Late Night Tesco

H and I had a really fun midnight trip to Tesco the other night for beer, sponges and disinfectant.  We really enjoyed people watching to see who else shops at that hour on a Monday night.  Thankfully we had a hot pizza to eat the car before going into the store; otherwise we might have missed the dozen or so loitering ‘almost 18s’ who were waiting for the 18 year old friends to exit the store with booze / already drinking with their 18 year old friends in the parking lot.  Awesome way to make me feel young again.

We also enjoyed the older man checking out behind us with a shopping cart overflowing with potato chips and ramen.  Seriously?  I think we can all guess what he had been doing earlier that evening.  Then there were the people picking up soda and chocolate, probably on the way to their own night shifts, not so entertaining.  Lastly, we had the twenty something year old couple who appeared to actually be doing their weekly shopping trip.  That was fairly depressing; I almost went over to them to remind them that Tesco does deliver.  H may or may not have accidentally thwacked one of them with our shopping basket though so I felt it was better to keep my distance.

All I can say is that Tesco > Carrefour for late night grocery shopping.  Carrefour was always out of milk late at night but Tesco was fully stocked.  The real trump card though is that unlike Qatar’s Carrefour, Tesco sells all kinds of alcohol.  Now if only the beer was refrigerated, late night grocery shopping would have the potential to be the perfect date night.

Expat Dictionary 101

One woman recently told me that she loved Anonymous Third World Country because for the first time, she “truly felt like an expat.”

Definition: she had a driver, cook, maid and nanny.

I’ve never had such an experience.   For me, feeling like an expat has been more a feeling of displacement, not belonging, and difficulty.  Don’t get me wrong, I love living overseas and there are thousands of wonderful things about this kind of life, but it is often difficult and unglamorous.

With the excitement of a transfer and getting to live in and explore a new country and its environs comes a lot of stress, hard work and waiting.  Every new visa means more than getting to be a tourist in a new country.  It means among a hundred other things:

• Quitting a job
• Selling a car
• Disposing of food / alcohol / cleaning products
• Saying goodbye to friends
• Closing a bank account
• Cancelling a lease, internet, utilities, insurance
• Filing a second set of local country taxes
• Packing a container to ship and two suitcases of belongings that you can’t live without for 1-3 months
• Updating an itemized inventory for container insurance
• Finding a new place to live
• Finding a new job
• Finding new friends
• Buying a car
• Getting a new driver’s license
• Setting up a new bank account
• Getting insurance
• Setting up internet and utilities
• Waiting 1-3 months for your belongings to come
• Finding your way around and locating grocery stores, dry cleaners, doctors, restaurants, hair salons etc.
• Living out of suitcases

My particular favorite circular reference is that you can’t set up a local bank account without an address and you don’t get an address until you can pay your deposit and first month’s rent.  Wiring money from another country takes 2-10 business days and when you have 30 days to get yourself into ‘permanent accommodation,’ it means you have a maximum of 18 days to find where you want to live, in case the wire transfer actually takes 10 business days.

H and I just moved into our new ‘permanent’ home after hours at the leasing office trying to locate our wire transfer.  And we were the lucky ones; the other family at the office had the same problem and went ‘home’ to their hotel room for another night, without the keys to their new rental ‘home.’  Unfortunately, H and I showed up at our new home to find that it hadn’t been cleaned, as specified in the lease, nor were there any linens for the bed or towels in the bathroom, also as specified in the lease. 

So H and I had an amazing night sleeping on the couch in the unclean apartment because a used rental couch without sheets seemed a lot more sanitary than a used rental mattress without sheets.   This was after a late night trip to the (thankfully) 24 hour Tesco to get beer and disinfectant to make one bathroom usable enough for the evening.  We either didn’t get enough disinfectant or beer though because we started to clean one toilet and stopped when we found dried vomit/excrement on the outside of the toilet bowl; needless to say I’m posting this from the closest coffee shop with internet and a bathroom.  Sadly I haven’t chosen a new gym yet or I could also be writing this freshly showered.  I know, I know, this blog should really be renamed, The Glamorous Life of Anonymous Expat. 

Why Be a Waugal Watcher When You Can Train Greyhounds?

