Kids

[nirgal]

It's so cool when they grow up :) and you see bits of yourself that come through it all :p
I e-mailde Miss about getting over to Uluru (ayers Rock) the spiritual heart of Australian Aborigeonese. Turns out she just got back from there... watched it change colors as the sun rose, then took a helicopter flight over th Olgas (Kata Tjuta) at sunset :).... I want to do that!

Uluru is sacred to women
Kata Tjuta is the male equivilant

.....dreamtime

[HoneySuckleBlue]

I can't wait to see that in mine, that's so cool she thinks like you:)

[7river]

thats great!

i get hints of this already. i'm trying to prepare for a big anti-uncle ron movement but so far i am gaining popularity...hehe its the friends. they think i'm cool so amanda gives in:)...well sometimes i'm "gay" but i think it is seeping in...........wow that is a cool beetle just landed on my desk....i should get screens:)

[luvndrumn]

Y'know, parenting is a curious thing.

You are uber dope all the way through pre-pubescence. Then they hit the teens and you become nothing more than brain stem. Damn good thing breathing is involuntary or your ass would be dead. Then twenty-something comes along and the 'rents begin to start to almost make sense. By thirty, you're a f(@#ing noble prize winning, rocket scientist, poet laureate, nuklur fizzisyst, double not spy!

Gee. And all this time, I just thought I was Dad.;)

Heh heh heh.:)

[nirgal]

It's a wonder we survived this long, eh?

In those teen years, reminding them now and then that you were that age and have done everything they might think of and more, and it wasn't that long ago... sinks in a little tiny bit ;)

Miss has the travel adventure bug, big time:) Not much into the spiritual, yet, mom and stepdad were'nt tuned that way..... but I bet it's there

[nirgal]

... and I got some advice on what to wear to an Aussie weddin'...
http://media5.hypernet.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=001666

Shorts, knee socks, Roman sandles, Tux jacket :p

[mariecstasy]

You Know, I Already See So Many Pieces Of Me In Arianna. Its A Really Cool Thing.

And I Have Realized That I Am More Like My Father Then Any Of My Parents. He And I Were Talking About That Last Night. Its Awesome When You Grow Up And Think How Lucky You Are To Have The Parents That You Do!!!!!
Nirgal. Shes A Lucky Girl:)

[HoneySuckleBlue]

Niiice, oh you'll be stylin' there;) !!

I loove the way they talk!

[nirgal]

I showed her that page, and she said ~~~HAHAHA! Okay so your mates are leading u astray me thinks! All the Aussie blokes will be wearing stubby shorts and a blue "wife-beater" singlet! Oh and of course thongs :) But Kris will be wearing a bowtie as he's the groom :) ~~

http://www2.ecentral.com/members/tdankers/uluru.jpg

She's been all over the world already, and a lot of the places are energy type centers, I think she's drawn to them but not aware of what it is...... I want to be around her more.... she's a sweety :)

[HoneySuckleBlue]

A bowtie and wife beater...man I can't wait to see the pictures!

Where are energy centers? I'm new to all this stuff.

I'm so happy for you, this is going to be an amazing trip!

[FunkyPhreshMama]

i can tell my little girl is gonna be just like me and she is only 5. unless a lot changes, she is independant and hard headed just like mommy. can't beleive she is starting school this year........................



kids r awesome!!

[HoneySuckleBlue]

My five year old is just like her daddy. That's so cool we can be happy together, she starts kindergarden this fall too:) is she excited? Mine can't wait.

(...and she lost her first tooth two days ago:D )

[nirgal]

:) ....then you get the teen years ;)



I got another Dingo ism :D

balls!!! tux??? wassat? one of them penguin suits! Get real!!! Gregs talkin about the middle of flamin SUMMER mates!! the poor buggar will keel over with heat exhaustion!! mmmm I see the plot now... I see make him wear the flamin tux keel over with heat stroke then fill him up constantly at each town along the east coast... aahhh now theres a plan! The missus's will have to keep his missus distracted somehow cause you know how ornery they can get when a fellas with his mates gettin over a dose of heat through the ministrations of the Amber Fluid Rx

Tell young Miss Ive never beat me missus!! not once even come near it!!! but I wear me singlet religiously tis a true joy a real companion thing been through thick and thin with me singlet I have!! tis the epitome of Aussiness it is! fair dinkum!

And tell her Kris will NEVER EVER EVER NEVER NO WAY WILL HE EVER live it down if he wears a bow flamin tie!!! NOPE!!! cant be done in in Aussie no flamin way mate! strewth what next? eh? she'll be bannin the ute next I bet! have ladieda wines and finger tucker instead of meat pies and sauce?! gawd what sorta fair dinkum nupshuls is that for an Aussie? eh I ask yer!

Groomsmen wear a tux?... man at least yer safe!! Father of the Groom or Bride means your not a groomsman... You little ripper!!... smile all the way to the keg they are gonna have a keg arent they? on the back of the ute right? gawd help us when yer post the pics!!

Compared to your $$$ mate our property is dirt cheep even on the coast! Id suggest you bring along a nice healthy wad and if that east coast mob dont get it outta yer in shouts at the nearest rubbity plonk it down on a nice bit of coastal Aussie

So Im deeply miffed yet again... seems Im to be left in the wings again whilst a forumite hits our fair shores... yous east coasters! flamin yobbos!! ah well no worries get to keep the glorious and perfek Wait Awhile to our good selfs for a wee while longer...

