quicko: no shriver's

I've been really craving Shriver's lately -- possibly because I know I'll be going there soon.  For those unacquainted, Shriver's sells the most delicious salt water taffy (Australians, just go check out the website, I'm sure they explain it) in the world.  I've been particularly thinking of teaberry -- mostly because I've never encountered it as a flavor anywhere else, in anything.  But while I'm thinking of favorite flavors ... I might just mention cinnamon, wintergreen, spearmint, vanilla, chocolate, peanut butter, peanut butter and chocolate, molasses, lime, lemon, orange, (teaberry fits here again), watermelon and root beer ...

quicko: the "in america" song

My friend Glen has a favorite little song he sings that pops out every time I comment on something that's different.  One of the more recent bursts of joy it brought was in relation to hand sanitizers, of which Bath and Body Works offers a much wider and (dare I say it) prettier smelling range than, um, Coles, which is pretty much the only place you can find (normal, antiseptic smelling) sanitizer here.

"In America!" belted Glen, "we have sweet-smelling hand sanitizer!"

(Hmm.  Maybe you have to be there.)

quicko: ben and jerrys

Today was Ben and Jerry's free cone (or cup) day!  I had chocolate fudge brownie at Broadway and chocolate and peanut butter at Manly.  Oddly enough, I have no recollection of taking this picture and am not entirely sure who it is or who took it ... but the ice cream looks good, hey?

Ah!  Mystery solved -- it is Glen's, he texted me a photo of his escapades in Melbourne!  (I was evidently supposed to text one back but didn't learn this until both cones had already been well and truly consumed.)

quicko: s'mores

They don't do them here (not having Graham crackers ... or proper marshmallows ... or Hersheys ... or apple cider ... possibly they have the sticks for the fires ...) and they're seen as one of those exotic American dishes, roughly.  The people who've heard of them have heard rave reviews and always really want to have one ... though one of my friends insists on pronouncing them "so-mores," despite repeated attempts to explain that this is one word that is always -- always! -- contracted.

quicko: butterfingers

They don't have Butterfingers here.  Not in candy bar form, not in ice cream topping form, not in any form.  It's taken five years, but, man, I'd really like a Butterfingers just now.

quicko: the gift of who?

So I have actually mentioned this before, but it's come up again (in the third edition of New Headway Elementary this time ...) that Australians don't know the story of "The Gift of the Magi."  Now I recognize that many Americans also don't know of it (though a fair few who don't know the title I suspect would recognize the story), but the thing is it's the literary Australians (such as other ESL teachers) who I would have expected to have been versed in such classics who aren't familiar with it.  Go figure!

quicko: what's huge in america; a flop in australia

Here begins an intermittent series of lists my co-workers have concocted to breathe life into this blog.  Their first contribution?  What's huge in America, but a flop in Australia.  As follows:

--PB&J
--Chick Filet (the store)
--huge turkey drumsticks
--Sizzler (came and failed here)
--Starbucks*
--American beer
--cheese in a can**

*Debatable.  There are lots of Starbucks around, but it was insisted to me that they are only in tourist areas.

**I insist this is also not big in America.  At least I really hope it isn't.

quicko: good hair

Now I'm not the American that came up with this, but I see no need to disagree:  American girls have great hair.  What else is there to say?

quicko: tide sticks

I've got these handy little things called Tide Sticks, which I carry everywhere to avert any number of regularly scheduled catastrophes involving [whatever I'm eating] and [whatever I'm wearing].  They are truly magical little sticks and I don't see how anyone leaves home without one.  N

quicko: pros

Having just spent a month abroad, and half of it in the U.S., I figured a list of pros of both places makes sense.  I have a feeling I might have mentioned some of these before ... possibly repeatedly ... but hey.  I've been on vacation.  You should be happy just to get a break from all those photos!  So, without further ado:

Australia:
--scenery
--accents
--work-life balance
--4 weeks annual leave
--superannuation
--more ability to travel
--dates written reasonably
--tax built into prices
--tipping non-essential
--higher education paid for by government
--public transportation
--safe
--cool money

America:
--prices
--floors in elevators numbered reasonably
--easy to have pets
--more cities
--more cultural events
--celebrate holidays fully
--can eat, shop, etc. 24/7
--diversity
--easy to have a car
--hay rides and pumpkin patches
--college campus experience
--snow
--good passport to have

quicko: baby ruth, butterfingers, heath, etc.

