Ssshhh

Sneaking in ever so quietly…..

How has everyone been? I missed my internet fam. There have been sweet comments left on my blog by the absolute sweet sisters that made me melt.I shall get back to responding.

I am back. No, I didn’t get married (fortunately) as some had asked if my husband forbade me to blog. I would rather chuck the husband out than my blog. I had gone overseas and returned back to start my Masters (which is what desi girls do when they don’t get married by the end of Bachelors :P). Masters is draining the hell out of me. Classes all five days 9 to 6 with assignments and assessments. Anyway no excuse will justify my long absence. So let me just make it up by letting your Aussie girl inform you about the weird facts of good ol’ Aus you might not know.

1. The fact that toilets and bathrooms don’t come with locks. Not all houses, some, but still. My friend bought this house and one of the toilets doesn’t come with a door!! Apparently you have to pay extra for the toilet door.
2. People in India just drop in without calling. People in Dubai call to let you know they shall be visiting. People in Aus are soo polite that its annoyingly cute. They don’t come. At all. You have to send an invitation and ask them to come because you have started talking to walls. I bet even for my funeral, I shall have to call everyone 2 hours before my imminent death with invitations and ask them to RSVP.
3. Day light savings.
4. That my little cousins attend “colleges” (primary level schooling) and my brother and I attend “schools” (a.k.a universities).
5. That there are alcohol shops next to schools, ahem I mean “colleges”. The two colleges I got to attend here, both had them so I am assuming its a norm for all (Could be wrong. So far no drunk kids spotted.)
6. Return policy : you can return any item (except bedding,cosmetics and used nappies) as long as you have the receipt. This is the main reason why NRI’s here don’t want to go back to India lol.
7. The water that flushes the toilet is as filtered as the water that I drink from tap (Let that sink in.)
8. Almost all shops close by 5 p.m. Worst thing ever. One gets back from work/uni/college/school whatever by evening and the shops are closed. People here don’t sweat about it but as a Dubai mall girl I seem to find it highly unfair that the plaza is open only for housewives.
9. The public transport system is so unreliable that one is forced to force her brothers and parents to drop her off to station so she doesn’t have to wait for 40 minutes for the bus and walk 1 kilometre to home.
10. They make you book in for a doctor’s appointment and call you in an hour late than the scheduled time but when its the other way round and you arrive just 5 minutes late, they have to reschedule your appointment to another day because you are late and they weren’t able to torture you to the maximum one hour they are allowed to.
11. Mcdonald’s also known as Maccas. So when a friend first asked whether I would be interested going to Maccas, I assumed Makkah and stared at her nonplussed. Refused because I hadn’t saved enough money for the pilgrimage when really she was asking whether I would like to hang out for a 4 dollar McFlurry milkshake.
12. The slang language. Barbeque = barbie, afternoon = arvo, etc. There is a whole dictionary full of it and I could write a post just on it.
13. Honey soy chicken chips.Like whaaaat? So its a potato chips chicken flavoured. All good yeah? But no, lets vegetify it and add soy. Make it a little bit healthy. Let the vegetarians taste the goodness of chicken. But wait, what about people with a sweet tooth? Can’t forget them now can we? Ergo honey.
14. Vegemite. Nuff said. For those who want to have a lick at it, I have one that expired a year ago that I received when I got my citizenship and we got it from the council for becoming an Aussie. So you shout Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi (while balancing the Aussie passport on your head) and then scoop a chunk of vegemite and dunk it in. If you can’t eat that scoopful, you aint becoming an Aussie. That’s how Stralians play mate!! We keep that honey soy chicken close and vegemite even closer. (Disclaimer : Not sponsored by Vegemite or the chickens.)
15. Australia is the only country where it is legal to eat the national animal. But I mean kangaroos!!! Why??

Any Aussies reading the post : you can come at me. These are my observations and the intention wasn’t to offend/insult Australia/Australians. I love me my Aussie barbie and we can have a nice chat some arvo.We can have vegemite together too.