So-So Living

The O'Connor Wattle St house that Rachel spent 2 years in sharing has finally been sold on, quite possibly to be knocked down for building flats. It's opposite the road from Tilley's and hence in the area where highrise flats are allowed under the new planning laws. The owner of Tilley's just happened to be Rachel et al's landlord. Stefan and Kristen found the ad description on All-Homes, as well as an "early draft" of the ad description before spin-doctoring had been performed...

SOHO LIVING

This enormous retro home is directly across the road from one of the Inner North’s most popular café precincts. The 5 bedroom, 2 bathroom home has large living areas as well as an eat-in kitchen. This home offers you the chance to have what would be undoubtedly a very much desired address by anyone seeking more then just a home but a lifestyle that is more akin to trendy parts of larger cities and is also becoming a way of life in Canberra. Investors and builders will also be astute enough to realize opportunities like this are rare.

... and the "early draft" ...

SO-SO LIVING

This retardly enourmous home is directly across the road from one or two cafés, including one that treats its customers and neighborhood with contempt due to its bloated fame. The 4 bedroom, 1 walk-in closet, 2 bathroom (one open-air/rain) home has large living areas (also with rain access) as well as an kitchen you probably don't want to eat-in. This home offers you the chance to have what would be undoubtedly a very much desired address by anyone recently arriving from a war-torn or economically depressed nation. It will taunt you with the possibility of desperately mimicking a lifestyle that is more akin to trendy parts of larger cities and has not yet become way of life in Canberra, which, lets face it, is a large rural center with what added benefits accrue from being home to the beloved national government. Investors and builders will also be astute enough to realize opportunities like this are rare, as knocking the property flat would be a good idea and you can do virtually anything from there.

Did you cut my deck?

It's the things you don't think of.

I'm pretty fascinated by the language nuances you uncover when you're in a foreign country. The first month I was here, I started to speak like I was Canadian (or at least what my semi-conscious brain thought sounded Canadian) just because I was listening so intently to everyone's accent. I'm sure the Canadian-ness of my accent has actually reduced since then because I've gotten over my initial fascination.

Two of Rachel's work colleagues, a couple who are originally from Brisbane, are both linguists and their theory is that people adopt the accent of their country just enough to be understood by the people in that country. I'm sure there's some truth in this: if you ask an American is there are "any bears around" in an Australian accent, then they don't know what you mean. We say "beahs", whereas they say "bearrs". Sometimes it's just easier to fake that "rr" and be understood sooner. I definitely notice that when I'm in Aussie mode I get asked to repeat myself much more often.

But even after almost a year of this, it still didn't hit me right away why a Canadian at our table at a Magic tournament recently did a double take when I asked if my opponent wanted to "cut my deck". "What the...? Oh..."

(In Magic, you and your opponent both have a deck of cards that you use to play the game. You "duel" using the cards in each of your decks to play the game. One of the rituals at the start of the game is to take half the cards from the top of your opponent's deck and put them on the bottom of the pile, as a minimal protection against cheating.)

You see, when a Canadian says an "e", it leans out toward what we think of as an "a". Now, if you think about what we Australians must sound like to them, our "e"s snip off more like an "i". We sound to Canadians a little like how New Zealanders sound to us. I'm not going to spell out what my Canadian colleague thought I said, but I'm sure he was very confused for that second before he realised it was just my accent.

I dread to think what he would have made of the various other commonly-heard pre-Magic-game phrases such as: "Hang on, I'll just shuffle my deck" or "Would you mind not looking at my deck?" or just "Can I cut your deck?"

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This post was brought to you by Royal Decks Missisauga

(Since whenever I have email conversations with Bug about Magic decks, my Google-mail gives me ads about deckbuilding of the carpentry type. I guess their context-detectors need work.)

Scary Halloween Costumes

Showtime, Synergy!

Jem! Is Truly outrageous! Truly truly truly outrageous! Whoah Jem, the music's contagious! Outrageous! Jem is my name, no one else is the same! Jem is my name!

Jem!

(We are the Misfits! Our songs are better! The misfits! And we're gonna get 'er...)

Dressing up for Halloween is such a big deal here, I had no idea! Rachel and I went to a Halloween party hosted by one of her workmates and the range of costumes was quite something. My last minute attempt at doing Jem's alter-ego Jerrica wasn't met with a whole lot of enthusiasm as I'd only done the blonde wig part and nothing else - that and half the people there were too young to know who Jem was, boy did I feel old! Rachel had fun finding all the various accessories to be Jem, including some truly hideous star-shaped earrings that you can't really see in the photo above.

It doesn't seem to matter what you dress up as so long as you do a really thorough job of it. There was a really good Conan there, a "Devilled Egg" (ie an egg with horns, but people thought she was a jaundiced cow...), various witches and ghosts (including one with a sheet that wasn't even white...), a peacock, Smurfette, Borat (who won the best costume competition because the resemblance was so good), a prize boxer, Charlie Brown, a scarecrow, a dryad, Duff Man (a superman outfit with the S signed over) and various other superheroes, the paperbag princess, and an Allen key which was my favourite because "Who would think of dressing up as an Allen key, let alone go to the trouble of assembling a plywood structure and a shower curtain for the purpose, and then be prepared to knock party-goers' blocks off just trying to turn around in a crowded party room?"

And after all that, we didn't actually get any trick-or-treaters knocking at the door. So now we'll have to eat all these healthy muesli bar snacks we bought ourselves. (Maybe that's why nobody came - they guessed we weren't giving away sweets...)