Missing Articles

I am a grammar nerd. You should know this right away. I’m perplexed by a couple of missing articles here. I was already aware of the example involving the hospital. It’s a pretty well known phenomenon in Britain and its commonwealths. Here it’s, “I go to hospital” rather than, “I go to the hospital.” The article is missing. And the fact that I know the term for that word is why I am a grammar nerd.

There’s another one that bothers me. I’m currently applying for a job at the Gold Coast City Council, commonly referred to as “Council,” but not “the Council.” WHY!? I wonder aloud. But Theo is not a grammar nerd and doesn’t care, not even a little bit, just as you probably don’t. “I don’t know,” he says…”why?” (meaning why do you even care). I say, (completely incorrectly) “Because there’s nothing like that in American English…” (2 minute pause) “I thought of one!”

These are the silly mind puzzles I play with myself. There are examples in US English:

I go to school. (not really)
I go to church. (nope)

Theo chimes in:

I went to court. (he never did this either)
But this could cause one to go to jail, I suppose.

All these examples show an obvious trend. They are all public institutions! What is up with that? Does dropping the article give them more stature maybe? Or do people say them so much they decided for a shortcut by dropping the pesky article?

But then I continued to ponder and realized there are some examples that don’t fit this:

Let’s go to town. (if you live in the country)
I want to go home. (wherever that is)

Then I thought, well maybe you do this when there is just one of something in your life. Let’s say you do live in the country. The “town” you speak of is probably the nearest town. Even if you live in the city, you only generally have one home… one church, one school, etc. that you attend, at least.

So I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with that answer for now, but ‘going to hospital’ still bugs me.

Gold Coast Night Life

Theo and I haven't properly gone out once since we've gotten here. Mainly because we're "old" but also because we have no money. When we do go out on weekends (at least in KC), it was either a rugby function or salsa dancing. And since my power to persuade my husband to go salsa dancing diminishes over time, and since I have no idea if there's even a salsa club in the Gold Coast, we just don't even try. Maybe someday when I have the energy, and the ability to pretend I fit in with 18 year olds (which is the legal drinking age here), I'll try again. But in the meantime, we'll just live vicariously through others. After reading a wonderfully written account of our houseguest's recent night life experience, I don't feel so bad watching DVDs from the library and eating ice cream on Saturday nights. I think we're actually making the best decision. Give it a read and you'll see what I mean!

tubeflops

I thought I had a healthy appreciation of flip flops (or jandles, as my husband calls them) before I moved here. But I realized the other day while shopping that the Aussies take them to a whole other level here:



I'm not sure what occasion would warrant these... my toes are the first thing to get cold... and they're not comparable to those gloves with the fingers cut out. At least those have a purpose, but unless you are a monkey and grip things with your toes, I just don't understand.

Toilet Rooms

You may remember from my earlier post about our apartment that it is common here to have a floorplan allowing for a tiny separate room just for your toilet – I theorize this began as the British “Water Closet” (WC) since that’s about how big it is - the size of a closet, with a toilet in it. I call it the toilet room, for lack of a better term.

I was pretty neutral on this subject, originally thinking it was a little odd, but then concluding that it is helpful for avoiding certain smells or allowing for privacy when my husband and I need to use the bathroom for different things at the same time.

But its true value occurred to me one day when I was watching TV. It was actually an American show – they are ubiquitous on Aussie TV. I’m embarrassed to admit it was “The View,” a show I never really saw back home but due to my current extreme boredom circumstances, seemed interesting enough to watch. They were having one of their little discussions and somehow the subject of bathrooms came up. Whoopie Goldberg was saying how she refused to share bathrooms with men due to the male post-urination “shake” phenomena, which I was aware of but never gave much thought to. She was disgusted by the idea of that shake and the thought that any nearby bathroom objects could be subject to its resulting spray.

And then the light bulb came on for me. I now think the toilet room idea is genius. I also now regard the actual room with more disgust than before, but at least its effects are confined and innocent toothbrushes can remain safe.

Living Penniless

One of the nice things about shopping in Oz is the way they’ve eliminated the need for pennies. Here’s what I mean:



Rounding…a simple grade school concept given a noble duty of lightening everyone’s load. In Australia, they simply round up or down to the nearest 5 cents.

It’s not that I’m a penny-hater. Absolutely not. I grew up loving pennies in the US; not only because they were free money I could scavenge from my brother’s bedroom floor, but also because of what’s, or I should say, who's imprinted on them.

Before there was Michael Jackson or Michael Jordan, my first childhood crush was Abraham Lincoln… probably the first clue to my family that I was odd. I was born in the “Land of Lincoln,” learned about him in grade school (when I thought it was dreamily awesome that he freed the slaves; whether for political reasons or not -- I was too young to care -- still don’t) went to the budget movie theater in downtown Belleville named after him, knew that various local schools and streets were given his name, and several family trips were made so I could visit his grave in Springfield, Illinois. Creepy to some…I know.

But even though I have this affinity for the coin, I understand its burdensome quality. It seems that the men in my life, from my brother to my husband, hate pennies and refuse to use them. I’m the type of person to toss in a few pennies during a sale transaction to reduce the change I get back. But not my husband, no, not even to save himself from getting 97 cents back in change. I will even purposely pad my wallet with his discarded pennies so that I’m never in that situation.

But I don't have to worry about that anymore. It’s actually nice to not have a wallet that feels like a lead brick. I would even advocate for its elimination in the US. After all, I can still swoon over the 5 note.

Gecko Update

After a few days of living in Frida's shadow, only occasionally coming out to explore the quietest corner of the living room, our friend "Gary" the gecko has left the building. Tonight, he made a move toward the back door, silently signaling his wish to be free. So we opened the door for him and he quietly and quickly left us. Our little friend has moved on to bigger and better things, I am certain. There is now an eerie emptiness in the apartment, but we wish him all the best!

Doctor Visit

Yesterday, I accompanied Theo to see a doctor. I’ve been infinitely curious about the national health care system (Medicare). I want to see if all the “horror stories” you hear about socialized medicine in the American press are true.

Theo doesn’t have a regular doctor, so we stopped in to a couple of medical centers within walking distance to see how soon he could get in. We were able to conveniently make an appointment for the next day. Since it was his first visit at this particular office, he had to pay a small initial visit fee of $50, about 75% of which will be refunded by Medicare. Even though the doctor’s name was ominously “Joe Black,” he seemed nice and took good care of Theo. He ordered some CT scans, so we made an appointment for the next day at another nearby location. This visit was also covered by Medicare, with the “benefit assigned” totaling about $300. I’m not sure why they give you this information, but it’s certainly interesting because we’ve had similar scans done in the US. We know they cost my employer-provided health insurance company thousands of dollars, not hundreds. Why the extreme cost difference, I have no idea...

We’ll get the results in about 2 working days, when we’ll return to the doctor “Joe Black.” Hopefully his name is no indication of the impending test results.

Either way, I’m impressed so far and it’s been an extremely easy process.