Thanks for your nice words. What really came out of this funeral is that you should love all your friends and your family as much as you possibly can, and not miss opportunities, because you don't know what might happen.

You ask:
".. Hey I had a lot of fun with your posts on how to live in Oz....
.. Is this real ?"
A: Much as Australians like a good story, to tell 'tall stories' and embellish things...yes it is real, sometimes I'm sorry to say.
I guess the problem with books is that when you describe a nationality in detail, you can really only generalise, and people are individuals.
I guess it's a bit like the generalisations on that famous Euro postcard I have a copy of "Perfect Europeans"...... "Driving like the French....Generous as a Dutchmen....controlled as an Italian.. cooking like the Brit's..(I forget the rest but I thought they were great)
BUT...in all the chapters of these books on the majormitchell website, I haven't found one yet where I could say "He's got it wrong! An Australian would never act like that!" In most cases, they can and they DO. The author I think digs out some of the worst things which he thinks are funniest (and there is truth in them as well).
Your words are good in that they give me pause - that besides presenting the book, I need to give more of my own experiences and provide some counter balance to include some more of the good things.
If you think the Oz ideas so far are controversial...it's about to get worse hehe! Hopefully I can explain it in such a way that Australians only appear 'different' rather than as 'losers' or anything really bad.
Stay tuned....
Kate

More on Australian Female/Male relationships....

The author observes that men in Australia in the 1980s became homosexual if they liked women, and heterosexual if they didn’t.
(I know that sounds crazy, but it goes on to explain better....)

The author had an encounter with a beautiful Australian girl at a party. She treated him like an old friend, gave him hugs, laughed at his travel adventures and acted really relaxed.
At the end of the evening he took her home. They sat together side by side on the sofa and kept talking and telling stories over coffee. Suddenly the author leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth. She tensed up, became stiff, and pressed herself against the far edge of the sofa.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I thought you were homosexual” she replied.
“How come?”
“You’re too friendly to be straight!”
“But you were friendly too!” the author exclaimed.
“Because I thought you were gay!”

From that moment on, the atmosphere changed totally. The conversation was no longer easy going and the girl behaved quite formally. No matter how much affection the guy tried to show her, she responded tautly and spoke with long awkward pauses.
“Are you sure you aren’t homosexual?” she asked again
“Of course not.”
Her reply was that “only gay men act so relaxed with women here.”
“Then how do Australian heterosexual men act?” he asked.
“NORMAL” she replied.
After much trial and error, the author learned over the next few months that only when he too tensed up, acted gruff and spoke with long awkward pauses, did Australian women seem to take his advances seriously and accept him as a possible romantic partner.
He says he uncovered the Australian heterosexual mode and found the basic rules.

1. Gay men in Oz behave towards women with the same relaxed, easy going attitude that heterosexual men show towards women in Europe.
Homosexuals here have a deeper respect for females and would rather regard other men only as sex objects.
By contrast, and in order to be seen as heterosexuals, straight men in Oz have to act surly, tense and uneasy with women, as if they didn’t like them at all. They must also look ready to run back to their mates at any moment.

2. Gay men in Australia, when visiting their women friends, bring flowers, boxes of chocolates or champagne, much like straight men do in Europe. They are also the ones who entertain the women with amusing stories and flattering compliments at parties.
Heterosexual men, on the other hand, wanting to be recognised as such, have no choice but to slouch in corners and grunt into their drinks. Since they also consider taking presents when visiting rather cissy and unmanly, many straight men just prefer to bring themselves, with maybe some beer or wine if it’s a party.
(For the presents thing: I can say that still hetero men don’t do a lot of present bringing. And if you do get presents, after you get married they often soon disappear. Just the way it goes. Mother’s day, Birthday and Christmas are seen as the appropriate time for gifts, and anniversary if they manage to remember it.)

Ok, I know this one is controversial, and I don't know how much of it could be still true today (I hope none), but it does describe what the thinking was like in the 1980's, and even when behaviour has changed, I think the thinking is a lot slower to follow...
I still notice guys though who are pretending they aren't interested in women, for some reason or another....I don't really know why they think this is Macho. I'm not going to try and analyse this one as they're just far too different from us.

(The next chapter is better....)
Kate

Ok, here comes another chapter (just one more chapter of this, then the subject will change to....Australian gambling)

The book says it’s all very well for Italians or South Americans to kiss at the slightest pretext - flirtatious people by nature, for them kissing can be a shallow affair. Many people may even do it with people on whom they have absolutely no sexual designs.
Australians, (book says) ‘highly moral and honourable by contrast’ will kiss for one purpose and one purpose only.
In Europe when two people get to kiss each other, they often perform the act in a passionate though not really optimistic manner. Europeans kiss for pleasure, using it (book says, not me) to avoid deeper, more intimate commitments.
In Australia, once you’ve kissed there’s no turning back (possibly in a good % of cases).
When dating, Australians kiss to let you know that they’re ready....like now.

Kissing is the key ritual. Australians are meticulous about kissing and have made it the cornerstone of sex.
“Kiss me again.”
“No”
“Why?”
“Lets make love instead.”
After all, if you are going to all the trouble and actually invade someone’s personal space, you might as well go all the way....

Many people from overseas, after making initial contact with Australians and kissing them quite passionately, think nothing more of it. On the following occasion, wishing to pick up where they left off, they can be shocked to find they no longer arouse the same degree of interest before.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Then kiss me?”
“What’s the point?” (i.e.,, it didn’t lead to anything last time, so why bother?)
“I like you!”
“You sure didn’t show it last time.”

The most popular and successful lovers in Australia know to hold back to the last moment and not to waste their kisses on hellos or goodbyes. They know only too well that kissing must be reserved for the following occasions:

*As an indication of readiness
*As a signal that the waiting is over
*And when you’re drunk.

