quicko: "skiing"

... in Australia is not exactly the same as skiing (no quotes) in, say, Colorado.

photos: storm brewing in manly

quicko: weather or not

It is ridiculously hot in Sydney today -- 106 Fahrenheit (41 Celsius).  Tomorrow, though, is supposed to be 72 Fahrenheit (22 Celsius).  Gosh, you'd think it was Darwin!  (Which seems to be roughly 88 Fahrenheit (31 Celsius)).

quicko: cyclone tracy

Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin late Christmas Eve 1974 and was arguably the greatest natural disasters to hit Australia in modern history, particularly in terms of damage.

According to Wikipedia:

"Tracy killed 71 people, caused A$837 million in damage (1974 dollars) and destroyed more than 70 percent of Darwin's buildings, including 80 percent of houses.^[4][5] Tracy left more than 41,000 out of the 47,000 inhabitants of the city homeless prior to landfall and required the evacuation of over 30,000 people.^[6] Most of Darwin's population was evacuated to Adelaide, Whyalla, Alice Springs and Sydney, and many never returned to the city. After the storm passed, the city was rebuilt using more modern materials and updated building techniques. Bruce Stannard of The Age stated that Cyclone Tracy was a "disaster of the first magnitude ... without parallel in Australia's history."^[7]"

photos: god keeps his promises

Just when I needed a reminder -- God sent a great, big, beautiful double rainbow to remind me that, YES, He DOES keep His promises ... and is great and awesome and amazing and loves me ... wow!  Praise God!!

quicko: spring!!!

There is a little bit of spring in my room and I'm so thrilled!

(And THANK YOU, Katie!!!)

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, the Australian seasons shift on the 1st of the month (a pinch and a punch, etc.) instead of the 21st, so it is officially spring here now.

Australians by and large tend to really despise winter (unless visiting real winter overseas, which they find a pretty awesome novelty), so the change in the air is palpable in terms of mood when it goes from winter to spring.  Everyone is happy and cheerful and optimistic -- and looking forward to a much better summer (ask them about it) than last year's.

wild, wacky weather

The weather in Sydney's been making a nuisance of itself this weekend.  Usually it sits around at 75 sunning itself  prettily, but it really got a bee in its bonnet about something recently.  I don't know who's offended it, but, gosh, I'd hate to be in his shoes.  Just being nearby seems to be bad enough.

Usually I don't complain about the weather (I tend to figure whatever happens happens ... why bother checking to find out?  If I look bedraggled enough, someone usually gives me an old, half-broken umbrella to borrow.  Besides, I tend to like rain and storms and snow.), so it's really more a sign of boredom that I bring it up.  Since my standard pace is flying madly around late for everything, I think the fact that I had an urge to floss my teeth (floss my teeth!  who gets urges to floss their teeth?!) speaks volumes.  Sufficiently busy people cannot possibly worry about such things.

Wow, do I sound discombobulated today or what?  Maybe it's because I haven't got my contacts in.  Throws everything slightly fuzzy, hey?  If you've never read my writing before ... trust me, I'm usually much better.  Don't know what's wrong with me today.  Going stir crazy I suppose.

Ah, yes, stir crazy.  Because not only has it been bad weather (oh that was what I was going to tell you about!  Sorry, on a tangent now, you'll have to hang on a couple paragraphs.), the bad weather is also making me sick.  Now, I'm not remotely a believer in the whole "the weather made me sick" when it's happening to anyone other than myself.  And as a caveat, it's not technically the weather in my case, but the unfortunately hideous heater.

The darling little heater probably no reader but my mother will remember because it came from way, way back in 2008 when I first started this crazy little blog and had no idea that a whole half dozen people other than my mother might happen to read it.  At that time, I was convinced the darling little heater didn't work at all.  However, my father came out for a visit a couple years back and informed me that it works just fine, it's just that it doesn't actually produce much heat.  Which, really, I could have sworn was the definition of "working" for a heater, but he insists it's not.

So, darling little heater and I have been trying to keep ourselves warm (neither succeeding), but one of us contributes very negatively to the air circulation in the room and the other of us is getting a cold.  I'll leave you to work out which is which.

