The Dunny

I accidentally said "toilet" to some Americans on Thursday. I was explaining to the secretaries that my students were having a break in the middle of our two hour class. One of them repeated, "Oh, you give your students a potty-break?"
And on Tuesday I tried to convince an American planning a trip that she should say les toilettes when in France because it's so much easier to remember than les vé cé or les wat-air. She wasn't sure that she could bring herself to say toilettes (and yet pé cu didn't faze her)!

You see, in America the word "toilet" always refers specifically to the porcelain throne. That means they need other euphemisms (not that "toilet" itself isn't a euphemism, it was originally). Here's a discussion from a professional linguist, based on personal experience:

I heard the following exchange a couple of years ago in the National Gallery (London) between a couple of American tourists and a cruel (and probably bored) security guard:

Tourist: Could you tell us where the restroom is?
Guard: Do you need a rest?
Tourist: Oh no--I mean the bathroom.
Guard: Why? Do you want to have a bath?
Tourists: *gasping for another word*
Guard: I can direct you to the ladies' toilets?

This difference seems to be driven by the fact that America houses have long had toilets in the bathroom, a trend which is far more recent in Australia. So they're not used to the smallest room in the house being called "the toilet" and think of water closets as a continental convention.

I must have been off my guard linguistically this week because when I first got here I was always carefully to say "bathroom" and I think I still do when talking to strangers. I refuse to say "restroom" as that word makes no sense (see joke above). Canadians say "washroom", which is kinda what it is but I can't just start using Canadian words. At least when we're at The Runcible Spoon there's nothing inaccurate about calling it a bathroom.

And, while we're on the subject, one of the things I explain to the American student teachers headed for Australia is dual-flush toilets, and the fact that it's usually a button. This is because the flush is always some sort of lever here and dual-flush toilets are almost non-existent. I say almost because they've just built a new energy-efficient building on campus. Cindy works there and has discovered that they have dual flush toilets there. She particularly likes the fact that it's labelled "number 1" and "number 2"!

Cornbread

Cornbread is an American dish that's not completely crazy but still ain't quite right. It tastes very good; it has a sweet flavour and a texture like a friand (because it's made from corn meal rather than flour. If you made it into a muffin it would go great with afternoon tea.

The problem is that they serve it as a side to the main meal, especially barbecued things. I just can't imagine using anything so sweet to mop up gravy or BBQ sauce. And it's too crumbly for that anyway.

Chez ze Locksmiss

Our car is now slightly less dodgy than before. We took it back to the locksmith and left it with them long enough for a more senior employee to take a look at it. The younger guy had tried twice to no avail but the expert took only a few minutes. We were happy to discover that the door key now also starts the ignition.

Comical Transport Day

Today on my way to class I saw two interesting things:

An asian guy with a longish blond mohawk (but black sides) wearing a pinstripe navy suit, riding a skateboard.

A girl on a Segway wearing a fully enclosed motorcycle helmet.

And there I was on foot!

Preparing Americans for Australia

Today I gave my Australia talk again to a new batch of American student teachers. I told them about Australian schools, wildlife, culture, cuisine and that if they were staying with host families, they should try to learn to use their knives and forks correctly.

None of the questions were particularly stupid this time. Taking me for Emily Post, one girl asked me whether she would have to eat whatever her host family served; I said she should just talk about her likes and dislikes at the start. One mother asked a good question about what sort of meat we eat. I told her to imagine the American diet but replace 1/3 of the beef with lamb. That elicited some mutters from Americans not used to the taste of lamb!

I recommended that they watch Kenny and Summer Heights High to get to understand the Australian sense of humour. I warned that these might be a little harder for Americans as they don't have laugh tracks etc. but that this was good practice for when they'd be subtly mocked by their hosts. It turns out that the organiser who asked me for suggestions actually labelled Kenny as "highly recommended by an Australian national". It's available at Blockbuster Video and one girl said that she watched it for class but thought that it was some sort of low-brow stupidity. Obviously she was taking it the wrong way so I told her to watch it again when she gets back from Australia.

I showed them a promo for Summer Heights High that maybe I shouldn't have. I immediately remembered that there's almost no swearing on American TV and some of the shocking parts reminded me of the "don't ask, don't tell" style of political correctness you often get here. One of the students said that she had asked specifically for an outback school so over lunch I told her to find out a little about teaching aboriginal students and explained some of the things that my grandfather had discovered teaching his aboriginal student teachers.

Sumer is icumen in

When I was walking to campus yesterday I realised that I shouldn't have worn jeans. It got up to 28˙. I changed into shorts as soon as I got home. After dinner last night I put on some thongs and Cindy and I took a walk and bought some "small" (12 oz) ice creams.

Today it's going to get up to 28˙ again, they predict. And there's a bushfire warning, which they call a "red flag".

