Food and drink in Australian English

In Lynne Murphy’s blog Seperated by a Common Language, she routinely discusses dialectal differences between British and American English. I recently left comments on a number of her posts from 2006 and 2007, in most cases adding an Australian point of view.

I’d like to take up some of the points I raised in those comments about Australian vocabulary, but for the time being I’ll only list the ones pertaining to food and drink. I’ll save some of the others for a sequel.

Weekend in Melbourne

I visited Melbourne for my cousin Laura’s 21st birthday party, which was celebrated on Saturday 3rd May.

My parents and I departed Friday morning by train. My sister couldn’t come with us because she is just starting another elective for her university medical course - this time on Aboriginal health for which she is spending a few weeks in Alice Springs. However, Rebecca did accompany us as far as the station.

What I did with Word

For word processing I use Microsoft Word 2002, which was the most recent version of Word when this computer was new (before that I used Word 2.0). The fact that Word allows comprehensive customisation of menus and toolbars etc is an important reason why I’ve never switched to a cheap non-Microsoft alternative, yet I must say that the customisation of Word 2002 was the most painful experience of customisation I have ever had.

A little fun and a little news

While browsing language-related blogs, I came across this, which links to this, which the author of the aforementioned blog used to generate this. It looked fun, so I had a go and generated this. I limited my colour choices to the standard selections (no arbitrary RGB values) lest it become tedious and boring (and a tad too silly).

Because this is something I found done on another blog and then decided to do myself, I guess it counts as a meme. Nobody told me to do it, though, which is nice. And yes, I’m well aware of the deliberate irony behind the website, having been to Germany and all.

Incidentally, the reason why I was browsing miscellaneous language-related blogs in the first place is that, what with Language Log having recently moved and been redesigned, I thought it would be a good time to visit all of the blogs in Language Log’s sidebar. Having now looked through all those blogs I can announce that, in my opinion, the best and most consistently interesting one is the Cognition and Language Lab (which I’ve now added to my sidebar).

Now, while I’m here I might as well tell you some of my miscellaneous news.

New kitchen cupboards

I was at my parents’ place for much of the last week while my kitchen was renovated. I now have a completely new set of drawers and cupboards, and a new sink. Also, the water heater was moved from inside to outside.

I was lucky with the benchtop colour. The colour I chose was a discontinued one, and there was only one sheet of it left in the factories anywhere in the country! I got the colour I wanted (the very last sheet of it) but I had to sign a form saying that I understood that if the sheet cracked during construction or something I would have to choose another colour and that I accepted the associated financial risk. I was determined to have the colour, because I had my heart set on dark green benchtops and none of the other available colours were remotely like it.

I am very happy with the colours of the new cupboards, including the dark green benchtops but also with other aspects of the colour scheme (for example I’m happy with my decision to have white handles instead of the default stainless steel). I do have some reservations about the dimensions of things - I would have liked the drawers to be less shallow and the top shelf of overhead cupboards to be easier to reach - but that’s OK.

Pam’s haiku on display

I have mentioned my friend Pam Marlow on this blog before, and one thing Pam does is to write haiku accompanied by photographs (and she has plans to publish a book of them). Anyway, today I visited a small art exhibition in which three examples of Pam’s work were on display.

Here’s a photograph of one of them (as you can see, I used the flash). Please click on the image to magnify it and read the haiku.

Friend publishes book

A friend of mine (whose blog is listed among the links over on the right) emailed me this morning to say that she’s had a book published! I replied with my congratulations.

Here are links to her newly published fantasy novel on Amazon UK and on Amazon US.

In other news, Language Log has moved, so I have updated my link. And my kitchen is due to be renovated early next week, so you can expect to hear about that afterwards.

Yorke Valley photograph

Here’s a photograph I took with a borrowed camera during the Easter weekend. It came out rather dark, so please view the picture in full screen mode after sunset with the lights off. Any light reflecting off your computer screen will ruin it for you.

Easter

The big event this Easter is that my sister returned from overseas. Beginning before Christmas, she spent several weeks in India followed by several weeks in Papua New Guinea as part of her training to become a medical doctor. I have told her that if she wants to write something about this for a general audience then I am happy to publish it on this blog, and I understand she’s thinking about it.

Floating seeds in mountain rivers

Regular visitors to this blog will have heard or seen some of the music I’ve created, such as this audio file of the tune that I dedicated to my late grandmother at her funeral last year, or this sheet music of the piece that I wrote years ago (as a teenager) inspired by the concept of musical modes. I repeat these examples here as a sort of introduction for new visitors.

A few years ago (around 2004 or so) I was working on an instrumental composition with the working title “Floating Seeds in Mountain Rivers“, but somehow I got distracted with life and never finished it. Anyway, I have decided to make the portion that I wrote available to musicians, and you can click here to read it. If this inspires you to write a bit of your own, please get in touch and arrange some way to share your ideas with me (not that I need any help, as I can improvise any number of endings, but just that I would find it interesting).

Perhaps some day I’ll get around to completing the composition for myself.