A successful romantic evening in Australia (in the 80’s and I can vouch for part of the 90’s too) consists of not kissing on meeting, absolutely not touching during dinner, no physical touching on the way home, total abstinence while sitting around in front of the tv. (C’est vrai! It used to happen!)
Then, just as you are about to say goodbye and both are wondering whether perhaps the other one is not a bit ‘funny’ (i.e.,, Gay) one all-exploding kiss must come as a complete and instant outpouring of the tension.
Then you see that the Australian is now ready.

Ok, now I have to say that this chapter could be a bit misleading, since it implies that Australians are incapable of being casual about kissing. Of course they can be. It’s called Casual Sex (hehe I’m only half joking!)

How to understand the attitude of latin temperaments, par exemple towards kissing, when as Australians we’ve been brought up thinking about it in a totally different way in our society (in a very high % of cases) is maybe the very hardest thing I struggle with as an Australian, even after 13 years have gone by since my first Belgian penfriend started to take a lot of time to explain the latin ‘system’ to me when we were 17 years old (I think for many Oz males, it could be almost impossible to understand)
Mon amie m’as dit que chaque jour a l’ecole, she would kiss each of her friends pour ‘salut’, meme les garcons, and even some guys would kiss guys (here, it wouldn’t happen unless you were gay, so this idea poses a HUGE problem for our thinking). She also told me that even students she didn’t know well or even didn’t know at all were kissed, and this was very hard to understand.
Ok, let’s reverse the situation and see what would happen if we introduced this seemingly simple greeting custom on Australian teenage school students (but with Australian mentality which makes all the difference).
From the Australian view (especially the Australian teenager when I was growing up), this would raise things like; “Kissing your friends hello, huh? Fun!..hehe” and things like “We kiss when we haven’t seen people for a long time....you only saw your friends yesterday!” And we also wouldn’t kiss anyone but our boyfriend at that age if we had one (there’s little kissing of parents, if at all, especially, since in the teenage years we hardly want to know them or be seen with them, and we wouldn’t ever kiss our same sex school friends either). And if we DID kiss another boy besides our boyfriend at school, even to say hello, our boyfriend would almost certainly punch the other guy who would dare do this.
In adulthood too, this jealousy thing can still be a problem. Because kissing is so often seen as so much more than a kiss, even to kiss somebody else’s girl casually or for fun can mean trouble, maybe because A: even a misunderstanding can get some people into trouble and B: if it’s another Aussie kissing somebody else’s girl for fun, the boyfriend knows this guy is thinking about sex anyway, so that’s why he’ll hit him!
To give a good example: My husband’s Oz hard rock band consists of a couple of ‘normal’ Australian guys plus 2 very what I would call ‘Ocker’ aussies (the extreme swearing, beer drinking but fun loving kind, not very cultured about anywhere except Australia, but mostly nice guys).
The band is playing this Saturday night in my city, and I’ll be very interested in watching what happens with the antics of the lead singer, as always. Off stage, he’s just often mildly annoying, not too noisy, but on stage, he takes on a ‘rock star’ persona along with his costume which he thinks gives him a licence to do what he wants....including wander off the stage in the middle of a song and kiss or feel girls in the audience. He doesn’t mean any harm and he’s just doing it for casual fun - mostly - but he does it in a suggestive fashion and picks women at random in the audience to do it on, without knowing if they’ve got a partner or not. Eventually I’m quite sure that some intoxicated boyfriend is going to punch him one...it’s just a matter of time. (If the boyfriend is an Aussie, he will do it knowing be full well knowing that Dean is always thinking of sex when he’s doing this, because most are, and that is the attitude behind much kissing). It’s not just the suggestiveness of it that’s the problem, but also, Australia has quite strict anti-sexual harrassment laws, which could also get him into trouble if one of these women decided to complain....
It’s amusing to watch, as long as nothing bad happens....

Back to the ‘what if Australian teenagers started using kissing greetings at school’....I’m sure some do already (...behind the toilets!) they wouldn’t just stop at one...it would not be for just ‘hello’ either.
And when parents take their kids to school, the kids don’t kiss them goodbye much either, if at all. One reason could be ridicule. I remember when I was quite young at Primary School, we used to hide at a corner of the school building at the end of some lunch times and watch one particular kid return with his mother after having gone home for lunch. She’d always make a fuss of him and kiss him goodbye, and we’d be hiding laughing...je ne sais pas pourquoi, exactement, but that’s how it was. I’m sure that’s why he looked so reluctant to kiss her too, because he probably knew the other kids were spying on him!

Can anybody tell me why some Europeans (Swiss particularly I noticed) ‘air kiss’ strangers? I mean they go to kiss you but they don’t make contact. To most Australians, this probably feels pretentious and a bit fake, but we wouldn’t be sure about it and might wonder ‘why make a show of it?’
Is it because they feel they have to do ‘something’? (An Australian in an awkward position would most likely wait to see if the other person was going to shake hands, or else stand back nervously and avoid any contact altogether...the 'hands off!' policy)
I have seen some older Aussie women (over 50) be a bit pretentious with kiss greetings too, but go the opposite way: being too kissy when they don’t mean it, seemingly in an attempt to look more sophisticated than they are.

Can somebody tell me if in France hand shaking is as important a ritual between guys as it is here? (More on this one at a later time because I only found out recently that this is a lot more important here than I thought before.).

Even in Adulthood, Aussies wonder to themselves ‘Why would total strangers kiss each other?’
Because even if we can eventually manage to put the sex ideas aside, there has to be either real affection to do it, or in a few instances, duty (like an old aunt you hardly know but you’d better kiss her anyway because she’s your relative).

