I'm an Aussie, and I'm OK

I had my citizenship exam a few days ago, and I must say I was a bit nervous. So, if I didn't pass would they throw me out of the country? Sentence me to 3 years of watching cricket and eating meat pies?

I shouldn't have worried, the test was fine. It made me wonder though about what the poor immigrants in America have to do.

Anyway, the clerk who gave the exam said I should have my citizenship ceremony before Christmas.

Ho, ho, ho or Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi!

School holidays

Vacation is a bit different for school kids in Australia. Rather than having all their time in one lump for summer vacation, they have it distributed throughout the year in two week increments.

This week, the kids have their (checking calendar for season) SPRING vacation. Of course, I should admit that North Queensland doesn't really have a spring. It's either the Wet or the Dry, and now it's sort of the not hot, not cold, not wet season. Oh, yeah, that means Spring!

Dave's mother came up from Brisbane for the school holidays, and to celebrate Donnelly's birthday which is next week. So, we went out for dinner at a local restaurant.

However....

This is what they usually look like when a photo is taken!!!

Here is Grandma Mais with Donnelly

Chloe, Mais and Donnelly

Now, certain pictures you need to hold on to awhile. This one I think will be good for a bit of blackmail when they're older!

Chloe appears to be imitating the whale that swallowed the sea.

A bird in the hand

I don't know what it is about boys that makes them hunters at heart. No matter how peaceful they seem, there is some urge to commit mayhem on poor, unsuspecting wildlife.

The boys latest endeavour is a "bird trap". I remember making traps when I was a kid, and the trouble with capturing squirrels and other critters is that they don't want to come down out of the trees.

Solution: put the trap IN the trees. Brilliant!

Here Donnelly and Brynley display the latest in bird-catching gear.

When I asked Donn what he would do if (should have said when) he catches one, he said promptly:

"Eat it! Yeah!"

Not meatloaf again!

Chloe: So what did you eat while I was on my sleepover?
Me: I can't remember.
Boys: Meatloaf!
Chloe: Oh man! I'm so jealous!

The kids love meatloaf, and surprisingly they are aware that a lot of U.S. shows have the teenagers complaining about meatloaf. They can't figure out why, because they like mine. The fact that one of the secret ingredients in the sauce is brown sugar probably has something to do with it.

No matter how much I cook of it, there are hardly ever any leftovers.

No, this isn't my meatloaf, but it looks like it.
Mine never sticks around long enough to get photographed.

Procrastination ahoy

Yes, you can tell that procrastination is in full force when I start taking pictures.

This is one of the lovely things my mother-in-law sent up to us. It's a brass holly leaf, so we can have Christmas year round.

It actually has cute little feet under it to keep it raised off the surface of a table or shelf.

And then that wasn't enough procrastination so I pulled out my cookbook and made a pineapple upside down cake. My excuse is that tomorrow is my birthday, so I deserve a little brown sugar.

Yum!

Homemade toffee

This is what happens when you turn children loose on the Internet. They start sharing recipes for candy-making on FaceBook.

What's next? World domination?



A few little details here...Brynley is dressed like the man in black because he's performing in a school concert tonight.

And the football? Well you never know when a game  might come along.

You did what?

There is such a thing as too much efficiency, I have to say.

Dear husband has been taking care of all the paperwork for the last year or so. He does a great job, and it's so nice to not have to worry about the details. I have a general understanding about the finances and such, but he takes care of all the day to day stuff.

So, when he told me that he was going to put together the forms for my citizenship application I thought, oh goodie, something else that I don't have to worry about. These days you can apply online, and we did so.

Yesterday I got an email from the immigration department telling me to report for a citizenship exam on September 22, less than a month away. Did I say that there is an exam? Yep.

Whoops, ok, download the 50 page pdf that is supposed to tell you all about how to pass the test. Here are some sample exam questions. How well would you do?

1. What do we remember on ANZAC Day?
   a. The landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli, Turkey
   b. The arrival of the first free settlers from Great Britain
   c. The landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove
   
   
2. What are the colours of the Australian Aboriginal flag?
   a. Black, red and yellow
   b. Green, white and black
   c. Blue, white and green
   
   
3. Which of these statements about Australia's system of government is correct:
   a. The Queen of Australia chooses people to form the Australian Parliament
   b. The government is elected by the people
   c. The Prime Minister chooses our Members of Parliament
   
   
4. What is the role of the Governor-General?
   a. The appointment of state premiers
   b. The signing of Bills passed by the Australian Parliament
   c. The appointment of the Head of State
   
   
5. What is the name given to the party or coalition of parties with the second largest number of members in the House of Representatives?
   a. The Government
   b. The Opposition
   c. The Senate

So, how did you do? The correct answers are 1a, 2a, 3b, 4a, 5b.

The Parliamentary system is really different to American politics. You can have any amount of political parties, and they can join together to form coalitions. If the Prime Minister isn't popular with his party, they can fire him, and put in someone else (this happened last year). Citizens vote for their favourite party, not their favourite politician.

I had to guess at the one about the Governor-General. The Governor-General is the Queen of England's representative in Australia and sort of keeps an eye on things.  In 1975 the sitting Governor-General actually sacked or fired Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

Anyway, lots of stuff to know!

