April 5, 2009

Sunday Times: Learning to speak Aussie-English

April 5th, 2009

Before coming to Australia, I had a few worries. Sunburn was a potential concern, as was the fact I had no idea how to tell the deadly poisonous spiders from the regular, fly-eating, web-weaving sort. Not once did it occur to me, however, I might have problems understanding the locals or deciphering the newspapers. As a veteran Home and Away watcher (1989-1991), I was confident I would be able to comprehend Australians and, indeed, communicate with them.

After all, they speak English, albeit with slightly mangled vowels, and they use the same words we do, apart from the occasional “Fair dinkum!” and “You flamin’ galah!”. Don’t they?

No, actually. They have an entire vocabulary unto themselves. Like America and England, Ireland and Australia are nations divided by a common language. I first noticed this when it came to drinking, which says a lot about my priorities upon arriving.

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February 23, 2009

Sunday Times: Homesick for a miserable, skint place

February 22nd, 2009

Sometimes it’s a struggle to get my head around the fact that I live in Australia now. I mull it over as I drink my morning coffee and contemplate the azure sky arching over the northern reaches of Sydney Harbour. The yellow and green Manly ferry chugs by below, passing a white yacht in full sail and a speedboat tugging a swooping paraglider. A brightly coloured butterfly dances above the terrace. It’s hard to believe, but this is where I live.

I cannot imagine what it is like to be in Ireland now because I’m so far away, geographically and mentally. I know it’s grim. Every article and e-mail I read conveys an unrelenting hopelessness, but when you’re 12,000 miles away in the sunshine, it’s difficult to appreciate the enormity of Ireland’s meltdown.

A friend recently returned home after a stint overseas. “It is worse than I thought,” she tells me. “On the news we are now watching images I know we will be seeing on Reeling in the Years in a decade.” I gulp as this sentence flashes up on-screen.

It resonates more than all of the news articles I have read. Things are that bad? Reeling in the Years bad? Oh dear.

I didn’t plan to emigrate; I planned to travel. Having blazed a glorious trail through my savings, I needed to stop in Sydney for a while. Under normal circumstances I would stay a few months, then move on, and slowly head for home. But I’m starting to feel like an accidental emigrant. The message from everyone is “don’t come home”. Even my mother says it: “Things are terrible. Just dreadful. Whatever you do, don’t come home.”

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February 9, 2009

Sunday Times: If the cap fits, I’ll buy 10 of them

February 8th, 2009

Slip! Slop! Slap! It’s an Australian mantra. In the fierce sun here, everyone is exhorted to slip on a T-shirt, slop on some sunscreen and slap on a hat. While I can do the slipping and slopping, the slapping is a problem — hats don’t fit me. I have a really big head and it always looks as though I’ve accidentally picked up a child’s hat and am trying it on for humorous effect.

I’m deeply embarrassed by this — it seems so unladylike to have an enormous head — but I try not to let on I care. “All the brains,” I say mock-ruefully, when friends make me try on hats and then guffaw. “Yup, I need a huge head for all the brains,” I say, beaming broadly because it’s so incredibly funny that I’m the Elephant Man’s sister. Inside I’m dying. It’s an affliction normal-headed people could never understand.

Over the years, I’ve tried on innumerable hats and they never fit. Shops tend to label women’s hats as “one size”, for which I read “Tiny”. Occasionally, they come in Small, Medium and Large, which appear to be for heads the size of golf balls, tennis balls and footballs, respectively. None are ever for heads the size of medicine balls.

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January 25, 2009

Sunday Times: Aussie life is not all beer and barbies

January 25th, 2009

Tomorrow, millions of Aussies will join together in some much-loved activities — firing up the barbie, playing backyard cricket, competing in flipflop-throwing contests, hitting the beach in the evening to watch the fireworks and, of course, downing a few tinnies along the way. Tomorrow, you see, is Australia Day, when the locals mark the anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 and, as the promotional ads say, “Celebrate What’s Great!” about their country.