In Europe, it’s not such a difficult thing for some of us to kiss strangers or little known friends - it often feels nice and becomes a bit of a matter of ‘doing as the Romans do’ and since everybody is doing it, it’s not so uncomfortable, but when we come home, it’s not automatic and there’s more like a process that some of us have to go through, by asking ourselves questions: 1: Do we know the person well enough?. 2. Do we like the person enough? 3. Do we feel like kissing them on this particular day? (this last one is probably important for many, since even the Robert Treborlang book mentions that the Australian ‘mood’ is rather variable. (I'll find the link to this later)

So what are the main reasons latins kiss strangers? To be polite? To be friendly? Duty? Automatic and don’t have to think about it? All of these????? It would help if somebody could give me some of the answers.....
In Australia, it is far easier to do it for goodbye than hello, since at least at the end of an evening/meeting you know the other person (and you could be drunk too LOL).
In my 20’s, I really didn’t notice any Australian ‘just friends’ kissing each other, but now that I’m 30, it seems much more common to see from that age group onwards. Several theories: after you are 30, your friends may be ‘old friends’ by then. Plus, you may care little if some stupid incomprehending Aussie might see you kiss your friend and think you’re lesbian etc. Also after age 30 more people are married, and this makes casual ‘just friends’ greeting kissing less ‘dangerous’ and less likely to be misinterpreted.
In my circle of Alliance Francaise aussie friends, we always kiss when we greet each other....not to pretend we are French, as such, but maybe to be less ‘Aussie’ and more cultured - but it still wouldn’t work if we weren’t already fond of each other, which we are, regardless of some huge age differences. (i.e., age range is 22 - 65)

Also, Australians have a much different idea to Europeans about modesty and not showing a lot of nudity on tv and such....why else would the most shocking thing a yobbo could think of to do to disrupt a national cricket match (yobbo = often drunken slang talking aussie) be to take his clothes off and run naked (called streaking) onto the field in the middle of the game, usually with the police not far behind him. He becomes a star on the tv news and gets his 10 minutes of fame....
However, I think we accept a lot more nudity than Americans, because a famous touring Australian stage show called “Puppetry of the Penis” has been banned in some states there.
As for European Movies featuring latins, they can sometimes be rather frustrating for Australians. We know the movies are done by French or whatever with latin temperaments, so we look forward to the ‘good bits’ and a lot more nudity than we’d ever get on our own movies, but instead often have to endure a lot of deep and meaningful talking..(Aussies would ask ...”What’s the point? Just DO something and get on with it!”) until we wonder if the movie will ever get to the ‘good bits’. Our popular movies are not like that, mostly.
Ok, so ends this post. Hope it hasn’t been too long...and I tried to keep it constructive, something which rarely happens when discussing things with Aussie guys. In about 30 seconds your entire conversation can degenerate into innuendo....

Ok, here comes another chapter (just one more chapter of this, then the subject will change to....Australian gambling)

The book says it’s all very well for Italians or South Americans to kiss at the slightest pretext - flirtatious people by nature, for them kissing can be a shallow affair. Many people may even do it with people on whom they have absolutely no sexual designs.
Australians, (book says) ‘highly moral and honourable by contrast’ will kiss for one purpose and one purpose only.
In Europe when two people get to kiss each other, they often perform the act in a passionate though not really optimistic manner. Europeans kiss for pleasure, using it (book says, not me) to avoid deeper, more intimate commitments.
In Australia, once you’ve kissed there’s no turning back (possibly in a good % of cases).
When dating, Australians kiss to let you know that they’re ready....like now.

Kissing is the key ritual. Australians are meticulous about kissing and have made it the cornerstone of sex.
“Kiss me again.”
“No”
“Why?”
“Lets make love instead.”
After all, if you are going to all the trouble and actually invade someone’s personal space, you might as well go all the way....

Many people from overseas, after making initial contact with Australians and kissing them quite passionately, think nothing more of it. On the following occasion, wishing to pick up where they left off, they can be shocked to find they no longer arouse the same degree of interest before.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Then kiss me?”
“What’s the point?” (i.e.,, it didn’t lead to anything last time, so why bother?)
“I like you!”
“You sure didn’t show it last time.”

The most popular and successful lovers in Australia know to hold back to the last moment and not to waste their kisses on hellos or goodbyes. They know only too well that kissing must be reserved for the following occasions:

*As an indication of readiness
*As a signal that the waiting is over
*And when you’re drunk.

A successful romantic evening in Australia (in the 80’s and I can vouch for part of the 90’s too) consists of not kissing on meeting, absolutely not touching during dinner, no physical touching on the way home, total abstinence while sitting around in front of the tv. (C’est vrai! It used to happen!)
Then, just as you are about to say goodbye and both are wondering whether perhaps the other one is not a bit ‘funny’ (i.e.,, Gay) one all-exploding kiss must come as a complete and instant outpouring of the tension.
Then you see that the Australian is now ready.

Ok, now I have to say that the last chapter could be a bit misleading, since it implies that Australians are incapable of being casual about kissing. Of course they can be. It’s called Casual Sex (hehe I’m only half joking!)

