air nz – $848

air new zealand is offering U$848 on ‘pacific class’ from march 1 to june 14. that’s from LA to auckland.

argh!! letterman

i think i mite have mentioned that letterman is on the air here m-f at like 1230am. the shows are normally about a week behind their airing in the states and mostly they’re in the right order but not always. sometimes it’s just random and bizarre.

right now they are broadcasting a show from right after xmas. that would be fine. EXCEPT they broadcast the exact same show a few weeks ago. freaking repeats of letterman w/in a couple of weeks. argh!!!!!!!

weather & rain

they say melbourne has ‘4 seasons in one day’ and i can’t tell you how true this saying is. it’s very common for it to rain, then be sunny and warm, then get cold. possibly a few times in a day.

this has been a pretty crap summer in my opinion. it hasn’t been consistently warm at all. yesterday it was grey and raining. about 3pm the sun came out and it warmed up. about 6pm i talked to a friend who said it was pissing rain on the east side. it was very grey here and it began raining at some point. i was inside so whatever. at 330am i was awoken by thunder. it was pouring and we had a LOT of thunder and lightening. i went bk to sleep but it did wake me up a another time so i think it went on for a few hours.

apparently 45 mm fell in the city in like no time at all. (if the conversion is right… that’s 2 inches… but that doesnt seem too bad. i know the areas where it flooded got like double what the city did). the area where my school is (glenferrie rd in hawthorn) completely flooded with people getting stuck in their cars and such. the news showed this guy that lives right down the street from me who’s entire ceiling fell in. that’s scary since i live on the top floor but everything seems to be fine here.

danger on the street

at 1am, one of the channels here shows letterman. it’s not the current one… it’s about a week delay. the other nite i saw one where they kept showing a new building on w 53rd where one of those window washer carts had come away from the bldg and was in danger of falling from the 35th floor. as you would expect, the entire block seemed to be blocked off. cops out there too.

tonite i left for work at 5:50. caught the tram on the corner of flinders and william where there’s a big hotel. as i got off the tram at 5:55 a few blocks away i grabbed my phone to put it on silent. that’s when i realised i had a message. work had called and said they didn’t need me. so i head to the grocery store. at 6:10 i’m back ready to cross the flinders st/william intersection but there’s a fireman on my corner and one on the other corner. actually the other corner is blocked off. hmm. it’s not til i reach the other corner and hear this guy say there’s falling glass that i notice the glass on the ground. the safety diversion was just to walk 4 feet away and walk along the tram path for a few feet and then we could walk back onto the sidewalk. i could see a window that looked missing (it’s probably a 15 story bldg).

but how’s that for a difference. there were cars driving right along there. the tram stop is in the middle of the street so that’s like 4 ft way from the sidewalk. when the glass fell it must have fallen into the street. there were only 2 official people there. i was able to walk right up to the corner.

i’m not sure if this means nyc goes overboard (possibly b/c of lawsuits) or if melbourne doesn’t do enough. somehow i think i’d prefer the nyc method.

animal rescue – pt 2

on tonite’s show… the same kangaroo rescuer. this time she has a tiny joey who can’t walk. something is wrong with his legs and if he doesn’t heal in a few weeks he’ll need to be put down. (god, how many times does this woman put herself into this situation???). also, we have some croc folks. right now they’re taking it out of a trap and trying to get it into the water at a croc farm. it’s freaking 12 ft long and it’s not happy. it’s refusing to leave the cage.

oh!!! and now we’re at the aquarium in WA (western australia). they have 4 small male crocs in the same area whereas it would normally be 1 male and lots of women. since there’s no women around, the boys are pissy and the smallest one is being bullied. so they’re injecting steriods. i kid u not.

tv – animal rescue

i’m flipping channels and there’s some sort of ‘vet’ type show on. but what are the stories? no, not a cat that needs surgery or a cut paw. how northern american.

there’s the woman who rescues kanagroos. right now she has a joey (that’s a baby kanga) who was hit by a car and might be blind. so it’s trips to the doctor and specialists. even though the doctors think he’s blind and hence she’d have to ‘put him down’, she decides to keep him and see if his vision kicks in (apparently all joeys are blind when they’re born and dont get vision til they’re 6 wks old). of course the joey turns out to be fine.

