Mucky

Hell Neil, you think the Bill is bad, don't you get Eastenders? The worst soap of the lot. Talk about reaching for the Gin. The funny thing is that call centers being developed in India aere training their staff by making them watch that drivel, as example of typical british life.
No wonder I can't understand a damn word they say when I have a bank queery.


Muck

JohnInMiami

Neil, dubya has ME want to leave America! Can I come hang out in Oz for awhile?

Mucky, enough with the bloody television exports! Our television is wretched enough - we don't need any help from you! You've inflicted upon us The Young Ones, Coupling, Absolutely Fabulous, Are You Being Served, What Not To Wear and many others. Now the suits at the BBC have given us the cheeky poofster Graham Norton and his American spinoff show. Please...no more, no more!!

To get back on thread - SnR, our experience at the AMP tower was the same as the others expressed here. Blah would be my description of the food quality. However, we had a delightful dinner at Nick's Seafood at Cockle Bay Wharf. It was reasonably priced and the service was excellent. Doyles at Circular Quay was ok - the view of the Opera House was excellent but the place seemed more about seeing and being seen than having a nice dining experience.

Mucky

your welcome to them all john, I agree they are all crap.

Muck

Neil_Oz

John, you've copped a double whammy in Florida, haven't you? Needless to say you're more than welcome, but be warned that Australia's treatment of refugees of late is (how should I put this?) a contentious issue. Never mind, the countdown to November 2 is ticking away.

Mucky, I think the ABC used to screen "Eastenders" some years ago, but not since we discovered that we could make world-class cheap crap ourselves and furthermore sell it to the Mother Country. "Eastenders" provided a model of unrelieved tedium for our efforts, though, I think. No luck selling "Neighbours" to the Americans, so they've had to make do with Steve Irwin.

BTW, I have a dim recollection that our SBS network once screened a Welsh-language soap. It rated right up there with the News in Tagalog at 4:00 am, but for some reason didn't last.

AndrewDavid

Off Thread:

Can't wait to hear your reponses when "Fahrenheit 9/11" opens. No need to convert this to celcius.

AndrewDavid

PS have elections been scheduled down under ?

Neil_Oz

A/D, since when has "off thread" been a problem on this forum?

"Fahrenheit 9/11" opens here 15 July. Election? If the government manages to get ahead of the Labor Party in the polls you can bet the wheels will go into motion pretty soon. The Electoral Commission needs (I think) 33 days from announcement date to get everything ready. Some think that the PM wants to go before your election, though, on the grounds that GWB's likely fate might set an unfortunate example for the punters here. October is currently best guess.

Deputy Secretary of State Rich Armitage (the guy who looks like a world champion wrestler) has bought into the Oz political scene again. Judging by a poll taken after the Prez did the same, this could increase the Labor vote.

Mucky

Neil, That would be Pobl y cwm. It means people of the valley in a proper language...lol
I'm sure that went down like a lead balloon in Oz, however I suspect that there are almost as many welsh speaking people in oz as there are in Cardiff.
But Welsh is making a comeback, Welsh language schools are springing up everywhere all at the expense of english language schools.
Cheers

Muck

Neil_Oz

I've been caught out (again), on two counts.

AD, I've just read that "Fahrenheit 9/11" (Celsius -12.8/-11.7) starts July 29.

And Mucky, I mixed up "Eastenders" and "Coronation Street" - must have momentarily gone into an intergalactic time warp. "Eastenders" may still be screened here, not sure. Re "Pobl y cwm", the language wasn't the problem, as it was subtitled, which is more than can be said for the programs that feature only partly comprehensible Scots and northern English accents.

AndrewDavid

The only accent amongst the lot of you we can understand is Canadien.
AndrewDavid

SusanInToronto

AD - are you saying that you understand the French Canadian accent? That would be Canadien! Those of us who are English speaking refer to ourselves as Canadian.

Noddy

You get Eastenders and Coronation st in Australia ??? Why ?? Do people actually watch that trash.

Noddy

AndrewDavid

Yes Susan ,

I can understand a bit of both. Luckily foreign language was still required in jr high and high school when I was younger; unfortunately that is no longer the case which explains why UK, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia are popular US vacation choices.