How to understand the attitude of latin temperaments, par exemple towards kissing, when as Australians we’ve been brought up thinking about it in a totally different way in our society (in a very high % of cases) is maybe the very hardest thing I struggle with as an Australian, even after 13 years have gone by since my first Belgian penfriend started to take a lot of time to explain the latin ‘system’ to me when we were 17 years old (I think for many Oz males, it could be almost impossible to understand)
Mon amie m’as dit que chaque jour a l’ecole, she would kiss each of her friends pour ‘salut’, meme les garcons, and even some guys would kiss guys (here, it wouldn’t happen unless you were gay, so this idea poses a HUGE problem for our thinking). She also told me that even students she didn’t know well or even didn’t know at all were kissed, and this was very hard to understand.
Ok, let’s reverse the situation and see what would happen if we introduced this seemingly simple greeting custom on Australian teenage school students (but with Australian mentality which makes all the difference).
From the Australian view (especially the Australian teenager when I was growing up), this would raise things like; “Kissing your friends hello, huh? Fun!..hehe” and things like “We kiss when we haven’t seen people for a long time....you only saw your friends yesterday!” And we also wouldn’t kiss anyone but our boyfriend at that age if we had one (there’s little kissing of parents, if at all, especially, since in the teenage years we hardly want to know them or be seen with them, and we wouldn’t ever kiss our same sex school friends either). And if we DID kiss another boy besides our boyfriend at school, even to say hello, our boyfriend would almost certainly punch the other guy who would dare do this.
In adulthood too, this jealousy thing can still be a problem. Because kissing is so often seen as so much more than a kiss, even to kiss somebody else’s girl casually or for fun can mean trouble, maybe because A: even a misunderstanding can get some people into trouble and B: if it’s another Aussie kissing somebody else’s girl for fun, the boyfriend knows this guy is thinking about sex anyway, so that’s why he’ll hit him!
To give a good example: My husband’s Oz hard rock band consists of a couple of ‘normal’ Australian guys plus 2 very what I would call ‘Ocker’ aussies (the extreme swearing, beer drinking but fun loving kind, not very cultured about anywhere except Australia, but mostly nice guys).
The band is playing this Saturday night in my city, and I’ll be very interested in watching what happens with the antics of the lead singer, as always. Off stage, he’s just often mildly annoying, not too noisy, but on stage, he takes on a ‘rock star’ persona along with his costume which he thinks gives him a licence to do what he wants....including wander off the stage in the middle of a song and kiss or feel girls in the audience. He doesn’t mean any harm and he’s just doing it for casual fun - mostly - but he does it in a suggestive fashion and picks women at random in the audience to do it on, without knowing if they’ve got a partner or not. Eventually I’m quite sure that some intoxicated boyfriend is going to punch him one...it’s just a matter of time. (If the boyfriend is an Aussie, he will do it knowing be full well knowing that Dean is always thinking of sex when he’s doing this, because most are, and that is the attitude behind much kissing). It’s not just the suggestiveness of it that’s the problem, but also, Australia has quite strict anti-sexual harrassment laws, which could also get him into trouble if one of these women decided to complain....
It’s amusing to watch, as long as nothing bad happens....

Back to the ‘what if Australian teenagers started using kissing greetings at school’....I’m sure some do already (...behind the toilets!) they wouldn’t just stop at one...it would not be for just ‘hello’ either.
And when parents take their kids to school, the kids don’t kiss them goodbye much either, if at all. One reason could be ridicule. I remember when I was quite young at Primary School, we used to hide at a corner of the school building at the end of some lunch times and watch one particular kid return with his mother after having gone home for lunch. She’d always make a fuss of him and kiss him goodbye, and we’d be hiding laughing...je ne sais pas pourquoi, exactement, but that’s how it was. I’m sure that’s why he looked so reluctant to kiss her too, because he probably knew the other kids were spying on him!

Can anybody tell me why some Europeans (Swiss particularly I noticed) ‘air kiss’ strangers? I mean they go to kiss you but they don’t make contact. To most Australians, this probably feels pretentious and a bit fake, but we wouldn’t be sure about it and might wonder ‘why make a show of it?’
Is it because they feel they have to do ‘something’? (An Australian in an awkward position would most likely wait to see if the other person was going to shake hands, or else stand back nervously and avoid any contact altogether...the 'hands off!' policy)
I have seen some older Aussie women (over 50) be a bit pretentious with kiss greetings too, but go the opposite way: being too kissy when they don’t mean it, seemingly in an attempt to look more sophisticated than they are.

Can somebody tell me if in France hand shaking is as important a ritual between guys as it is here? (More on this one at a later time because I only found out recently that this is a lot more important here than I thought before.).

Even in Adulthood, Aussies wonder to themselves ‘Why would total strangers kiss each other?’
Because even if we can eventually manage to put the sex ideas aside, there has to be either real affection to do it, or in a few instances, duty (like an old aunt you hardly know but you’d better kiss her anyway because she’s your relative).

In Europe, it’s not such a difficult thing for some of us to kiss strangers or little known friends - it often feels nice and becomes a bit of a matter of ‘doing as the Romans do’ and since everybody is doing it, it’s not so uncomfortable, but when we come home, it’s not automatic and there’s more like a process that some of us have to go through, by asking ourselves questions: 1: Do we know the person well enough?. 2. Do we like the person enough? 3. Do we feel like kissing them on this particular day? (this last one is probably important for many, since even the Robert Treborlang book mentions that the Australian ‘mood’ is rather variable. (I'll find the link to this later)

So what are the main reasons latins kiss strangers? To be polite? To be friendly? Duty? Automatic and don’t have to think about it? All of these????? It would help if somebody could give me some of the answers.....
In Australia, it is far easier to do it for goodbye than hello, since at least at the end of an evening/meeting you know the other person (and you could be drunk too LOL).
In my 20’s, I really didn’t notice any Australian ‘just friends’ kissing each other, but now that I’m 30, it seems much more common to see from that age group onwards. Several theories: after you are 30, your friends may be ‘old friends’ by then. Plus, you may care little if some stupid incomprehending Aussie might see you kiss your friend and think you’re lesbian etc. Also after age 30 more people are married, and this makes casual ‘just friends’ greeting kissing less ‘dangerous’ and less likely to be misinterpreted.
In my circle of Alliance Francaise aussie friends, we always kiss when we greet each other....not to pretend we are French, as such, but maybe to be less ‘Aussie’ and more cultured - but it still wouldn’t work if we weren’t already fond of each other, which we are, regardless of some huge age differences. (i.e., age range is 22 - 65)

Also, Australians have a much different idea to Europeans about modesty and not showing a lot of nudity on tv and such....why else would the most shocking thing a yobbo could think of to do to disrupt a national cricket match (yobbo = often drunken slang talking aussie) be to take his clothes off and run naked (called streaking) onto the field in the middle of the game, usually with the police not far behind him. He becomes a star on the tv news and gets his 10 minutes of fame....
However, I think we accept a lot more nudity than Americans, because a famous touring Australian stage show called “Puppetry of the Penis” has been banned in some states there.
As for European Movies featuring latins, they can sometimes be rather frustrating for Australians. We know the movies are done by French or whatever with latin temperaments, so we look forward to the ‘good bits’ and a lot more nudity than we’d ever get on our own movies, but instead often have to endure a lot of deep and meaningful talking..(Aussies would ask ...”What’s the point? Just DO something and get on with it!”) until we wonder if the movie will ever get to the ‘good bits’. Our popular movies are not like that, mostly.
Ok, so ends this post. Hope it hasn’t been too long...and I tried to keep it constructive, something which rarely happens when discussing things with Aussie guys. In about 30 seconds your entire conversation can degenerate into innuendo....