One of H’s colleagues resigned today so that he could kick-off November in a new career. Six months ago he used some savings he had acquired working overseas to buy a share in a greyhound. The dog lost its first race spectacularly and its trainer, who was working for free in exchange for a percentage of the dog’s winnings, threatened to quit. Over the weekend, the dog won its race, the second one it has competed in. He decided that in lieu of paying the trainer, he would quit his six figure job and train the dog himself. His goal is to purchase shares in additional greyhounds or be hired by others to train their greyhounds and live off his earnings from that and his winnings from betting on his dog. Apparently in Australia, people train greyhounds by setting them loose in a paddock with a kangaroo or two and letting the animals chase each other. The preferred practice used to be setting the dog after rabbits, but this practice of "live kills" is technically illegal. The legal protection may be unnecessary, as racing dogs have been bred to the point that they are unable to catch any game in the wild. On the track they only need to run in a (relatively) straight line. The ability to stop, turn or do anything else is neglected in the breeding practice. All it takes is one quick change of direction by the intended prey, and the pursuing dog falls tail over head with it's paws in the air. Of course to oversee this training, it’s essential to always have a cold beer in hand. Good luck Anonymous Colleague; you are certainly going to need it.

Platinum Rock Stars

In the fields that H and I work in, it’s not uncommon for us, our friends and our colleagues to rack up a lot of frequent flier miles.  Frequent flyer ‘status’ was absolutely not on our radar for discussion topics prior to moving to Australia.  But in Perth it’s a totally different story.  In our offices, where nearly every person is a Qantas platinum frequent flier, people flaunt their platinum luggage identification tags like they’re the next Hope Diamond.  Laptop bags are unnecessarily toted around the office so platinum status can be broadcast throughout the office common areas and elevators.  Qantas domestic lounge culinary offerings are discussed as intently as a degustation menu at a new Michelin starred restaurant.  Very angry discourse occurs on a regular basis regarding how alcohol isn’t offered in the lounge until 11:00 AM.  It’s nearly impossible for me to keep a straight face when I see and hear all of this.  Firstly, almost anything is more interesting to talk about.  Secondly, the Perth Qantas lounge is nothing special.  Lastly, everybody here has platinum status.

I had to travel up north last week with a handful of people from work and one of them very excitedly invited me to join him in the Qantas lounge for breakfast pre-flight.  I stopped by a few minutes before boarding to say hello and grab some water and was greeted by a lounge full of people in high visibility work wear and steel toed boots, many of whom were familiar to me from my office and those of our competitors.  What can I say; we all must be rock stars with our platinum status?  Especially when it’s acquired from short haul flights to exciting places like Karratha, Exmouth, Darwin, Paraburdoo, Broome and Geraldton, where the majority of passengers are wearing high visibility work wear in various degrees of filth.

While my Qantas lounge breakfast date invitation cracked me up, the icing on the cake came when an Anonymous Colleague came into the office one morning extremely disappointed.  He had gone to the airport the night before to pick up a friend and when he saw that the flight was delayed, decided to head to the Qantas lounge for a beer and burger.  Despite his platinum card, he was told that he couldn’t enter without a boarding pass.  Shocked and disappointed, he went to wait outside the lounge in mere mortal territory.  Would you ever have guessed that you can’t just pop into the lounge for free food and alcohol whenever you feel like it?  If there was unlimited Qantas lounge access, the bar there would be the most happening place in Perth.

Australians, Convicts, What's the Difference?

Conversation at last night's beer tasting:

Bob-o: You know who really can't pull off a shaved head? 
Me: Who?
Bob-o: Jack-o, he looks like a convict when he shaves his head.
Me: So?
Bob-o: So he looks like a convict.
Me:  He's Australian, what's the difference?

Oh, snap.  I'm sure I'm the only one who thought that was LOL hilarious a la Larry David.  What can I say?  Hello, my name is Anonymous Expat and I'm an oilfield prisoner.  Besides, everybody in Australia claims that their ancestors were free settlers rather than the prisoners the British sent over to populate the territory.  I call that revisionist history...free settlers were the minority of immigrants.

