quicko: the big 3-0

21st birthday parties, as I'm sure I've mentioned aged ago, are huge in Australia.  Similarly splashy are 30ths.  What's even more intriguing about 30ths, though, is the monumental effect they have on guys.  While a 30-year-old single girl has long been thinking about love, marriage and settling down, a 29-year-old single guy (generally, let's face it, more than a bit of a playboy) has not.  Suddenly he turns 30 and !!!  Some vague alarm bells start going off in his head that maybe other people like kind of sort of have often thought of you know, like, getting together or something and then his 30th birthday party comes and voila!  The breakthrough comes and he suddenly goes, "I've got to get married!  Fast!"  I don't think he knows why, but probably having had to schedule his party in the afternoon so all his mates with wives and toddlers could make it (not even the vaguest of considerations at his after-midnight 21st extravaganza) has something to do with it.  He immediately sets to work acquiring a proper, wife-material sort of girlfriend and getting engaged and is happily married by his 31st.