Discoveries

This has been a week more of discoveries than actual events, though there have been some of those as well. Throughout the last week I have found things out about Australia which are interesting and, at times, unbelievable. It just goes to show what a fascinating country this really is.

But first to the events of the past week, the first of which was the raising of a giant Christmas Tree in Canberra. This large, and I'm sure, artificial, tree stands right in front of the Legislative Building. It is lit up by many small Christmas lights and there are even presents, or more accurately, large gift-wrapped boxes, underneath. I tried to get a picture, but none turned out well. I'll have to use my mini tripod to get a good night shot.

On Monday, to finish off the year, the local Ukrainian Scout group had an "apel'", which translates to "gathering". There was a brief mustering, where I was the sergeant giving the orders, followed by an excellent barbeque. I brought some porkchops to be cooked and they turned out alright. That's it for scouting until February except for camp outside Orange, NSW later on this month. I'll have more on that during a later post.

I've taken to watching Australian parliamentary debates (Question Time in the House of Representatives) on the internet via the Parliament House website, http://www.aph.gov.au/. I must say that it is very entertaining if for no other reason than the choler to which the MPs whip themselves up. They tend to shout extensively and use colourful metaphors to describe their opponents. It was doubly interesting for me lately because some of the debates surrounded the government's proposal to buy a laptop for every secondary school student in Australia, a move the opposition opposes, if only out of a contrarian expectation of the public. The program is called either Computers in Schools or Computers for Schools, which is the name of a federal program my mom administers. Unfortunately, Parliament has risen for the summer and I shall have to find somehow else to amuse me-sen (Yorkshire for "myself").

I have been following not only Australian politics, but Canadian politics as well which is also providing no end of entertainment. I was rather hoping for a change in government or an election. Maybe Stephen Harper has played his cards right, though, as the coalition seems to be imploding which is probably what he was counting on. I can only hope that the coalition gets its act together by budget day.

It's not as hot down here as I thought it would be. Temperatures are lingering around the mid 20s, and I was expecting at least 30C by now. Today it barely reached 20 and rained wombats and koalas, my Australian equivalent for cats and dogs. It doesn't feel like a proper Australian summer. It has, however, caused some leaking in Fenner Hall, though not anywhere near my room, thank Fortuna.

Today, apparently, there was also an earthquake in the region that was felt up to 60km away. The quake measured 1.0 on the Richter Scale, but I think 2.0 is about the threshold for anyone actually feeling it. I guess we can all go about our business as though nothing had happened, because nothing really has happened.

The first discover this week was that on of my favourite book, In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson, goes under the title Down Under Down Under. Why the title would need to be changed is beyond me since most Australians would understand the sunburned country reference; it comes from a poem but is spelled "sunburnt country". The difference is that Down Under was published in the UK so it uses British spellings and turns of phrase. In a Sunburned Country uses American spellings and slang by contrast. The whole book is interesting but I am particularly taken by the chapter on Canberra, not only because I live there but because Fenner Hall is across the street from the Rex Hotel, where Bill Bryson stayed. He noted, among much else that Canberra should have one of the following mottoes: "Gateway to Everywhere Else", "Why Wait for Death?" or "There's Nothing to It!" To these I would add my own suggestions: "It's not that Bad", "It's not as Bad as You Think" and, my favourite, "Where Fun Comes to Die".

A few days ago, while working at ACTTAB, I found me-sen thinking that I should at least know how the odds are calculated for bets. I had always assumed that the odds are set by a bunch of guys sitting in a room, poring over thousands of statistics, and coming up with the odds. Actually, the odds are set by the betters themselves in a way. A horse's odds change depending on the number of people betting on it; the more people betting, the better the odds, the lower the payout. The money collected goes into a pool, there is a win/place pool, a trifecta pool, a quinella pool, and so on and those who win get a percentage of the pool money. It sounds complicated but once you see the equation, which only has 3 characters, it has a kind of elegant simplicity. If nothing else, at least I know better how things are done on the tracks.

I mentioned earlier that Australia is an interesting country and my last 2 discoveries this week relate to that. The first was the realization that there are only 2 paved roads leading into the state of Western Australia; one from the Northern Territory and one from South Australia. Western Australia, you have to understand is the largest state (taking up 1/3 of the country's size) and one of the most prosperous states. Yet, due to Australia's size (it is the 6th largest country behind Russia, Canada, China, the USA and Brazil) and the concentration of its population in a few large cities , there is little need for an extensive paved road network. Amazingly, the roads themselves, the Great Northern Highway and the Eyre Highway, are 1 732km apart! To put that into perspective, that is roughly the same distance between Ottawa and St. John's. Can you imagine crossing such a distance in a First World country without ever seeing another soul or crossing a paved road? It really does boggle the mind.

The second discovery was that Australia is considered part of the "Economic North" and "Economic West". This is a designation to merely say that Australia is a part of the First World, like Canada, the USA and western Europe. It is comical though since Australia is about as far away from those cardinal directions as you can get; only New Zealand, Chile and Argentina extend further south. It is also well into the eastern reaches of the Eastern Hemisphere making the "western" designation equally unintuitive. However, in a land of such striking contrasts, perhaps it is not that surprising that Australia finds itself in such a bizarre, and contradictory, position.