Easter Cooking

I saw some hot cross buns at the supermarket today; the scabby little American ones with the icing cross. No, I wasn't even tempted to buy some. I'm making the chocolate sort again this year. I'm using the same recipe as last year except this time I added some orange zest.

They're not all that pretty as I just scored the tops and drizzled a cornflour mix over them. (It was only after I'd done this that I remembered that I actually had a piping bag and could have done it neatly! Oh, well; next batch.)

American Illness

I'm just getting over a cold so I thought I'd give some more info on what Americans call things:

American	English
acetaminophen	paracetamol
Tylenol	Panadol (i.e. the most popular brand of paracetamol)
Advil	Nurofen (i.e. most popular brand of ibuprofen)
analgesics (even in the supermarket they use the technical term)	pain killers
allergies	hayfever
mono(nucleosis)	glandular fever
sinus infection	sinusitus
pink eye	conjunctivitis?
strep throat	tonsillitis?

I think I mentioned before that they have nothing here as good as butter menthols. Luckily I had some on the days I had to teach.

My cold's almost gone now. Just a bit of a cough so I'm taking expectorant tablets to try to clear that up before the end of the week.

Sink the Bismark

Tonight Cindy and I had a free dinner at one of Bloomington's most famous pubs, Nick's English Hut. (No, there's nothing English about it.) It was free because Chevron has sent recruiters to the geology department and they're trying to soften up the students. I don't mind eating and drinking their dirty money!

While we were there we noticed that many of the other tables were drinking their beer in a very strange way. They had small galvanised buckets in the middle of their tables and were pouring beer from their cups into the centre. The buckets were almost full of beer (about 1.5L) with a small glass floating in it. When they'd poured enough beer into this floating glass, whoever had sunk it had to drink it. Ah, American College students!

It turns out this game is called "Sink the Bismark" and it's quite a tradition at Nick's, you can even buy sets so that you can play the game at home.

What annoys an oyster more

Cindy and I were awoken at about 3.30 am Saturday by our favourite neighbours and their subwoofers. Then, while still half asleep I heard someone yell, "Hey, turn it down!" and the reply, "Fuck you!" There was a bit more shouting that I couldn't make out but the music didn't stop. After a couple more minutes I decided to phone in a noise complaint but the number they give is for an office that isn't open at 3.30 am. I didn't really want to call 911 so we just went back to sleep.

The next morning we were still annoyed so we printed a copy of the city's noise laws and highlighted the bits that said "Night time limits for non-stationary noise are from 11:00 p.m. - 6:00 a.m." and "A simple rule of thumb is that a noise is excessive if it can be heard in the public right of way or in another resident's home." I could have just slipped in under their door but I felt more like sticking it to their door with a dagger. I found that there was already a nail there so I compromised by just sticking the note on that. The only problem is, 24 hours later the note is still there. I don't think they've left their apartment in that time!

It's Slushing!

Yesterday afternoon a secretary from the philosophy dept sent out an email warning of an oncoming blizzard and warning that, because they live outside of the centre of town, the office might not be staffed today. Last night on the tele there was a little warning in the corner of the screen, warning the counties of south-central Indiana to be on the alert.

When we woke up this morning there was no snow. Another email was sent out saying that they were there but couldn't promise to stay the whole day. There was a mix of rain and snow when I walked to campus for a 10 am lecture but coming back at 11.30 it was snowing properly but turning to slush on contact. Which makes things a bit slippery; you have to waddle to keep your balance.

And I'm going to have to go back out today to get the car from the mechanic's. Luckily it will have two new tyres that will help me drive back through the slippery slush.

Adieu, Fenry!

A week after buying a new car, I managed to sell the old one. Eventually someone responded to the ad who was actually serious enough to come look at the car (rather than ask me to drive it to Indianapolis) and he came back to buy it the next day. I asked for $700, he offered $500, we settled at $600. I'm happy and I think he will be too (because there's no other cars for sale in that price range!).

In the 3 years since I bought it, I put about 4,615 miles on it but no extra dings. The switch back to automatic hasn't been too hard; only a few times have I reached down to change gears. I think Cindy will miss the sound of metal scraping on metal every time she opens or closes the passenger door and the way the glove box comes off in your hands if you open it...

The Annual Robert Burns Party

We went to a Robert Burns Supper last night, hosted by the same friend who threw one last year. This year there was about 30 people! The piper from last year came and deafened us once again. Again, there was an ode to the haggis. But Cindy found it not offal-ly enough (she prefers her liver as pure pâté).

Dodgy Bros

When we bought the new car we were only given one pair of keys. A long one for the door and a short, stumpy one for the ignition. So, worried that we might get locked out, we decided to get another set cut straight away.* The first problem we had was finding a key cutter. There had been one in the mall but he'd been replaced by a shop selling musical instruments and knives.** I put a question on Facebook and it turns out that Americans get their keys cut in hardware stores.

