quicko: entitled how?

I've had a eureka moment:  Americans and Australians both feel entitled, but in different settings (and get a bit annoyed by how entitled the other feels in the opposite one).  Americans feel entitled as customers (big surprise), whereas Australians feel entitled as employees.  Americans (tend to, overall, I find) expect to have to give, give, give at work with recognition only when they go exceptionally above and beyond.  Australians (tend to, overall, I find), on the other hand, keep track of every minute in lieu, whine excessively if asked to do an inch more than is typically required of them and step out the door the minute they're off the clock.  Americans thus see the Australians as lazy and entitled at work.  The reverse is (roughly) true, though, as Australians obverse Americans shop and demand their money back if not completely satisfied, write scathing letters of complaint and push to speak to the manager if an issue is not resolved to their liking.  Australians then think of Americans as pushy consumers.

The bottom line seems to be:  Americans work hard at work and expect that, when they encounter others at work, they better be working hard too.  Australians (despite thinking they're the hardest working people on the planet -- a myth requiring entirely another blog post to deal with) don't work as hard, but also don't expect others they encounter to be working quite as hard, either.

I'm afraid there might be a bit of a backlash to that last sentence.  I don't mean, obviously, all Australians.  Many Australians work harder than many Americans.  However, overall, I still think the points stands that Americans are entitled customers, and Australians entitled employees.

quicko: undersold ...

I find this truly bamboozling (and quite possibly my best answer to "what's the strangest Australian custom?" to date):  the number of times I've been sold less than what I wanted to buy.  Generally this involves hot chocolate and an "American small" (AKA "large" here) that I wish to purchase ... when, suddenly, somehow, I discover that I've been persuaded to buy an "American microscopic" (AKA "regular" here).  Here I was, prepared to pay, set to spend, ready to retail and, presto!  More cash in my wallet and less chocolate in my tummy.  As I said, truly bamboozling.

quicko: servings

At dinner in American homes, the table is set and there are various dishes served on the table -- meat, vegetables, salad, etc. -- that are passed around and everyone takes what they want.  There's generally a fair few leftovers at the end that make, say, lunch the next day.

In Australia, though, the standard is for each plate to be individually dished up in the kitchen by whoever prepares the meal and everyone is given a set amount of food that simply, I am told, becomes the amount of food you want for dinner that night.  Leftovers are rarer and generally along the lines of "the sausages came in a pack of 10 but there are 4 people who each ate 2 so we'll put 2 away for later."

quicko: great expectations

Americans have very high expectations of customer service, generally speaking.  Generally speaking this is also because we're used to high levels of customer service.  "The customer is always right" is engrained in us from early on, and we tend to continue on being right whichever country we're consuming in, whether they realize it or not.  Generally speaking, they don't.

quicko: retire or not

Evidently retirement parties aren't so big in Australia.  At least according to one friend, who had never heard of anyone having one.

quicko: christmas cards

Australians aren't really big on Christmas cards, and hardly any do Christmas letters.  Americans, on the other hand, do them both with a vengeance -- possibly late, but generally quite enthusiastically.

quicko: not so casual friday

I know it's only Monday, but I'm already thinking about Friday.  So sue me.

I just have observed that casual Friday is not quite so common in Australia as it is in America.

Well, let me rephrase.  I actually have no idea how common it really is in America, seeing as I've actually hardly worked there.  My Australian workplaces are 50-50 on the issue.  And, (this is the crowning glory of my research) the other Friday I watched people getting off buses in the morning rush (er, peak) hour and not many of them were wearing jeans.

Hence, Australians are not so casual on Fridays.

I rest my case.

quicko: morning/afternoon tea

An Australian (and, yes, British) concept just not part of American culture.  A precise definition is probably a bit elusive, but the general idea is that, in the morning or afternoon respectively, a group gathers for tea and biscuits or something similar.  Biscuits of course are small-ish cookies (about the size of Chips Ahoys), generally store bought.  The something similar though could be homemade, which would make it a particularly lovely occasion.

quicko: their politics

I don't really know a ton about Australian politics, but I managed to pick up a few tidbits lately that I thought might be of general interest:

--voting is compulsory here. You get fined if you don't vote.

--the two main parties are Liberal and Labour, which very roughly would translate to Republican and Democrat, respectively. (Ironic, eh?)

