Home and Away

February 2, 2002-Vocabulary Lesson

Now we know what we’ll save in a fire. The fire alarm went off in the building yesterday afternoon. We called reception to verify that it wasn’t just a test & prepared to evacuate. We grabbed the computer & back-up disks. It turned out to be a false alarm, but it did cause us to think about what we should really take. I read somewhere that you should keep what you would want to save in a fire all in one place so that it’s ready to go. David said we should have grabbed our passports. We have copies at home (Akron), so that didn’t seem important to me. I thought the photo albums of our trip would be missed, but they’re very bulky. We’ve almost filled four albums of 300 photos each. I have all the negatives & they’re now sitting right next to the computer bag.

When we went to Byron Bay with our rabbi friend from home & his wife and ate lunch at a seaside café. We had to go to the bar to order hard & soft drinks & our friend volunteered. He thought he spoke the language of this foreign land but came back carrying our drinks & laughing. He’d ordered three colas & a bitter lemon. Bitter lemon is bottled carbonated lemonade. The bartender asked him, “ Do you wanta try?” He answered that he’d tried a bitter lemon before & liked it. The bartender’s response was, “ Do you want a “try” to carry it all?” Our friend answered in the affirmative & presented our four drinks on a tray.

The temple bulletin came today. The writer of one of the articles can offer no excuse for his “typo.” He’s a native Aussie. His father, a pillar of the Jewish community in Brisbane & on the Gold Coast, had died & the son wrote & delivered a moving eulogy at the funeral. Unfortunately, in typing the heading, he wrote “Eurology for ....”

Now for your regular irregular vocabulary lesson from OZ. There’s another word for hoon. If you recall, a hoon is a young man who shows off while driving. They drive too fast, squeal their tires, & generally are a nuisance. Wanker is another word for that. When I raised my eyebrows, Syd Bruce cautioned that it might not be suitable for use in the U.S. Another term, “piss up,” means a drunken party. If you want to use it in a sentence, you’d say, “He’s so dumb he couldn’t throw a piss up in a brewery.”

February 4, 2002-Reminders of Home

Last night we had dinner at the home of the American family whose boat has been in dry dock for months. They rented out their house in California, bought a catamaran, & were sailing around the world for the last two years. They have two children ages 10 & 13. Both parents have advanced degrees in engineering & mathematics & were home schooling the kids. The girl will celebrate her bat mitzvah here the end of March. They hit a storm between New Zealand & Fiji & developed a crack in a crossbeam. They hired people to sail the boat to Australia for repair, but another storm did more damage & forced it back to Fiji. They had the boat freighted to the Gold Coast & have been here since September. The boat will be ready in June. One of the guests last night brought Chocolate Trivial Pursuit. I’d never seen it, but it’s played with chocolate “doobies.” That’s what we call the triangular pieces you put into the wheel when you answer a question correctly. It was such fun! But the rules were disappointing. You could only eat one of your pieces at the end of the game.

We’re watching the Super Bowl Game broadcast live. It’s Monday at 1 PM & the Patriots just scored the winning field goal. Even in Australia, I couldn’t escape it. The paper here carried a brief explanation of the rules. I guess Alex, our granddaughter, will be happy. She had money on New England. It was broadcast without commercials here, so when there was a commercial break, there was commentary. The odd thing about it was that the sportscasters were Australian. They did a good job, but we aren’t attuned to hearing Aussie accents discussing American football.

Speaking of Alex, the date was set for her bat mitzvah. It will be Saturday morning on June 5, 2004. Temple Israel sets bar/bat mitzvah dates two-three years in advance. It’s a custom that started many years ago. It wasn’t because there were so many to schedule. The parents wanted the advance dates so they could be sure to be able to book the DJ’s they wanted. One thing David hated when he was there was knowing what he would be doing on a certain date three years hence.

David is reading a book on cricket. It’s really for referees & a lot of it is too advanced for him. One thing he did understand is that there are specific rules for the ref to book tea time & lunch & set it up with the caterer.

More friends from Akron are coming. They're now in Melbourne. We’re eagerly awaiting their arrival on Feb. 10.

Toby