And there’s a lot to celebrate. Australia has vibrant cities, better beaches than you’ll find anywhere else, dramatic coastal scenery and awe-inspiring, wide-open bush and desert vistas. The lifestyle is laid-back and outdoorsy, and the people are mostly friendly as can be. As one of the official Australia Day websites points out, the country also gave the world the rotary hoe, permanent-crease trousers and wine-in-a-box.

So the most immediate answer that sprang to mind when a reader emailed to ask if Irish people should move Down Under was: “Duh!” Why wouldn’t you move to Australia when Ireland these days is about as much fun as the seventh circle of hell?

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January 19, 2009

Sunday Times: Drought is not as far off as you think

January 11th, 2009

In accordance with their reputation, I’ve found Australians are a pretty relaxed bunch. The two words I’ve heard most often since getting here are “no worries”. It’s even acceptable to wear thongs to the pub, once you understand thongs are flip-flops, and nobody is too hung up on the finer points of etiquette.

There is one serious social faux pas, however — and that is using more than your fair share of water. A large sign in the lush front garden of a house in Brunswick West, a Melbourne suburb, says: “Tank Water in Use”. Friends explain it’s because of the social stigma attached to watering your garden from the mains. Keen gardeners use recycled bathroom or laundry water. Everyone else sticks to drought-tolerant plants or just installs paving or decking outside the house.

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December 28, 2008

Sunday Times: Christmas needs lots of sunscreen

December 28th, 2008

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” says the Fashion Police column in the Sydney Morning Herald. “And the annual crimes against fashion include flashing Santa earrings, reindeer antlers, naughty elf lingerie and forgetting to apply sunscreen.” Sunscreen? It’s Christmas, but not as I know it.

Every year around the middle of December, my mother and I check in with each other, asking: “Do you feel it?” or “Have you felt it yet?” — “it” being that Christmassy feeling. Maybe it’s only diehard festive fans like us who really succumb to it, but you know what I mean: that tingling fizz of excitement, anticipation and sentimental conviviality specific to the season. It makes you spend too much, ask strangers’ children what Santa is bringing, choke up at the sight of old friends in the pub and parumpapumpum under your breath while queuing in the bank.

This year, however, I’m in Sydney and, frankly, it’s just not Christmassy. That’s not solely because of the need for sunscreen, although you do need it (“At least factor 30+,” warns an Aussie friend), but they don’t go for it the way we do. There aren’t as many street decorations or themed window displays and there certainly isn’t the same frenzy of consumerism — although that was probably lacking a little at home this year, too.

I’m determined to engender that festive feeling in myself somehow and, to the indulgent tolerance of a friend from Cork who has invited me to be her temporary flatmate in Sydney, I spend my first week in Australia on an all-out hunt for Christmassiness.

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December 14, 2008

Sunday Times: The travel bug has had a big bite out of me

December 14th, 2008

After two months in southeast Asia I’m covered in bumps, bruises, scratches and bites. I’ve lugged my overstuffed rucksack onto buses, trains, boats and planes. I’ve met hundreds of people and stayed everywhere from flea-pits to four-star hotels. (Oh come on, what’s an emergency fund for?). So now that I’ve earned my backpacking stripes, this is what I’ve learnt so far.

Just cross the road, they won’t knock you down. It always seems as if that seething mass of tuktuks, trucks, buses, and bicycles will make mincemeat of any pedestrian foolhardy enough to step into it. But it doesn’t, for reasons neither I nor the laws of physics can explain.

Keep your mouth closed in the shower. And don’t drink the tap water. The ice is fine, though, and so are the salads, whatever the guidebooks say.

Grin and bear it. Or just eat it — it won’t kill you. When you discover the meat on a stick you bought from a man at a street stall is not “Chicken! Chicken!”, as he insisted, but kidneys, well, just chow down. (But kidneys of what? My stomach still wonders.)

When you gotta go, you gotta go. If that means balancing precariously on a slippery, fetid, squat toilet while wearing a backpack and striving to keep your trouser hems clear of the wet, filthy floor, so be it. Western-style toilets would seem weird if you weren’t used to them; the proof being the dirty footprints I saw on toilet seats in Malaysia.