Back to the weather.  So here's the thing:  it is cold.  Really cold inside.  I don't know what the temperature is, but it's not pleasant and requires like three layers at all times.  Kind of like a British house.  Besides being cold, it's also been tremendously windy.  I think I read the winds have been blustering away at something over 100 kph, which is ... roughly as fast you're allowed to drive on the freeway.

On Friday evening I was walking in Manly after dark and more freaked out than I've ever been walking in Manly before.  Not only was it dark and cold and enormously windy (that howling sort of disconcerting wind), there were no other people anywhere around.  It wasn't that late, but it was pitch black and, I learned later, they'd stopped the ferries.  (That high of winds!  They stopped my sweet little ferries!)  Usually there's a few stragglers coming off heading in my direction, but not this time.  Just Kimmy and the howling wind pressing through the darkness together until we arrived in a terrified little heap at a friend's door and came in of the cold, cold weather.

Nope, not a typo.  You thought I was going to say "in out of the cold, cold weather" huh?  Well, I was, except that that wasn't actually true.  It was just as cold inside as outside.  Of course inside there was another darling little heater and a couple of blankets and hot tea, but they unfortunately did not make a big enough difference that the preposition "out" was warranted.

And that's really the end of my story.  In summary:  cold, windy, bored, sick, discombobulated out.  Maybe the pictures will help make sense of this.  See the little yacht with its unfortunate incident? It's supposed to be tethered out on the open ocean with its other little yacht friends, uh oh!

Good gracious.  Really my writing will be better later.  It seems to have got a bug today too, sorry!

photos: the beautiful rainbow out my bus window today

quicko: fall out of autumn

I never remember which word they don't use for this season, but either "fall" or "autumn" has fallen out of fashion.  I think it's fall.  But possibly it's autumn.

quicko: morning light

When I was back in America, I was struck by how late in the morning it was dark -- definitely still dark until 7:30 am.  While the time zones and latitude and daylight savings and such all obviously make a difference, I am pretty sure that it is generally darker later in the morning in America than in Sydney.  Which I think is why I actually prefer it to be dark in the morning -- early sunlight always feels like a slap in the face to me, and I much prefer for there to be an hour or so of darkness on my way to work before I have to deal with the day at hand.  It's what I grew up with, and much easier to reconcile, in my opinion.

photo: tropfest

Thank goodness I got the pictures before the rain!

We got to see the first three before it poured:

1.  Old people scaring each other to "death."

2.  Cops interrogating a clown.

3.  Boys in a house with matchbox cars.

The clown one was my favorite.  The first one was okay (why does Tropfest always have to feature people choking!?  I really, really dislike that.) but I wasn't crazy about the third.  I think the theme was a whoopie cushion, but I'm not positive about that ... It was the 20th anniversary of Tropfest, so that was pretty cool.

I found this terribly amusing:  walking out in Manly tonight there came a vague sprinkling from the sky.  The immediate response of my Australian friend?  "Is that rain or is someone up at that pub peeing on our heads?"

quicko: it's begininning to feel a lot like christmas!

It's funny these days -- it's been relatively gloomy and overcast, and Sydneysiders are, once again, beside themselves.

"Oh, this horrible weather!" they cry.  "This is not SUMMER!"

(They are so distressed, in fact, they cannot determine which word requires the most emphasis, which leads it all to come out as a rather mangled moan of despair quite in keeping with their general attitude.)

They claim that it's never felt less like Christmas in their lives because Christmas, everyone knows, is supposed to be sunny!  And hot!  And bright!  And beach-y!

Everyone is supposed to be scorching hot and sweltering in the sun barely able to move enough to re-apply the sunscreen for it to be summer.

It has been raining a bit lately, which is patently not (or is not?) Christmas weather.

I, on the other hand, have been delighted.  I've been feeling a bit on the homesick side, and there's nothing like a cloudy sky to make me think snow flurries and sleighs and jingle bells and -- gosh, I find myself thinking of Christmas, how jolly!