Hi Kate,

Thanks a lot for sharing this book with us. I am having a great time reading it.

I am a bit confused on the last chapter as it seems there is a misunderstanding between the kisses... Or maybe I read it wrong...
In France, we do kiss other people to greet them but it's on the cheecks (the number of cheek kisses varies from 1 to 4 depending which part of France you come from!!!). As far as I am concerned, none of the people I know kiss each other on the lips for a simple greeting but I have seen it happening in Australia a lot...
To greet each other, guys usually shake hands. It is OK to kiss another guy when he's from your family (cousin, father, uncle...).

As for more intimate kissing, I don't know anyone going around town kissing strangers just for the sake of it (unless they're drunk that is!!!) or to greet someone.

It seems like europeans are found very flirtatious by Australians. For example, at work once, a french guy started to talk to me about casual things like quality of life in Australia and visa things. When he left, an Australian girl who could understand french told me the guy was flirting with me... For us, it was just a casual conversation...
In France, guys and girls can have casual conversations without any other underlying meanings (hope the english is correct!) whereas in Australia, when a guy talks to a girl, it often means he's interested... There are more interactions between the 2 sexes in France than in Australia I find.

I don't know anything about swiss air kissing!!!

I look forward to reading the rest of the book!

Celine

Salut Celine,

Sorry about the confusion.
In the previous discussion I was for the most part really only speaking about kissing on the cheeks (not any other kind).
Ie - that even if Australian teenagers at school decided to start greeting each other with a kiss on the cheeks - be it 2, 3 or 4, that it would be something they would consciously always have to think about (not an automatic reflex like when kissing your parents, I guess, which is the closest some of us can get to automatic kissing) and I believe the sentiment would definitely NOT be the same as for Europeans in the same situation. It may LOOK the same, but it wouldn't be.
For the most part the little Aussies would still probably be thinking about sex anyway!
I don't mean to say that Aussie guys are incapable of separating the 2 kinds...just that maybe their brains tend to have a lot of trouble running in neutral, LOL! That's how I often see it in my observations, as I spend more time hanging out with and thus observing the guys in my husband's rock band (some real 'dinkum Aussies' there who are classic text book cases for this book!) than I do with Oz women, who I often find more complicated and complex to understand, actually.
If you've seen people in Oz kissing each other on the lips for a simple greeting....well, I think they would definitely have to be single and unattached, and then it also depends on the situation and the venue (I guess it happens a lot more if you're drunk!) but I live in only a small city and in the part of society I live in, and where almost all our friends are married and older, you would never ever kiss another person or friends on the lips. Only your partner. Otherwise it's just far too intimate and out of bounds. Maybe it might happen by accident if both somebodies were really drunk, but even then I think it would be extremely rare, and it would cause problems, maybe on both sides (ie somebody gets punched for it)
Yes, I really think Australians misunderstand Europeans a lot and think they are very flirtatious, and this cheek-kissing custom is part of it, maybe because we're often a lot more reserved and 'hands off!'. Many people here are, even with their good friends, at least till they reach a certain age.
And in the past when I was still single, I didn't notice many Oz guys talking to an unattached girl 'just to be nice' and have a casual converation - there's usually an ulterior motive or to be flirtatious - while trying not to appear flirtatious (perhaps the next little chapter will help explain this part better!).
Yes, I can understand perfectly what you mean by 'underlying meanings' (it's exactly the correct word) and it's exactly the thing you often can't find easily 'downunder', nice simple conversation with guys.

Ok, I need to find a Swiss to explain to me about the air kissing!'

'Attrition' in the book is explained as this: When Iraq and Iran went to war, the whole world expected a fast end to the conflict. Instead, the 2 countries settled down to a long struggle with the aim of wearing down each other’s resistance. This is called the war of attrition.

If you want to be successful with the opposite sex in Australia, in some instances (not all), you need to understand the art, as courtship downunder (at least in the 80’s) was run along similar lines.

Australians, you see, are independent and proud beings who consider that any admission of desire shows a demeaning lack of character. (Could be true).
One may have urges, one may even have certain designs, but you don’t reveal these. (All too true sometimes). On the contrary, all references to real intentions ought to bring out a hot and swift denial.
“I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me.”
“I’m just not like that”
“It was the last thing on my mind.” (yeah, right!

Half hearted excuses like ‘What’s wrong with that” and “Haven’t had it for weeks” simply won’t do, says the book. Even the slightest admission of desire can lead to complications and risks being seen like trying to extract sex from the other person.
“You’re not really a bad sort” (these positive-negatives are very well known as the ‘backhanded compliment’. Others include: ‘I’ve seen worse’....’it’s not that bad’...the list is quite long).

“I reckon you look a bit of all right”
“ Oh yeah?”
“Actually I quite like you”
“I knew you’d turn out to be a creep.”
It may be admissible for a Frenchman to sight a pretty girl in Montmartre, share a quick lunch with her and then, after declaring his intentions, end up having a siesta together an hour later (says the book). But in Australia this kind of quick-action is frowned upon in certain sections and can be seen as ‘queue jumping’.

Australians are a well brought up, moral nation who’ve learned since childhood that you’ve got to take the bad with the good. After all, you can’t just go from soup to dessert. And you certainly shouldn’t have dessert on its own.

