Random notes

I’ve thought of it many times but kept forgetting to share this on the blog. For the Obama inauguration, our Irish Chairman sponsored breakfast for everyone who wanted to come in and watch the events on our projector in the boardroom. Over half of the office turned up, and I don’t think it was just for the Egg Mc Muffins! The amazing thing is that we couldn’t have had an event like that in our office in Minneapolis. In fact, all of the political discussions that went on in the office throughout the US election would have been banned under HR guidelines in the US. Outside of our office, Obama-mania was every bit as pervasive. From the election to the inauguration, Obama’s face was on the front page more times than I can count, and you heard people talking about him in the street everywhere you went. You still see lots of Obama bumper stickers, t-shirts, and posters, and a house near us prints out his speeches and pastes them to the side of their house.

On another random note, we read in all of the books before we came about Australians’ tendency to shorten words, but we didn’t realise how often that crept into daily speech. A few examples that we hear all the time:

Mc Donald’s = Maccers
Hols = holidays
Brekky = breakfast
Sunnies = sunglasses
Arvo = afternoon
Convo = conversation
Salvos = Salvation Army
Doco = document
Ute = SUV
Milko = milkman
Postie = postman
Fireie = fireman

One of my coworkers, whose last name is Chaplin, is known as Chapo to all of his friends.

Since I love all that is “cute,” I find all of this quite endearing.