--if I'm understanding this right, when Australians vote they can just pick a party at the top of the ballot and then everything else will get filled into how that party wants it to go. Of course, they also have the choice to vote for each candidate individually if they want to.

--if Australians vote for a candidate who doesn't end up really being in the running (say, the Green Party), instead of that vote going to the losing party, it will then be allocated to whichever party (presumably Liberal or Labour) the losing party (in our example, the Green Party) had thrown in its lot with. To put it in American terms, it would prevent situations like Ralph Nader pulling votes from Democrats because those votes would ultimately end up being Democrat votes.

--they do all the electing a whole lot faster than we do, and are shocked and appalled that it could possibly take us so long just to make up our minds and pick a President.

melbourne cup day

Today was Melbourne Cup Day!

Until a week or so ago I had never heard of Melbourne Cup, but as soon as I heard about it I knew I was going to like it: you get to wear cool hats.

The Melbourne Cup itself is not just a horserace, but the horserace, and not just the horserace, but an event.

If you’ve seen My Fair Lady, think the Ascot race scene. (Alternatively, if you’ve been to Ascot, think Ascot.) We’re talking out and out fancy dresses, hats and fascinators.

I’d also never heard of fascinators. (Turns out it’s the name of those big, floppy flower things fancy women attach to the sides of their heads in case of, I don’t know, some sort of floral emergency.)

Seeing as I like dressing up, I set out to experience Melbourne Cup Day to the hilt, even going so far as to acquire a fascinator. One has to be culturally alert.

I was the only one dressed up on the bus, and suddenly wondered if it was all some very bizarre joke Australians love to play on unsuspecting Americans. I got to work, though, and found the girls glamorously glitzed and the boys sharp and snazzy.

And so many people had hats!!

I can’t quite say it was The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, but it was the closest I’d ever come. We pranced around taking pictures for awhile, then got down to business: sweeps.

Maybe other more gamblingly inclined folk are familiar with sweeps, but, like much in Australia, I had never encountered them before. Basically what happens is that everyone puts a small amount ($3 AU, which isn’t so small if we’re considering the current exchange rate) in a pool and randomly draws out one of the horses. (There’s cute little pictures of the jockey’s uniforms in the paper that get cut up for the drawing.) Then, if you win you get, in our case, $35 AU. There’s a bit for second and third, too, and last place gets their money back.

With sweeps taken in in the morning, we set about the arduous task of teaching (odd what they put you through in academic environments) until the blessed hour of 2 pm arrived. There was then a lovely little parade of outfits and hats, complete with prizes for the craziest and best.

From there we trekked to the Shark Hotel (why they call all the pubs hotels is still beyond me) to watch the race in style (which is to say, we provided the style). They had a couple big screens up to accommodate the couple hundred students, teachers and, presumably, other townsfolk who showed up to cheer for their stake in the sweeps.

I had drawn Septimus, who was the favorite for the race, though I decided I’d cheer for Mad Rush since he had the coolest name, though Zipping and Ice Chariot weren’t bad, either.

As the race itself drew near, people across the country huddled around to watch.

I’m still not sure you get how big it is. Literally: in Melbourne, everyone had the day off work. And tons of people dress up. And everybody talks about it all day. I’m not saying it’s as big as, say, Christmas, but it definitely ranks higher than Columbus Day. It’s a come-from-behind-out-of-nowhere holiday: one you’ve never heard of and never contemplated having. It’s a great country.

Though we didn’t have the whole day off in Sydney, the city stopped for three exhilarating minutes to watch. And watch we did, just like they do in movies where everyone kind of leans to one side to follow as closely as they possibly can. We held our collective breath. We did our collective lean. We kept holding our collective breath. We collectively leaned some more. Like I said, it was exhilarating.

And it came down to the wire! Septimus had been rocking around in and out of second and third place, but dropped out somewhere in the last third or so. It all got a bit hazy. They kept passing horizontal lines on the ground and I kept trying to figure out which one was the one until suddenly they were showing replays of the photo finish and announcing that an outsider had won!

Septimus, unfortunately, did not win, place, show or even have the decency to come in last, but I couldn’t really hold it against him. He’d come a lot closer to making it than I had.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Melbourne Cup Day. The three minutes that stop the hat-laden country flat in its tracks. Till next year.