workin’ My Way Back To You Babe in 1979 – but classics like Big Girls Don’t Cry and Walk Like A Man featuring Valli’s trademark falsetto are still as great now as they ever were.

The show charts the story of The Four Seasons, the struggle to hit the big time, the genius of Bob Gaudio’s writing and Valli’s extraordinary range, the personal tragedies and the ups and downs of life on the road. As Valli (Ryan Molloy on London’s stage) points out, as the bad times always pass, so do the good ones.

This is a fantastic, feel good musical. The cast is great, the show moves swiftly and the music of the era runs its nostalgic fingers through slicked back hair and many great memories. And quite frankly I defy anyone not to let a little tune burst forth on the walk back to the tube. 

Oh wait…I think that was just us…

The Very Best of British …

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There are times in this expat life of mine that I discover something that I think is so random and nonsensical that there is nothing for it but to shake my head and laugh.

This week, I learnt about Premium Bonds.

Premium (or lottery) bonds were introduced by Harold MacMillan in 1956 as part of the government’s National Savings and Investment Scheme. This is how they work:

1. You pay some hard earned cashola for a bond. You can sell this back to the government, at your request, at the original price you paid. No more. No less.

2. The government pays a return on the bond but not to you. Instead it goes into a central prize fund.

3. A monthly lottery distributes premiums to those bond-holders whose numbers are selected randomly.

4. The machine that generates these random numbers is called ERNIE. I kid you not.  It’s acronym of Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment.

5. Your chances of winning (according to the Premium Bond Probability Indicator on moneysavingexpert.com) are as follows:

Hold £100 over a year = 3.28% chance of winning anything

Hold £1,000 over a year = 28.3% chance of winning anything

Hold £10,000 over a year = 96.4% chance of winning anything

6. The anything you could win ranges from £25 to £1,000,000. But you should know that in November 2011, 99.75089525% of the prizes made available were £100 or less. Just to be precise. I wouldn’t want any rounding up or down of the decimals to mis-represent the opportunity here.

After all, what could be a sounder investment choice than essentially putting a down payment on a whole lot of future lotto tickets?

But really, who am I to quibble about such things: apparently one in three Britons invest in them.

All I have to say is “The very best of British to them!”

Tour of Duty…Gunners Style

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For those of you who’ve been following Gidday for at least this year, you may remember I told you about my first sortie into the world of English football, in particular my visit to see Arsenal play Aston Villa at Emirates Stadium in the 4th round of the FA Cup. Arsenal won and I managed to have a jolly good time so it was thumbs up all the way round.

Well would you believe that I’ve been back already? After 8 years in London, I have managed to grace the Gunners home turf with my presence twice in 2 months but this time it was from an entirely different angle. I did The Stadium Tour.

As part of a Charity Dinner I was attending at the end of March, the tour was offered for those wishing to turn up early and get a sneaky peek behind the scenes of one of London’s newest football stadiums.

We headed out from the function area in all our finery and followed our guide, Colin, to the other side of the stadium. Here’s the view from the expensive seats:

We didn’t hang around here though – it was off to have a gander at the Players’ Entrance.

Interestingly, the players get hit smack bang with a big red wall the moment they arrive, just in case there’s any doubt what they are here for.

There are also some photos of…well…blokes playing football (don’t ask me who they were)…

…and also a time capsule placed in 2004 when the stadium was officially named.

Colin then took us to the Players’ Change Rooms where we all got a little feng-shui’ed.

This is where the players change (obviously) and where Arsene Wenger briefs the team. The room is a horse-shoe shape (apparently corners are not great for Feng Shui) with every player considered equal. All sit in their allotted places every time: the defenders sit together, the strikers together and so on. The goalkeeper always sits closest to the entrance/exit and the Captain occupies the middle of the horseshoe’s curve (see Van Persie’s shirt in the picture above).

The middle table is low so that all players can see each other easily when seated. Colin is not a tall fella and as you can see, it only came to waist-height on him. (Sorry if you are reading this Colin.)

We then had a sneaky peak at the Away Change Rooms. Funnily enough, the room is rectangular and you might like to check out the height of the table…

Before we knew it we were heading out to the pitch…

…and into the dugout.

Citroen sponsor this area so the seats are specially designed…and very comfortable.

Arsene sits in that front row seat on the right. I happened to sit there without any prior knowledge of this fact (power attracts power maybe? I’ll bet all the Gunners fans on the tour were gutted I got pole position) so I thought I should let you know what the Wenger view was like…

I know. It doesn’t look that much different compared with the view from the expensive seats higher up.

Anyhow, we were making good time and the next tour group from our do was gaining fast so we managed to squeeze in a visit to the Press Conference room.

The Away Team Manager always gets the first gig after the match here. 25 minutes then he’s off and Wenger takes the chair for 25 minutes. It’s the Press Officer’s job to make sure there’s no over-running.

In the neighbouring corridor there are a number of rooms used by radio and TV channels for post-match interviews. You know when you see a player interviewed in front of a wall with all of the sponsors names on it? Well that’s all it is…

…a wall!

Champagne o’clock was nigh and not wanting to risk the wrath of his thirsty guests, Colin led us back around the stadium to finish the tour. I know the photos start to look the same but I just had to take one more cheeky snap.

You can actually take an audio guided tour of the Stadium yourself rather than wait for an invite aligned to a posh function like I managed. You can also combine it with a visit to the Museum (which I didn’t get to see so you’ll be one up on me!)

I have to admit that it will never have the awesome magnificence of the MCG – they are just enormous shoes to fill. And I’m not a follower of English football (as we have established in my earlier post). But given that it’s an intrinsic part of England’s sporting culture, it was fantastic to feel the ‘passion of the game’ brought to life for the second time this year in Arsenal’s hallowed halls.