Quote - well, regrettably not everyone is fortunate enough to have been born in the USA, and to speak english as a first language, and to experience the great education system enjoyed by US-ians chokes a bit on that part

rendo' is an INTERNATIONAL site and the Internet is an INTERNATIONAL medium if you care to remember....

gets off soapbox and walks off muttering darkly about ethnocentric US-ians who think they own the whole damm place... and don't even get me started about US-ians using their State abbreviations and expecting the rest of the world to know where the frack you're from... mutter mutter mutter

 

I've had a number of Aussie-asians as friends in my lifetime.  In fact, one family was from Perth.  I was fascinated to discover that W.A.-asians and East Coast Aussie-asians don't particularly care much for each other.  One friend of mine who hailed from Sydney said something along the lines of 'he wouldn't care if all of W.A. fell off into the ocean' -- or words to that effect.

Years ago as a child a local TV station in my southern state carried Skippy the Bush Kangaroo as regular children's programming.  I can recall wondering why all of those people who lived in Florida had English accents.  The territory looked a lot like certain parts of Florida -- and the people in the show spoke with English accents.  But since coming to know a few Aussies in the intervening years, I eventually came to realize that they weren't from Florida.  In fact: they don't even have English accents.  I've also learned that the ancestors of all Aussies actually all came from a place called Botany Bay.  And a few others came from Van Diemen's Land.  IIRC, they changed the name to Tasmania..........out of embarassment...........or something.

One of my Aussie friends was kind enough to give me a world map as a gift.  It's a large map, meant to be stuck to your wall.  It's a little different from most other world maps that I've seen.......it features a large South Arrow (as distiguished from a North Arrow).  And it has the continent of Australia shown near the top of the world.

I suppose that it's all a matter of one's point of view.  Hey.......I even like the concept of a South Arrow displayed prominently on the map.  Because as we all know, deep southerners are great people.  And since Australis translates as "The South Land" -- I suppose that the people down there have got to have something to recommend them.  To say otherwise would be to go against nature.

One thing that I'm still not sure about, though -- do y'all speak English down there?  Just like we do?  I'll have to be sure to ask my Aussie friends about that the next time that I see them..........

At least one of our mods here claims to be from someplace called the UK.  I wonder if they speak English there?

Something To Do At 3:00AM