General Chat

If you know budgie, chirp, chirp, feathers. Do you comprehend "budgie smugglers". That's right zooom over to google, wonder if it will be there?? Of course your budgie might be an obscure reference to an as yet misunderstood euphimism. I await your correction.

By the way, wrong thread I know but, Curtis was an optimist!!!


The Australian bobsled team. Yes, definitely mirrors Cool Runnings. Australia does not have a bobsled "track", nope not in the entire continent. Our guys practice by pushing their sled around on rails in car parks.

According to our media, bless their little Aussie hearts, we have about five chances at medals. The government have done their bit by importing a Russian skater for us. The remainder of the potential heros all seem to be ageing rapidly. Do winter sports favour the aged??

No idea of the names, google might help, but one or two chances have figured prominently in world championships of late.

Nearly forgot. There are those who attends cricket matches who never ever see a ball bowled or a wicket taken. It is the social atmosphere, the beer and the crowd driven entertainment what they goes for.

Oh, sigh.

I once spent an afternoon on the edge of the Caribbean watching a cricket game. Rastas vs. non-Rastas, it was, and a finer-looking collection of young fellas you could not have hoped to see. Of course, I was a rather fine-looking young, uh, well, I was going to say fellita, myself, but that might not be a word I want. And cigarettes wuzn't what we wuz smokin, AuntyS. ;) No worse than what your capsule description sounds like, anyhow.

Anyway, this seemed to me to be the main point of the game.

I have also kept company with numerous budgies. The second-last was officially called Beauregard, after a person of that name with a family surname of mine whom I found in the Chicago phone book once and thought too ridiculous from words. But the then No.MinusOne didn't know what a budgie was, being of the USAmerican persuasion, and thought that when I got the critter down from the telephone line where I found her (yes, she turned out to be a her named Beauregard) that I somehow knew her name: Bungie.

I find the Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoo the nosiest bird of all time, but I tolerate them as only around for a few months of the year.

Talking of cricket, I always think of Noel Coward and "Mad dogs and Englishmen", when I watch it or listen to it.

Gail

Well only to the extent that it seemed to be what they would expect a conversation about cricket to be about.


They can be jolly noisy. You can yell at them, the insects that is, and they stop for a second. What with them when it's hot and the frogs when it's wet and the galahs and cockatoos. Noisy around here.

OH, Aunty S, I have crickets chirping in my garden right now, had to close the window as it was too loud. Ahhh! you were talking about the little insects?

Gail

I think they really do need to know. We will be inundated with weird winter wobbly gobbly games, none of which we play, or watch, or are capable of. This will be my revenge.

Cricket. For the edification of Canadians this is the very famous "tea towel" explanation of the game. Yes that is correct it was printed on a tea towel. And yes I do know that some of your more cultured population do follow the game.

Cricket: As explained to a foreigner...

"You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in.

There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.

When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game."

Bob, I am also concerned at mentioning cricket. I have a strange feeling they think we do something interesting with little chirruping garden insects. As for explaining the game, which I have tried before, one now has to mention things like the Wagon Wheel, Snicko, Hot Spot and Hawkeye and why an opposition player was caught chewing a piece of leather off the ball .

You do see the problem don't you??!!

Thanks A S, for the explanation,
I thought that having included the word LOGO the connection would be made.......

Bob


I is NOT a foreign interloper I Is a Honary Aussie, so there!!!

I first went to the MCG sometime in 1962 to a Victoria verses Western Australia State of Origin football match with my then soon to be OH.

No eskies anymore. They check your bags as you go through the gates and confiscate any glass. The only beer you can buy comes in little plastic cups and has to be carried back to your seat in a cardboard container.

If he went on Boxing Day he was going to the traditional boxing day cricket match, and yes temperatures of around 100F or about 37C are very common.

Janey the Arsenal Cannon is the squiggly gun which is on the Arsenal soccer club flag. I think that is why they call them "Gunners". Get the connection, Arsenal, gun, gunners. Oh don't bother it's only soccer anyway.


I still think bean bag beans is the way to go.

And Australians tend to like the Connonwealth games. This is where we can flex our sporting muscles and win lots of medals and puff our chests out with pride and have the media tell us how wonderful we area. Just in time for the Olympics where we come back to earth with an almighty thud and learn that being a big fish in a little pool does not mean diddly squat when you get to the big pool.

All I know is that the Winter and Summer Olympics are held every 4 years, in alternating 2 years

Until sometime in the 1970s, they used to be held in the same year, so you'd have the Winter Olympics in February and Summer ones in August/September.

Then they decided to split them,

Each is held every 4 years, but the IOC gets to have its jaunts every 2 years :)


They don't care about the Commonwealth Games!


in fact, I think they don't really care about the athletes in the Olympics, despite everything they say! They just like all the perks that comes with being on the organizing committees and on the IOC


Me??? Cynical??


Nah!



OH and I just have proof (unfortunately not written) that the IOC was open to bribery, at least in the mid-90s




sylvia

Okay, can any one tell my why the winter Olympics are being run 2 years after the Olympics, well 18 months. It is very close to the Commonwealth games this year. Is this the longest time between the Olympics and the Winter Olympics?

Gail

PS Go AuntyS, great stuff

hmmmmm


snowboarding and moguls on straw bales



new Olympic sport :))))



Hi deb!




sylvia

You know Deb, I couldn't even do that!

Here in central Canada, we haven't had any snow worth mentioning for weeks. The sidewalk's bare, the roads are bare. It is wonderful. I just hope it doesn't get to the point where summer crops are threatened from the lack of it, as happened a few years ago.

Berona - watch cars go in circles? ;)

Watch paint dry ... while someone runs a chain saw next to your head ...

No.1's mother watches car races on tv. Thankfully that doesn't seem to be genetic. He does spend too much time watching tennis, though. Which strikes me as kind of like counting sheep ... zzzzzz

Welcome to the 2010 Winter Olympic games............Bring your own snow!

Have you watched motor sport? The cars go round and round the circuit for hours, then they either break down one by one, or have a five-car pile-up - but it's always the car which keeps going to the Finish Line which wins!

I always compare that to Steven Bradbury's win at the speed skating.

Yep - the boxing kangaroo mascot is allowed to stay.

rolfol!


well, they deserve it



Did I say .......... the ONLY coffee you can buy inside any of the Olympic venues is



COCA COLA's brand


Not even Timmie's!



don't think I even want to try it!

Oh no, a precedent has been set!

Next thing you know, there will be giant Pepsi banners strung from the dorms ...

;)

SENSE HAS PREVAILED!!!!


It was announced about an hour ago that the Boxing Kangaroo Flag can remain, hanging dow the outside of the Athletes Village


....... but the Australians have to register it with the IOC for all future Games.


Score 1 for the Aussies, 0 for the IOC



sylvia

Bob, you foreign interloper -- what the H is an Arsenal Cannon?

;)

What an interesting thread....
talking of trademark/copyright.
Did you know that the original Arsenal Cannon was NOT copyrighted?

the new logo is......

Bob