BYO Rifle, Not Beer

Recent trips taken by friends and colleagues from Perth:

• Drinking and sunbathing in Bali
• Drinking and catching up with friends in Sydney
• Hiking Machu Picchu
• Drinking and clubbing in Hong Kong
• Drinking and sleeping in Bangkok
• Aerial feral hog hunting in Queensland*

*I was going to make a crack that only in Australia would someone take a week of vacation to shoot feral hogs from a helicopter but apparently it's very popular in Texas.  The Texas State Legislature passed 'the pork chopper' bill this spring which makes it legal, as of September 1st, for sport hunters to rent the gunner seat on a helicopter to shoot wild hogs and coyotes.  And apparently bookings for gunner seats are going quickly.  There is a huge amount of enthusiasm in Australia and Texas to temper out of control feral hog populations.  H, let's not move to Texas.  Unless of course my birthday mercenary can ride shotgun while I shoot feral hogs.  Yee haw.

 

Image courtesy of Eric Lewis via http://www.texasmonthly.com/2011-08-01/webextra10.php

How [Not] to Prepare Your Travel Documents

It's amazing what comes up during the course of a normal dinner conversation in the world that H and I have found ourselves living in. The other night we were out to dinner with some friends and instead of the usual conversations around politics, the state of the financial markets and upcoming vacation plans, H and I learned how to accidentally bribe a government official.

One of our friends shared a story from a business trip he had taken to what I'll refer to as an anonymous banana republic gone sour under military rule. He disembarked from his flight, queued at customs and handed over his passport, in its case, to the customs' official. The customs' official thumbed through it for a few moments before stamping it and handing it back. The guy's boss went next and after the customs' official paged through his passport, he started grilling him with questions. Our friend took the twenty minute delay to check out his new passport stamp and found that A$50 that he had stuck in the back of his case, along with various frequent flier cards and other scraps of paper, was now gone. Apparently the cash, and not the appropriate visa, which his boss was also in possession of, had smoothed his entry into the country. A$50 will get you 90% of a case of beer, a steak dinner for one, lawn seats at a cricket match or a question free entry into an anonymous Latin American country. I wonder what else this admission fee includes.

Hole in One

My division at work has been subdivided into small groups for team building activities.  This morning, Anonymous Officemate, my manager (M) and two other group members spent the morning playing nine holes of golf with the goal of seeing how much beer they could consume before noon strengthening team ties.  I had a meeting with M shortly after their return and asked how his morning on the golf course was.

M:  “Well, it was interesting to say the least.”

AE:  “What do you mean?”

M: “Anonymous Officemate showed up to play in a singlet, denim shorts and flip flops.  I sent him home to change into more appropriate clothes and he came back without clubs.  I asked him where his clubs were and he told me that he didn’t have any.  The inappropriate attire and lack of clubs made me slightly suspicious so I asked him if he knows how to play golf.  His response, “Oh yeah, for sure.  I play Wii Golf all the time.”  Needless to say, he was appointed to driving the cart while the rest of us played.”

I was speechless for a solid minute before my jaw returned from the floor and I erupted into laughter.  Anonymous Officemate, you fail, yet again.

Australia Day

On Wednesday I had the day off from work in honour of Australia Day.  While none of my Australian colleagues could tell me what the significance of Australia Day is, apart from beer and barbies, I learned from Wikipedia that it’s the official national day of Australia.  The date, January 26^th, celebrates the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove in 1788 and the subsequent proclamation of British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of Australia.  The First Fleet refers to the 11 ships that departed from Great Britain in 1787 to establish the first European colony in Australia; approximately 52% of the passengers were convicts.

There is some controversy around the celebration of Australia Day on January 26^th.  Some people, particularly Indigenous Australians, refer to Australia Day as Invasion Day or Survival Day, and stage protests at annual Australia Day celebrations.  Others view the date as strengthening the connection with Australia’s convict past, commemorating, “Britain's driving ashore of Australia's first white citizens in chains.”  Due to these reasons as well as a myriad of other arguments, including the fact that January 26^th falls during school holidays, proposals have been made to change the date that Australia Day is celebrated.  To date this has been unsuccessful, so on Wednesday I was able to partake in my very first Australia Day, full of barbies, flags, beach trips, beer and fireworks.

In order to cut down on antisocial behaviour, alcohol could only be consumed within designated zones during the Perth Australia Day fireworks extravaganza.  Additionally, alcohol consumption within these zones was restricted to a two hour period between 6:30 – 8:30 PM.  Adults over the age of 18 were permitted one bottle of wine, one six pack of beer, or one six pack of premixed drinks (per person).  Yes, you did read that correctly.  It was considered perfectly legal to consume one beer every twenty minutes for two hours, in a public, outdoor space.  And please don’t forget that the first barbie I spotted was at 7:00 AM so some people had been drinking for many hours before 6:30 PM rolled around.  Maybe H and I are getting old, but while we could see how one can easily drink three beers in an hour, maintaining that pace to consume an additional three beers within the next hour seemed a bit extreme to us.  We haven’t yet taken to heart the Aussie mantra I learned from a very drunk middle aged man during a free (and copious) tasting of very nice wine at a boutique vineyard in the Margaret River: “Work is for work and alcohol is to get pissed.”

