Angels and Demons or the Antipodean Halloween Special

There are several scary events, mostly scholastic, that coincide with the season of All Hallows Eve. Halloween has always been one of my favourite celebrations because of the free candy and somehow it's never quite what you imagine or remember. Generally nothing scary happens, even though we trick ourselves into thinking it does (just think of the Halloween series of horror movies), and we all get together to dress up and share a good laugh. Mostly, though, it's about getting the sweet stuff at a stranger's expense. At what other time would you be able to walk up to another person's home while masked and disturb them in the middle of the night and not have the police called on you? Despite Halloween being associated with evil, the word "hallow" actually means "holy" and is the precursor to All Saints Day (Nov. 1) and All Souls Day (Nov. 2). If anything, Halloween should be about angels, not demons. Do you see what I did there? How witty.

Australians don't celebrate Halloween in any meaningful sense and I think the country is much impoverished culturally because of it. For one thing, Halloween serves as a convenient break in the holidays leading up to Christmas. In major department stores Christmas decorations are already in place which I think is quite affronting. People in North American complain when Christmas decorations go up in mid-November but here they go up at the beginning or middle of October. The reason? There are no major holidays between September and Christmas, with the possible exception of the Melbourne Cup but there are no decorations for that. If Australia got Halloween then the Christmas decorations wouldn't go up until November at least. Or Australians could do something for the Melbourne Cup. Whatever the case, I think we can all agree that any time before November is far too early for Christmas decorations.

In the scary news, the school year has just ended with my official class on Thursday; I have a review class for Advanced International Law this Wednesday. While you may think this would be celebratory in nature, it is quite the reverse. As Bart Simpson once pointed out in a Halloween Special, "After all, what's scarier than having to go to school?" After the teaching comes the scariest part of all --- the exams! Even if you prepare fully, you never quite shake the feeling that you won't be able to cope once the exam begins. Luckily I only have 2 exams this semester but Commonwealth Constitutional Law is a difficult subject and no matter how much I prepare, I don't think I'll be calm going in.

At trivia on Tuesday, I had a rather good run of luck. Every 10 questions there is something called a spot question wherein a question is asked and the first person to run up with the correct answer written down wins a free jug of whatever drink they choose. The first spot question was "Place-Ville-Marie is an important landmark in which city?" I was writing down the answer (Montreal) even before the question was finished. Today someone remarked how difficult that question would be if you're not from Canada to which I would agree. Nevertheless, I had won a free jug for my team and out of respect for me, they allowed me to get some soft drink. The next spot question asked who had a number of hits in various decades since the 1960s. I wasn't the first person up but I was the first person up with the correct answer, which was Cher. This time, out of respect for my teammates, I got a jug of Heineken. I was riding on a high the rest of the game; we finished 3rd which doesn't even get us a prize.

Yesterday, Tony, a friend of mine, convinced me to go see a movie with him and 2 lady-friends of his. He had free movie passes to Greater Union, a cinema company like Cineplex Odeon, that were expiring on the 31st. There's only 1 Greater Union in Canberra so our selection was quite limited. More or less by default, the choice was Couples Retreat, a romantic comedy that turned out much funnier than I expected. It's about a couple who need couple's therapy at a resort and convince 3 other couples to join them to get a group rate; hilarity ensues. Afterwards we had a spirited discussion on accents. Tony claimed that he spoke Chinese without an accent which I replied was a fundamental impossibility; as long as there are 2 people speaking a language there are accents. In a fundamental way, there are as many accents to a language as there are speakers because intonation, pronunciation and vocabulary are unique to all of us and how we recognize each others' voices. According to Tony, he speaks a form of Chinese called Standard Chinese which is an artificial way of speaking because the intonations and pronunciations have been dictated by a central body rather than by linguistic evolution. I felt constrained to point out that because it is a different way of speaking to another way, it is an accent. Anyway, the matter was not resolved but I still think I'm right.

I read an interesting statistic on the CBC website that said there are 2.8 million Canadian citizens abroad for the long-term (greater than 1 year). That's nearly 10% of the population of Canada and it's a group to which I proudly belong. Going by the list, Australia is the 4th largest home for Canadians outside Canada but I haven't met many here. I'm just glad to be part of such a large minority. I wonder if we qualify as visible?

Lastly, some of you pointed out that in my previous post I used "desert" when I should have used "dessert". I will wriggle out of this one by saying that I was using "desert" in its archaic form which means "something which is deserved", a sense preserved in the saying "just deserts". The "t" ending is also present in other words such as "impost" (something imposed) and "receipt" (something received).

Mwa ha, ha, ha! Boo!