mike carey

There was a prize for fifth place? What ever happened to 'Silver Medal = Loser'?

Yes, I know I'm trivial!

Slava is a diminutive of the Russian name Mstislav. (Diminutives for men's names often have an 'a' ending, Misha short for Mikhail and Sasha for Aleksandr.)

Exactly, BUT the photo you're copying has to be on the internet, not in one of your personal folders. You post a link to the photo in here, not an actual copy of it. If copy and paste doesn't work, click on the 'image' icon in the bar at the top of the box you post in and paste the URL into the dialogue box.

For those who don't know, 'Holding the Man' is the story of a love affair between high school friends who played [Australian Rules] football in a country town in Victoria. It's a story of the AIDS plague and the sadness that arose from that.

Close.

A very particular demographic there!

Something Australians can relate to! (We can compete as to who speaks faster, Rod!)

I was not aware that Tim Conigrave's sad story had made it to the stage abroad. That support would be reason enough for me to support the company. It's especially poignant that 'holding the man' is a penalisable offence in Australian rules football.

I'll volunteer to be your test case, although I suspect you'll find one sooner.

Self-awareness is always an attractive trait. Now if only I could understand a Glaswegian accent.

Perversely, omit 'on' and that would be a complete sentence!

Hey @rvwnsd happy birthday, hope you have a great day! I always enjoy the things you have to say in here. (Yes, I'm early in posting for those of you in the US. It's already Sunday here.)

When I last worked there was a Vietnamese bakery nearby that made great pork rolls (a crusty bread roll with pork and salad ingredients on it) for less than $5. There are more of those sorts of shops here than there are chain outlets like Subway. The two big supermarket chains here typically don't sell those sorts of meals but they have started to open stores that are more like convenience store and they have a range of sandwiches at good prices ($6-$8), but they are packaged rather than made to order. I had a good chicken and salad on Turkish bread sandwich from one of them recently. (Different culture note: chicken and salad, not chicken salad, that means chicken with lettuce, tomato etc, not some chicken in mayo concoction.)

I've bought clothes on line exactly once, and that was underwear from an Australian company (no, not that one). I don't reject using on-line in order to protect local businesses if it is the bricks and mortar presence of a big company, they can look after themselves. I have no desire to use the likes of Amazon, but I'd be happy to use smaller on-line retailers. My first on-line purchase even vaguely related to this thread was for sheets. I was in Iraq and totally unhappy with the crappy linen that the US contractor was providing so ordered some linen from LL Bean. 10 years later I'm still receiving emails from them almost daily. I need some new trousers and I'll probably order from them. (They price in AUD now and offer free shipping over a certain purchase amount.)

In Australia, coins are only legal tender up to certain amounts, $5 for 'silver' coins (5, 10, 20, 50c) and 10 times face value for $1 and $2 coins. (For one and two cent coins, which are no longer in circulation but are still legal tender, the limit is 20c.)

I'm guessing sherry. Ed: Oops, posted this before seeing @escortrod's entry and your reply on the next page.

Even allowing for the variations between Celtic, Germanic and Norse heritage, Great Britain is far less diverse than Africa. So you would expect these companies to be able to differentiate between the various racial groups on the continent.

Oh, I don't know. Perhaps she likes him and he is interested or even likes her. Is he gay, or is he bi or G4P?

In addition to the other comments, the average price for a litre of wine includes the wine in a box offerings that here, even for the good ones (a relative term I accept) can be $AU12 for two litres. It doesn't take much of that wine to bring the average down to $US12 no matter how much wine is sold at $20 a bottle (75cl).

There's a running joke in Sydney and Melbourne that in hick town Canberra there are kangaroos hopping around (it's also a standing expectation of tourists that it happens everywhere in the country). This morning in Canberra, the national capital:

I suspect that the booking sites aren't optimised for multiple city itineraries. For one thing, the best deals on the different sectors are likely to be with different airlines, so there is less chance of low overall prices for the itinerary. A travel agent might be the best way of doing it. Alternatively use your preferred airline's web site (or check separately on several of them). I've done the travel agent thing (a trip to South America with a whole bunch of flights in the continent, but also tours and hotels) but other than that, the closest I've come to that sort of trip is one into one US city, an internal flight and home from the second US city, and I booked that on the QF web page. The fare was the same as a return trip to the first city would have been (it was the further one from Sydney).

Meh, we don't do thanksgiving, but some of us have heard of it.

Of course you can go cold turkey with food. Think the week after thanksgiving.

@escortrod, not haggis? Seriously some good things there. Lancs hotpot is one I love but hadn't thought of for years.