Argy-bargy

Yes, I heard this wonderful example of Aussie slang used in a sentence today. With a straight face. By a well-educated, relatively dignified septuagenarian in a conversation about the journal ranking exercise the Australian government is going through right now.

I did sort of want to hit the stop button and cackle with glee, but I guess that is what a blog is for.

Still more fauna

There was a really disgusting worm slowly oozing along the wall in my "dining room". We aren't talking about your friendly neighborhood earthworm. This was more primitive, oozier and sort of what I think a tape worm must be like. Gross.

Aquarium

I went to the Sydney Aquarium today, finally, meeting for the first time some more friends of friends and their 2 little boys. I'm definitely thinking about getting a season pass and going back (regularly?) late on weeknights when it isn't quite so full of kids. It is pretty amazing to watch a HUGE sting ray swim overhead.....

Yuck

The whole moving to a new continent all alone thing really sucks when one is home alone on a Saturday night. Stiff upper lip and all, but it sucks.

More on the local fauna

Yesterday I got some warnings from my officemate about spiders and moths. Apparently in the summer, the moths come, sometimes in plague-like swarms, and munch holes in all of your clothes. There are two on the ceiling right now and really quite a lot flying around the garden near my open windows and I hope they don't find my clothes until I can figure out how I want to cope.

Apparently, the poisonous spiders in Sydney are small and harmless-looking. The officemate doesn't like to kill spiders--in Finland it is considered bad luck, and besides, they eat other pests--but when in doubt she does kill spiders here. Apparently the bad ones also hang out in places where one is likely to reach with blind hands too.

I think the Bill Bryson book talks about a museum dedicated to all of Australia's poisonous beasts. I should go and get educated.

Off topic

I really don't want this blog to become political (unless it is ruminations on Aussie-US relations or how my view change in response to being over the really big pond) but this is funny and somehow, perhaps, is relevant in an obscure way because I find it funnier after political discussions with my Finnish officemate.....

Interesting fauna

Another encounter with a strange beast this morning:

In my bathtub was an insect that looked exactly like a eucalyptus leaf. The "stem" was its head (I think), which retracted when I went to scoop it out and put it outside.

No clue how it locamoted into my bathroom!