(by the way, Australians are completely dumbfounded by the electoral college)

So, remind me what weekends are like?

Lately I've been writing, writing, writing. I just realized in the last three weeks I've written three chapters, adding up to 88 pages! Yikes! No wonder I'm tired.

This weekend while I'm huddled up with the computer at my desk, the kids and Dave are downstairs cleaning out the basement. We have company coming, so we've moved up the annual spring cleaning by about three months. I must add that I am using the 'Royal We', as moi (to  quote Miss Piggy) is not lifting a finger. Other than to continue to type madly.

Periodically I hear crashes and muffled yells. And sometimes the odd remark, as things are carried out to the pickup for loading for the dump.

My favourite so far is Chloe's lament, "How did we get so much crap!"

To make up for having nothing interesting to write about, other than my thesis which would bore anyone to tears, I've decided to take you on a tour of my narrow little world...i.e. the desk of a PhD student.


Starting from the far left we have the most dedicated laser printer you will ever find. Having a house full of students (count 'em 6!), being able to print and not worrying about running out of ink is a real necessity.

In front of the printer is my usb cable to connect the digital camera to the computer to upload the picture you're looking at. It has a label on it that says Olympus which is not the brand of camera I have, it's a little one Dave uses. But, somehow I lost mine in the move to this house. However, it still works.

Among the random pile of stuff to the right of the printer is my glasses case. My reading glasses I mean. Yep, I have to have two pairs of glasses not just one. It's very funny when the kids come up to ask me a question. Drag off the reading glasses and pop on the regular glasses, and try to be unobtrusive while doing so. Did I mention that none of the kids need glasses? It's very strange.

In the middle of the pencil "bucket" (I'm sure there is an appropriate stationery term for it, but it escapes me at the moment) is a flower Bryn made me for mother's day, my very first. There's also a pair of scissors there that I have to guard with my life because they develop feet if you don't watch them closely.

Next to the pencil thingy is a glass, that if I were a good person would be filled with water. Alas its usually holding diet Coke or lemonade (Seven-up). The glass is sitting on a coaster turned upside down.

This is a very Australian kind of advertisement. As everyone knows, bull is not true, therefore the reason for the ad. In very small print at the bottom it says "there's bull, and John Bull".  Its the slogan for a line of work boots.

And finally there is the computer. I spend more time with it lately than I do humans. Sigh.

To the right of the monitor is a faithful notepad that bears the brunt of my scribbles and ideas. The latest thing its had today is the horrible realization that I had that even without a discussion and conclusions chapter, I've written over 200 pages.

Hopefully some of it will be worth reading!

Passed the exit seminar

Before they let students submit their thesis at my uni they require the students give a half-hour talk about their research. It's attended by as many big-wigs as they can get, and the student is evaluated on how well they have done the research and on a piece of writing the student submitted (usually a chapter of the thesis).

I had my exit seminar on Wednesday and was very nervous about it. The main issue that was bothering me was that I had about 40 minutes of powerpoint slides to get through in 30 minutes.

What really happened was much worse! I arrived about 20 minutes before the seminar and tried to get set up. The technician that was hooking everything up found that my laptop wouldn't connect to the projector. So we tried two other computers which failed as well. Finally the tech went back to his desk and got his laptop which seemed to work. So, one problem solved.

The talk was being video-conferenced to Cairns. We could see the room, but there was no-one in it. For quite a long time. As it turned out, my other supervisor was locked out. She called security to come and let her in, but there was an emergency nearby that required an ambulance so no one came to unlock the door until the seminar was nearly over.

Meanwhile I started my talk but the laptop I was using wouldn't show the same thing on the screen as the projector was showing. So there I sat at one end of the room trying to squint near-sightedly at the screen at the other end of the room. And try to act cool and collected. And try to sound smart enough to be getting a PhD.

At the end I got a lot of good comments from my friends and colleagues, and some advice from the bigwigs about how to finish the writing up of the thesis. Whew!

Now, back to the writing!

A happy bunch of coconuts

Coconut palms are in short supply in our town. Although they grow throughout our area, due to safety concerns, very few people have them in their yards anymore.

The way that coconut palms work, like most trees, is that the fruit grows large, and then falls off the tree. Dave told me that one of his grade school teachers in New Guinea was killed by a dropping coconut. So, it's nothing to sneeze at.

When we first moved into this house, a group of Islander people came by and asked to harvest the coconuts. They brought long-handled hooks with them that they used to drag the coconuts down.

So, for the last 6 months we've been watching the coconuts grow, and wondering if the people would come back to take the latest batch.

Yesterday, a gentleman came by and said "Can I have coconut?"

Yep, sure. He was by himself, so we wondered how he'd go about it. He went to the back of his car, and took out a bunch of rope, and a couple of specially curved pieces of wood. The wood pieces he nailed to the tree. Then he used the wood as a platform to scale tree, looping the rope around the tree, just like a timber faller, going to top a tree.

 When he got within a reasonable distance of the coconuts, he twisted them off, just like picking plums.

We thought he might take them all, but no, just the ones that were ripe.

If you look at the picture you can see a bit in the middle with no coconuts.

So, here's another skill I have not gained yet, how to tell when coconuts are "ripe". Hope that's not on the citizenship exam that I still have to take soon.