My name is Petra and I am from Germany. I saw your Tropicana Picture and was so happy to find a very good picture. I dance since 5 years salsa and my teacher was dancer at the Tropicana. It is so difficult to find picutres from the show, and I love the show. I was there two times but my place was so far away. I can’t make pictures. Do you sell yours? Could I buy a DVD or CD from you with your Tropicana picutures? Sorry for my bad English. I hope you could help me please help me.

I hope to hear from you
Petra Schwuchow

With our sympathy,
-D&S

I stumbled across this blog as I was trying to find an outsider’s perspective of “Australian Etiquette” but I’m pleased to be doing my bit for cross cultural understanding.

Australians eat a lot too, I think we’re second in the obesity stakes and I think we’re rising to the challenge. But that still looked like a lot of food.

As for duty free, I was taking the piss. Some of our airports are privately owned and they also own the duty free so in order to make more money they push everyone through it.

Sepos = Septic Tank = Yank = Americans. Its rhyming slang so don’t get too caught up on it. The sentiment has long since changed but the term stuck. And what’s the difference between Catsup and Ketchup? And its called a powerpoint because it supplies power at a point. Australians tend to be a bit literal that way (eg. blue mountains: its blue and its a mountain; the snowy mountains: its snowy and its a mountain, Tomato sauce: a sauce made of tomatoes etc).

Glad you liked your time here Arlo, have you been to the land down under Joe? Arlo came at the right time. October/November sunny and warm not too hot. Come over for Christmas and enjoy prawns (I think Yanks call them shrimp) and beer on the beach on Christmas day - can get rather hot though in December.

See yous later

Thanks for the comments! I read them with a huge smile on my face – it’s always interesting to get a native’s perspective on your own perspective, if you know what I mean. I also hope you realize that many of my points were decidedly tongue-in-cheek. I never mistook the McDonald’s sandwich for a national food.

Joe beat me to it in his comment, but he’s right. Americans do eat a lot, or at least some of us do. More to the point, our servings seem to be much larger. I read somewhere that our problem with obesity could be traced back to when we were all taught as children to “clean our plates,” that is, to eat everything put in front of us. Now, in adulthood, we don’t stop when we’re full, we stop when the plate is empty. And when restaurants compete for our dollars by giving us more food instead of better food, well…

I have to admit that we didn’t hit any of your “true Aussie culinary experiences” while we were there, but let me assure you that we didn’t just frequent American-based fast-food restaurants, either. By and large, we ate well.

I suppose Duty Free is also a pretty big deal for many American travelers, too. We have plenty of duty-free shops in our airports, but none (that I can recall) that passengers are required to walk through. Personally, I don’t see the discount outweighing the opportunity cost. Is it really that much of a savings?

Powerpoint switches, eh? That’s what you call them? That’s what we call Microsoft’s presentation software! I guess we use “wall outlets” or “electrical sockets” in the States. Yes, they’re always on, which I suppose is arguably more convenient. It has the added benefit of giving a financial boost to the “plastic safety plug” industry whenever new parents childproof their homes.

We considered going to see the Jenolan Caves while we were in Katoomba and, come to think of it, that would have been a great option for the day that we were rained out. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it, except perhaps because Oksana had already seen them, some 15 years or so ago, when she first visited Austrailia on a Russian student exchange. Caves and Skycar, next time for sure.

Did we have a good time in Australia? We had a FANTASTIC time, and neither my wife nor I were ready to come home after three weeks. We’ve many other countries on our list of places to visit, but I can’t imagine that I won’t ever go back to Australia. It was too friendly, too beautiful, and we didn’t see near enough of it. We shall return.

Wow, thanks for the comment! When I asked who was reading, I thought I was proposing a rhetorical question. I didn’t really expect anyone to answer, but I’m glad you did! Most of the time I’m just writing for me. Getting a message like this forces me reevaluate who my audience is (in a good way).

Rodanthe and Currituck, how cool! I wouldn’t be surprised if we discovered our families were connected just a few generations back. I don’t know all the details, but both sides of my family are from generally the same area. I spent most of my childhood bouncing between grandparents’ houses in Elizabeth City and Hertford, NC. My mom’s side of the family still has a cottage in Nags Head and we go back east for a visit every chance we get. I don’t know if, as you say, the ocean is in our blood, but I grew up in that Outer Banks surf, and these chilly Alaskan waters have me missing it more often than not.

I wish I had some genealogy notes to compare with you, but although I’m interested in the subject, I’ve never put in the research time. I was lucky enough to be born from a succession of young parents, however, and as a boy, I had the pleasure of knowing six of my eight great-grandparents. I guess I know a few branches back.

The name Matthew Midyett is new to me, and I thank you for the information. I should see what I can coax out of Google about him right now…

How much do we eat? Quite a bit typically. We have a problem with obesity in this country (me included) and are accustomed to getting too much food.

I enjoy reading the terms you use such as beetroot, and tomato sauce, instead of beets and ketchup. I had to look up sepo, not very appealing from the definition I found. :(

Sanger was also a fun new word for me.

As you guessed, our power outlets are always on. In some living rooms there are switches for some of the outlets to allow for a single place to turn on/off freestanding lamps. With our local energy “crisis”, I think folks around here would welcome on/off switches for our outlets.

Thanks again,

Joe