Speaking of les canadiens, have you seen "Mambo Italiano", another side of Quebec?

A/D

Neil_Oz

Noddy, it's been a long time since "Coronation Street" screened in Australia, not sure if "Eastenders" is still running. But if you're from the UK, you'll know that we've been sending you a fine old load of cobblers for years ("Neighbours" etc). We should stop doing this to each other. Every Oz soap ever made has used the "Coronation Street" device of having a local pub (or whatever) in which ALL the characters can assemble and tediously review the trivia of their daily lives.

Mucky

Do you know what really makes me laugh about Eastenders and Corrie, the working class people are always in debt but can still all afford to eat and drink in the pub every lunchtime and evening.Wish I could

Muck

Neil_Oz

Maybe that's why they're in debt, Muck. It's a continuing mystery to me why you can go into almost any licenced club here and see ranks of pensioners feeding the poker machines for hour upon hour. How do they do it? As someone in the US said, "Slot machines are designed for people who failed math at school". I'm no prude, but it strikes me as a real scandal that Australian state governments have become so addicted to revenue from the "one-armed bandits".

aren

Neil,
Having spent the better part of the day reading nad laughing through various threads, even with only limited comprehension, can you explain the origin of "Pom?"

Neil_Oz

aren, I wish I could. Maybe anothre poster knows?

One theory is that "pommy" came from POME (Prisoner of Mother England), the initials allegedly stenciled on transported convict's clothing, but I've never seen any evidence that in reality this term was ever used. None of my convict ancestors' rags were passed down as a family heirloom.

Another theory is that new arrivals often became so sunburnt that they reminded the locals of pomegranates. Who knows?

Just don't call Mucky a "pom". For some reason the Welsh seem to dislike being confused with the English (something to do with the Saxons chasing them out of England during the Dark Ages, I think).

aren

I'd never insult a Welshman. We spent a brief time in Devon at a hotel that was straigt out of Fawlty Towers, and the Welsh couple staying there gave us the one brief glimpse of civilised behavior we saw there.

How about giving "poncy" a try?

Neil_Oz

Don't get me started on Fawlty Towers establishments! I'm sure I once met Sybil's American cousin running a motel in Massachusetts - happily chatting to me about her vacation in hte Caribbean while buffing her nails as her husband dashed around whimpering, dementedly trying to remedy yet another catastrophe. And I found a relative of Basil's, another American, running (I use the word loosely) a restaurant in Canberra - when he came over to apologise for the latest in a long string of disasters he was actually bending over and bobbing while wringing his hands! At some stage I contributed to his problems by breaking a wine glass - the sole waitress took one look and ran off, not to be seen again, and eventually the chef came out to sweep up the mess. "Do you do this all the time?" I asked him. "Doesn't worry me, mate," he said, "I'm out of this bloody madhouse as of tonight." Eventually some missing bread rolls were delivered from another restaurant by the owner, an Italian guy who I recognised. "What are you doing here?", he asked. "I've been wondering that for some time", I replied.

Anyway - aren, you've sent me off to the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary this time. I find that "ponce" has several meanikngs, the original equating to "pimp", but I must have been using it in the sense of "to move about effeminately or ineffectually".

And I took the opportunity to look up another entry. "Pommy ... a British person, esp. a recent immigrant. Pommy bastard: a term of affectionate abuse [abbr. of POMEGRANATE rhyming sl. for immigrant." So there you go.

We inherited the Cockney taste for rhyming slang. So Noah - Noah's ark - shark and so forth. I once read that the only known use of rhyming slang in the US is "raspberry" - raspberry tart - fart.

Mucky

I am pleased to see my countrypeople did not let you down aren.
Neil you are correct but the real reason the Welsh don't favour the English so much is probably more recent. It is probably due to the English media as much as anything.
If a welsh athlete does well he is British, if he fails he is welsh.
England stopped the home international footie games as no one else was worthy.
Michal Owen was really welsh, but was born in a hospital just over the english border.
England cricket team selectors never seem to get past the severn bridge .
OOh yes and ancient battles didn't help too much either
Oh and the Welsh Minister for the government is English too.
So you can see we welsh are not bitter and twisted at all lol
;-)
Muck