Day 38: Smug, Smuggler...

Ils ont découvert avec stupéfaction que leur guide de voyage était un contrebandier.
They were astonished to discover that their travel guide was a smuggler.

I cannot help to wonder where the people from French Word of the Day get their sentences from. And who picks the word, for that matter. If there are 365 new words to be learnt as a reasonably beginner French student, would smuggler really be one of them? Would I go to France, and ask where I can find a smuggler? Or look at the bus driver and ask him, are you a smuggler? Hm... maybe it would be useful to be able to deny that I am NOT a smuggler. But then I can think of a whole list of words that would need to be added to my list of vocabulary if that is the rationale!

These are some of the thoughts that made their way into my consciousness today. At some point even thoughts about rain, more rain, lots more rain and then the inevitable thoughts of floods had to make space for something else. It is quite challenging though: the water levels keep raising, some roads are flooded, others almost flooded, some schools are even closed, and anyone in a house close to water is watching the water level with a careful eye. In the Gold Coast, that is just about everybody.

Hence it didn't take long for the two red-and-yellow canoes floating up the canal, to be spotted. (Yes, floating UP, as the water levels are still raising.) As I was standing on the porch, watching the canoes, taking a picture and waiting for thoughts other than rain and water to enter my mind, I suddenly saw the neighbour frantically trying to get my attention and pointing at the canoes. Gosh, they must be hers! I hurried over to where she was standing next to the water with a long pool broom.

"They are coming this way! We can pull them up just now!" She was quite agitated. It must be terrible watching your belongings float in the river. But just as she predicted, the canoes were coming closer fairly steadily, and with some more long-handled pool equipment, we soon managed to pull them ashore.
I looked at our neighbour. She was visibly happy. No, she was beaming!
"There, you take that one now." She pushed the one canoe in my direction. What? I can't do that!! I protested.
"Finder's keepers, lovey!"

The truth slowly dawned over me.

And she looked.... SMUG!

Canoes floating up the canal

Day 37: The Entertainer

It is a good thing that I'm not an ostrich today - it would be impossible to find any piece of dry sand to bury my head in. It has rained cats and dogs, old women with clubs, men, some frogs... and still it rains. And judging by the rainfall patterns, it is going to keep on raining well into February.

The rain does not deter Aussies from going out and having some fun though! On the contrary, it inspired some inventive blokes who happened to own a boogie board, pulley system with a long rope and a short ramp, to make good use of the flood water next to the road. This to great entertainment of the small crowd which has spontaneously gathered next to the road in expectation of at least one spectacular fall. With some disjointed encouragement from the bystanders they tried again and again to achieve a passable waterski and jump off the ramp. 

Ironically enough, it would be less entertaining to watch if they simply succeeded. The true entertainer would either woo the crowd by progressively outdoing himself, OR by performing a vast array of nearly successful attempts, with each one just being the slightest bit closer to success than the previous one. Of course, the MASTER entertainer would keep this up for exactly as long as he intended, building up the tension to unbearable heights... and then finally allow the audience to let out the breath they've been holding by finishing off in one grandly executed leap of triumph.

Now the fact that I considered burying my head in the sand today - provided of course that I could transform into an ostrich - should give some indication to the outcome of The Test. The good news is that statistics can still be trusted, and as such, we maintained the 50% pass-rate at Southport and husband is now the proud holder of the Document that Defines your Identity in Australia. 

(It still defies all logic that the same document in South Africa is only good for one thing: driving. Despite it bearing a photo AND fingerprint of the bearer, it is very often of no use proving your identity. Especially to banks! They need the Identity Document, which has no fingerprint, no barcode, and more often than not a very unrepresentative photograph...)

The only really bad news today is that I came to the realisation that I'm not much of an entertainer at heart after all. I will be perfectly happy to pass my test at the second attempt, and then never repeating it again!!

Rain in Queensland

Day 32: Who has more Weather?

I was planning to write about the meaning of life, love and everything else today, but the weather got me distracted!

The comment about London got me wondering: how DOES London weather compare to Melbourne? More than once I have heard people say, 'Why do you want to go live in Melbourne? You might as well go to London!'

Well..... let the numbers speak...

Melbourne, Cape Town & London: Temperature and Rainfall (Jan - Dec)

Summer: London only has 3 months with average max temperatures above 20ºC, where Melbourne has 6, Cape Town 8. Melbourne does get a bit hotter at times though than CT or London...

Winter: Average minimum temperatures during winter are very similar between Melbourne and Cape Town - and these all above 5ºC. London winters are MUCH colder and longer - average minimum below 5ºC for 5 months! (And of course the record minimum drops to -10ºC...)

Also note the avg maximum winter temperature in London is also about 5º colder than Melbourne!

Sunshine: Cape Town wins hands down on the sunshine hours though - not surprisingly. But Melbourne still beats London!

Day 31: Weather Comparison

Today a bit of analysis. There's nothing quite like numbers to prove a point - numbers in themselves are unbiased - it's how we INTERPRET them that creates debate!

For the comparison below, we are looking at the Average High / Low, Record High / Low and Average Rainfall (not on the same scale as the temperatures!!)

It is a common believe that Sydney's weather the most closely resembles the weather we are used to in South Africa, but after seeing the graphs, I will take such statements with a pinch of salt. No major city in South Africa has close to the rainfall of Sydney!

However, of all the cities Brisbane and Durban are the most similar in both temperature and rainfall, with the Gold Coast a close comparison.

Somewhat surprising (for me at least), Perth and Cape Town not only has similar trends, but are also closer in temperature than Perth compared to the other cities.

Lastly, Melbourne is not THAT bad, but it's also not 'like Cape Town, just more so'. Winter lows doesn't drop as low as Johannesburg / Pretoria, though it rains consistently throughout the year, but still has 2000 sunshine hours. It's maybe just the big difference between the recorded highs and avg maximum temperature in summer that signifies how... hm... temperamental the weather really is!

There really is no city quite like Melbourne...

Temperature and Rainfall patterns - January to December

Weather comparison legend

All data sourced from Wikipedia.

Edit: Yearly Rainfall graph edited to zero-based.