random Aussie stats

In the last edition of 2009, The Week magazine had a retrospective of aussie statistics that I found interesting.

An aussie woman’s life expectancy is 84. Men = 80. Which made me wonder what it is with other countries – especially those with national healthcare. The chart below doesn’t differenciate between genders but out of the 6 countries I compared, the states has the lowest average – of 78.

Aussies give less to charity (though I’m sure this would be different after Haiti & Tsunami figures). A 2005 report (Giving Australia) says the avg total annual personal donation was $424. GDP wise, americans give 1.6% of GDP & Aussies .68%.

There’s not the constant ‘church & state separation’ here because church really doesn’t enter into it. I really enjoy not having to hear the constant religion din. The 2006 census showed the majority of people (64%) said they were christians but 19% ticked the non-believer choice. The 2001 census only had 16% of non-believers. Go non believers!!!! BTW, in 1911, 96% of all aussies said they were christian.

More than $18 BILLION is spent per year on gambling.

After iron ore & coal, overseas students/education is the 3rd largest cash machine for the country. Not at all surprising but I didn’t realise that AU has the highest percentage of overseas students among all OECD/developed countries. ONE TENTH OF THE ENTIRE WORLD MARKET. No one should be wondering why politicians are making trips to India to smooth things over after multiple Indian students have been bashed or killed. More surprising is why they haven’t been doing more.

and lastly….

AU has the 2nd highest proportion of foreign born people – 30% (Israel is #1 but there wasn’t a % noted). Add in all those foreign students & it’s surprising the country isn’t more diverse & welcoming to migrants. Instead they’re pissy about being overtaken by the 158,021 new immigrants that arrived last year. The blurb says that breaks down into 21% from New Zealand, 14% from UK & 20% from China & India (combined).

it’s just not easter w/o the eggs

one of my first years in AU, i decided i wanted to dye eggs for easter. run out to the shop, grab that little box of dye, some eggs, some vinegar and voila! pretty easter eggs.

but no.

in one of those classic expat moments, none of this was easy. first i found it hard to find the dye. ok, fine, i can get food colouring and make due. i had no idea it would be so hard to find the eggs. i don’t eat eggs that frequently so i think it was the first time i realised that all the eggs in the grocery store were brown, not white. i ended up having to open a bunch of egg cartons to find the palest browns i could. it just wasn’t the same… the brown came thru in the dying process and i have never tried it again.

so i found this article about brown eggs quite interesting.

turns out brown hens, which lay brown eggs, are more efficient than white hens that lay white eggs. due to efficiency’s sake, egg producers started using brown hens in the 1970s and today it’s very hard to find a white one. the australian egg corporation estimates less than 3% of the eggs laid in the entire country are white. apparently you have to go to a specialty place (one named in sydney but not near me) and they claim there’s demand during easter but then no demand the rest of the year (huh? people say no to the white egg? really?)

the article is about the hunt for the white eggs by the greek community who dye the eggs. no mention of the american expat community or how much fun the aussie kids are missing out on. happy easter all!

(the pix below are some eggs i bought at the grocery store a few weeks ago. the company’s logo has a smiley face but how cool that they’ve extended that onto all the eggs in the box!)

more art – but this side of the world

a few weeks ago, the boy & i went to sydney and managed to check out a lot of art while we were there.

we went to art gallery nsw to check out the archibald. the archibald is an annual prize for portraits. i can’t remember ever hearing about it before moving to AU but it’s a massive thing here that gets big media coverage… on the morning brekkie shows & evening news & in mags, etc.. the portraits are usually either artist self portraits, celebrities and (lesser so) relatively unknown aussies. last year’s winner was one of heath ledger.

it wasn’t til we were at the show that i realised it’s actually multiple prizes – portraits, australian landscapes and subjects done by an aussie artist. you can check out the winners here and the rest of them here. personally, i found most of them boring.

