Tina's wanderings around the world

There are two Australian habits that I've become more and more aware of lately. (Seriously, sometimes I wonder at my observational capabilities--it seems to take me so long to put two and two together these days!) First, is their massively long-period socializing. I'm used to spending a few hours at a time with a group of friends or even more preferably, a, singular , friend (I much prefer one-on-one time) but then I go home and and that's that. No FOMO disease, nothing like that. Happy to be home. And maybe it's a me thing, but I just don't really like socializing for hours and hours on end. It may have something to do with the subject matter that takes the stage when socializing, though, too. More often than not, it's chatter about nothing. Little depth, very superficial, friendly chitter chatter and banter. But I hunger for intellectual conversation. One time, we had a group of friends over and we were sitting out back, kicking back, having this senseless ch...

For Valentine's Day this year, a group of our friends decided it would be a good idea to do a progressive dinner. I didn't really know what a progressive dinner was at the beginning, but for some reason not realizing that I haven't understood something has become more and more common over the last year and a half...I'm not sure if this is an Australian thing or if I just hadn't been exposed to in the past. Anyway, as it turns out, a progressive dinner is when you start dinner at one house, then dinner progresses to another person's house where more food is served. Brilliant idea. Here in Erskineville we're within walking distance to two of our friends' houses, so we thought it would work out quite well. The first stop was Ashleigh's house where we snacked on fondue for appetizers (which inspired a 70's theme, though our accuracy in dress was questionable!) and imbibed Bec's version of my stepmom's Thanksgiving punch (tropical fruit juice ...

I still need to write about the weekend, but since I'm at work right now (and that's the topic on my mind, and I am on a ROLL with entries after having been silent for a few weeks) I'm going to go down that path. I am still at the audit office. How is that, one might ask. Well, there was an exit strategy in place, let me tell you. First off, one of the girls in our department (and there are only four of us) quit in December because she's moving to the Gold Coast. Which left us short a member. Then, my boss went on vacation from before Christmas to the beginning of February. If I had left, there would have been one person to run the department--a third to a quarter of its normal capacity. I thought it would be nice for my boss not to have to worry about staffing while she was away on vacation (she got to go to Egypt, lucky duck...and London and Albania). I figured I'd work for two more weeks after she got back and then I'd be off to some non-prof to find some mor...

First of all, I've been wanting to write about a particularly lovely weekend, two weeks ago, but then I emailed about it to a few different people and it took all the immediate writing novelty value right out (and I would then have felt like I was just repeating myself, and then I start feeling generic...) BUT on January 24th, Marcus and I celebrated our one-year anniversary together, and it was truly a perfect weekend. Marcus took over the reigns and planned a beautiful weekend out of the city. And it was a surprise, which made it that much better. :) We both took a half day off of work that Friday and borrowed our roommate's car...and began heading south. We passed close to where his parents own a beach house, in Gerroa, but kept driving south. Hmm. About 20 minutes later, the traffic slowed, the road curved, and we entered Berry, a cute little touristy town with an apparently renowned bakery and cute little shopfronts that make you feel like you stepped backward in time just...

Okay, so I can't quite figure out how to go back in and be able to write underneath that embedded video, so I figured I'd just write a new one. :) But like I was saying, Australian ad campaigns can be so in your face, especially government commercials. The anti-smoking campaign actually makes me queasy to my stomach. There are quite a few that are bad, but this one's the worst. Here's one for under-age drinking: And then there's a Kotex commercial that literally made my jaw drop with its inappropriateness: I continue to be awed and amazed. There are two other commercials that brought me to the conclusion that I needed to let you in on this australian advertising phenomenon, but unfortunately I can't find them on Youtube. Well, I found one but it's in another language, but if you stick around till the end of the commercial, you'll see what I mean. The other one is a deodorant commercial and I can only imagine what my face looked like when I saw it...anywa...

I have seen some of the most bizarre and hilarious commercials here. Australian advertising campaigns are so in-your-face, and it's a total hit or miss. Here is my current favorite: