united

united sales continue.

for travel btwn april 1 and may 18, la/sfo to syd/mel is U$474 one way (why are they suddenly advertising one way instead of roundtrip?!?!) so that’s $948 roundtrip.

for travel btwn may 19 and june 22, u can do the same routes for U$424 (one way) which is $848 roundtrip.

all have to be purchased before april 11.

< insert where the bloody hell are ya joke here >

quote of the day

was flipping channels & there’s some lifestyle type program on. they were in some vintage boutique type place so i stopped flipping to see where the shop is. turns out the story is about how to shop vintage. god. but even worse they v briefly interviewed the shop owner/assistant and she came out with this quote. she had an excellent future in PR.

it’s always gorgeous to have something fabulous.

aussie citizenship test

one of my friends forwarded me one of these quizzes today. as you would expect, it’s full of cultural references and i didn’t do so well but a few questions were quite funny so thought i’d share a couple. of course, only aussies might find them funny.

What does having a ‘chunder’ mean?
thank u to men at work for enlightening me about this term years ago but i don’t think i’ve heard anyone actually say the word since i’ve been here.

Best Aussie name is what?
a) Cheryl
b) Charlene
c) Bazza
d) Thommo
e) Shazza

geez, i don’t even know how to start explaining why that is funny. the choice of names or the abbreviation. i am surprised kylie isn’t there.

What do the following terms mean:
a) Mate?
b) Maate
c) Maaaaaaate?

i think this one is pretty telling as this makes a lot of sense to me (telling as in how assimulated i am). or at least i think it makes sense. the subtleties here are one of those things that could trip me up.

how many times can we say the word ‘bloody’?

following on my post re: the brits not liking australia’s new tourism ad which asks ‘where the bloody hell are ya?’, it would seem no one likes this ad. canada decided it can’t run during family programs b/c they don’t like the word ‘hell’ and it voilates some law during the scene where a beer is being drunk. now the american family association (afa) has said they are offended by both ‘bloody’ and ‘hell’ and going to boycott au as a vacation destination. that’s ok, they probably don’t have passports anyway.

did anyone see it? the article says it was shown on last nite’s episode of lost.

the new sedition laws???

last week i read a blog posting about the prime minister’s website having a copy of a speech online where howard apoligised for the war. i can’t remember where i saw the posting but the person was impressed… said maybe howard is an ok guy… later on i saw an update saying the entire site was a joke.

there’s an article in the age re: the site was shut down. it took the domain registrar (au based) two days to let the site owner know why it was shut down (though if you read the blog of the guy who owns the domain, he sez 3 days).

Bruce Tonkin, the chief technology officer at Melbourne IT, said the site had been shut down in response to a request from the Prime Minister’s office on basis that it looked too similar to its own site.

neville is arguing satire while MelbourneIT claims it was phishing. haven’t seen anything from yahoo which is where it was hosted.

pretty disgusting on the govt & MelbIT’s part.

flights in march-june)

book by april 2nd and travel between may 1st & june 8th (or march 10-june 30 is slightly more expensive) for LA U$798 on qantas. there’s other good fares too.

i’m back

i walked down to fed square to check out the crowd. roamed around a little bit. nothing too exciting. it was sort of crowded but not incredibly so. i got home in time to watch the ceremony on tv. it was pretty cool and no where near as long as the olympics shows (but the same basic scenario).

i have some pix here. sorry, not very talkative… it’s late & i’m sleepy. nite.

UPDATE: i was so tired last nite that i forgot to mention during my walk up to FedSq, i saw a motorcade which seems to have been queenie. it was that black car she likes so much (and that she road into the stadium in) and several white cars and a couple cops. also in the motorcade was an AMBULANCE. just a normal melbourne ambulance. i thought that was funny… having medical staff in a car i could see but an ambulance to drive a whole 5 mins???

this does mean that brad was right about where queenie was staying in melbourne (i was wondering what hotel here was grand enough for her)… he said she would have been staying at the gov-general’s house which is under a 10 min walk from our apartment and that’s where the motorcade was coming from.

it’s 7:08pm

and the opening ceremony for the commonwealth games is about 90 minutes away. i can hear the helicopters roaming around (that reminds me… last nite went out to eat and the specials chalkboard said ‘this week’s special…. helicopters overhead’). the ceremony is taking place at one of the big sporting venues but up the road from me is one of the ‘live sites’ (at fedsq) so i’m going to go for a stroll & see just how crowded it is. the news had a little clip & it looked fairly crowded…. whooo hooooo!!!!!

commonwealth games

this week starts the commonwealth games in melbourne. for those who don’t know, it’s kind of like the olympics (swimming, gymnastics, shooting) with some non olympics sport tossed in (lawn bowls, rugby, table tennis, netball) tossed in and the participants are all from british commonwealth nations. some history and a list of participating countries is here.

today is the first day i’ve noticed there’s a lot more people on the street but for weeks now there’s been lots of work going on. there are now all sorts of pretty flowers all around the city.

(btw, i realised i never finished this & put it in drafts. am now going to upload the partially finished post & move on)

bloody australia

and no, i don’t actually mean the red stuff. a few weeks ago, the media up in arms about tourism australia’s new ad campaign entitled ‘where the bloody hell are you?’ (u can watch the ad there). for those who don’t know, here’s the definition off one site:

bloody intj adj : generic English swearword, ranging in intensity from impolite to as strong as fuck; used in all the same places as fuck but with not as strong a connotation. For example, like fuck, it is used as tmesis for emphasis and other effects, abso-bloody-lutely, ‘not bloody likely’, “this is bloody good”. [Known in Australia as the Australian adjective - kinda like motherfucker in some places in America.]

so the ad has been criticised as being rude and portraying aussies as rednecks. then the brits decided the use of the word bloody is too risque so they’ve banned the ad on tv (though it’s still showing in print and in theatres). and even though the tourism agency sez it spent A$6mil on focus groups including in the states…. is anyone really going to understand the phrase at home? is it really enticing anyone to visit? doubtful… the ad is pretty crap regardless.