it was only by accident that we discovered inside art express on a different floor. here’s where we should have spent our time. i was gobsmacked that all the artists shown here are HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS. it was depressing that i’d never be able to produce anything as cool as some of their work but it was also inspirational (and hopeful that if they continue their work the archibald might be more interesting in years to come).

my favourite artist was estelle felix. her paintings were cool but she had 3 soft fabric pieces (the site only shows the orangey yellow one) with a craft sensibility that made me want to create interesting wall hangings. i hope estelle continues the art path as i’d love to see more.

then we headed to MCA. there’s something about the mca that always draws me back… a combination of the art and the beautiful harbour view i think. this is one of the places i discovered during my first trip to sydney 9 years ago and i have very good memories of the james exhibit and a lazy sunny afternoon.

i wanted to see yayoi kusama: mirrored years and discovered i could easily decorate my home by adapting her art. massive greyish ‘clouds’ cushions that i was dying to recline on? check. mirrored balls lying on the floor reflecting the light? check. closets turned into art by covering them in mirrors and scattering polka dot soft toys across the floor? sure – although i’m probably more inclined to go with the closet covered in mirrors with dangling xmas tree lights. i’d probably skip the water on the floor though.

u can check out her site and those in LA and NYC can see other exhibits of hers.

happy new year!

happy new year all! hope everyone had a good one.

today is my last day off work. we have a mandatory break each year which is nice except the 5 days comes out of our holiday time. which means i really get 3 weeks per year instead of 4. or rather i get 4 but can only do what i want with 3 of them. it’s been really nice having time off since work has been very busy of late (and it will continue to be til probably april). i don’t really want to go into the office tomorrow.

pix!

don’t ask me why but aussies dress up in costume for xmas parties. they don’t get the whole halloween thing but come xmas party time and it’s fancy dress (as they say – how confusing… fancy dress isn’t black tie but dress up as a lion sort of thing). i had 3 xmas parties to attend this year and 2 were mandatory costume. the third had a ‘white’ theme and some folks took that as an invitation to dress up as well.

first party had a magic theme. i went as a voodoo princess. second party theme was circus/carney trash/cirque de soleil. i went as the bearded tattooed lady. not many pix of me w/in those so look on facebook… several coworkers put their pix up there.

here’s pix from new years eve. it was a pretty quiet one. bbq at some friends’ new house in the burbs. was 104f during the day & cooled down to a sultry 90f at midnight! i adore having new years in summer.

at the beginning of december i was thrown a surprise bday party (def a surprise as it was weeks before my bday!). pix here

aussie xmas trees

i’m having a hard time getting into the xmas spirit this year.

i’ve bitched about the lack of xmas music & shitty xmas trees before but this year everything is annoying me.

take for example – yet another metal xmas tree that gets used year after year after year. this one sits in the docklands.

the aussie election

the election here was… 2 weeks ago? the 11 yr running prime minister (and george’s buddy) was kicked out. woo hoo! but a few days before the election we all had a flyer in our mailbox with a pix of kevin rudd.

someone in my building put it on the cork board as follows (nice creative use of the pins!).

total rip off

i’m going to bitch for a second about how aussies get totally ripped off –

it’s xmas party season & for whatever reason xmas parties mean costume parties. (they dont dress up for halloween but bring it on for xmas). my company’s party is this friday with a circus/sideshow/carnival theme. my costume involves tats. i’ve got some stuff sorted but had intended to buy that tattoo paper so i could print off temp tattoos (thinking vine like branches up my neck). i’ve called and visited a multitude of shops (craft, kmart, office supplies) and no one has them. the office shop used to but they dont carry it anymore.

so this morning i go online. i can find 2 places in AU that sell it & thus would get it to me on time. here’s where the bitch starts:

to order a few pages in the states i’d be paying about u$12 (converted to maybe 16 aussie). to order the same amount here it’s $a50.

argh.

a jb hi- fi customer warning

this one is for any australians who stumble upon this post. if you ever buy anything electronic @ jb hifi, watch out for this ‘warranty is included’ scam. fyi, this occured at the elizabeth street shop in melbourne.

the other week i bought a pair of noise canceling headphones at jb hifi for an upcoming trip. the price on the package was $199.

the sales person assisting me wrote out the order for me to take to the counter & pay. as he was writing it, i noticed he put a $37 warranty on the paper. um, i don’t want an extra warranty. he informed me that the warranty was included in the price of the headphones.

