Socceroos

When somebody you have never met says, “Hi, how are you” and sounds like they genuinely mean it, it really throws you off balance. You don’t expect it, you expect maybe a hello and if it’s a shopkeeper you might expect a “can I help?” in Grumpy tones, but you definitely don’t expect them to care about your welfare and when it happens you will tend to reply with an “Uh…. I’m fine thanks…” and probably forget why you were talking to them in the first place. Now imagine that everyone around you is like that, every time you walk into a shop people say “How you going?” or something along those lines and they really do mean it. You are Imagining Australia. Let me put it to you in a different way: Yesterday I bought an Australian sim card for my new phone and find out that I need to ring the company to register it. No big deal, I phone the number provided and get a recording of a lady asking me questions. Now In Britain the recordings are generally along the lines of “Hello, you have reached a monotone recording, please press 1 to be put on hold indefinitely, please press 2 to be cut off…” and so on. In Australia even the recording lady sounds really sociable, she asks you questions that you have to say yes or no out loud to and if she doesn’t recognise what you’ve said then she comes out with “I’m really sorry, I didn’t quite catch that, I was just asking if you want to register the phone to yourself” and she really does sound apologetic. Anyway eventually I get through to an operator and on top of registering my sim card the girl on the other end is actually talking to me socially, I mean asking me about what I’m going to be up to in Australia, what it’s like in England, what I’ve seen and all kinds of things. I mean I actually had a 10-minute conversation with a customer service rep as though I’d just met her down the pub or something. If you are Australian and reading this then you probably think it’s normal, but in England it’s a struggle to even talk to a customer service rep, let alone get them to do what you phoned up for before being put on hold so you can talk to somebody else and say everything you’ve just said and still finding out you aren’t talking to the right department and then finally being cut off and having to start again.

The Jetlag is what’s really hitting me at the moment; I’m only really starting to balance out, a typical day involved waking up at 2AM, not being able to sleep till 5, then getting up at about 9 and having breakfast, then feeling sick because it was 1AM as far as my body was concerned and I never get up at 1AM to eat Chinese food (I was in Hong Kong at the time). Then, lunch and more feeling sick, as I don’t generally get up at 4 or 5 AM to eat more Chinese food, in the evening it’s time for complete exhaustion and collapsing in bed at 10, then waking up at 1am (Hong Kong time) with my body angrily demanding to know what exactly it was I thought I was doing. Since I’ve reached Australia it’s been a little better, I get up at about 6am and go for a run (it just seemed right) and I don’t feel sick after breakfast anymore but I’m still getting exhausted at about 1 in the afternoon and need a power nap, which really doesn’t help.

In other news Australia qualified for the world cup for the first time in 31 years earlier, beating Uruguay in Penalties. Now let me tell you about an Australian game of “soccer”. It mostly involves Physically running into whoever has the ball and elbowing them in the eyes until they relinquish it, it then involves power hoofing it in the direction of either goal, usually ending up somewhere in the crowd. Following this is extremely loud cheering and some waving of blow up kangaroos. Oh and the Australian national team are called the “Socceroos” which is all very fetching until you realise that being called a Socceroo anywhere that isn’t Australia probably just means that you play for the local Disabled children’s team. Something that’s really quite funny about Australian soccer is the commentators, a lot of them are Aussie rules commentators and only do the football when it’s needed. As such, it seems that they have a really hazy idea on what aspects of soccer to actually get excited about, on top of this they are extremely biased toward the Australian team. A typical comment I remember was:
“And Stevens (probably) is making a real run up the wing! He’s reached the Touchline! AND IT’S HALF TIME!”
Not a clue as for what he meant by touchline, but it’s clear from this that the half time whistle was the most exciting aspect of the game so far, apart from the completely fair tackle where Aussie player number 4 almost broke somebodies legs. Anyway it’s late and I’m off to bed so that I can wake up several times in the night because it’s not time for sleep yet in England, and then I shall be awoken at 6 AM or so by the cockatoo that has taken residence in the garden.

Cheers - Walexei