The second problem we had was extreme cold. The last couple of days it's been around -10 ° and apparently this doesn't agree with door locks. Central locking was struggling and after Cindy opened her door, it wouldn't latch closed again until we'd locked and unlocked it several times.

So off to the hardware store we went for new keys and some silicone grease.*** When we got there the guy said that he might not have a blank to match the stumpy ignition key. Then he looked more closely and explained that the ignition key was identical to the door key but broken off half way. Turns out there's a fragment of key stuck in the ignition which allows us to start the car with any old key or screwdriver. (Cindy's not too happy about having paid good money for such a vehicle.)

The folks at the hardware store suggested pulling the fragment out with a magnet. But the rest of the key is brass, so I doubt there'd be enough nickel plating left for that to work. And even if we can get it out with a pair of tweezers, there's always the risk that the door key really is a different cut and we won't be able to start the car to drive to a locksmith. We're going to have to think over our options.


* Yes, we have AAA but it's easier not to have to wait. I've only ever called them for flat batteries before; I've never locked my keys in the car in America.
** Including a shiv disguised as a Zippo lighter. The last time I was there for a new watch battery he didn't put the seal back properly. Water got in but when I went back to complain, the shop had disappeared.
*** I read online that WD40 is only good for releasing joints that are rusted solid. Silicone, white lithium or teflon grease is best to keep joints moving.

Two Car Family

A little while ago I took Fenry in for some minor repairs and asked them to have a look at the brakes while they were at it. Turned out that new drums, shoes, cylinders, pyramids and tetrahedra were needed for both the rear wheels, which was going to cost $380. Given that I paid $400 for the car, I had to think this over a little... Knowing that rego time was coming up soon was an added incentive to make the decision quickly.

Today Cindy and I went and bought a new car, a '98 Hyundai Sonata GLS. It's an automatic so she'll be happier about driving it more often and we'll both be less worried about it breaking down. The 3L V6 means that we'll be able to get to Indianapolis quicker but it might also be more expensive to run. Luckily insurance is not much more.

The guy selling it had posted two ads, the second explained that he'd already dropped the asking price from $1700 to $1400 and insisted on "no low-ballers". So I wasn't sure whether I should haggle but when I offered him $1300 to take it then and there he jumped at it. (Maybe I should have started lower.)

Now I'm just trying to sell off Fenry to re-coup some money. I've put up a few ads on online classifieds and have already had a bit of interest so I'm confident that it won't take too long to sell. Actually, I've learnt a bit about Craig's List* in the process. I had heard that it was full of weirdos so I wasn't too surprised when the Nigerian scammer asked me to send him my details so he could pay me in advance. One told me that my car was underpriced because he wanted me to use a certain trade-in site; another told me that he'd previously bought a newer mint-condition Civic for less than I was asking and offered me about half the asking price, if he can get cars that cheap, good luck to him. The strangest was one who told me that he had $500 cash and could come around if I'd accept that much; it sounded like something a dealer would say, to put the pressure on but he also told a story about it being for his son. But there's been a couple of more normal sounding inquiries so I'm confident.


* Most Americans pronounce the name Craig as "creg" but not all do. I haven't yet worked out which ones.

Sane American Products

Here's something you won't see in Australia - not because it's crazy, because it's sane. Pepsi is tapping into a demand for boutique soft drinks by making versions of Pepsi and Mountain Dew with real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. Such a thing would be unnecessary in Australia because cane sugar is so cheap! I doubt that they'll win over those people who believe that New Coke was a big conspiracy but it's always good to see people rejecting HFCS.

We saw these bottles with their retro labels in the supermarket yesterday so I bought a bottle of Mountain Dew (I hate Pepsi so I doubt that real sugar would make me like it). Yeah, and apparently in the 60s Mountain Dew was sold with a bumpkin as their mascot. I now discover that the bottle I bought was not the original recipe, which I missed by a few months. Well I've never had the original recipe anyway so I'm not too bothered.

This may sound silly but if you've never lived in America you won't realise how, because of huge subsidies to corn farmers, high fructose corn syrup is the basis of all sweet things and is even added to things that shouldn't be sweet (like bread). Actually, there are also differences when you buy bags of plain old sugar. All the no frills brands are beet sugar and the expensive ones advertise that they're cane sugar. Because beet sugar doesn't go through the same refining process, you can't find big cheap bags of raw sugar, you have to buy demarara or turbinado or some other fancy name.

iPod Touch

Apart from the free upgrades, I've also been redeeming my frequent flyer points for toys - a 32 GB iPod Touch!

