More Random Information

Canberra is basically a melting pot of many nationalities and backgrounds. There are many people that have come from other countries to work here. Since Canberra is the capital of Australia, all of the countries embassies are here (Poland, Finland, America, Russia... etc)

Another Yellow Country trait: Every Thursday has Desperate Housewives at 9:30pm and it always starts 10 minutes late. I don't get it. They advertise it to start at 9:30pm and it always starts at 9:40pm.

Since our winter is your summer, we don't start the season for T.V. episodes until our fall/winter starts. So it's always 6-7 months behind what it is in America. We had been watching Desperate Housewives before we left and are still waiting for the episodes to catch up where we left off.

This also goes for movies. Movies always come out way earlier in America before they come to Australia.

Double lane round-a bouts: These are super scary and they are all over. It's a round-a bout with two lanes (inside and outside). The first month or so, I always got honked at in the round about. It's scary because if you are in the inside lane and are getting off on one of the exits, you don't know if the person next to you on the outside lane is going to keep going through. So, essentially, you have to hurry and cut them off to get out. I asked someone what you're supposed to do in this situation and they said to use your indicators to tell them (blinkers). BUT... if the person is RIGHT next to you, how are they going to know? It's just scary! Hate the double lane round-a bouts!

In my previous post I told you how they call McDonald's Macka's. Well just to clarify, I spelled it wrong. It's Macca's. They actually had it spelled in one of their commercials when I noticed I spelled it wrong.

I mentioned going to Blockbuster in my previous post... and seriously, do you remember the last time you went (aside from the fact that they are shut down now in Utah). I didn't know people still rented movies, but now we do that again. We are paying for our internet by the download, so we can't download movies now like we used to or else it would use all of our data up. We will be able to get normal internet when we can move into a house. I can't wait!!!

Everyone says, "How are you going?" instead of "How are you doing?". The first few times that people asked me it caught me off guard and I had to think about what they were saying.

I have actually had a few dreams where we are all speaking with an Australian accent. lol

We just barely found somewhere you can buy the stick deodorant. I thought we were doomed with roll on and spray on deodorants. That is really all they sell everywhere. Again, isn't that what we used in the 80's or 90's? Good 'ol Lona sent us some normal deodorant in the meantime.

Costco Pizzas-- I posted about the seafood pizza, but they also have a meat pizza with salami, lamb, Canadian bacon, and chicken... That one looks less gross than the seafood one, but it's still up there on the "do not eat" list for me.

Here is another commercial song that is always in my head because they play it alll the time! It's a Super Annuation (what we call 401k) commercial. I just played it on You Tube and Jeremy rolled his eyes and said, "Ugh".

"From little things, big things, grow..."

I posted the "Tip Top Bread" commercial song previously that went, "Gooooood on ya mum. Tip Top's the one. Good on ya mum." Say that out loud at random through out the day still.

Hana's Helpline: I always have random songs in my head from the shows here. This is another song that is a kids show. It's about this duck, whose name is Hana and she solves kids problems. The numbers on the phone are animal noises instead of numbers and the phone number to call Hana's Helpline is: Moo, Baa, Double-Quack, Double-Quack


This brings me to my next random thing. If someone is reading back the spelling of something or a phone number, and there is two of the same digit or letter next to each other, they will always say "Double 2 or Double R", etc.

On the phone:
They say, "Hash Key" = We say, "Pound Key"

No one uses their checking account here. They all use their savings account and then use their debit cards to withdraw money from savings instead of checking. ??? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of having a savings account? I finally asked someone in the store the other day why they do that and she said she didn't know. Half the people here don't even have a checking account, only savings. People can set up to 15 savings accounts at the bank to separate what they are saving for or paying for.

I still haven't tried Vegemite, but I plan to before we go. It just doesn't look too appealing.