Successful Australian lovers, therefore, go out together for drinks, eat something, then walk around a bit, have a few more drinks, go to a movie, drove back to either one’s place, sit around, play some records, snack, watch the late news, have another drink, sit around some more, then when they run out of all other possibilities....when there’s absolutely nothing left to do...they go to bed. At least in the 80’s. Things have changed now, but I’m not sure generally how much.

So ends the chapters on Relationships, the Oz way.....

The book says, to earn people’s respect in England you’d be best to marry into a family with a long and distinguished lineage. (Though marrying into Royalty these days seems to make you more ‘fair game’ than respected!) In Arab countries, it’s praying in the Mosque 5 times a day. But in Australia, if you want to be respected, you must become a heavy and committed gambler.
The book says that unimaginative Europeans, brought up to regard gambling as wasteful, fail to see how risking a large percentage of your weekly income on a horse running 3000 kms away, can be an expression of one’s respectablility.
Australians, of course, know better. They realize that more than a flag, an anthem or a coast to coast highway, a nation gambling as one will always be united against all odds.

True, every country has pockets and bits of gambling, but they are seen more as something to be done on the quiet in one’s spare time, and with help of a few shady individuals. No German or Italian politician would dream of flaunting their gaming habits to family, colleagues or their electorate. Even in ‘an amoral country like France’ (says the book), gambling is seen as something one performs on the quiet, a habit somewhere between picking your nose and snatching handbags on the subway.
Australians, the book says, were the first ones to break through these old world taboos. Far from apologising for it, we’ve made gambling the cornerstone of the nationhood and in the 80’s it was still used the way Popes used religion to unite medieval Europe.
There is an intricate network covering the whole country for this purpose:
Racecourses, dog tracks, poker machines by the thousands (if not millions!), lottery agencies, TAB offices, Bingo houses, trotting meets, stock exchanges, art-union mailouts, church raffles, write in competitions, lotto promotions, instant prizes, soccer pools, Tatts Keno, multitude of TV game shows to win prizes and cash, scratchie (scratch and win) tickets, and even cockroach races.
You may hear in fact mysterious incantations wherever you go
“Eleven and 25 always come up together”
“The 3rd in the 4th looks good”
“I was told I’d only get 4 to seven on the red in the second but I got on at 4 to 5.

In Europe, if you can identify every one of Mozart’s symphonies, people will say about you “That person is cultured.”
Do the same thing in Australia and you’ll be called a show off. (DEFINITELY TRUE).
BUT if you can name every horse and rider who’s won the Melbourne Cup since 1861, you will be regarded with great respect. (True!)

Talking about race horses or dogs is never showing off.
You are admired as someone worthwhile.

Men and women who back in Budapest, Zurich or Vienna would have never dreamed of gambling 5 dinars of their hard earned money, and whose parents would have turned white at the thought of their children wasting their wages, in Australia soon shed all inhibitions and devote many waking hours to this new respectable way of life.

It’s not as if they’re gambling - they’re simply trying to gain acceptance. Accountants, lawyers, doctors - all do it, including to be sociable and earn the respect of clients (who can often be found at the races anyway).

In other countries, ‘unenlightened parents’ (the book says) are horrified if their children gamble. In Australia, parents of certain demographic/economic situation (usually the lower bracket) are keen to see their kids grow up respected members of the community, and encourage gambling from an early age.
“Don’t waste your money, Mary! Better buy Tattslotto!”
“Grandpa reckons Concerto is set to win”
“I bought everyone scratchies for Christmas but gave Dad a Quick-Pick (tattslotto)”

The book says it’s important therefore to train children from an early age to buy lotteries for birthdays, hold intra-family Melbourne cup sweeps (most people have these now, as well as at their workplace), watch lotto results gathered around the tv, and to put into practice the wise saying ‘the family that bets together, gets together’. (!!)

The part about the Scratchies is even more true these days! If you don’t know what to buy for the person who seems to have everything...a lot of the time they end up with scratchies....

Not that long ago, I was in a Ballarat shopping centre close to an area called Wendouree West (inhabited by mostly ‘Westies’ living in government supplied cheap housing when I noticed some people with scratchies at a table behind me in the restaurant area.
There were about 5 of them of all ages - a family I guess - rather poor looking, .. and between them all they had at least 50 scratchies, and were having a great time scratching them all, one after another, hoping to win a lot of money!
Same with Pokies - there is a ‘Gamblers Anonymous’ programme, but the promotion of these machines is so much bigger....
Since Pokies were introduced to Victoria about 12 years ago, they’ve gone from being entertainment, to out of control for certain % of people. They started at 2c and 5c machines.....but these days they’ve added $1 machines too.
Before their legalisation here, to play them you used to have to take bus trips to the New South Wales border (a 5 hour trip at least) and people went as a social outing and spent 1-2 days going on trips to special clubs there where they played pokies.
Now they can do it everywhere and almost anywhere - pubs, bowling clubs, tabarets, RSL’s, football club rooms, etc. Ballarat alone has 700 Pokie machines for its 83,000 people population.
Australia does indeed have a gambling problem. Pure and simple. But many don’t get help and a lot of it goes unnoticed because of many reasons. A lot of people who do it, don’t believe they ARE gambling - for example, betting on horses isn’t gambling, but can be seen as ‘punting’ and just having some fun. Lottery tickets...well, they don’t cost that much to buy one every single week. Casinos are gambling, sure, but those playing in those and on the pokies can also see them just as ‘fun’.
These statistics just released will give you an idea. They certainly shocked me into seeing that the problem we have is much huger than I already knew.
My city: Ballarat, population 83,000 people. Pokie machines - 674.
Gambling losses for 2002-2003: $47,436,036!!!!
That’s almost $130,000 a day....and it is known that some people are gambling on these machines at the rate of losing $1000 every hour!
The tv ads which warn about problem gambling and where to get help, and there are warnings posted at the Pokie venues on the machines.
In 1992 when the pokies first arrived in my city, $8 million dollars was lost through them. In 1993 it was $17 million dollars...and up and up it goes.

