The cultural shock... or rather poke. Yeah, the cultural poke.

Short of the water whirlpool turning the other way when you flush the toilet, I haven’t had much adjust to here... For now. I would certainly make the trip again just to see that spectacle! It’s mind blowing folks! It’s only been a couple days and I already have a stiff neck from looking at it! I was convinced it was an old wives’ tale, but it’s TRUE! Okay, let’s get a hold of ourselves here... I know you must be as excited as I am. But before this post turns out to be uniquely about toilets, let’s change the subject.

Beets in burgers! What! Why didn’t I think of that?! Delicious, nutritious, colourful and just plain living on the edge; putting beets in your burger has apparently been part of Australian culture forever. Crazy. Not just any beets either, pickled beets! Yeah, let your mouths ponder that for a while... Choking on saliva yet? I was. For those beet haters out there who told me beets taste like dirt... Take it back... It hurts. I’ll send my roommates after you! As one of them valiantly stated:"I could eat beetroot out the tit"; so you know they love it for real... You don’t find devotion like that on every street corner. Even McDonald’s has joined the fun with their McOz burger, which, you guessed it, has some kind of cheap canned version of what is supposedly a beet in their burger!

In other news, I’ve been saying and writing “Oi” wrong all these years... I’ve been saying “Oy”. What a chump... It seems I’ve been parading around as a dyslexic gangster for the last couple years instead of the cool and assertive dude that I was aiming for. My image is ruined. Thank god for beer. I’ll have to drown out my sorrows! But, which one should I choose?

It seems the eternal beer conflict centered on determining which beer is the ultimate beverage rages on constantly on this side of the world as well. The only downside to this exciting discovery is that I cannot participate here yet as they have none of the beers I drink here. Also, when I do try to represent a Canadian beer at the table, I usually get ridiculed because our beers are named after people (John Labatt, John Molson, and Alexander Keith) whereas here, the beer name template is “adjective adjective”. For example, “Super Dry” or “Extra Dry”. I’m sure this only applies to a small minority of beers, but I have yet to stumble upon others! In any case, I can’t wait to stumble upon a “Super Duper Extra Ultra Uber Dry”! Hopefully, that beer will be in liquid form. Because they already have something here that tastes like solid alcohol... Vegemite.

For those of you unfamiliar with this, to say the least, original and unique product, it’s labelled as being a “concentrated yeast extract”, whatever that means... The first couple ingredients are: yeast extract, salt and malt extract. An excellent source of all types of vitamin B, it’s mainly used as a toast spread; kind of like our peanut butter! Sold at any respectable grocer near you! Now for what they don’t tell you – It tastes like an almost solid block of cooking wine to which you add additional salt, let sit for a while and then infuse with salty sea water. I’ve been told to “ease into it”... I will most likely follow that advice as I wish to be able to taste in the future... J (No but really, it’s not that bad... Okay, it's pretty bad).

These are only a few of the small things that have brought a smile to my face in the first couple days of my stay here. I’m sure there are more on the way. Why do we travel? I know one of my reasons is to realise and remind myself that there are many different ways to solve a problem (i.e. thirst with beer, vitamin B deficiencies with suicidal products, etc. ) and to go about things and that yours isn’t necessarily the best one, even if you’ve been doing it forever. I guess what I mean to say is:

Lesson learned: Think outside the box, be open to new ways of doing things or you’ll never learn anything.

Australianly yours,

Joël

P.S. Flies are the size of marbles! I’ve been using the 5 D’s here for sure! Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive and Dodge. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a fly!