Ce n'est pas une sororité

When I was rushing, I met eight thousand smart women pretending to be sorority Barbies, which, in my opinion, is worse than actually being the sorority Barbie. I also met this wack Australian girl.

That was a good thing.

>Date: 19 Jan 2009 22:04:02 -0500
>From: Awesome Australian Girl
>Subject: read if you can be bothered. otherwise ignore.
>To: sigmadelta@Mac

Ok, so I'm bored, and Jo just did this, and I thought it was a great idea. So I will ignore the fact that no body expressed any interest whatsoever in the little details of the land down under, and regale you with them anyway. If you actually have a life, unlike me, please feel free to ignore this and get on with it.


CURRENCY: dollars. Currently trading at about 66 US cents. This year's been crazy though - in June it got up to 98.5 cents and in late August it hit 45 cents. Notes (we don't call them bills) are also a lot more colourful than in America, and are made of plastic, so if you leave them in your boardshorts pocket and go swimming, you're golden. Also, we have $1 and $2 coins, and we got rid of 1c and 2c coins about a decade ago.

LANGUAGE: English. Like British English (same spellings and all that), but with a funny accent, and a few colourful phrases thrown in here and there.

GEOGRAPHY: Big (6th on the list). But, like Canada, also very sparsely populated -- 2.5 people per square kilometre (Canada has 3.2). Population: about 21.4 million, all of them around the coast. There is nothing (NOTHING) in the middle of the country. If you drive across from Sydney to Perth, you see signs that say "Last petrol for 400km". There are 6 states and 2 territories (NT and ACT). The capital is Canberra (pronounced cam-bra, not can-bear-ra) and the biggest city is Sydney. Perth, state capital of Western Australia, is one of the most isolated regional capitals in the world. That's where I'm from.

FLAG: see attached. The big star under the Union Jack has seven points to represent the 7 states and territories (they didn't include the Australian Capital Territory coz it's tiny, insignificant, and no one cares about Canberra anyway). The constellation on the right is the Southern Cross. It's also on the NZ flag, but their stars are red, with five points. Ours are white with 7 points.

FAMOUS PEOPLE (just some you might have heard of): Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban, Heath Ledger (he was from Perth. The whole city went into shock when he died), Russel Crowe, Geoffrey Rush, Hugh Jackman, Banjo Patterson (poet, author of The Man from Snowy River), Ernie Dingo, Ian Thorpe, Shane Warne, Luc Longley (basketballer), Germaine Greer (feminist), Barry Humphries (alias Dame Edna Everage), Pat Rafter and Lleyton Hewitt (tennis players), Fiona Stanley (doctor, just about invented modern treatment for burns victims), Toni Collette, Cate Blanchett. Aussie bands you might know: Jet, Savage Garden, Missy Higgins, Crowded House, John Butler Trio, Silverchair, Men at Work, Ben Lee, Xavier Rudd...)

GOVERNMENT: Queen Elizabeth II is officially our head of state. We have our own parliament and constitution (we're very advanced like that). The current governing party is the Labor Party (the only time "labour" is spelt without a "u" for some reason), which is centre-left. The other big parties are the Liberals and Nationals (they form a coalition most of the time). There's also the Greens, One-Nation (the far-right one) and some other little ones.

INDUSTRY: Service mainly, but Mining and Agriculture make up about 60% of exports. Mostly wheat and wool, and iron-ore, gold, natural gas and coal, with some other bits and pieces thrown in (opals, silver, tin, nickel, diamonds, a bit of oil).

NATIONAL SYMBOLS: koala, kangaroo, eucalyptus tree, Sydney Opera House: the usual. Australian Rules Football, Uluru, the green and gold.
The Australian Coat of Arms shows all the states' symbols in a crest held up by a kangaroo and an emu. These two animals were chosen because a) they're both tall and b) neither can walk backwards (and our national anthem is called "Advance Australia Fair").
Funnily enough, the koala is not featured on any Australian money: the echidna, lyre bird, platypus, kangaroo and emu are.

OTHER SOURCES OF NATIONAL PRIDE: the only extant monotremes (egg-laying mammals - platypus and echidna), and most of the world's marsupials. We generally rank in the top six medal takers at the Summer Olympics, despite having a markedly smaller population than all the others at the top of that list.
In 2008, four cities (Melbourne 2nd, Perth 4th, Adelaide7th and Sydney 9th) reached The Economist's top ten "world's most livable cities" list.
The fact that we have desert, rainforest, coral reefs and alpine regions. And some of the oldest rocks on the planet (no volcanic activity helps).
Also, we walk upside-down (obviously).
And our swans are all black.

MEASUREMENTS: metric. Did you know that the imperial system is now standardised on the metric system? So an inch, officially, is 2.54cm, a foot is 30.48cm, and a mile is 1609.344m. Go figure. Initially, the metric system was defined by the French, making the distance from pole to equator 10,000km, and dividing it up accordingly. Now, a metre is defined as the distance that light travels in free space in one 299,792,458th of a second. How about that.

HOLIDAYS: We celebrate Australia Day on the 26th of January, Boxing Day on 26th of December, and there is no Thanksgiving. Most of Australia celebrates the Queen's Birthday on the second Monday in June. In Western Australia, we have Foundation day on the 1st Monday in June, so we do our own Queen's Birthday, which is kinda like Easter, with no fixed date. It's usually the last Monday in September or the 1st in October, but the State Governor decides it each year. None of these days actually celebrate any real queen's birthday, and the name will change to the King's Birthday Holiday when Charlie (or William, if it comes to that) takes the throne.

Ummmm.... I think that's it. I have successfully not done any work for about an hour now. Excellent. Good night.