Shh, don't tell the Australians!

quicko: fair is foul

So now it's been gorgeous weather.  Beautiful.  Stunning.  Glorious, as my mother would say.  What are Sydneysiders doing?  Complaining.  "This weather!" they moan.  "Rainy one day, sunny the next."

"It's making me sick," the masses wail.

For goodness sake!  What more do you want?  It was raining (which, I might point out, you all did not like); now it's sunny.  Enjoy what you've got when you've got it!  Of course it's unpredictable -- it's the weather, for snowing out loud!  (Which it's not!)

photos: it's not beginning to look a lot like christmas

rain, rain, go away

It's been raining a lot lately.  This is, for Australians, unacceptable.  It is unacceptable because this is Australia and everyone knows Bad Weather belongs in Miserable England and Nowhere Near Beautiful, Gorgeous, Sunny Australia.  Hence, it is very Out of Character for Beautiful, Gorgeous, Sunny Australia to be so grievously afflicted.

This out of characterization happens, incidentally, annually at this time of year, and biweekly the rest of the year, but Australians are blissfully aware of this, so please don't let the cat out of the bag for them.  I'm not sure they could take it in this weather.

Rain really doesn't bother me.  I've always liked it and found it calming, which anyone who knows me must surely think of as a remarkably good thing.  I also don't like umbrellas.  I find them big, bulky, pokey and terribly impractical.  Unless it is absolutely pouring ("bucketing down" would be the verb of choice in Australia) and I'm on my way to work or also freezing cold, I'd really rather be without.

Australians, however, do not view rain the same way I do.  They view it as tantamount to a personal insult.  Not only that, they view it as "miserable," "gross," and "disgusting" weather.  This I really don't get.  Okay, miserable I grant could be a frame of a mind, but gross and disgusting?  Have they really never before encountered, say, manure?  Roadkill?  Vegemite?  These items qualify as gross and disgusting.  They are dirty and carry nasty bacteria and could seriously harm you if ingested.  Rain is none of that.  Rain, on the contrary, cleans things.  It washes the city!  It's essential for farmers and growing things and all that, too, but overall it is clean.

Acid rain is a different story.  Acid rain is nasty and evil and bad.  I'd be upset to get drizzled on by it, too, but I have been in Sydney this week and there has been no acid rain here.  Not that you'd have known that by the reaction the real rain got, poor dear.  Rotten deal, really.

Sydneysiders grumble and complain and mope and whine when there's rain.  Everyone stays inside and parties are canceled left, right and center.  No one seems to care that the rain is nice, pleasant and beautiful, or even that next week it's going to be boiling hot and muggy and everyone would like nothing better than to jump in the nice, cool ocean which is really in very many ways remarkably similar in chemical composition to the precipitation which has lately been falling from the sky.

If it were 2-week-old snow we were talking about, that got pushed around a Wal-Mart parking lot ten times over and is looking muddy and brown and altogether worse for the wear, I'd understand.  But we're not.  We're talking clean, lovely, refreshing rain.

It's enough to make Australians pack up and take a clearly much-needed holiday to England.

quicko: spring has sprung!

It's spring in Sydney!!  It's absolutely gorgeous this weekend!!

quicko: not too cold

Although it gets cold here, it never gets so cold that flip flops are unthinkable.  Some might not choose to wear them, but you're unlikely to actually get frostbite.

quicko: november showers

We're a bit past them now, but here's something:  it rains in Australia in the spring time.  Every year.  Quite a bit.  And yet every year the Australians (Sydneysiders in particular) forget this and wail bitterly.  "It never rains like this!" they cry.  "Our city is always sunny and lovely -- and this!"  (Here they give up in disgust.  Rain makes everyone grumpy here.)

quicko: rainbows

There's been so many rainbows here! Not every other day or anything, but a good handful of times since I've come, which is considerably more frequent than I would have seen them at home. They're absolutely gorgeous here, huge, stunning ones that reach all the way across the Spit and just make you want to stop and gaze at them until they go away. The pictures don't do them justice. You'll just have to come visit.