How Was Your Weekend?

After almost a year in Perth, I’m starting to notice a trend in typical responses to the recurring Monday morning question of “how was your weekend?”  Please tell me if there is anywhere else in the world (apart from college campuses) where the responses would be as aligned towards over imbibing and hangovers as today’s responses were to my polite queries about my colleagues’ weekends.  Keep in mind that the average age of my colleagues is closer to 40 than 30…

• “Well, I had a few too many beers on Friday so I spent the rest of the weekend recovering, but you know, it was all in good fun.”

• “I got totally pissed on Saturday and boy was Sunday tough.  It was worth it though, Saturday was great!”

• “Saturday afternoon we had a barbi in the park and you know, after a few beers, I really couldn’t be bothered watching the kids for the rest of the weekend.  You know it’s tough keeping up with them all day when you’ve had a few too many.”

• “I hit the Coronas a bit too hard but what else are you going to do on a hot day?”

• “I was planning on going to Rotto (a local island) for the weekend but after Friday night’s happy hour, I couldn’t make the Saturday morning ferry.”

One of the few exceptions to the above was the head of my group who declared that she had, “found an amazing sounding diet pill from an infomercial over the weekend but then felt a bit like a drug dealer when she went out and bought mass amounts of it to share with all of her friends.”

Oh Anonymous Colleagues, I could overlook your fondness for carrying and using pocket breathalysers, your penchant for wearing heavy wool coats and thick scarves in 20 degree Celsius winters, your love of abbreviating words and adding “o” and “y” endings, and perhaps even your love of meat pies at morning tea, but I’m starting to think that you all have a few roos loose in the top paddock.

And on a sidenote, how can my one other Anonymous American Colleague think I’m Canadian, especially almost a year of working with me?  Perhaps she needs to lay off the alcohol as well, eht?

Three Strikes, You're Out. It's a Sports Metaphor

H and I were flipping through TV channels last night after dinner and came across The Big Bang Theory’s Panty Piñata Polarization episode.  As I am generally entertained by Sheldon’s antics, I wasn’t surprised to find myself laughing hysterically about Sheldon’s three strikes of friendship.  Sheldon gives his friends a strike each time they fail to comply with his strict rules and regulations for comradeship and if one accrues three strikes within one year, one is required to take Sheldon’s class (in person or online) in order to restore one’s friendship with him.

In Panty Piñata Polarization, Penny gets banished by Sheldon after receiving her third strike, her second one of the evening:

• Strike One: Forwarding e-mail humor on March 18^th.

• Strike Two: Touching Sheldon’s food.

• Strike Three: Sitting in Sheldon’s spot on the couch.

While I think that the three strike system may be a bit harsh for use with friends, I feel that it may actually serve a good purpose for use with colleagues.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could banish colleagues from your vicinity if they accrued three strikes?  If I could banish my officemate after three strikes, I would have sent him packing this morning.

• Strike One: Engaging in a loud, two hour phone conversation with his brother about a new wrestling video game after showing up at the office an hour later than the rest of our group.  You’re 37, grow-up or shut-up, at least while I’m on a conference call and actually working.

• Strike Two: Eating a can of tuna fish in our office.  To those who don’t know me, this may not seem so bad, but the scent of canned tuna fish is my number one olfactory pet peeve.  College dorm mates were forced to empty their tuna fish cans at alternative trash receptacles than the one outside my door and poor H can probably count on one hand the number of times he has consumed tuna fish since meeting me.  On Anonymous Officemate’s first day, while eating my lunch of chicken teriyaki at my desk, I asked if the smell bothered him and said that if he found that or any other future lunch smell offensive, he should tell me and I would endeavour to eat elsewhere.  I also politely informed him that he should feel free to eat whatever he wished in our office, except for tuna fish. 

