Cultural Learning and the Pizza Cat Ratio
Before I start, I have boring stuff to get out of the way, firstly with a confession. I’m not religious, nor am I one who’d normally confess to anything, but since watching the Godfather Trilogy over the past month (finally, it happened, no I hadn’t ever seen it, this could be a blog post in itself) I’ll give it a go. Now I can remember on at least about a 100 occasions in my child hood I’d require money for candy or coke or something, I was a kid, a bag of sugar and a blue spoon would have done fine. Anyway to accomplish this we’d turn the house upside down for loose change, and quite often rifle through mum’s purse to see if she had any left over, which was often the case. Bam, huge confession, I’m going to hell..
This got me thinking, I can remember thinking from as long as I was old enough to register what a card was that the Australian Medicare Card was the ugliest, shittest excuse for a card. I know it doesn’t have to be pretty, its a card with a number on it, and thats the only purpose it serves, but there’s a reason why people like Gold Visa’s, and Black Amex’s with funky designs on them and apart from the money, I think its bragging rights, for having a sick looking card. I will take a Black Amex, it will be a bad thing (starts at $150,000 USD I think), so I wont.
An Australian Medicare Card (That’s me, John Citizen!)
Now, apart from some wonderful examples that you see in 80’s movies like those original Blue and Gold Visa’s, or an 80’s National Bank Debit Card (White Strip, Red Strip and a big red star, hooray), I was sure this was one of the ugliest specimans of the modern plastic mould. I was wrong:
An English National Insurance Card (with my new name, Hard Carver)
Yes, this monstrosity turned up in my letter box last Thursday, its the English Version of the Australian Medicare Number, except its more like an American Social Security Number, as it handles tax, money, healthcare, the lot. I get it, the card is probably in its current state as a memento. A reminder of the good old days when they could employ a nine year old with two colour crayons to draw the cars and how much harder things work back then.
Blergh.. Yes, I just took up all that space whinging about something that myself and 60 million K-heads (or Kingdomites) have in their wallets. Sue me.
Saturday, on the bus
On to better things. On Saturday we caught the bus to Richmond. I love that place, everything about it, every shop imaginable, swanky restaurants and bars on the river front and just a niceish +Subiaco feel to it, like Mayfair without the buildings, or something like that.
Colourful Hanging Baskets, everywhere!
We had a few beers in the afternoon at a couple of pubs and then stopped in at All Bar One which i just like the Queens Hotel, with a massive list of beers and funky modern bar.
Drink Schneider Weisse….. its so good it dis-obeys the laws of gravity
Ever since we arrived 3 months ago, I’ve been hunting around for that perfect pizza and have thus far been unable to find it. We’ve been close a few times, the chain called Pizza Express does a fairly top notch one. But it was a little place accross the road from All Bar One which we found the money shot. It was called Pizza Allo Roma and we found it purely out of co-incidence. The pizza was fantastic, tasty and awesome with the extra chilli, couldn’t have asked for it better. But the best thing was the way it came, long, on a board and it was half a yard long. I wanted to get the Yard long one just to say we did it, but that was too much, even for me.
I couldn’t think of a good way to share the experience with everyone, as the saying goes, “Photos, or it didn’t happen”. Well, it did happen, but I forgot to take a piccy, so I’ll have to unleash the pizza - cat ratio graph:
The Graph
I realise I’ve made a mistake with my scale, as surely a normal domestic cat wouldn’t grow to a yard (most of ametre) long, such as the one featured in my accurate graph with ruler installed. Which is better for my story, as I”m assuming that a yard of pizza now equals 2 cats, which means by eating half a yard with Cath, we consumed a cat. But I won’t tell her that.. It was a cute kitty too, try searching for yard of cat in google sometimes, the results aren’t quite what you expect. Yes, I cheated. I love cats, and I don’t endorse eating them.
After the delicious pizza we got on the train and ventured to Putney for another messy night at Slugge…. should I say Zulu’s. It was apparently a Southern Hemisphere reunion party, cept the crowd was about the same as I remember from last time.. South Africans everywhere, I didn’t see any Brazlilians, or New Zealanders, though I could have checked a little more thoroughly under the seats or something. Fun was had by all though. Some more than others, others probably being me in the end. I stupidly stood at the bar for probably two hours in an effort to get beer and the bar stuff were just effin’ useless! But that happens, we keep on living.
Zulu’s
I think we’re done there now, too many memories of messy nights at Steve’s, the Scotto or any other pub filled with youngish Aussies (or South Africans in this case, about the same though, they can certainly drink like or better than us).
