Christy and I were rambling around Circular Quay and the Rocks today and on our way through the royal botanical garden, we stopped because we saw a big pack of Sulfur crested cockatoos.
Colorful tropical birds that you've only ever seen in pet shops are common place here. As a matter of fact, they commonly wake you up at 4 am with they're constant squaking. Cockatoos are fairly large birds, I'm sure you've seen them. They're parrot sized and then some! But, I commonly see them on the side of the road here. Along with colorful galahs, lorikeets, rosellas, magpies...I see them everyday and not in cages...FAR OUT.
Anyway, the detour to the botanical gardens ended amusingly. (Is that word?) I decided it would be a good idea to pull some of the biscuits that I had in my bag to convince these birds to come land on me for a photo op. (When am I going to be able to so easily convince a non-caged cockatoo to sit on my shoulder, really?) So, I pull out a scotch biscuit (mmmmm, arnotts) and suddenly, I had a very good friend on my shoulder. Not many pieces of scotch biscuit later, I had several friends. I had friends on my shoulders, back, and even one trying to eat my hair. And, I even had one hanging on for dear like to my back pocket...effectively executing a sort of ass grab of sorts. It was really quite the experience. And I do have pictures, but no means to upload them at the moment. Soon enough...check back!
So, if you're ever wondering...yes, sulfur crested cockatoos like scotch biscuits. If you don't want company hanging onto your ass, don't let them know you have food in your bag!
All right, as promised, I'll now give a little bit of a summary of what has come to pass in the last two months or so.
As soon as I got back from Tasmania, I started hunting for a job. Every single person in Wagga Wagga NSW has my resume. I spent weeks chasing people down, using all of my phone minutes on local calls, begging people to hire me with no avail. What the problem was...I suspect I will never know. All I knew was that I didn't have enough money to stay here and pay for next semester, let alone the following years. I knew I had to figure something out...and pretty fucking fast.
So, one day, during a tasting class for wine and grape science (it was red wines...with the Pinot Noir that tasted like Shiraz! G'Damned Australians!), I was walking to the toilet and nearly killed myself slipping on a piece of paper. I picked it up in a huff and took a look at it. It was a job ad for an internship in Oregon. I remember immediately thinking "Holy shit, I can go home. And work in a winery. And best yet, I'll be PAID!" On a whim, expecting no results, I applied for the internship. On a whim, also expecting no results, I surfed winejobs.com to see if there were other vintage internships available. Turns out...they're everywhere! I applied only for west coast internships: if I was going back to the states, I was doing so no where near my home. This adventure has to continue.
The next hurdle to clear was with CSU. I wanted to know if I could study by distance (DE) even though I wouldn't be able to do residential schools in September. I need to stay in school for health insurance reasons and because if I don't, I know I will struggle to ever go back again. So, I chatted with my pal Chris and he told me that I could most likely continue to take subjects by distance ed (DE) and do things onshore in the States.
So I waited. Was I going to get anything? An internship? Within two weeks, I had three offers on the table, each of them better than the other in some respects, but each worse than the other in some respects. I ended up choosing an internship in a place called Quincy, WA. Near Seattle! I need to be there in the beginning of September, and it looks as though Mom and I will be driving the CRV cross country. Woop woop!
I don't know if it's the right decision, but I know I am poor as all hell. Who knows! I'm just ramblin', tryin' to make a livin' and doin' the best I can! (Points if you can name the song and artist!) I plan to come back to Australia after the 1st of 2008. When I'm at home, I'm going to begin applying for other jobs here and getting my visa switched to a working visa (much more complicated than it sounds!). I'll be back!
So, yea, a month and some change left under the southern cross, then onward!
That is the very annotated and short version of what has been going on. Now you are up to speed!
The woman pictured with me above is my personal hero. Not only did she send me Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, but she is also helping me keep my teeth clean....BECAUSE SHE SENT ME TOOTHPASTE!!! :-D Fantastic. SMS, as the Aussies put it, You're a LEGEND!
Thank you! :-D
And yes, I am wearing pink saran wrap and she is dressed as playboy bunny. We're THAT special. :-)
I was over at a friends house for dinner a couple of Sundays ago. We were all sitting around the table, eating, enjoying, sipping some wine. My mate's girlfriend joined us for dinner, and I think we got off on a bad foot right away. If you know me, you know how horrible I am with names. I had met this girl before, I know I did, I recognized her face. I couldn't for the life of me remember her name. Well, she remembered me and remembered that I had not remembered her name the last time we met, so she basically started hating me right away. (Greeeatttt.)