• Strike Three: Leaving aforementioned not fully finished can of tuna fish in the trashcan in our office overnight, with the door locked and windows closed so the cleaning crew couldn’t empty the garbage.  Let’s just say that was not a pleasant smell to encounter at 8 o’clock this morning, even if I was a fan of chicken of the sea.

Farewell, goodbye, auf wiedersehen, adieu, Anonymous Officemate, I have hereby banished you, imaginarily at least.

I overlooked your incessant weight conscious chatter (which fruits have the lowest calories, your need to purchase new bathroom scales (yes, plural and yes, for one bathroom), how you burn more calories running than swimming, your preference for cheap low carb beer, and your girlfriend’s need to lose weight (told to her over the phone)).  I refrained from giving you a strike for your visible nipples and chest hair due to not wearing an undershirt.  I listened politely during your many hour monologues extolling the top restaurants in WA while you sat and ate your salads and drank your Diet Cokes.  I tried not to compare you to my former officemate with whom I shared enjoyable conversations and numerous high fat deserts, while extolling the theory of regular exercise but not the practice of it.  But now Anonymous Officemate, you’re banished.  Since I can’t actually throw you out of our shared office, I think I’ll bake up a storm this weekend, and enjoy eating my way through an abundance of deserts in our office next week.  Perhaps that will frighten you enough into leaving on your own accord.   

Hello My Name is Anonymous Expat and I Am Not an Alcoholic

Today I met with my manager (M) for my full-year review.  It was going well, with good feedback, high ratings, and great ideas for next year when to wrap up the discussion, M asked how I’m doing in Australia as a ‘work widow.’  He asked if I have a good support network here and wanted to make sure that I’m not keeping company with a bottle of gin?!?

Maybe this is a weird Aussie way to show interest in employees’ personal lives?  Maybe I should have said yes, but it’s not my husband’s work / life balance that drives me to drink, but my own poor work / life balance due to the ridiculous hours my group is demanded to work.  Perhaps that would have gotten me some time off?

I’m just trying to figure out why M would ever think that unless it was just him being awkward talking about something not work related.  Especially as I:

• Didn’t put forth as a safety share what a good idea pocket breathalyzers are to check whether or not you should be driving home from after work drinks (as another manager in my group actually suggested).
• Didn’t attend the group holiday party where I was told that all of my colleagues drank near their body weights in cheap tequila and danced on the pool table by the bar en masse, in front of the company CFO.
•  Have never come to work hung over or smelling of alcohol (per some Australian colleagues).  Actually, I have never even been hung over in Australia.
• Haven’t come back pissed (aka drunk) from a work lunch with external participants (per some Australian managers).
• Never have more than one or two beers at work happy hours.  Clearly if I don't drink in excess with my coworkers on a weekly basis, it must mean that I drink in excess by myself because no one in WA can drink in moderation.

Maybe you’ve been watching too many episodes of Packed to the Rafters M but my name is Anonymous Expat and I am not an alcoholic.  And if I was, my drink of choice certainly wouldn’t be gin.

Bottoms Up for Classiness

Sometimes Western Australia is just so classy that I don’t know what to do with myself.  Take this conversation I recently overheard at my office for example:

M talking to A, a colleague who had just returned after a year of maternity leave, “So, what kind of birth did you have?”

A, “It was totally natural.”

M, “Wow, you’re brave.”

A, “Actually, I just got to the hospital too late for an epidural, I was begging the doctors for one.”

M, “Why were you so late, was it a quick labor?”

A, “No, my husband was drunk.”

Apparently the beer was just too tempting to A’s husband, despite her being nine months pregnant and bursting to give birth.

I told H about this conversation when I got home from work that day and he told me that I had already told him the story.  Impossible I told him, I had just overheard the conversation a couple of hours ago and I hadn’t talked to him since then.

Turns out H had heard a similar story at work, from yet another Western Australian colleague.  This guy was wondering if his wife had the right to be angry at him when he broke her no drinking during the last two weeks of her pregnancy rule.  He went out and got drunk one night during this period but she didn’t go into labor so he thought no harm was done.  She on the other hand felt just a little bit differently… 

When Life Sometimes Feels Like Fiction

Last night, H and I went for drinks with a few of H's colleagues.  Sometimes I wonder where the hell I am, not just geographically speaking.

My first pint of beer was accompanied by the following conversation:

B, "I'm going to Duri* (Indonesia) for days off to visit my boyfriend but he'll be working."

Me, "What is there to do there?"

R, "Drink cheap beer and hire prostitutes."