All missing in Australia.

quicko: read-y or not ...

It's a general cliche not (NOT!) particularly shared by the Australian readers of this blog, but it seems that the average Australian you grab off the street is significantly less likely to have read a book from cover to cover in the last year than the average American you grab off the street.

photos: pinata party, take 2!

Isn't my fiesta fishy just adorable?  And how cool is Martin's guitar!?

quicko: crafty americans

While I know there are a lot of artistic Australians, overall I think the average American is craftier than the average Australian, in the "arts and craft" sense of crafty.  Give an American a pipe cleaner, some rubber bands and an egg carton, and he'll know what to do with them.  Give them to a group of Americans and you've got both a masterpiece and a serious mess on your hands.

Americans like to be creative -- even the "scientific" ones -- in terms of holidays, costumes, parties and general coolness.  Halloween is the obvious example, but it extends far beyond that.  Take the pinata making party I went to last night.

It was an American group meet-up thing and there were roughly a dozen of us gathered in an apartment, all ridiculously hard at work in flour up to our elbows making any number of paper mache objects.  Off the top of my head, we had a piggy, a guitar, a cactus, a Corona bottle (obviously there was a bit of a Mexican theme -- when isn't there for overseas Americans?!), an ant, a fish, a dragon, an eighth note and an unprintable piece of anatomy.

Isn't that cool?  Isn't that creative?  (And I don't mean the unprintable piece of anatomy, by the way.)  Americans just love things like this -- and I have to say we're not too shabby on enthusiasm side of things either.

Anyway, here's some of the fun:

quicko: customer service

Let me give you an example of how good American customer service is.

I was at the LA airport the other day and feeling a bit peckish so I asked a girl at a burger joint there how much the cookies (about three times the size of any I've ever seen in Australia, where they'd be priced about $3 regardless) were.

"Too much," she told me.

"How much is too much?" I asked.

"$2.35," she said.  "Plus they don't taste that good.  If you want something sweet, I'd go to the coffee place next door, their stuff is way better."

So I went next door and got a scone.  As I sat there eating it a guy came by mopping the floor.  He stopped by me and I thought he was going to ask me to move aside so he could mop.  He wasn't, though.  I had to ask him to repeat himself to make sure I had heard correctly.

"Would you like a cup of water?" was what he was actually saying.  "I know those scones are a bit dry."

And he brought me a glass of water.

And every other person I met working in restaurants smiled at me and treated me like, gosh, I don't know, a customer?

I love America.

quicko: renaissance festivals

It seems I alluded to this in December of 2009, but I'd like to make it slightly more official now:  there aren't Renaissance Festivals in Australia.  They simply don't have them.  How tragic is that?!

thanksgiving

As much as I enjoy life in Australia, this week is Thanksgiving, and what sort of American would I be if I didn’t talk about the things I was thankful for? Of course I’m thankful for the opportunity to live here, my church, my place to live and my job. Of course I’m thankful for my friends and family. And of course above all I’m thankful to God for His love, presence in my life and sure hope of salvation. Since I’m abroad, though, this year I’ll list the things I’m especially thankful for – the ones I miss most:

10. Mexican food, Bombay Cuisine, Common Ground, Panera, Coldstone, Graeter’s and mom’s cooking. Yeah, you guessed it, that’s all food. First off, Mexican – they just haven’t got much of it here. A little, but not much. Bombay Cuisine for the nan bread. Common Ground because it’s my favorite coffeeshop, and everyone needs a favorite coffeeshop to come home to, even if it is five hours away. Panera for the Asian sesame chicken salad, the cinnamon crunch bagels and the hot chocolates. Coldstone for the Mud Pie Mojo, add some brownies and put it in a waffle bowl, Love-It size, please. (Incidentally, that is not the biggest size. That’d be Gotta-Have-It). Graeter’s for the black raspberry chip, obviously. And mom’s cooking, enough said.

