Movie genre: Shark horror!

Australia is famous for its great variety in animals, from the cute and cuddly koalas and the curious looking kangaroos to hungry crocodiles and dangerous sharks. With the summer season coming in a couple of months, my husband decided to read up a little about the sharks in Australia. He informed me that the probability to drown in Australia is 1/30,000 while a shark attack is only 1/300,000. My husband knows that I am very skeptical towards sharks and do not believe for one second that any shark attack on humans are ”just accidents as humans are not their natural prey”. Bah, I say. Sharks are just mean killing-machines and will eat anything that they can put their saw-like teeth into.

Sharks are not only terrifying and fascinating to rest of the world, Australians themselves have a very special relationship to this grime yet magnificent  creature. So special in fact they have an entire genre of horror-movies featuring this over sized fish. How about ”Sand sharks” where mutated sharks can swim not only in water but also in sand? There are a number of films where sharks have been mutated to fit into the environment, ”Snow Sharks”, ”Swamp Shark” and the new movie for this year ”Sharknado” where a tornado with man-eating sharks is sweeping through California. How about ”Bait”, a movie where a tsunami outside a coastal town in Australia brings a group of sharks into a supermarket where a bunch of shoppers are trapped? There are so many odd movies I’m amazed how it’s even possible to come up with some of the plots: ”Mega shark versus Giant Octopus” and ”versus Crocosaurus”, ”Sharktopus”... just to mention a few. According to my husband there is only one shark movie and that is ”Jaws”. I’ve seen ”Jaws” and some of the sequels too. Is there anyone middle-aged who hasn’t seen ”Jaws” and isn’t familiar with the theme song? It’s enough to hear a few notes to send thrills down my spine.

                                        No, not my genre in movies, not even in 3D

It’s Friday night. I’ve been spending most of the week in my study researching and putting together an essay that is due in one week. I’m very pleased with being ahead of schedule. So pleased actually I will treat myself with a glass of wine in front of the TV. How about a movie? A romantic one, without any man-eating fishes.

My kind of film...

An Aussie gift for the royal baby

The official name of this country is ”Commonwealth of Australia” and it is a monarchy. The Head of State is the British monarch and the prime minister is the political leader of the country. Needless to say, the Australians are eagerly looking forward to hearing the baby news of prince Will and his Kate and yesterday 15th of July was the announced due date of the royal offspring. A few months ago, Julia Gillard was the Australian prime minister and she decided that she was going to knit and stuff a kangaroo as official gift for the baby. When she was removed from her post and Kevin Rudd took over – called K-Rudd by the press – he decided that the kangaroo was being dumped for ”something more precious”. His spokeswoman said that ”it will be something Australian, precious and very special for both baby and mother”. Rumor has it the gift is very precious indeed: an opal-encrusted rattle. You know what a rattle is, the little toy the baby holds in the hand and shakes, it makes noise. Fisher Price has some soft ones in very nice colors and with a nice rattling sound. How exciting is it for a baby, albeit a royal one, to shake a silver rattle decorated with green opals? Babies like to put their rattles in the mouth. How will an opal-encrusted silver rattle fit in the baby’s mouth? How to avoid the opals scratching the baby’s gum? Why do K-Rudd and his henchmen sneer at the knitted stuffed kangaroo? I think it was a wonderful and very heartwarming initiative that the prime minister wanted to KNIT a toy for the future monarch of England. That is truly a gift from the heart! I can understand if people didn’t think it was enough with just a knitted kangaroo but I am sure there would have been other official gifts as well from the Commonwealth of Australia.

After a busy day governing Australia, Ms. Gillard used to wind down with knitting

My husband has given me some beautiful, valuable jewelry over the years but my most treasured jewelry are the necklaces and bracelets made from pasta and plastic beads by my daughters and I have worn these with pride. I have framed paintings they have given me and I always have some of their art work on the walls. Very precious and so very special to me.

As for the royal baby’s presents of England, I do hope that Julia Gillard will give her kangaroo anyway, although the Australian press think it’s unlikely that she will. I am sure Buckingham Palace has a fair number of bejeweled silver rattles already, passed on through generations of royal babies. What they probably do not already have is a kangaroo, knitted and stuffed by an Australian prime minister. That would be something very special for both baby and mother. 