We were chatting at dinner, and we got into a conversation that resulted in her asking if anyone knew of a city called Columbo. I said not, that was US television show, the only city I knew that vaguely Colombus, OH. She looked at me and said, "I'll bet there's a world city named Columbo. You see, there's this thing about Americans. They have a reputation for being self centered and know absolutely nothing about world geography and history. I see you're not exception."
I'm sure I turned red straight away. I was quick on my feet and said, "Well, we don't need to look any further than home, we've got all we need to be great." I followed this up with a laugh to show that I was half kidding, and I got a group laugh from the Aussies. I was more seriously then I could have let on in that moment.
I know we have that reputation world wide. But, it's not like anyone else in that situation was volunteering any examples of this chicks' magic city. I agree with this statement in some ways, a lot of Americans don't look further than home and we come across as stupid in the world view. They have a program here called the "Chasers War on Everything", which is what the next comes from. I do love it, you should watch the episode where they run up to Johnny Howard with various objects. Anyway, here's a good Australian view of Americans:
With that, I'll bet I could find an equal number of retarded Australians. This is essentially propaganda. Funny, but, it could be repeated in any country. Entertaining.
But, lately, I've been chatting with my flatmates and history has been coming up quite a bit. Here's the example I'll cite. One of my flatmates was trying to explain that her family name had been altered because it began as Boleyn. After Anne Boleyn was killed, they had had to change their surname to avoid persecution. Someone asked why Boleyn had been killed. Not a single Australian in the room could recall, so I finally broke down and told the story. The "stupid American" was telling the colonial commonwealth country dwelling people a story that took place in their "mother country".
This happened again, and again. Major wars, major events, ancient and modern...all with my resident Australians having no idea what went on. I never expected them all to know anything about US History, but I did expect them to know European History like the rest of us. Especially England, given that they are in the commonwealth and technically still under Elizabeth II.
I'm not a history buff, I haven't had global history since 10th grade with Mrs. Darrow! (Maybe I'm proof of how fucking rockin' Mrs. Darrow is!) But, I still evidentially have a much wider working knowledge of past world events, and, as I've found, a much larger working knowledge of current world events.
Australia loves to hate Americans. I think the real case is that Australia loves to envy Americans and the States...we took the chances, made a name for ourselves. We have opinions, we make them heard. Love us or hate us, you know our name and there is some degree of success in that.
This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black!
Hey Australia, watch who you're calling stupid. We're not all dumbasses.
Cheers Big Ears
Oh, and Colombo is a city in Sri Lanka. Columbo is a TV detective. But don't worry, the smartass Australians didn't know that either. :-)
Since I've been here, I've noticed my own tendency to assume that anything I see: animals, plant, rock, must be foreign. I've looked stupid on a number of occasions because I say things like "What's that?" and someone will say, "Catrina, that's a cow."
But, a lot of the time I'm right...it's a creature or plant that I've never seen before. Chances are I'm seeing it outside of my window at 4 am, and if that is the case, then I know it has never been above the equator. So, I take a couple of dumb ones for the team, but I do usually learn a good bit about this excellent example of island biogeography.
My mate Pete (AKA Yakimus) and I were coming back from a wine tasting the other day (wine faults...ACK!) and we drove by one of the fields I commonly walk by on my long walk up the hill to the winery. Out the car window, I saw these awkward looking off white colored animals that just looked horribly unhealthy and, well, cold. I looked over at him and said, "What the fuck are those?" He pulled the car over (love this kid), put it in neutral, pulled his sunnies off his nose and up onto his head, and said, "Catrina, those are sheep. They've just been sheared." I retorted with, "Well, I didn't recognize them because they looked cold!" He threw the car back in gear and laugh at me, "You Yanks. I can't believe you sometimes."
If you go overseas, don't automatically assume that everything is not what you know. Unless you want to provide the locals with free entertainment.
I've been busy lately with end of term garbage, assignments, revision, tests. Lovely. I took the above picture in a heinous session of paper writing about sensory thresholds. It was obvious mania.
