Tiffany and Greg Around the World
The Balinese have an odd relationship with their monkeys.
On the one side, they are considered sacred (and therefore protected and allowed to live where they want) for their ability to ward off evil spirits from the temples they inhabit.
…and that’s good. Because those temples are pretty amazing
On the other hand, they raid rice paddies for food and snatch the tourists’ purses, wallets – pretty much anything they can get their hands on.
…which is kinda bad.
518 people
About 466 miles from “Cans“
Sometimes, oh and without warning of course, the whole town just separates from the mainland and becomes an island for a few months…so you want to watch out for that.
and the largest gator (sorry…CROC…because it matters while it’s eating you…) ever caught in the history of the planet? Yeah, right down the road.
28ft, 4in long. This is a to-scale model!
Welcome to Karumba
So keep in mind that sign, and the information contained thereupon, as we go though our entertainment options on Thursday Island for the month we were there.
So after having our car break down in the middle of an Australian zombie outbreak and narrowly escaping with our lives it was time to seek alternate transport.
But at least now we understood why the koalas hang out it the trees. Apparently zombies can’t climb eucalyptus. Come on, have you ever seen a zombie Koala?
[fgallery id=18 w=450 h=385 t=0 title=”zombie koalas”]
Well, after spending a week with them in the wild as they laughed at our misguided attempt to repair our car we can confidently say that neither have we.
Continue reading “Zombie Koalas”
Tons of venomous creatures, the barren deserts, dingos that do in fact eat babies, great white sharks, etc, ad nauseum.
That’s part of the international community’s common knowledge right?
Well, we knew about it before we got here at least. And, you’d think, the Aussies would kinda downplay it right? Bad for tourism and whatnot.
The most common car hanger here fits under the theme “stuff that will kill you” and yes, Kangaroos count
Nope, quite the opposite in fact.
Living for free as volunteer crew on someone else’s yacht sounds all well and good while you’ve got a boat to live on but we are often asked what we do when we’re between yachts.
Our first few months in Australia are a good example. After we left our work with the racing stable there was about a month before we found a job “sailing” in New Zealand and after that about another month before we decided the best way to celebrate the 4th of July was to get trapped in a genuine Australian blizzard. Both of these situations were the same: too short a time to find a temporary position but too long to want to pay for a hotel in a country with a high cost of living. So we had to answer the question –
What does a sailor do for a cheap night’s rest down under?
As we’ve previously stated, friendships lead to a lexicon whose size is directly proportional to the time invested in the relationship. These lexicons lead to key phrases that communicate much more than the simple words involved when we are lucky enough to have been together long enough to be “in the know.”
It’s not just shared experiences like stumbling up the towering mountains of New Zealand that create this shared vocabulary. Another source of this insiders verbiage is simply and consistently hashing out the meaning of words over time. Because while two people may speak the same language, they probably don’t use the same words to describe the same things. Example: what might be “cool” to one person may be “wicked” to another (“phat” could also be substituted.) Though these words may be synonyms, there are variations of meaning that make each more appropriate at different times.
There is a difference between something that is “gross” and something else that is “disgusting.” The choice of using either of these words describes more than just that fact that something is repulsive; there are nuances (for a 12 year old boy “gross” might be a good thing).
As a married couple (or anyone building a joint vocabulary) it is important to nail down these subtle differences in word use to more effectively communicate with each other.
We ran into this particular nugget of nuptial knowledge when Tiffany started calling Greg “cute.” She meant it as a compliment and Greg took it as a bit of an insult. Then Tiffany got confused:
Tiffany – “But you’re good looking. That means you’re cute!”
Greg – “No. Bunnies, baby horses and Mini Coopers are cute. I am not.”
It was at this point that a working definition of the word “cute” had to be established…
Melbourne, Vic, AU
Yes, yes we’ve seen a kangaroo…
As Americans, Australia is fascinating in a completely different way than any other country in the world. Because of all the other countries out there, Australia is the one where we can look at what they have done and say, “but for a few key choices, that could have been us.”
Our mainland is similar size, we have the same parent-nation and defacto common base language. Most of both of our neighbours are from a different culture (US is beside Latin / Spanish influence while Australia is right next to Asia.) Australians came, in large part, from prisoners while the US got started, at least in the eyes of England, as basically a bunch of armed insurrectionists. After declaring independence, we’ve both maintained close ties with the motherland, we both had to resolve conflict with a native population, we both face similar issues on fronts of economics and immigration…we could go on. Our two countries had a lot in common starting out and face many similar challenges to this day.
Like slurpee brain freezes
Which is why it’s so fascinating how we have both developed along slightly different paths.
Wow, Kentucky cricket…who knew!?
Unlike the other countries we’ve been to, the fascinating thing is not how massively different life here is from what we’re used to.
With Oz, the interesting things are in the details of living.
Melbourne, VIC, AU
Unbeknownst to us, this job put us smack into the middle of the backpacker working trail and as a result, our workmates were not who we expected. In what we anticipated to be a primarily Australian work group we found ourselves surrounded by 2 Kiwis, 3 Germans, a Sweede, 2 French, a Scott, 2 Americans (us) and a paltry 5 Australians. The foreigners outnumbered the locals by more than 2:1. Also the overwhelming majority of employees were female or as Greg put it to his unmarried brother Chris,
“Dude, wanna meet a bunch of young European Cowgirls?”
“Then come to Australia.”
Continue reading “Mostly European Cowgirls”
Melbourne, VIC, AU
…just usually not so much on themselves.
While Greg spent the majority of his time feeding and mucking Tiffany got to “train” the horses.
At this point we should point out that Tiffany has a tendency to…smack things (Aside from Greg, that is). We’re not saying that Greg has ever been approached by a pastor at church but he has had to field a few worried glances from time to time from fellow parishioners. It came with the territory when he decided to marry a woman who gets her kicks zip lining over tropical rainforests and sailing through gale-force winds. As Tiffany puts it, “I don’t bruise easy. I just hit things hard.”
Now we’ve already gone over how these horses are half-ton hyperactive 2 year-olds that are fed nothing but sugar all day, every day, right? You put them together with Tiffany on a daily basis and well…
It keeps it interesting