B, "Well, the prostitutes won't do me much good." (B's a woman)

R, "But you can hire them to do things for you, like paint your toenails."

*Duri is an oil town in Indonesia in the middle of nowhere.  Travel sites say, "There's no reason to visit Duri except for business."  Traveling from a reasonably first world country to Duri on your time off requires real devotion.  Often outside women are viewed as unwanted "competition" by the local umm..talent.  

Next conversation (still during pint one):

Me, "Hey, T, nice to see you.  How are you?"

T, "I'm doing well, just got back from the rig a couple of days ago."

Me, "It must be nice to be back."

T, "Not really, they had great food there.  All you can eat ice cream, oysters, and one night they served kangaroo, it was incredible."

Note, T is not Australian, and honestly who would trust seafood cooked by a man with marginal hygiene that more likely than not has spent some time as a ward of her majesty's correctional institutions.  

By this point, I was in need of another pint.

R, "Have you been to a cricket match yet?"

Me, "No but I'm looking forward to experiencing that unique cultural phenomenon.  As Bill Bryson says In a Sunburned Country, in what other sport can you dress in white from head to toe and end the game just as clean as you started it?"

R, "It's great fun, you sit in your blow-up pool all day drinking overpriced beer and eating meat pies and occasionally glance over at the game."

Me, "Wait, did you say blow-up pools?"

R, "Yeah, everyone in the lawn area brings them."

(Break for me to physically close my gaping jaw.)

R, "So you heard I got transferred to Saudi Arabia?  I'm trying to figure out what I can do to be barred from entering the country.  I'm thinking that maybe I'll bring in a load of pornography."

H, "Nah, they'll just confiscate it (and be silently thanking you for providing it)."

R, "Maybe I'll get fake breasts, they won't let a lady man in."

Me, "I think a quick trip to Israel to get your passport stamped would be easier."

After a visit to the bar, for another round, we started talking about R's time in Oman when he got invited to a camel race in the middle of the desert.

H, "You know camel racing has changed a lot.  They don't have child jockeys anymore, they've been replaced by robots."

R, "Yeah, people were putting up a big fuss that all these kids were stolen and forced to work in dangerous conditions for little if any pay."

S, "The kids weren't stolen, they were bought."

H, "But now it's more of a Land Cruiser race than a camel race because all the owners all race beside their camels to control their robots with remotes and they all try to cut off and distract the other drivers to make them drop their remotes."

Where am I and is this the real world or some kind of backwards flushing toilet alternate universe?

Australia is Awesome

First thing this morning, my boss (M) and I got an urgent request to review a model. The requestor (L) came to discuss what he needed and M and I got to work. For hours we sat poring over cell after cell in a 100 gig spreadsheet looking for errors. Six hours into working without a break, L started to call. M decided to ignore it and keep working. Every 20 minutes the phone rang with the same number and then at 4:00 PM an e-mail came through from L:

Just wanted to see if you had a chance to review the model yet. I need the updated version ASAP.

Thanks,

L

M's response?

Sorry just got back from lunch. Got a little delayed with some extra rounds of beer. Opening model now.

L's response? Silence, confusion and a little bewilderment

L's not Australian, nor is he from a part of the world familiar with sarcasm. L was grateful to receive the updated model but he was not grateful enough to buy us a real round of beer or a much delayed lunch. As global as the world gets these days, some cultures still don't understand that I mean the obvious conclusion when I say the exact opposite.

Spare Change?

Tonight as I was walking home from work, I passed an inebriated older man asking passerby in the street for change. As I crossed the street to pass him, he approached a teenage girl and asked her for spare change. She replied, very sympathetically,

“I’m sorry sir, I don’t have any change. Why, are you hungry?”

His response? “No, I want a beer.”

And instead of responding that she was sorry she couldn’t help, she reached into her purse, pulled out her wallet, and handed him a bill. Given that in Australia, coins are used for all currency denominations below A$5, she had to have contributed at least A$5 towards the purchase of this man’s beer.

I guess in Australia, honesty can help get you drunk.

Do You Know What Time It Is?

Today I got into my car at 2:30 PM, switched on the radio, and learned that it was almost “Beer O’Clock.” I’m looking forward to my first Friday at work, which will be next week, to learn if this is really true for all or just a select group of unemployed or 37.5 hour work week employed Western Australians. Stay tuned.