Baby rattle de luxe - for picky babies

A corkie to the rescue - or not...

Australians have the tendency to simplify many words; presents are called pressies, breakfast is brekkie, the supermarket Woolworth is Wollies, McDonald’s goes by the name Macca’s... The list of Aussie nicknames is endless. There are nicknames for different trades as well. An electrician is called a ”sparkie” because of the sparks that come when the electricity is made. A ”chippie” is a carpenter, named after the chips that come from chopping up wood. A builder is called a brickie, as in the bricks that are used for building a house. The ”-ie” endings can be substituted with ”-y” depending on your fancy.

Serving over-processed food all over the world: Macca's (photo from Wikipedia)

A couple of days ago I had a man of the trade to come and fix in our daughters’ bathroom. In Sweden – and probably in many other countries as well – a bathtub has four short legs so it stands firmly on the floor. Here in Australia, or perhaps I should say here in our house, the bathtub is suspended from a low tiled wall to the bathroom wall where it is only attached by silicone, like they have glued one side of the bathtub to the wall. Every time there’s some weight in the bathtub - like when daughters are taking a bath - the tub is sinking and... well, the silicone is not meant to function as superglue for a water filled bathtub with a teenage girl in it. A gap of 2,5 centimetres between the wall and what is behind the tiles magically appears when the tub is filled with water. The man came and fixed the problem by putting on new silicone that will last until next time our daughters take a bath, which I reckon will be tonight.

                          Our bathtub that is "siliconed" to the wall. 

 I asked him a question about the shower in our master bathroom but he just shook his head and said ”I’m just a corkie”. Corkie? Corky? According to an English dictionary ”corky” is an adjective that means that the wine is tainted in flavor from the cork in the bottle OR it means someone having undesirable or negative qualities, a persona non grata really. It could also mean someone who’s not very clever. Was the man really telling me that he’s a scumbag?! Was he maybe saying that he was not the sharpest tool in the shed? I asked one of the builders – a brickie – who explained that ”corkie” is a corker, someone who puts silicon between tiles as a profession. Considering that our bathtub needs some kind of supporting installation rather than just new silicone, I think in that in this particular case, the corkie might have been somewhat corky. 

                             A meerkat - just because it's cute to look at

Christmas in July

It is winter in Melbourne and although their mother refuse to accept that July is now a winter month, the girls are just recovering from a week with high fever and coughing which they always get once per year during winter. Normally, winter is not that dark and gloomy in the northern hemisphere since we have Christmas to look forward to in December. In southern hemisphere, it is summer in December meaning that we have absolutely nothing to brighten up the dark and cold winter months. However, the clever Aussies have come up with something to cheer everyone up! Christmas doesn’t come once per year in the state of Victoria, it comes twice. ”Christmas in July” seem to be a BIG thing around Melbourne. Every little town and every theme park with self-respect organise something special to celebrate Christmas when it is winter, which it is in Australia in July.

Perhaps I am being narrow-minded because I cannot see the point in celebrating Christmas in July AND in December. I am already trying to cope with the fact that it is actually WINTER and cold in Australia, it was -1C in the morning a couple of weeks ago. How is that even possible? I mean, everybody knows that Australia is supposed to be warm and sunny all year around. Apparently this is only applicable to Darwin in the Northern Territory where they have lots of crocodiles, sharks, stinging jellyfish and other animals that are hazardous to your health. Yes, we have winter in Melbourne but the animals are less dangerous here.

 To get back to the ”Christmas in July” happenings; my husband is trying to convince me that it could be fun to go to Christmas markets, say hello to Santa Claus and listen to traditional Christmas songs. I don’t want to be a party pooper so I will be as enthusiastic as I possibly can although I think it is wrong to have Christmas-related events in July. Call it winter festivals or snow festivals because believe it or not, there is snow in the Victorian mountains. Not very much, just a couple of centimetres but with the snowmaking systems that all the ski resorts have it is entirely possible to go skiing even in Australia. As for having Christmas in July at our house, I am willing to compromise; I’ll bake some traditional Swedish Christmas buns and cookies, warm some mulled wine and light lots of candles when it is dark but there will be no herring and red-and-green table runners and place mats because it is NOT Christmas, it’s just winter. 

Sovereign Hill, the gold mining theme park, is offering an old-fashioned Christmas