I think perhaps after nine years living here in The Netherlands that I might actually have been passively integrated into Dutch life. I was watching the UEFA Cup football match between The Netherlands and Romania with genuine excitement and hopeful anticipation that my team would be the winner at the end. This from someone that proudly didn’t know jackshit about football when I first turned up here. Football to me meant rugby league; soccer was a game for girls who couldn’t play rugby league; and The Netherlands definitely wasn’t my home team. Tonight I knew all the names of the players, and could even name the coach. Amazing really because I don’t watch football at all except for UEFA and World Cup, and I defintely don’t watch the sports news, or read the local metro newspapers, so my guess is, it’s something in the cheese!

Now if only I could finish learning dutch language the same way!

Andy.

I heard it again today at work, this word “Australianism”. The first time I heard it I thought the person was geographically challenged and didn’t know how to say “Australia” properly. But then on hearing it again, I realised that this person was actually trying to tell me something. What, I had no idea, so I asked.

“Australianisms are what you say all the time, and nobody understands you”! Came the reply from the American collegue.

It seems that political correctness has been taken so far, that now the Americans I work with can’t even say to me, “I have no idea what the fuck you just said, can you repeat it please”. But instead invent new politcally correct words that sound pleasant, but are devoid of any meaning, and actually just confuse the shit out of me.

Looks like I’m going to have to add “Australianism” to my list of buzzwords to drop into work conversations where I have no idea what the fuck someone is talking about!

Andy!