Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi!

I found some funny articles on what different cultures are like.. here are the best bits about aussies.

cartoons from Nicholson Cartoons

You know you are aussie when...

• You know hardly anything about the Constitution and what it actually contains. Before the whole republic thing, you may not have even known it existed.
• You can't remember past the second line of your national anthem, let alone the second verse . . .
• Whether you're male or female, you watch a lot of sport. You watch the cricket, and support your footy team... which code is best is a matter of controversy and depends on your upbringing. You can be sure that the contest is between League, AFL, and maybe Union-- none of these fancy Northern Hemisphere games, like soccer or gridiron. If you're male, you can argue intricate points about their rules. You don't know so much about basketball, netball, hockey, baseball, etc.-- even if the national team are the world champions.
• You're lucky to get four weeks of vacation a year.
• Snow is always a memorable and freakish occurrence.
• You probably own a telephone and a TV. If it needs it, your place is heated in the winter, or maybe air-conditioned in the summer, with its own bathroom. You do your washing in a machine. You don't have a dirt floor. You eat at a table, sitting on chairs.
• You don't consider insects, dogs, cats, monkeys or guinea pigs to be food-- though you may have eaten kangaroo or emu.
• A bathroom, strangely enough, always has a bath in it. Toilets are usually in a separate room, and they're also usually indoors these days. There's no point in being indirect about it-- if you are going to the dunny, that's what you'll say.
• The trains, trams and buses are pretty good in some cities-- but places like Sydney have desperately overloaded public transport systems (disappointingly, however, promised Olympic chaos did not eventuate).
• You think a tax level over 40% is scandalously high.
• "Australian" is pronounced with one syllable.
• You can't understand why overseas people who supposedly speak the same language have great difficulty comprehending you.
• For some reason, -o is a popular ending for words: arvo, combo, garbo, kero, lezzo, metho, milko, muso, rego, Salvos, servo, smoko, speedo, etc.
• Although you do say "g'day" and "mate", rarely would you ever say things such as "sheila", "cobber" or "dry as a dead dingo's donger"
• Mustard and vegemite come in jars. Shaving cream comes in cans. Milk comes in bottles or in cardboard boxes.
• The month comes second: 26/1/88. (And you know what happened on that date).
• The decimal point is a dot. Certainly not a comma.
• A billion, ever since American economists started running the world, is a thousand times a million.
• You think of the word 'war' differently.
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• World War I was fairly important; after all, we suffered the highest per capita death toll of any Allied nation. You think the Anzac spirit is still important, so long as the Kiwis don't win the sporting tests.
• You expect marriages to be made for love, not arranged by third parties. Getting married by a registrar is an option, but not a requirement; most marriages happen in church. For some reason, the Japanese like getting married here. You have a best man and a maid of honour at the wedding-- a friend or a sibling. And naturally, a man gets only one wife at a time.
• Once you're introduced to anyone (perhaps besides the Governor-General, but who is likely to meet him anyway?) you can call them by their first name.
• You know who the first American President was, but not the first Australian Prime Minister. You don't really know what happened in Federation.
• You resent people who succeed over others- everyone should do the same thing, so we all get a "fair go". This is what's known as the "tall poppy syndrome", a kind of American Dream in reverse.
• You are proud of exports such as Geoffrey Rush, Peter Weir, Barry Humphries (a.k.a. Dame Edna Everage); Paul Hogan, Nicole Kidman (her marriage break-up is still front page news), Cate Blanchett, Baz Luhrman, Olivia Newton-John, Midnight Oil, ACDC, John Farnham, Dragon, Yothu Yindi, Elle Macpherson, etc. etc. Even so, you still are suspicious of terms like "Australian culture".
• Not to mention Greg Norman, Cathy Freeman, Dawn Fraser, Herb Elliot, John Eales, Kieran Perkins, Susie O'Neil, Pat Rafter, Ian Thorpe, the Oarsome Foursome, Karrie Webb, Mark Waugh, the late great Sir Donald Bradman and many many others . .
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• You are slightly less proud of the Minogue sisters, Kevin Gosper, Robert Hughes, Jelena Dokic, Shane Warne, Christopher Skase and Skippy
• Mel Gibson, by the way, is Australian. And so's Russell Crowe!
• You think dying at 65 would be a tragedy
• Your country has never been conquered by a foreign nation (you don't count 1788).
• You measure things in metres, kilograms and litres, unless you are over about 50.
• Aside from Ginger Meggs and the American exports, you know nothing about comics.
• You drive on the left-hand side of the road. You stop at red lights even if nobody's around. If you're a pedestrian and cars are stopped at a red light, you will fearlessly cross the street in front of them.
• New Zealanders are basically our naive country cousins, who talk funny and for some bizzare reason, think that they invented pavlova. They are to be pitied and laughed at. They have no hope of gaining the upper hand in the endless sporting rivalry between our two nations.
• Americans are loud and supremely ignorant of Australia (all they know about us they gained from Mick Dundee); British and Europeans in general are more quiet but pretentious and cowardly.
• The nationality people joke most about is the Kiwis (New Zealanders), particularly their fush-and-chups accents and their sheep.
• You don't care very much what family someone comes from.
• Christmas is right on the summer solstice and is quite often the hottest day of the year. You spend it with your family, give presents, and put up a tree. Your decorations still feature sleighs and snowflakes. You send people cards with pictures of White Christmases. There is nothing unusual in having Christmas dinner outdoors.
• Sydney 2000 was a wonderful opportunity to show the world (a) that we are the greatest sporting nation on Earth, Ã la the swimmers of Melbourne '56; and (b) that we do have flushing toilets. But everyone will forget about it within months.
• If you have an appointment, you'll mutter an excuse if you're five minutes late, and apologize profusely if it's ten minutes. An hour late is almost inexcusable.
• If you're talking to someone, you get uncomfortable if they approach closer than about two feet.
• Your next door neighbours can be from Tunisia, Israel, Indonesia, India, Japan, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Brazil, Spain, Malaysia...
• You sleep with Aeroguard on.
• You feel obliged to spread salty black stuff that looks like congealed motor oil on bread and actually grow to like it.
• You actively dislike Americans, but watch their TV, eat their food and worship their idols.
• Democracy means the freedom to draw caricatures of John Howard.
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• Your idea of a lethal weapon is a slug gun.
• A posh meal = an all-you-can-eat buffet.
• The only thing better than beating the Poms at ANY sport is giving them hell about it.
• You can compress several words into one - ie 'g'day', 'd'reckn?'
• Your nickname ends in 'a' or 'o'.
• You've ever used the words - grouse, tops, ripper, choice, sick, rad, exo, ace, wicked, ballistic - to mean good. And then you place 'bloody' in front of it when you really mean it.
• Your politicians believe than sticking the prefix 'un' in front of your nationality is an effective way of making you sit down and shut up.
• You take pride in living in a tolerant multicultural society but firmly believe that all Poms and Kiwis are fair game.
• You insist on asking every celebrity who steps of an aircraft what they think of Australia. If the response is not overwhelmingly positive, they should be subjected to immediate public ridicule.
• The private lives of footy and cricket players become more important than local and national news stories.
• You say 'no worries' quite often, whether you realise it or not.