I live in Michigan and I frequently talk to Australian friends on the internet. When I log on, they are usually logging off, because in Australia they are just about a full day ahead of us folks in the United States. This makes wishing them a "g'day" rather difficult since my mornings are their evenings and vice versa. With typical Aussie humor they tell me this means that Australians are more advanced than Americans. This is certainly true since instead of wishing them a good day, I may have to start wishing them a happy tomorrow. Only trouble is, my tomorrow is their today, which means that when it finally gets around to being tomorrow for me the Australian tomorrow has already moved into next week.
These people are carefully instructing me in Aussie lingo, which of course, is very ridgy-didge, a phrase that I adore saying even though I haven't the slightest clue what it means. I have the feeling that it could mean something along the lines of, "this lingo is crazy but we love it." Americans have their crazy lingo as well, though ours just seems so boring compared to people who call each other "mate". Talking to an Australian over the internet is a lot of fun. The fact that their emails are always coming from tomorrow doesn't seem to stop them from coming in the slightest, which can only mean one thing....all that time that people have spent dreaming of building time machines?.....What a waste, when all they really had to do was visit Perth.
Some Aussies cannot understand the American propensity toward eating only three meals a day, while the Aussies themselves prefer to have breakfast, lunch, dinner and tea time. We Americans also have a "tea time" of sorts, but we simply call it "snack time"minus the actual tea. Unfortunately, our version of tea time usually lasts the better part of each day and occasionally well into the night as well. Tea time itself is something that the Aussies take issue with, because they consider it barely primordial to not have one. While some folks may believe that tea time is the social event of the season, others will inevitably prefer to munch popcorn and watch television. Troglodites only need apply.
I have a laptop computer that evidently was made in Australia because when I'm awake and the computer should be turned on, it will sometimes turn itself off for no apparent reason other than the fact that I'm right in the middle of writing something vaguely important, and I might not enjoy losing it entirely. When I'm asleep however, and the computer should be off. It will somehow turn itself on during the night and hum away through the wee hours of the morning, until I wake up, whereupon it will immediately shut down for a snooze. This is why I suggest that my computer may be Aussie because it keeps Aussie hours.
Even after I have opened the top and pressed the "on" button, I still must wonder whether this will be the time when I write a four page article and lose it all, simply because I am too engrossed in writing the thing to save it. My computer knows this and will do its absolute best to shut down while my hands are still in querty position. I have come to the conclusion that computers can sense when fingers have settled on their keyboards, and use that as their cue to endlessly frustrate. My laptop has another new and annoying game that it now plays...it will allow me to type along flawlessly for a paragraph or two and then suddenly, it will not allow a certain letter to print on the screen. It does not matter which letter, as long as I cannot finish my sentence without it.
But I digress, which is something I do very well. This article is about Aussies, not computers, which although they do have minds of their own, do not always play well with others. I suppose that same sentiment could be used to describe some Aussies as well, but so far I have yet to meet any that I didn't like, while on the other hand, I frequently find reasons to dislike my laptop. Although for the price I paid for it, I should be grateful that it works at all. Again, I digress.
So what is it that Aussies do while the rest of us are sleeping? They are working, playing, eating, having tea, or otherwise living their lives. And what are we doing while the Aussies are sleeping? I'm not entirely sure, because I haven't yet figured out how many hours ahead of us they really are. I'm beginning to wonder if they actually do any sleeping at all because every now and then I will find one just lurking on the internet any time of the day. But when I try to contact that person, I usually find them not paying attention, their minds and eyes elsewhere when my message gets to them. This makes me wonder if Aussies can only sleep while sitting up with a glowing computer screen in front of them.
Perhaps Aussies use computers that are manufactured in the United States which would mean that the darn things only work after dark and before dawn. So, when I spot an Aussie online at 7 am it could mean that the Aussie is at that moment going to bed, and their computer is surfing the net all by itself. This concept gives new meaning to the words, "computer dating". I will tell you something...if my computer starts dating some other computer online, I am not paying for the wedding ceremony.
This article is dedicated to all of my Australian buddies from MC. You know who you are...Hooroo, mates!
