mike carey

Why will you never make it here, it's only a 14 hour flight from the west coast and if the flight from the NE to LAX/SFO is too long, Qantas flies non-stop from DFW and United from IAH, so you can have a shorter connecting flight (Qantas also flies out of JFK with a stopover in LAX, so it's easy!). Come in Feb/Mar for Mardi Gras. From Sydney, Mount Victoria is about 2.5 hours by train, and they run every hour, under AUD10 no reservations required, and the Blue Mountains National Park is spectacular: you'll love it!

Before he was elevated, Archbishop Sin joked that he would never be made a cardinal.

Colour me stunned. My immediate reaction if I don't get something like this is to say it out aloud. Worked this time too (although to me it was obvious straight away).

Not something that bothers me, but the emergency services make a big deal of it because of the possible confusion with the letter O being 6 on mobile phones. The emergency number in Australia is 000.

Not ads to hate... There is a Royal Commission into the finance service industry. Its hearings have been a litany of banks etc behaving badly. These two ads were commissioned by a public broadcaster program about ads to persuade people to abandon the big banks. The end of the first one where the customer's 'Dear John' letter to the bank says, 'I cheated on you once with a credit union and it was fantastic' is fantastic itself.

Public broadcasters that do not carry advertisements are a blessing. Unfortunately not everything I want to watch is on the ABC.

Not funny in the 'joke' sense, but I had a good laugh at this, in a tweet: We offer a free car ventilation service. All you have to do, is leave a dog locked in a hot car, we do the rest. It was tweeted by the Metropolitan Police in Camden [in London].

And this, about the 'Tasmanian done good', from the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-comedian-forcing-stand-up-to-confront-the-metoo-era

Thankfully nothing like the purge and massacre of the PKI has happened this year in America.

20-18. And for those years this century where I would include the word 'thousand' (more often those in the first decade) I would say 'two thousand and seven' or whatever.

Bon anniversaire!

Lol, no, and I've made no secret of that. Lance can have his way with me, and as soon as possible. But I do want the shirt too.

@Lance_Navarro tweeted a photo of himself in a t-shirt saying no one is illegal on stolen land. I need one of those shirts.

Happy Canada Day!! // Bonne Fête du Canada!! O Canada, terre de nos aïeux.

Bon Anniversaire!

The original post was about the extent to which countries accepted homosexuality. Rightly it cited countries where it is legal but oppressed. What it didn't do it calibrate its condemnation of countries where it is illegal but not oppressed. The law is clear in Singapore, but the enforcement is light. I wouldn't want to live there, but would happily visit and hire there. I would be much more worried about visiting the UAE than Singapore.

Happy birthday, @glennnn!! I know you haven't chatted here for quite a while, but I saw that you had visited the forum last night your time. Hope you are having a great birthday. Hope you have overcome the challenges you spoke of last time you commented here.

Works for me!

Germany finish fourth in their group and are bundled out in the group stage. Makes Australia's loss in the same circumstances a little more bearable. Actually, no it doesn't. Separately, I note that Fleet Street was in full 'we're going to win the cup' insufferable hyperbole mode after England beat Panamá and Tunisia, but have gone a bit quiet after they lost to Belgium.

When I was growing up those shoes would be called sand shoes, or sometimes running shoes or runners. 'Sneakers' became popular after that.

Sex work or paying in a foreign currency? (The answer is yes either way.)

Meh, US privilege! (That's a joke BTW.) Seriously though, I wouldn't dream of trying to pay a companion abroad in AUD. Obviously foreign currencies are accepted to a greater or lesser extent in some places and some circumstances, and USD more widely than many other currencies. For what it's worth, the donation I posted to Daddy was in USD not AUD. I had US banknotes from my last trip to the US but would probably have converted money to USD if I had not.

I have said for a long time (in here and elsewhere) that there is an equivalence between prices in AUD, CAD, NZD and USD and to a lesser extend GBP, that means we tend to compare the number rather than convert the currency. Expecting to pull your usual USD rate in Canada or Australia is optimistic.

One thing to consider in whether to use bottled water or tap water (if you can justify the environmental issues with bottled water) is that tap water is often fluoridated and the fluoride it provides is important for dental health. When fluoride was added to town water here, rates of child dental decay fell through the floor.

Lol. No, the ones that still have a label on contain gin, the water bottles have the labels removed.