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November 30, 2008

Sunday Times: Violent coup that’s all rather quiet

November 30th, 2008

Bangkok’s airports are occupied by protesters, but I’m not too bothered. I’m in Chiang Mai, 700km away, and it’s as relaxed as ever on Wednesday evening. Unperturbed by the day’s news, I go for dinner, slurping down a big bowl of hot and sour prawn soup and a Singha beer.

Later, I find out a man was pulled from his car nearby and shot dead. Then I read the prime minister, Somchai Wongsawat, has flown home from Peru. In the face of trouble, he has retreated to his party’s stronghold — Chiang Mai. Sometimes, the news comes to you.

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November 23, 2008

The crankiest woman in Northern Thailand

So I’m here in Chiang Mai on a balmy Sunday evening and I’m working my ass off. Alright, so I don’t expect much sympathy, but trust me, it’s not easy. Bad enough to be chained to the computer, but you try concentrating when there is a night market in full swing RIGHT OUTSIDE THE WINDOW. And when I say in full swing, I mean in extremely loud full swing, with live music competing with tinny (and terrible and highly irritating) Thai pop music and a man on a loudspeaker who I can only assume is giving a sales pitch, a neverending sales pitch.

Oh hang on, they seem to be playing the national anthem. Suddenly everyone on the street is standing stock still, although no one is really singing along. It’s a ponderous old tune, although bits of it sound rather like our national anthem. No cheering at the end, though, just a co-ordinated mass bow and, hang on, yup we’re back to the earlier racket of the band and the pop and the man on the loudspeaker. Aaaaaaah. I may just have to dig out my earplugs.

Really I’m just cranky because I should have finished this ages ago and I didn’t and I love markets almost more than anything. The strolling! The shopping! The street food! My own worse enemy, I am. Ah well, back to work. Only a gazillion words to go.

UPDATE: It is two hours later. I give up. I CANNOT hear myself think. And I don’t really have a gazillion words to go.

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November 21, 2008

Curl up and Thai

I’m getting braver, you know. Like, for example, the other day I went into a Real Local Restaurant (formica tables, bare walls, not a Westerner in sight). I perused the picture menu and wondered which of the 18 white dumpling-like things – the pictures were very small – I would have for lunch.

Suddenly, the waiter grabbed the picture menu from me and handed me a piece of paper with “FISHBALL, tofu, vegetables” printed on it. The price – 30 baht (about 70c) – was scrawled underneath. I beamed at him, trying to look more confident than I felt. A couple of minutes later, I was presented with a steaming bowl of broth, brimming with noodles, three different types of tofu, lemongrass, chillies, onions, coriander and a few bobbing dumplings. Of course, it was utterly delicious.

So today I did an even braver thing. After an afternoon spent in my guesthouse, suffering the most godawful, debilitating, stomach-curdling, galloping case of…no, wait for it…writer’s block, I decided to take a break and go for a haircut.

I’ve been having such humidity-related hair issues in the past five or six weeks I had overlooked the fact that I was direly in need of a trim. Shaggy and unflattering are about the kindest adjectives you could use for the “hairstyle” I’ve been sporting.

I passed a small hair salon on Phrapakklao Road yesterday and it seemed as good a place as any to go. “Hello,” I said cheerily in Thai to the salon lady, before realising I do not speak very much more Thai at all, let alone any haircut-related Thai.

I pointed at my head and made a scissors motion with two fingers. The salon lady came over and picked up a chunk of my hair. I made the scissors motion again, but this time indicating that she should lop off a couple of inches. She picked up my fringe and I repeated my scissoring gesture. Then she took a look at the back of my head and let loose a torrent of Thai. I smiled hopefully at her. More Thai. I responded with a questioning, but still hopeful, look. “Same-same?” she asked brightly. “Same-same,” I said.

After a bracing shampoo with icy water and much smiling, nodding and sign language later (we discussed my split ends in sign language), I had me a haircut. It’s rather nice, actually, although my fringe looks a bit, eh, interesting. Total cost, including a hefty tip? Two hundred baht. Or about €4.50. Shear good value, if you ask me.

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