Friday 24 August 2012

Straya Mate!

I had a pretty lazy day yesterday, slept in til midday then just hung around the house. I think I was still getting over the jetlag a bit! Last night was my first real experience of Vancouver. Siobhan (who I am staying with), took me out to this live music venue called the Backstage Lounge with a group of her friends. First one of Siobhan's friends came over for dinner, and it was then that my very Aussie accent became apparent. Up until this point, I didn't think I had that strong an accent, however apparently I do! This resulted in Siobhan having to translate sentences to her friend which I found quite amusing. Apart from the accent barrier, there were phrases and words which didn't make sense to them either; such as the word bogan. I then tried to explain what a bogan is....and it is actually a pretty hard thing to explain! After dinner and a few wines, we caught a taxi into Backstage Lounge which is located in Granville Island. This was the first time I had laid eyes on the city. It was around sunset (the sun sets late here because it is Summer) and the view of the golden reflected high rise buildings set against the mountain range was truly an amazing sight!! We reached Backstage Lounge which has a Thursday night special of $1.75 beer middies and live jazz music. The people I was with could not believe we pay up to, sometimes more than $11 for a pint in Perth. Being with a large group of Canadians, they were all very intrigued about my accent and culture, which I found bizaar. It's interesting the things that are universal world wide (or perhaps to Western cultures) and then things which are completely different. For example the term 'uni' is widely used in Aus as an abbreviation to university however none of them knew what I was talking about. Here they call it 'school', which to me sounds like you are a teenager again! It also became obvious that Australia has a very celebrity obsessed culture. We are very concerned with body image, fame and wealth. However when I brought up the names of two Australian women (who we may consider to be our most famous models); Miranda Kerr and Jennifer Hawkins, no one, not even one person, knew who I was talking about! So much for the media promoting them as having world wide fame!


The jazz band @ Backstage Lounge.
Source: http://www.thebackstagelounge.com/photos

The night turned out to be a good one, with lots of dancing and fun company...but I guess you can't really go wrong with $1.75 drinks and live music. I imagine their would have been a few sore heads this morning haha. Today we took it pretty easy, Siobhan showed me the train route down to where my uni is and then we went to the shops ( or Mall as it is called here) and I got my phone sorted out, so I now have a Canadian number which is a relief!  

No comments:

Post a Comment