quicko: role

Australians use the word "role" to refer to their position at work. Yeah, I understand it, yeah, it makes sense, yeah, it is one of the most annoying words they have here. I don't know why, but it drives me nuts. Get a position, people!!

quicko: woolworth's and coles

The two grocery stores in Australia. There's IGA and I imagine a couple other off-beat ones, but these are the major ones that everybody goes to, tra-la.

quicko: sorry, charlie, but get out of town

It was only after I taught my students the expression that I realized Australians don't say "get out of town." To be more precise, it was in the middle of the lesson that it occurred to me I hadn't heard anyone here say it and suddenly felt a great deal of pity for my poor elementary students who'd be all eagerly using their new idiom only to receive hostile blank stares. Poor dears. The hazards of having an American English teacher.

It was after that that my co-worker pointed out they don't say "sorry, Charlie," either, owing to the expression originally having been an American tuna commercial. The things you learn!

quicko: cuba

I have a friend here who is in Cuba now on vacation. This amazes me as, though it is incredibly closer to the U.S., I think Americans are incredibly less likely to visit. In fact, I'm pretty sure we can't, can we? I'm sure it is a beautiful place, yet it never entered my mind to think of going there. Huh!

quicko: sultanas

In Australia they make a distinction between raisins, from red grapes, and sultanas, from green grapes. All well and good except that neither of them taste right and Sultana Bran just doesn't have the right ring to it.

quicko: soap suds

Australians might be good at saving water, but they are bad at washing dishes.

That shouldn't take too much thinking to figure out.

But also, let me just add that they're particularly bad at washing dishes because they refuse to rinse them after they've been washed. They don't seem to realize that, as my American co-worker so astutely pointed out, you're not supposed to eat soap. But maybe it's all intentional, in a subconscious sort of cleansing of all their unrepeatable language.

quicko: getting darker

Australia just had time change on Sunday and the days are really rather ghastly bright in the mornings and morosely dark in the evenings. Why can't we just all stay on daylight savings??