’see the total owed is$199. just like it sez on the package’

(but yet the headphones were listed on his form as $162 and the warranty was $37)

yes but i don’t want a warranty. he went on about how GREAT the warranty was & obviously as they are such an expensive pair of headphones, i’d want it. besides it was included in the price. i had to have it.

afterwards i looked at the receipt and sure enough there were 2 items listed – $37 for the warranty & the $162 headphones. that annoyed me. i read the documentation to find out i had 15 days to say i didn’t want the warranty. so i called the warranty # & found out i had to call the shop.

when i did, they said i couldn’t get a refund. i asked to speak to the manager. they put me on the phone w the same sales person who argued how he could take away the warranty if i didn’t want that but the $37 was part of the price of the headphones so i wasn’t getting that back. after several minutes of back & forth, he finally said ‘you can have a refund’.

tonite when i went into the shop, not a word was said. the person behind the counter did disappear to ‘find something out’ but didn’t balk at refunding at all (and my refund slip sez ‘customer changed mind’). i walked out in less than 3 minutes with my $37.

so anyone purchasing from them – watch out for the scam. i won’t be hurrying back.

not silly, stupid plus phones, the trip and whatever else

the aforementioned APEC conference is starting this week.

last nite while i was wordpressing away with the tv on in the background, i noticed the tv channel went to a live b’cast of bush getting off airforce 1 at sydney airport. yes. we’ll delay the existing program so we can show george walk off the plane, shake a few hands & get into his car. i did learn some interesting facts. did you know george brings about 600 people along? including his chef? and there’s an ambulance that goes with him everywhere? and that w/in the ambulances they have x amount of george’s type of blood just in case? did you know before he arrives they fly his own cars over (18 of them)? (numbers )

best is how even though this was about 11pm, they said all the roads to & around the airport had been closed since around 5pm. well that would be great for commuting or needing to fly.

anyone have any recommendations for me on a pda/phone combo? am looking at the moto qh, blackjack, blackberry pearl and maybe treo.

only 10 days til we leave!!!!!!!!!!!!!! woooooo hoooo!!!!!

does anyone want me to bring anything over from au?

sydney is just silly

next week, sydney is shutting down. yes, in another example of govt not knowing how to deal with certain situations, they enact marital law.

towards the end of next week, many companies in sydney are closing. roads are being closed. people are being told to stay away from the city. they’ve even set up a public holiday on friday. why? because sydney is hosting apec – the asia pacific economic cooperation. apec consists of 21 ‘member economies’ (see below for list). this is the conference where u always see pix of politicians in the ‘traditional dress’ of the hosting country.

on the special apec sydney website, you can find out about the havoc this will cause. my fav is why they’re closing schools & areas:

The Australian Government is responsible for the security of visiting foreign dignitaries and the NSW Police Force is primarily responsible for protecting them. Careful planning is necessary to ensure safe and secure APEC meetings for everyone and importantly the general public. As well, Australia is obliged to extend to dignitaries a similar level of diplomatic courtesy that is extended to Australian Government Ministers and officials when they represent Australia overseas.

yes, b/c every other city shuts down to extend diplomatic courtesy. could u imagine if nyc shut down every time something was at the UN?

here’s the best though – dress up george in a range of scary aussie clothes

participating countries
Australia; Brunei Darussalam; Canada; Chile; People’s Republic of China; Hong Kong, China; Indonesia; Japan; Republic of Korea; Malaysia; Mexico; New Zealand; Papua New Guinea; Peru; The Republic of the Philippines; The Russian Federation; Singapore; Chinese Taipei; Thailand; United States of America; Viet Nam.