9. Tri-County Mall. It’s not really as materialistic as it sounds. It’s a comfort place. I can just go there and walk around and know where (okay, approximately where) the stores are. There’s Charlotte Russe and Wet Seal and Body Central and, in the department stores, Jody Coyote earrings. I get the biggest kick out of being able to go there now in the middle of the day and being allowed to be there – I don’t have to be in school anymore! (If anyone questions me, though, I’ve got my handy pocket-sized diploma to prove I am a genuine graduate of Lakota West and most definitely not truant.) And there’s the memories. There’s the store I always avoid because I once got offered a job there and then took a different one a couple days later. There’s the glass elevator I acted out a Lady Macbeth scene in multiple times in succession for a theatre project. And mostly there’s just tons of ambles back and forth with friends, chatting, shopping and sharing lives.

8. Dates, measurements, sides of road, elevators, etc. It would be so incredibly much easier. The month goes first, it just does! And my brain just thinks in pounds and inches and miles and Fahrenheit. And I nearly get run over on a regular basis. (Not really, Mom, it just sounded better.) And that ridiculous "ground" floor notion. As if we count "zero" in any other context!

7. The choices and prices. America’s just got so much variety so cheap – and I am so ready to stock up at Meijer! And get my film developed. And run into some random person I happen to know from somewhere.

6. The Cincinnati Enquirer. I’m excited that I’m going to be home over New Years so I can see Jim Borgman’s year in review. And read Tempo, and Forum and the comics. I get Speed Bump online, but that doesn’t make up for Red and Rover, Zits, Baby Blues and Frazz.

5. The Cincinnati theatre scene, by which I mostly mean the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival. I’m also pretty partial to LaComedia and whatever’s on at the local high schools and community theatres, but you’ve got to have a favorite theatre company and Cincy Shakes is mine. Sitting on the stage, making eye contact with the actors, going to talk-back sessions after Sunday matinees and seeing Jeremy Dubin and Giles Davies.

4. My library. I love it. I even have its phone number memorized, which is slightly more than I can say for my own library number. Thank goodness they let you check books out regardless. And rack up fines of up to $10. It’s a great library. It has all my favorite books and movies and the CDs that I think I own because you can check them out for three weeks and then renew them (online!) up to three times, and I won’t even be home for that long. They let me stand out front and do "Issue of the Week" for the Pulse-Journal and didn’t kick me out like they did at the grumpy Kroger’s (that, HA, doesn’t exist any more!). And the librarians are great and there’s the summer reading program and the easy-to-use computer card catalogues and the sales with ultra-cheap books I’m sure to get a few of for Christmas.

3. My car. Freedom to an American. Independence! Liberty! Sorry. I’ll stop naming elementary schools now and get on with it. Despite Baby Blazer’s suspect AC and perpetually breaking-though-Dad-assures-me-they’re-really-fixed-this-time wipers, Baby Blazer is my pal about town. We crashed on the regional highway together, got pulled over (and let off) in Michigan together and are generally inseparable on the road. We listen to music together; sigh when we find our keys swallowed inside one of us; search wildly for the sight of each other in the parking lot; and occasionally beep at each other for the fun of it.

2. Snow. It just really isn’t winter without it. And, may I just say, my driveway and yard make an absolute winter wonderland when it snows. Really, honestly, they do. The driveway’s lined with huge evergreens and we’re all in a woods and it’s beautiful.

1. My friends and family. Okay, you just can’t make one of these lists and not put friends and family in their rightful space. Being so far from home, easy access to my family is what I miss the most. It’s horrible being in a different time zone and having to coordinate schedules to times when both parties are 1. awake and 2. not at work, which pretty much leaves weekends, and heaven forbid you make plans then. And not only that, it’s so ridiculously expensive to fly home. And it takes so long. I miss being able to jump on a quick, cheap flight – one quick, cheap flight. Or be in a plaec where I could feasibly drive home. Doesn’t really work so well from Australia. Anyway, I can’t wait to be home and see them all again. I can’t wait to hug everybody and hang out with Dad and play games with Mom and take my one brother everywhere with me and talk Calvin with my other brother. And hug everybody some more.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

quicko: panera, or lack thereof

That's just it -- there is no Panera here. There's hardly any bagels to speak of at all, come to think of it, let alone cinnamon crunch ones. And no Asian sesame chicken salad. And you already know my views on hot chocolate.