Lost in Translation

Every week it seems that I encounter a new Aussie word that requires translation.  For example, a couple of weeks ago there was a story in the paper about "Bowser Rage," in which a man was punched in the face, hit his head on the concrete, and fell into a coma after apparently cutting in line while people were lined up for the next bowser.  What's a bowser, my American readers are asking?  Simple: a gas pump at a service station.  According to the story, about 40% of Queenslanders reported experiencing bowser rage in the past six months.  Oh my!

I confused two students this week while I was giving them feedback about papers.  I told one that some information should be provided in parentheses.  "What is that?" she asked.  I soon learned that many Aussies have no idea that Americans refer to () as parentheses and [] as brackets.  For Australians, both are called brackets.  I told another student that she needed to put a period after "et al" -- which prompted a blank look.  The right term here is "full stop," like the thing that appears at the end of this sentence.

A few days ago I was sent the following video by a Kiwi living here in Brisbane.  Back in March when I was at a conference in Wellington, I couldn't appreciate my Aussie colleagues' laughter about the New Zealand accent.  To tell you the truth, I still have a hard time detecting it.  There seems to be so much variation in Aussie accents that a Kiwi could easily slip in undetected.  The humour of this video was therefore lost on me:

New Zealand Photos

Today I posted some photos from my New Zealand trip on Flickr (the same ones that appear on Facebook, my FB friends!). I found it quite hard to take pictures with our little Fujifilm FinePix--without my glasses I can't see the little video display when aiming the camera. :-(

Post Trip

Yes, I am back in the land of the kangaroo, the emu, and "Spicks and Specks"-- feeling quite energised, although I feel I could sleep for a week.  I'll be posting pictures here later in the week. Perhaps the biggest shock of the trip came from my continuing battle with the telecoms in this part of the world.  Using my mobile in New Zealand to make calls to Australia was expensive (about $3/minute*), and a 10-minute call from my hotel room cost me $80.  I didn't use the internet much either, as the hotel charged $30/day for the service.  Despite those minor inconveniences, I look forward to seeing more of NZ on a future trip.  The South Island is still my undiscovered territory.

*All prices roughly converted to Australian currency.

Hanging Out With Seals

I am in Wellington and having a good time. I have long wanted to visit New Zealand, and I haven't been disappointed with it one bit. The terrain is quite different from anywhere else I have ever been: for example, mountain ranges seem to just erupt from the sea; pine, palm, and fern trees grow next to each other in dense forests; and cities and towns seem to cling to the shoreline (and parts of them are even washed away). And Kiwis are even more laid back than Aussies, a feat that I thought was impossible for any other nationality.

My morning started out with a 45-minute wait for my tour bus to pick me up. When the driver finally arrived, he announced, "we are running a little late, but that doesn't really matter." We then drove around the SW corner of the North Island for eight hours. This particular tour advertised visits to "Lord of the Rings" sites, which turned out to include a stop at a gravel pit and two city parks, none of which particularly evoked memories of the movie. We did visit a park that had a section nicknamed "Rivendell," the site of the Elvin world in the first movie, which actually did remind me of the film...sort of. Anyway, the real highlight of the trip was our very long journey way out to Palliser Bay to see a colony of fur seals (that group of rocks in the upper right side of this picture, which I got from here). There were only seven of us on the trip and we were able to spread ourselves out among the rocks and watch dozens of seals and their teen pups frolic in the waters around us for nearly a half hour. It was absolutely amazing. Other highlights included lunch at a small cafe, wine tasting at Martinborough winery, and a perilous drive across the mountains. It was all fantastic!

I did catch up with some of my colleagues at the conference welcome reception at the end of the day, so I can say I did a little work. Tomorrow the conference really gets into full swing. I will have to try hard to keep my thoughts from drifting back to those seals.