The Australian Way.

Australia is very different to the rest of the world.

Most people would think we just CBF doing a very good job in cooking, cleaning, hygiene...anything, actually. But that's not true. We are very good cooks and cleaners and we are quite hygienic...well, most of us, anyway. But we actually live life instead of perfecting it.

There is no specific Australian "look" - we're a motley gang. We all look different and we all look beautiful. Have you ever been on morphthing.com and found that two faces morphed together sometimes looks prettier than the two seperate faces? Yeah, that's a bit like us. We keep getting prettier by the generation.

Just to clear things up:

Our school year goes from early February to mid December, with Easter break, Winter break, Spring break and Summer break. In that order. At the moment it's supposedly autumn. The weather is a bit psycho here.

We have two kinds of schools: government (aka public) and private. Government schools are funded and run by the government, and are not allowed (well, in theory) to be political or religious or biased in any other way. Government schools have very low fees that are supposedly voluntary. Private schools are independently owned and run and funded by churches and by school fees, which are very costly. Private schools are generally stricter and follow some kind of church or belief, and are sometimes single-sex. Most government schools do not offer boarding, wherelse most private schools do. If you have a scholarship in some public schools or you live outside of the Perth metrapolitan area and you are accepted into Perth Modern School, there is a special boarding house. Just to be more confusing, a private school here is exactly the same as a public school in England.

Kangaroos and koalas do not roam around suburban areas, and the only places you will actually see one is in the middle of god-knows-where or in a zoo. Seriously. Koalas don't even live in Western Australia, which is where I live, anyway.

SYDNEY IS NOT THE CAPITAL!!! The capital is Canberra, which is in the tiny territory called the Australian Capital Territory (ironically), or ACT which is in New South Wales near the Victorian border.

It is not *always* hot. In summer, the weather is about 20 degrees Celcius (68 farenheit) at night and can get up to 45 (113) or higher, but normally it's about 30 to 35 (86 to 95). In winter, nights can get as cold as 0 degrees (32), but it's normally around 8 or 10 (46.4 to 50). During the day, it's normally around 15 (59) but it can get as warm as 20 or 22 (68 or 71.6) or as cold as 11 or 12 (51.8 or (53.6). Well, that's in Perth, anyway, which has Mediterranian (however you spell that) weather. In some places the temperature is more stable throughout the year, but in central and north Australia the weather is a bit more extreme - the days are very hot and the nights are very cold. And it does snow here, contrary to popular belief, just not around where I live. In Tasmania, mostly, and the higher areas of Victoria and New South Wales. It even snowed in Brisbane, once, but that's quite rare, because it's in sunny Queensland. There's a big drought problem here, too, although it floods every now and again in Queensland and it's quite wet in Sydney sometimes - although Perth is very dry. At the moment, it's nighttime and cold, and I'm wearing autumn clothing, but tomorrow it might be really hot or even colder.

We don't all speak with an Australian accent, and not all of us exclaim 'Crikey!', as the late Steve Irwin famously did. Nearly the whole population are immigrants or descended from immigrants, and most speak two or three languages - the native language of both parents, and yes, sometimes that does mean you have to learn two languages - plus English. In theory, I should know four languages, because my mother knows Mandarin and Cantonese and my dad is Korean, but I'm just really good at English and really lousy at Chinese and Korean.

As I mentioned earlier, there aren't alot of Aboriginal people. They mostly live in remote towns, although some do live in the big cities. The majority of the population are actually mixed-race, and every country is probably represented in Australia. In Perth, there are lots of Chinese, Singaporean, Vietnamese, Indian, English and Middle Eastern (mostly Afghan) communities, with smaller Sri Lankan, Hong Kongnese, Korean, Italian, Polish, Malaysian and Taiwanese communities. It's a mixed bag, and there are lots of mixed-race people (not meaning to be rascist, I just don't know how else to describe them), especially in this Y generation.

We have Krispy Kreme and Starbucks and other American brands here, and some are popular and some are not. Actually, Starbucks wasn't really popular at all, so they closed down all the Australian branches. Gloria Jeans is much more popular. There are lots of big Australian brands here, mostly surf brands - Billabong, Roxy, Rusty, Quicksilver - and our big (expensive) department stores are Myer and David Jones. Most working class people shop at Woolworths, or "Woolies" as it is known, Target (which is pronnounced 'Tar-jay' here to make it sound more classy), IGA and Big W. There's a big emphasis on jeans here, and my favourite stores are Just Jeans and Jeanswest, and popular stores for teenagers are Jay Jays, which sell dirt cheap clothes, Diva, which sells dirt cheap jewellery, and Ice, which sells dirt cheap makeup. Most teenagers shop around shopping centres, but the most popular place to shop in Perth is Murray Street Mall, Carillion City and Hay Street Mall, which are all in the middle of the city and connected by plazas that are also full of shops. London Square, which is nearby the malls as well, is really popular for looking like a rennaisance European town, but there aren't very good shops there. We don't have Wall-Mart here, and we're not allowed to buy guns. Tobacco and alcahol is illegal until your eighteen. We have IKEA here as well, and it's enormous - it used to be really big but they replaced it with an even bigger complex.

Aussie terms:

Australian - Aussie
Mosquito - mozzie
Barbeque - barbie
Afternoon - arvo
Kilograms - kilos or kayjees
Pullover - jumper
Swimming costume - bathers or cossie
Englishman - pom
A not-very-nice Englishman - pommy bastard
Bottle of beer - stubbie
Woman/Girl - sheila or lass
Man/Boy - bloke or lad
Fries - Hot Chips
Crisps - Chips
Old car - old bomb
Good day - G'day
Good night - G'night
Kangaroo - roo
Redhead - ranga
Airhead - Froot Loop
Breakfast - brekky

and the list goes on.

I cbf typing anymore. Goodnight.