Category: Uncategorized

I have an apology to post to this blog. It has been brought to my attention that I’ve been using “cell phone” instead of the correct term “mobile phone”. I’m sorry.

I would like to point out though that I still like the letter U and I use it whenever possible to honoUr my upbringing in the proper spelling of words in English. I would like to apologiSe if I have accidentally left that little bugger out.

I would also like to point out that I still think it’s a 350 ZED and not 350 Zeeee as is so often pronounced around here. It’s just not catchy pronounced as the latter.

Furthermore, I still don’t like how Nissan is pronounced (Nee-sahn), nor Mazda (Mars-da), nor Mitsubishi (Meet-su-bishi) nor Hyundai (Hunday). Maybe that’s their proper pronounciation (although I’m pretty sure it’s all day, every day, he-yun-dai at the very least). But anyway, whatever.

So that should wrap that up. When I come back to Australia next (more about that soon), if anyone points out from now on that I have misused and abused the English language (not by simple grammatical and sentence structure errors, which I’m sure are rife throughout this blog, but by using the Yank equivalent) I will buy them a pint of their choice of Cooper’s beer. This offer is a once only per mistake thing so first in best dressed and most drunk. I may even put some intentional errors in just to check who’s still reading this site. Jajajajaja. (that’s Spanish and I count it as legit).

This is what I was able to do during Wilma, and this was one of the conversations I had.

(I’m babbling to my flatmate about something)
Neighbour: Hi! Where are you from?
Me: Australia.
Neighbour: Where in Australia?
Me: South Australia
Neighbour: Where in South Australia?
(I’m starting to raise my left eyebrow at this point)
Me: Adelaide.
Neighbour: Adelaide? Really? I used to work there on the railway lines.
Me: What? You’re kidding me!
Neighbour: I used to work there back in the 60’s for a little while. I’m from England originally and moved to Australia for a while and then back home to England. I wanted to move back to Australia but they wouldn’t let me back in so I moved here instead. I really want to go back there.
Me: Wow. I didn’t think I’d be living next to anyone who knew where Adelaide was.
Neighbour: Yeah, yeah. Lleyton Hewitt comes from there, right? Tennis player?
Me: Yeah, that’s right.
Neighbour: I also did some work for the railways out in the bush.
Me: Oh really? Where abouts?
Neighbour: I used to work in a town called Barmera. Lake Bonney.
Me: WHAT? You know about Barmera? My Grandma lives there.
(Barmera has a population of around 4000 people. It’s not huge, so I’m amazed at this point this guy knows about Barmera).
Neighbour: I also used to work in this little town on the way to Barmera coming from Adelaide. You had to go past Kingston and then you had to turn off not far from there.
Me: You mean Moorook?!?
Neighbour: Yeah, that’s it, Moorook.

It’s at this point of the conversation I started to feel a little light headed. Moorook at most has a population of a couple of hundred people. People in Moorook who had to go to highschool went to the same one as I, Loxton High. What the hell were the chances that on the other side of the world I would meet someone who had lived/worked in Moorook? Diddly squat.

The partying has taken its toll. I’ve been out every night since Wednesday now and I pretty much finished up on Saturday night by going to Voodoo lounge in downtown Ft Lauderdale. They were actually playing some pretty decent dance music, what I mean is, they played some Mylo which makes them about 7 or 8 months late. Well, whatever. Good vibes that night and good people.

I decided to finish the weekend by visiting a friend’s place last night for an excellent BBQ. I was pretty stuffed and they decided to watch “Revenge of the Sith”. They’re real hardcore Star Wars fans, that’s the only reason I could think of why they’d do that. Normally I’m complaining about the acting every 5 minutes and the only way to shut me up is to either gag me or promise to show me scene 14 from the movie “From dusk till dawn” afterwards. I was so tired and exhausted though that I only complained about the acting once; that part where the Stormtrooper hands back Obi Wan’s lightsaber just before order 66 is executed. “Oh, here, I found this” or whatever the hell he says. That acting is primary school play quality but without the parental attachment that makes it watchable.

While the power was out during Wilma there were fantastic opportunities to do some stargazing as most of the street lights were out in the ‘burbs. Although there is some overlap between the constellations I could see in Australia there are of course many new ones to look at. Below is a shot I took out the back of my apartment with my camera mounted on a tripod. This pic has notes so move your mouse over a box to read a description of the constellation. You can see the original without lines or notes here.