For those who don't know, it's much more than a normal iPod - it doesn't just play music and movies, it's also a mini computer for web browsing and games. It has pseudo-GPS by knowing the location of the Wi-Fi network you're connected to (not very accurate but I think it might improve once SkyHook has gathered enough info). I've been filling it with other useful applications like dictionaries, a toilet locator, a unit converter, an ebook reader, movie times and a fart machine.

It's not a phone but it has Skype so, with the new headset that includes a mic, I can use it as a phone wherever there's wi-fi. And in Bloomington there's free wi-fi everywhere - campus, cafés, restaurants and everyone's apartments.

I'm very happy with it so far. The only disappointment is that it doesn't work with my old Firewire iPod charger so I'll have to by a cheap compact USB charger from eBay. (Which is easier said than done. It's great to see the chargers getting so much smaller but the first batch of Apple chargers were recalled. These old ones and new fakes are being sold on eBay and apparently most of the fakes are not compatible with my model of iPod. But I didn't even get a chance to try to the first one I bought, that seller's gone out of business, luckily before I could pay him. Now I've bought a pair of cheap $1.37 chargers that don't try to mimic Apple's style but say explicitly that they work with the 3rd generation iPod Touch.)

I am really looking forward to taking it to campus on days when I don't feel like carrying the laptop and bringing it out at French table when we need to look something up.

Flying

I was a bit worried when I heard about the attempted bombing in Detroit and the new security measures. This wasn't actually a problem for us. On the way to Morocco I bought a small bottle of calvados (because it was cheap and I wasn't sure if I could get it later) with the intention of bringing it back to France. Then I remembered that we weren't planning to check any bags (cheap airline) and a 200mL bottle wouldn't be allowed on board; I decided to try anyway. I needn't have worried, the security leaving Marrakech didn't put any limit on the amount of liquids... but they did segregate men and women into separate queues for the screening!

Things were a bit more serious leaving Paris. The Spanish Inquisition started before we even checked our suitcases. After my cabin bag was x-rayed a guard asked me to open it. I asked him, "Did you see something inside?" but he replied, "No, just checking." They were in a very curious mood that day, he wanted to know what was inside every box and what everything was. He even asked about the TimTams, whether there was liquid inside, "No, they might be a little wet in the middle but it's not liquid." But the thing is, it wasn't just him, everyone was curious about what we'd been up to. Less than 100m further along, we were stopped again, asked more questions about our bags and what we'd done since we checked them, "Well, I had a cup of coffee..." and most passengers had their hand luggage opened and checked manually a second time.

Naturally we hoped to get upgraded to Business again but that didn't happen. As we sat in Economy Plus we reminisced about our time in Business, looked at the high prices of alcohol and calculated that between us we'd had about $50 worth of alcohol last time. The plane was late taking off because there were not enough de-icing machines to go around, so we got in to Washington a couple of hours late. Our trip through Customs was made a bit quicker by a blasé officer who let us take our 15L of cider through without paying duty. Then we saw that the next plane was delayed by two and a half hours so we had plenty of time.

Now Cindy, having flown more United miles than me, had been given some credits for domestic upgrades. Last time she wasn't able to use it because First Class was full but this time she was upgraded to First at check in. I wasn't all that jealous about a one hour flight but she was talking about sharing the seat, having half an hour each in First. Then, as we were waiting at the gate, my name was called over the PA and I received a First class boarding pass too! The seats were no better than Business but the stewardess took drink orders before take off and brought us snack boxes with chips, salami, Oreos and jelly beans. Not as much fun as 8 hours of Business but it was a nice treat.

The World's Classiest Strip Club

A while ago we were watching a doco on the Crazy Horse Cabaret of Paris; it followed some new dancers through their training. I was a little surprised when they interviewed some of the parents who described how proud they were. Then I remembered that the thing about French people being more open about nudity is not just a stereotype, e.g. topless bathing is more common than in English-speaking countries (but they do, in fact, shave their armpits; the French claim that it's German women who don't).

Then it went one step further - Cindy's mum thought that it would be good for us to have a cultural experience and decided to shout us tickets to see the show. It was excellent, very artistic:

Apart from the erotic dancers, there was a pair of male tap dancers to prove that it was a real cabaret and not just a strip club. They had quite a funny routine and were obviously talented. It must be hard competing with all those boobs.

Ouarzazate

From Morocco

After yesterday's trip to Casablanca we decided to take a bus trip to Ouarzazate.

We travelled over the Atlas Mountains, taking the highest pass in Morocco, 2,200 m. It was quite cold up there and the air was quite thin (water bottles opened in the mountains were flattened on the other side). We made plenty of stops to photograph the picturesque views.

From Morocco

On the other side we saw rocky desert with little towns built around casbahs. We had lunch at a nice little place in Ouarzazate overlooking the casbah. We only had time for a quick tour of the medina (the old city) before heading back over those windy mountain passes to Marrakech.