Also in my city just a few months ago, there was a very high profile court case of a bank teller being caught for embezzeling several million dollars of old people’s money from their bank account in order to support her pokie gambling habit. It is believed she lost all the money. Nobody, even her family, suspected what was going on until she got caught
There was an even bigger gambling embezzlement bust in Perth just last week, and nobody suspected this guy because it appeared he mainly gambled the big bets on the Internet, and just smaller ones at the races on a weekly basis.
So, the book is exactly correct. We ARE still a nation of gamblers. Not everybody gambles a lot, but many of those who do, spend everything they have on it.
Where does it all begin, this gambling streak? I think it begins when you’re very young. Then, you’ve got no money, so it has to be for other things - at my school it was swap card competitions in the playground. Kids competed with each other to see who could win the most cards. A bit later you can gamble your pocket money. And on it must go...

Hey, Spring horse racing carnival isn't far away. And, 2nd Tuesday in November is the Melbourne Cup. You HAVE to bet on this one if you're an Aussie. Doesn't matter where in the world you are living either. It's just one of those 'must do's.

Kate

This one is just a short chapter...but still useful I think

The book points out that some countries, like Italy and France, believe that children can be BORN with special talents or aptitudes. In Russia and Japan they say people there believe that children TRAINED from an early age will show marvellous abilities. Australians, blessed as they are with the spirit of fairness, hold both these views to be untrue. In Australia, it is believed that not only are all children born the same, but they must also be actively discouraged from becoming any way different, more capable or better than their classmates/peers.
(In some ways I have to agree with this: growing up, and especially at school, unless you’ve got a big and loyal group of friends behind you, it’s not ok to be different...these things seem to come to be valued only once you have left the school atmosphere behind...then being unique or talented is valued).

1. According to the Author, childhood in Oz in the 80’s consisted of a series of ‘’don’ts.’’ This word is one of the first that a baby hears.

2. If children show a natural passion for playing the piano, writing poems and other talents, it’s important to force them to spend as much time and energy as possible away from the things they’re good at or have a talent for, or at least try to get them to have a varied programme of hobbies.

Often these days it seems to me that it’s often only the family above all who support their talented kids until they’re old enough to get into the ‘it’s ok to be talented’ years. ).

The reason the author says that children should be discouraged from developing talents, is that he says being good at just the one thing will make them boring and unpopular with their friends (and this result could and does happen).
When I was at school there was a ‘special maths’ class for those who had a bit of trouble with the subject, but there wasn’t anything for the advanced kids. These days in the bigger schools, there are more specialist programmes than before.

Kate

Cette chapitre vient du site majormitchell.com.au de l'auteur Robert Treborlang, et pas le livre de 'How to be normal'. J'ai le choisi parce que c'est (malheureusement) souvent si si vrai ici en Australie

Pour etre Maussade....

"Les chinois.... will always greet you with the same degree of warmth.
Les Swisse, de l'autre cote, take a lot of trouble over their surliness, en esperant that it will keep them neutral pour la prochaine 800 ans.... Un homme de Brazil would not dream of being anything but casual and aimiable. En fait, dans la plupart des pays autour du monde, steadiness et regulierement of temperament is treated as a virtue, et est valable.

Les gens dans ce pays, quand meme, being of the freedom-loving kind, do not believe in limiting themselves to such constant behavioural ways. Instead, as true sons and daughters of the great outdoors, they take their inspiration for personal relationships from... the weather.

K: C'est possible! Ma mere de Nouvelle Zelande a dit toujours "Ils/Elles changent avec le vent!" a propos de la facon des Australiens.

Ask one of them about it, et si ils repondent at all, they'd probably tell you 'tout le monde dans le monde est comme ca' - que tout le monde devenir Boudeur quelquefois et ne savait pas pourquoi. (even if they ask themselves)...mais je ne crois pas que c'est vrai. Je crois que nous avons plus de ce 'maladie mystere' ici. C'est difficile de comprendre, expliquer...et fixer!

Malheureusement, j'ai pas le reponse de cette question tres important: Pourquoi les Aussies ont l'humeur si changeante?

Le livre continue....
"In order to be in complete harmony with the elements, tout le monde ici a appris le facon pour avoir l'humeur changeante vitement et sans annoncer. Ayant grandit dans le climat imprevisible et variable du 5 ier Continent, ils se sentent que c'est pas normale pour avoir le meme humeur tout les temps....et que on doit avoir le soupcon sur les gens qui avoir l'humeur que ne changent pas.

K: (C'est vrai aussi! Si on est trop heureux sur les Lundis au travail, les gens PEUT devenir soupconneux...par exemple, you must have been up to quelquechose sur le weekend!!!)

L'Auteur: I would advise all confused uninitiated tourists and newcomers: abandon your old-fashioned constant ways and use 'moodiness' as your new way of communication.

K: Nooooo! Ne le faites pas! Nous en avons suffit deja ici. Je crois que c'est cette qualite qui fait quelques types des europeans si speciale: ils n'ont pas un probleme avec le boudeur!

"......This will not only repress more successfully les gens autour de vous, mais aussi aide de placera un sens de remords sur tout le monde, tout les temps - un remords qui, en etant secret, va surement 'colle' la societe ensemble plus fort.

Comme les cyclones du tropiques qu'arrive sur ce pays out of nowhere, moodiness is at its best when used for no apparent or obvious raison. There should never be any clue of an explanation. Never venture/suggest un raison pour ca.
"You look upset all of a sudden."
"Its nothing"
"Was it something I said?"
"I just realised that I've got to leave. I've got another appointment."
"But you said you had a free afternoon."
"Maybe I have. I'm not sure."

