Civilization?

October 25, 2001-Travel Agents’ Worth

We have just reinforced our conviction that travel agents are invaluable. When we were at Qantas earlier in the week, they said that there were e-tickets available to Melbourne & Tasmania that were great prices. They could only be booked online. We logged on last night to have a look around. The bottom line is that we were up until 1:00 AM & didn’t book anything. The input format wouldn’t let us book a circle trip & if we booked two round trips (Brisbane/Melbourne & Melbourne/Hobart) we’d have to book one & lock it in then hope that the fares & seats were available on the other. It was too risky & the cheap seats were gone already. We could be stuck with a round trip ticket to one place with no hope of getting to the other. Today we went across the street to a travel agent at the shopping center. Unlike us, she was able to hold seats on some flights while she looked for other arrangements. She also knew all the ins & outs of the deals, coding, & combinations that would work for us. The seats were going fast, but we did finally book the flights along with a hotel in Melbourne & one in Hobart. We’ll go back to her later to handle the other hotels & car rentals. While sitting in the office, I saw several travel brochures on touring America. It’s funny to see tour companies like Globus advertising tours to the U.S. I’m used to the brochures for foreign venues, but I guess the U.S. is foreign from here. There was one company that caught my eye. I chuckled at the title of one book that advertised tours of America & Canada. Isn’t Canada in N. America? The next one on the rack promoted tours of Europe & Britain. When did Great Britain secede? And I thought Americans were ignorant of geography.

October 26, 2001-Making A Horse Race

The Melbourne Cup is a horse race that takes place next Wed. I hear that this country stops. The lady who does my nails said she used to go to the race when she lived in Melbourne. Everywhere else there are parties at homes & restaurants. It’s much like the Kentucky Derby, I would suspect, only with more attention nationwide. She told me it was really a shame how they shoot the horses that fall & break a leg during the race. We discussed different ways of treating them nowadays, but she surmised it wasn’t cost effective for most of the horses. I mentioned being at a rodeo when a calf was roped & broke its leg. They put it on a pallet & dragged it off to become veal chops. She told me that her daughter just returned from Spain where she had seen bullfights. We clucked our tongues & patted ourselves on the back for being more civilized & not torturing our animals for sport before killing them. “Yes,” she said, “That’s why they just shoot the injured race horses right there on the track.” I gasped out some exclamation as she told me she’d actually seen this on TV. A woman in the next chair assured me she’d been at a race & had seen it with her own eyes. They shot the horse on the track, covered it with a tarp, & hauled it off to the knackers. I teased them & said I didn’t know I was coming to such a barbaric place, but at least the people here are safer than in the U.S. I’ve mentioned to you that to get a handgun here you have to apply & have a very good reason. I just found out that no automatic weapons are permitted & hunting rifles may only be single shot. You have to reload every time it’s fired. That also gives the animal a fair chance.

Say Again?

There was a sign in a department store that said,” Does your credit card shout you up to 62 days?” I thought it had to do with ringing you up as in “give you a shout.” David said he sort of knew what it meant but didn’t know about the “shout “ part. We asked for a translation & the first person didn’t know. She asked another sales woman & we gathered around the poster in a tight little group trying to translate. One of them finally said that in a bar if you shout someone a drink, it means that you are buying it for them. It’s your treat. We’d say, “The drink is on me.” So, what the sign means is that there’s no interest on charges for 62 days.

Add this to your list of strange Aussie food combos. On the menu today we could have chosen the bacon, banana, cheese sandwich or the bacon, pineapple, cheese. Will creativity know no bounds? David had an open face chicken, avocado, cheese melt & I had a bowl of minestrone. The soup was good, but it wasn’t even a distant relative of the minestrone we’re used to. For one thing, it was white. It had no beans in it, but it did have potatoes, carrots, broccoli, corn, & cauliflower with cheese on top. It was quite good.

Toby