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

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…