Was thinkin if yous blokes let Greg loose to travel over here who knows what stories he woould tell when he lobbed up back home! We could end up with a right royal invasion of Yanks down this way... no thats fine mates have fun dont worry about little ol me way over here in Wait Awhile she'll be right mates no worries


Rotflmao!!

[Moominpappa]

Nirgal,


Can I suggest you get in some preparation for the Aussie mindset by trying to pick up a copy of Billy Connolly's world tour of Australia - hopefully it's available in the states as the BBC sells everything off. For a man reknown for his use of the F-word, he is both the nearest thing I know to a renaissance man and is the only human being I laugh at, in the nicest possible way, just by seeing his face. As a former welder in the Glasgow shipyards he explores the Sydney harbour bridge and Opera House with the same child-like enthusiasm as he shows when he communes with nature in some of the most spiritual places in Australia. He's very deeply into aboriginal art but minutely observes the daily routines\habits and compromises that are part of the human condition.

And I must fess up - despite the bad language, Billy has been a good old standby for those nights when the kids are ill and can't sleep, and want to snuggle on the sofa with something on the telly - our youngest one actually looks forward to vomiting because he knows what the reward will be - (where did we go wrong!!!). Otherwise it doesn't seem to have had a detrimental effect - and the oldest, (20), thinks it's really :cool: cool that his parents let him watch Billy Connolly from an early age.

As Billy says - there is no such thing as bad language - only bad use of good language. They won't say f**ked but they will say redundant. But when you're redundant you're f**ked.:p

That doesn't really give a taste of what the show is like, but as he says at the end of one of his live shows when people ask you what the show was like,
you tell then that you laughed your arse off, and then when they ask you for a few of the jokes, you'll just look blank and say, well you had to be there. I'm just hoping that's how my kids view me and Moominmamma as parents.

[nirgal]

Billy Conolloy is a familliar name.... I think M (my better) nows his stuff, I'm not much of one for the tv :p But I'll look it up.

Have you read In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson... he captures it pretty well.... I love the way they use language, And the rhyming slang, which I believed originated somewhere around London, has developed in it's own direction.

I've got an article on "Piss Take" culture, that I found interesting, I could post, sort of gets to the heart of Aussie maleness :)

[Moominpappa]

Cockney rhyming slang guv'nor - the argot\patois\secret code of the criminal underclass who lived in the gutter slums of the East End of London from the 17th century onwards. As these were the principal export to Australia when the colony's were found, and once you completed your sentence you had to pay for your passage back to the UK, its not suprising that many of them stayed on.

Most of it has become parodied nowadays. Most people in the UK will trot out Apple and Pears, (stairs), Trouble and strife (wife), jamjar (car) as well as the more common rude ones, Merchant Banker (W**ker) and doing a pony=pony & trap = crap.

As the slang evolved, the eventual word used might well be three or four steps away from the original rhyming couplet. A popular word for someone who is an upper class twit with lots of money, a supercillious manner and no brains is a berk. That comes from the Cockney slang, and is a shortened reference to the Ladies and Gentlemen of the Berkshire Hunt, which rhymes with a more earthy word for such a person.

True Cockneys are born within earhot of the bells of Bow, a district that marked the eastern edge of the city of London before it descended into marshland and wharfs. There were a number of islands jutting out into the Thames at this point which would later form the basis of the great docks that serviced the British Empire. One of which, the Isle of Dogs, was where my mother was born in 1934 and wher she lived until she was evacuated in 1939 to escape the air-raids, moving first to Oxford and then Norwich. There she met my Dad, got married, and had first my sister, then me. In 1963, the country came grinding to a halt for nearly six months, (as I posted in the earliest memory thread), and things got fairly desperate for my mum and dad as there was very little money coming in. Even after the snow started to melt, they wanted to move someone warmer, so they applied to Australia House in London for what was called £10 assisted passage trips. For a contribution of £10, probably then about two weeks wages, the Australian government would pay all the other emigration expenses to get individuals who had skills that were in short supply, and their famillies to Australia. There was probably a very racist policy going on, as they were looking for white Europeans to bulk up the population.

Tens of thousands took those passages during the fifties and sixties. Many found they didn't like the climate, there were frequently cases where qualifications had been over-stated or down-right falsified to get the passage and so jobs were either poorly done or the individual added to the unemployment bill. Some just got plain home-sick. This was the generation that engrained the notion\stereotype of the whinging pom in the Australian pysche.

For whatever reason, my parents decided not to go. Even now, I wonder how life would have worked out of I was sitting typing this in Wolla-Wonga instead of Norwich.

And I quite understand the reluctance to TV watch - its nowhere near as interactive as the net. I only wish I could stream video on this machine - there's a wood-carving sanctuary that I would love you to see as well as lots of aboriginal art. He also spends sometime being shown around a reproduction of Captain Cook's ship, The Discovery, in which Cook circumnavigated the world map-making and incidentally claiming Australia for His Britannic Majesty, King George - the same fat fool that was losing thirteen colonies in a pointless war elsewhere in the world. The original Discovery was a converted collier designed for coastal trading around the UK - Cook took her round the world including the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn. That must have taken some seamanship. And not a Yankee Clipper Captain aboard!