Half a Story

Listening to a discussion on the radio earlier the question was are we a ‘glass half-full’ nation or ‘glass half-empty’? This apparently was shorthand for ‘optimistic’ or ‘pessimistic’. Setting aside the necessity to use synonyms when words have more than three syllables, it got me thinking about those glass expressions. My simple reading of glasses and liquids is that if I’m drinking a pint of ale and the level reaches the half-pint line I’d say that glass was “half-empty”, but when I refill the now empty glass and the level reaches the half-pint mark I’d say the glass was “half-full” - nothing at all to do with whether I am popsitive or negative, or have a cheery or grumpy disposition.

A closing thought - at a social gathering where the host was filling the glass, he might contend that to suggest my glass was 'half-full’ was unreasonably optimistic!

Almost a Metric Virgin

I found myself explaining the UK’s adoption of the Metric system to an American and an Australian.

The US has of course remained uniquely wedded to the Imperial system while Australia has fully adopted the Metric system. The UK, I explained, is a bit of a virgin – not defiled by metrification but not pure to the Imperial system. We appear to be metric but we are not really sure about it. So for example, in company with the US, we are the last two countries to measure long distances in miles but in common with most of humanity we measure short distances in centimetres. Fluids are measured in litres but there are exceptions. Beer in a pub is bought in pints, but UK pints are not the same as US pints – a UK pint is 20 fluid ounces (there’s those pesky imperial measures again) whereas a US pint is 16 fluid ounces. Of course a gallon is eight pints but we don’t use gallons any more except we still measure vehicle fuel consumption in 'miles per gallon' even though this creates the greatest difficulty calculating fuel consumption (thank goodness for car computers). But when I say we buy beer in pints this does not apply to beer in bottles which are typically 500 millilitres. There are some pint bottles of course, milk is in pints when delivered to your door but is sold in metric bottles when bought from a supermarket. Uniquely we measure body weight in Stones (although these are being replaced by Kilos) but there are no signs that infant body weight will ever be measured in anything other than Pounds.

So far so good; my companions were looking somewhat quizzical and wondered why we made life so complicated - but I was saving the best ‘til last. Weather temperature I explained is measured in both Celsius and Fahrenheit so that the British can choose to use Celsius for low temperatures and Fahrenheit for high. So we’ll say it’s “minus 10°” if it’s chilly outside but “its 86°” if it’s a scorcher! The only logic for this is that minus 10° (the Celsius measure) sounds a lot colder that plus 14° (the Fahrenheit equivalent) but 86° sounds a lot hotter than 30° (the Celsius measure).

They concurred and suggested the British were all quite mad (and of course, they are absolutely right)! 

Singapore Fling

By the hotel pool in Singapore we observed the ‘solemnisation of an engagement’. The local couple were very smart in their white outfits and the scene was decorated with lots of sky blue ribbons and raffia balls hanging from the arbour by silver cords. A breeze gently moved the decorations and soft music played before the engagement vows were given. She turned and looked straight at her fiancé saying “Love you plenty long time Mister” – Ah romance is not dead!

OzTrek – Just let it happen?

Back to Sydney where we went up the Sydney Tower – great views over the city.

We got the concession rate which included the ‘OzTrek amazing virtual reality ride across Australia’ – great. The designers had hit upon the idea of enhancing the IMAX experience by animating the seats so that they moved in synchronicity with the pictures. The problem was, as any engineer knows, is bridging the gap between an idea and an implementation – this is where OzTrek failed. We were strapped into the seats like the rides at Alton Towers and the experience began. It started with a few shuddering jolts to the spine reminiscent of driving a Ford Prefect over cobbles. The jolts occurred at a frequency and in a direction totally unrelated to the images on the screen but after a few minutes the jostling stopped and I started to search my mouth for loose fillings. But no, the wretched experience was not over and was about to be further enhanced by the illumination of two side viewing screens (which never actually illuminated) and more relentless thumping. At the conclusion which seemed to last an eternity, we felt decidedly queasy and trampled which put us off beer for a good half hour.

So be warned ‘OzTrek – an award winning way of becoming acquainted with your spinal column and breakfast!’

Is that a Chimerney on the boat Mary Pawpins?

An audio-visual presentation shown on the boat as we sailed along the Gordon River (one of a many river trips as it happens) described how the valiant Capt Matthew Flinders had mistaken the entrance of Macquarie Harbour for the river mouth - he was pressed for time which explains the blot on his hitherto excellent mapping of the Australian coastline. Later another worthy captain by the name of James Kelly navigated the 200-metre opening and named it Macquarie Harbour in honour of the NSW Governor and named Sarah Island in honour of his boss’s wife. Our James was only 23 at the time but obviously had political nous beyond his years. As is often the way of these presentations, a picture of the good Captain Kelly was flashed up and a voice was required to speak the words of his journal. Judging from the accent, the bold James came from the land of ‘Mary Pawpins’ so had been coached in English accents by ‘Dick Vioyn Dioyke’. Now I simply cannot believe that it is too difficult or too costly to find a UK actor to do this work – what is it about Johnny Colonial that makes him think he can ‘do’ an English accent? – it must be the same affliction that Johnny Londoner contracts when doing a Scottish accent!

More bizarrely yet, it turns out that the cunning James Kelly was actually born and bred in Parramatta just outside Sydney over 10000 miles away from ‘Mary Pawpins’.

I’m sorry to correct you but ….

Now I’m not one to be picky but sometimes you just have to correct people when they perpetuate howlers. While touring the Blue Mountains our guide Steve related tales of the daring adventures of Captain James Cook. He concluded an otherwise engaging exposition by telling us that Captain Cook was not a Captain at all but a ‘Lootenant’ and was not made a Captain until sometime later. Well having some connections with officers in the Royal Navy, I felt able to inform him that the officer in command of any Royal Navy ship is called ‘the captain’ but that the schoolboy error he made was understandable because Captain is a rank an officer reaches after he has been promoted from Lieutenant (Lefftenant), through Lieutenant Commander, and then Commander. I was smug - Steve smiled winsomely.

Award winning hyperbole

Have you noticed the growing trend towards overblown hyperbole? It struck me as we looked through menus, bars blackboards, and tourist leaflets that every item seemed to have a hyperbole attached to it  – not ‘beer’, but ‘award winning beer’. On reflection, I don’t think this is an exclusively Aussie characteristic but perhaps generally redolent of an age dominated by ‘style over substance’. A ‘Good Food’ sign seems to adorn every pub these days and one can understand why that would seem more attractive to ‘Fairly mediocre Brake Brothers micro-waved food’. The use of hyperbole in this way has, I suspect, been around since the dawn of branding, and it’s not that which bothers me – it’s the use of totally unsubstantiated hyperbole. We were in a very small town for coffee (pause for shock revelation) and the small town had two establishments opposite each other – a butcher and the café /baker. The butcher boasted of his ‘award winning pies’ and the café of their ‘award winning Australian coffee’ – neither revealed the provenance of their awards so we were left to guess ‘by whom they were gifted’ and ‘what the awards were for’. I think the pies won an award from the baker for ‘best non-competing bakery product in Tasmania’ and the café received the accolade from the butcher for ‘tastiest low-cholesterol product in Australia’ – but I will never know!