mike carey

Does Bozo think so?

Some may have noticed I have changed my avatar. It's a bad photo of a red poppy I grew last year or the year before, a symbol of remembrance with its origins the Flanders poppies that grew in the ground of earth disturbed in war, In Flanders Field.

I suspect he meant complaisant, which it turns out is a word in English, although I checked it to see if he had used a French word. It means "marked by an inclination to please or oblige'.

This morning's national Remembrance Day service was conducted in the forecourt of the Australian War Memorial under partly cloudy skies. The service was attended by the Governor-General, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. The service in Brisbane was attended by Her Royal Highness Princess Anne, the Princes Royal, who is in Australia as the Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Australian Corps of Signals to mark the centenary of the Corps.

'Tradie' is more than a look, and often here it doesn't always even include 'that' look. People here are more likely to use 'bogan' for the look (in my part of the country at least), which is a borderline derogatory term for poorer and 'unrefined' people. Tradie is essentially a term that refers to people in the building trades (hence the typical Australian abbreviation/diminutive—shorten the word and ie or o at the end), and extends to tradesmen you'd employ to do minor home repairs, or who work in licensed trades like plumbing and electrical work, and also carpenters and the like. It also refers, more obliquely, to the proportion of them who have become increasingly prosperous as their small businesses do well with that kind of work and don't take on any of the pretensions that wealth can generate (some making a virtue of not doing so, a sort of reverse snobbery). To me at least, the word 'tradie' sits in a neutral to positive register, not a negative one. But back to the gentleman in question.

I think I've said it before, but from my experience there is a sort of gravity about prices in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US (and to a lesser extent in the UK) that leads to a closer alignment of the numerical dollar/(pound) number than the value at the exchange rate, especially for non-traded goods, or services where the price in the other market isn't affected by the price in another. Distance can affect price variations, providers in Niagara Falls ON might charge a similar exchange rate adjusted rate to those across the river, those in Toronto or New York not so much. Some travelling escorts would adjust their rates to match prevailing local rates.

You say that as if trade deficits are a bad thing, and that a deficit with one partner can's be offset by a surplus with another.

That sounds as if you expected what he says to be decipherable.

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Okay, this wins the internet today.

Dijon mustard would be one idea. I know that works for me when I fry mushrooms and add it with cream for a sauce for a steak or pork chop.

Well, one would hope to be able to visit Mr D'Arcy unannounced.

Interesting, I've driven around the periphery, Annapolis to Dulles. From National and Arlington to points south, Alexandria, across the river on the beltway, and back up to the former Bolling AFB and back to Crystal City, but I don't remember driving through the city itself. Parts I went weren't too difficult, but none of that recent. Maybe there was drama but the recollections of have faded. I wonder whether I should hesitate to try driving there again!

Some scenery in Berlin is pleasant, it would seem. Even the rail stations have their attractions.

One older thread with only one substantive post.

I went to two, but they were in the before times. Interest was episodic, some years planning started but faltered then the idea vanished. It had the benefit of coinciding with MAL so those attending could take advantage its open events, but the disadvantages of being in the north-east in January, and it being easy to leave committing until the last minute (and not doing so) and other things easily prompting a late decision not to go.

Did he 'add you' on FB, something that I'm not sure you can do unilaterally, or a) did he ask you to friend him, or b) did FB suggest him as a friend?

You may be surprised how many potential clients use a VPN (perhaps more so in here where VPN/overseas access to those reviews has been discussed from time to time) or who are not in the US will have read your great reviews.

Great, it'll be good to see you again.

The song still has the power to haunt, in the same way it did when I first heard it almost 50 years ago.

In my higher school certificate I discovered when I sat for the French exam that my teacher had omitted one mandatory text and taught us one that wasn't on the curriculum. I still passed, for what it's worth. That was one school and frankly one slightly ditzy teacher. This instance was at eight schools in Queensland, but even so only eight of many schools state-wide. Not all would have had Ancient History as an option for the final years of school, it's not typically a popular elective subject, but nevertheless this was a significant story for several days after it broke, while the authorities sorted out what had happened. In Australia, each state runs external examinations as the final chapter in a high school education, and schools are required to teach to the curricula for the various subjects. There is discretion by schools as to which subjects are offered but that is determined by demand for them by students and the specialist teachers they have available to teach, not any sort of oversight committee or community board, at least for state schools. Religious and independent schools have their own processes but their students still take the same exams. Some independent schools also offer the international baccalaureate. And as so often happens, in the story posted above, it's not the Australian Broadcasting Company. The ABC, like its counterparts in Canada and the UK is the public sector broadcaster, and it's a corporation owned by the commonwealth government but managed at arms length by a board. I believe that in Canada, that type of structure is called a crown corporation. The ABC is independent of the government, often aggressively so, by no means a 'state broadcaster' although I have seen US press outlets refer to it as such.