and the other story was a guy in perth who rescues snakes in his spare time. out of people’s backyards and such. he’s calmly trying to bag a snake while telling the camera how poisonous the thing is and that if the snake gets loose, they shouldn’t move. pretend they are logs. oh and then he talked about what to do if he got bit (either bring the car to him or carry him to the car. elevate his arm if bit there. get him to the hospital asap).

now this is one of the fun bits of living here. getting this sort of tv.

my future accent

thursday nite i waited on this woman who spends her summer in queensland (lovely weather, where the reef is, but considered to be pretty slow and backwards and filled with retirees) and her summer in denver. yes, i’m jealous of the eternal summer (though denver?!?!). she’s also lived in CT and NYC and somewhere else.

she had the oddest accent. it was definitely american but something was wrong. i’m assuming it was the aussie creeping in. not a really good accent either. it just sounded ‘off’.

and then last nite i waited on a couple and was trying to place the woman’s accent. it sounded american but it didn’t. finally we got to talking and she’s from houston and has been here almost 5 years. her accent wasn’t as weird as the first woman’s but again, it was slightly ‘off’. she was talking about how you don’t fit in anywhere – u dont sound american when ur in the states (and everyone sez you have an aussie accent) and you don’t sound aussie so people here still see u as american. it was an interesting conversation that i wish wouldnt have been cut off by other fucking customers wanting coffee and drinks. bastards.

holidays

earlier this week when i went to the grocery store, i noticed they had all the easter candy out. wow. now that’s pretty early since last time i checked easter is in april.

i noticed a lack of malted milk balls.

there’s also a lack of valentines day stuff. no decorations, no cards, no candy hearts, no ads urging you to book your table for dinner.

tuning your ears

there’s something i’ve been noticing over the past few months that i don’t exactly have a handle on.

we’re in the middle of the australian open right now which has brought a lot of tourists to town. for the first time since i’ve been here, i’m running into a lot more americans. i mean i’m waiting on their table or they’re coming into the juice bar. but definitely more american accents.

actually there seems to be a lot more travelers of all nationalities of late. maybe it’s the eternal summer folks headed south for the northern winter.

with all these travelers i’ve been noticing that they either don’t say anything about my accent or they don’t pick up on it or they mistake me for canadian.

for example: waited on an older couple last nite. the guy wanted a ‘brew’ but then corrected himself right away with ‘beer’ (brew isnt used here). he didn’t know what kind of beer he wanted since he didn’t know the aussie beers so i asked him what he drank at home (and yes, he said budweiser) so i could make a comparison. and at no time do i think he realised he was talking to another american even though i said i knew what he meant by brew and was making beer comparisons and spoke to his wife about wine.

i’ve also had the experience of asking someone where they were from and them being surprised when i say ‘nyc’. they don’t seem to hear my accent.

and no. i dont think i have picked up an aussie accent. in fact i’m pretty sure i haven’t. all the aussies i know say i haven’t (xcept for one incident the other week when saying ‘whateva’). course i havent talked to u lot on the other side of the world but i swear i havent picked one up.

i’ve noticed i’ve started to hear more differences in accents too. i’m wondering if the first several months i was here, i was more concerned with making sure i understood what people were saying (slang and also there are some pronunciation differences) and not paying attention to their accent. most accents here are aussie but there’s a fair amount of canadians and kiwi and some brits. so i think my ears were so overwhelmed with making sure communication was correct, that i wasn’t even paying attention to the accent.

about a month or so ago i realised this because all of a sudden i started to hear a lot more accents. and i’m able to place a lot of them too. although my ear isn’t really tuned to the kiwi / aussie difference yet (which is weird b/c in london i could tell the difference btwn the 2 but here it seems the accent differences aren’t as strong).

phone booth cards

one of the things i loved about london (yes, there ARE actually things i would put in the love category) were the cards advertising all sorts of sexual services glue tak’d into a phone booth. around my flat in soho, they were everywhere. i still have a few now on my wall (i have a bunch of postcards and pix on the wall of my flat here).

seems there’s a book out now on the history and design (and how it’s changed over the years) of the ‘tart card’! how rocking! has anyone out there seen the book? what’s it like???

the url is http://www.tartcards.co.uk/