K: Quelques de ca est si si vrai!

"Le but de boudeur, pour la plupart, bien sur, est tension, tension et plus de tension."

K: (Exactement!)

"En Amerique Latin, archaeologists tell with great pride of the achievements of the Aztecs and the Incas, qui avait bati les grands cites et chateaux, mais didn't know of the wheel. Dans un facon un peu comme ca, archeologists du futur might unearth with consternation/confusion upon this land an almost mythical and smoothly run society, a society where constant mood etait presque inconnu.
Boudeur est aussi utilise dans la famille, normalement sur les enfants impressioner, avant leur abilite pour le 'normal even temper' has been developed.
"Hi, mum! I'm home!"
"Oh. It's you."
"Sure it's me. Wait till I show you this!"
"Not now. I'm in a Bad Mood (or just busy)."
"Later then?"
"Let's just hope you're a good boy and don't upset me."

Par cette facon, l'enfant va apprendre que.... not only has moodiness the ability to put guilt upon the other person, but that anything new or interesting or different should be met with a selection of moods that will, avec bon espoir, arrete les autres de continuer avec leur idees, ou demander pour ton l'aide.

K: Hmmmm. C'est tout que je peut dire!

Kate

Old people in Greece or the Middle East are expected to live in the same house with their sons and daughters. There, says the author, they are subjected often to various stressors like having to cope with noisy grandchildren who not only expect their poor old relatives to amuse them, but also ask too many questions.
In some countries, the elderly are even expected to work long hours right into their 80’s, working in vineyards or farmyards, or wherever, and expected to be at the head of the table over long dinners with large families who always want advice and help...and that these poor old people know no rest.

Here in Australia, says the Author, speaking of the 80’s era (and it’s even more like it these days), the elderly are dealt with in a different way....Australia, being a progressive society, aims to provide those in their twilight years with a calm, worry free life.
Following years of study and experience, they discovered that the best way to do this was the gathering of the elderly together and keeping them safely (and securely) together in one place, under the care of strangers.
Amazingly enough, the best environment for this purpose has been found to be the place called the Nursing Home (often also known as Retirement Village, though the Retirement Village is a bit different and has more independent living, in an elderly village community setting, with medical services very nearby or on site)

The book says that such Nursing Homes normally consist of many small rooms (not all of them in need of a coat of paint), one large verandah, or sunroom with 2 or 3 tv sets and corridors just wide enough to permit the free flow of wheelchairs.
That’s a fairly good description of a lot of them, I think!

Advantages (according to the book: )
1. elderly can look forward to a peaceful drug-helped sleep without the danger of being woken early by kids running around the house.

2. Don’t have to suffer the stresses of a generation gap since they are totally with people of their own age.

3. Don’t have to answer questions.

4. Are away from the spying/prying eyes of a cruel young world
5. May spend their final 20 or 30 years in slow serenity without any stimuli or things to do or whatever (and this sad part is often true, as I’m struck by this every time I visit one)

Overburdened and stressed maybe by the hard, boring work of housework, mothers in Europe often allow their families to get out of control, says the author. Husbands, children, relatives can all go about unchecked/as they please as they give free vent to their egos.
The result is heated arguments, noisy talking and extended family discussions on every possible topic. Brought up in such an environment, young Europeans soon become outspoken and confident, with strong personalities of their own.
Australian mothers (in the 80’s at least) would never permit such lack of law/control.
An Australian mother knows only too well that the family is a volatile thing upon whose members she must put a steadying influence. She knows it is up to her to be peacekeeper if they are not to plunge into anarchy and barbarism through dangerous practice of open argument, face to face conflict and general discussion of ideas, which may not be to the welfare of the family.
The process of keeping the peace within the family is a difficult operation, and any woman with plans to start it will have to almost learn the skills of a diplomat to be able to do it.
1. To run the family properly along Australian lines, the first task is to keep the various members - sons, daughters, etc as far from each other as possible, so that not even a hint of argument may come between them. Lines towards achieving this aim are:

“Don’t bother your father.”
“Leave the kids alone.”
“You better tell me first.”
“You’re upsetting your sister.”
“No arguing in this house now”

“Stop it both of you!”
“I don’t want to hear any more about it!”
“I think you two better stay away from one another!”

(All sounds rather familiar to me, but I’m not sure how it is with very young families in the 2000’s)

What happens with unresolved conflicts that generations of good Australians grow up without knowing how to argue and make up, and the author thinks this is the idea. This attitude also has the added advantage of training everyone to live with a general sense of unease and tension from childhood on.

“3 The ultimate aim is to discourage any exchange of views, whether personal or general, since all such talking can possibly lead to full drama. The family may say it’s only a game that they play, but you never know, things can get out of control.

The reaction to any healthy European style argument should always be :
“Oh my God, the family’s falling apart!”
“I knew it would come to this!”
“What am I going to do now?”
“Why can’t we just have peace?”

The book then insists on not becoming discouraged by the difficulties likely to happen. “With practice, the clever hand of the manipulator will become undetectable and you’ll be able to work miracles for years to come without ever being sprung (found out).”

The author believes that the Australian family at that time was run strictly along British Parliamentary lines.

Father: Like the country’s Governor General. He’s the one to make long speeches at special family celebrations, gatherings, etc.

Mother: operates like a Prime Minister. Expected to make important, unpopular decisions but always promises to review the situation at a later date. She tries to remain in power for as long as possible.

Children: represent the Opposition. Heard with much whingeing, shouting and stamping of feet, they feel permanently frustrated and are critical of all family decisions as a mater of course (probably a fairly good description of today's Oz teenagers)

On some days, one may see mother taunted by the Opposition across the kitchen table, or the Prime Minister trying to convince father into signing any number of bills.

All patriotic Australians had to abide by the rules, ‘knowing that attempts to get around these could send the family into crisis’.

'ach'ment interessant !

la partie sur 'being sorry' m'a bien fait rigoler.