Misconceptions you've had

[Astro Forever]

Next time, I will include a surcharge for canadian buyers.

Nah, seriously, it's understandable! At least, you didn't end up losing money, that would have been

I used to think that when I was younger. Sydney and Melbourne are easily the two biggest Australian cities, about 4 million people in each. They had an argument over which one was going to be the capital, so in the end it was decided a new capital would be built in between them. So Canberra is comparitively tiny (about 300,000 people)..

Hahaha, that's about what happened in Canada! Montréal used to be Canada's capital, but the building was set on fire during a riot, and in the end it was Ottawa, the small city, that Queen Victoria chose over the bigger ones. But we don't have a special capital territory.

I think the biggest sticking point about this in history is that the very first colony was penal. First impressions last.

I guess. Thanks a lot!

Toilet water doesn't spin in Australia. I think we use a different flushing mechanism.

So, all this talk for nothing?

It spins in sinks and baths though, and my Dad tested this while on holiday in the northern hemisphere. Unfortunately, no one can remember the result.

I have to admit I've always found kangaroos kind of bizarre looking. I'm not sure if it's something you can ever adjust to.

I was also thinking of koalas, and all your wonderful parakeets. I own budgies (I never know how to call these in English) and I love to affectionately call them my "Australian immigrants".

We have very few colorful birds here. We'll see a Blue Jay or a Cardinal once in a while, but most birds around here are mostly black, brown and nothing special. I guess I should assume that parakeets aren't common sight in Australian urban areas, but, I don't know, I guess you still have a chance to see them somewhere if you want to.

On the whole, I see Canada, Australia and New Zealand as kind of an axis-of-ex-british. That is, I think we've generally kept the Queen's English but lost the pomp of Britain (no offence to our British members!) . We were colonised by the British, in one way or another, but lack the cultural zealotry of the USA (no offence to our American members!).

Seems right.

As for specifics, I think of Canada as a big country that blends across from English to French with sensibly drawn borders. Lots of natural beauty like forests and, um, beavers. I can't actually think of specific things apart from Niagra Falls. Snow, beer, nice people gathered in bars or bowling alleys enjoying a beer together and getting out of the snow, mounted heads of animals with big complicated horns (antelope?).

Nice start, except that antelopes are actually in Africa and Asia. But we have mooses and caribous. Some sometimes get killed in car collisions (sometimes along with the driver).

Towards the north it's like my memory; vague, fragmented, barren, and the occassional polar bear.

Great people to meet while backpacking in foreign countries, because they speak English and you can make fun of the Americans together.
Everything else I learnt from Degrassi Junior High, which I try to relegate to accents and environment rather than specific social interactions, because I'm aware of how distorted the British view of Australia is after watching the soap opera "Neighbours".

I've never watched that show, so I can't tell. As for accents, I can't even tell the difference between the American and Canadian accents, at least not yet (unless that's a huge Texan accent or something like that). But I sometimes think of the Australian accent as the English equivalent of my own French Canadian accent.

[DrFrag]

We have very few colorful birds here. We'll see a Blue Jay or a Cardinal once in a while, but most birds around here are mostly black, brown and nothing special. I guess I should assume that parakeets aren't common sight in Australian urban areas, but, I don't know, I guess you still have a chance to see them somewhere if you want to.

I'd forgotten about birds. Now that you mention it, we seem to have a lot. There's an apple tree outside my window which attracts a lot of lorikeets. I'm not sure if they're Rainbow or Green-Naped. They look nice but eat a lot of the apples (and leave apple crumbs on the lawn!). We also have kookaburras nearby which are unbelievably loud, but it's kind of cool having them in the suburbs now because we used to only see them in wildlife parks. Their call sounds like a crazy laugh, and we had a neighbour who kept a bird in a cage. I think it was a parrot. The parrot started immitating the kookaburras, but really badly. It came out like a really sick, demented laugh.
Galahs are seen a lot in parks here too.

We have budgies, but only as pets I think. I've never seen one in the wild. I've heard that if you release them they get attacked by the native birds.
Your Blue Jay and Cardinal birds look very beautiful.

Nice start, except that antelopes are actually in Africa and Asia. But we have mooses and caribous.

I need the embarrassed smiley back. I don't think there are any wild animals in Australia with horns, so creatures with complicated upside-down tree roots on their heads are all the same to me unless I'm concentrating.
(haha, that makes me sound so dumb! I know what a moose is.)

Here's another misconception.
When I was little, my mum told me not to eat raw pastry or it would give me worms. As in, intestinal worms. I think this was just to keep me out of the kitchen while she was cooking. Years later, when I realised how crazy that was, I asked her about it. She said it was made up, and something her mother had always told here. Who knows how many generations this has been going on for?

I used to think that when you watched TV, the people on TV could see you. I figured they must have a big wall of TVs in the studio so they could look at everyone at once. This was confirmed, I felt, some years later while watching a cooking show. My brother and I were mucking around with the TV, pulling the switch on and off to make his voice stutter in a humerous way. Then, if memory serves me correctly (which it probably doesn't), totally by chance the TV cook said "please stop turning the TV on and off". My brother looked at each other in total shock and thought "HE MUST KNOW!" hmy: hmy:
He probably said something more along the lines of "don't switch off, we'll be right back", but that was how we interpreted it.

[CommanderEVE]

ra... you guys can sure type alot

[Astro Forever]

I'd forgotten about birds. Now that you mention it, we seem to have a lot. There's an apple tree outside my window which attracts a lot of lorikeets. I'm not sure if they're Rainbow or Green-Naped. They look nice but eat a lot of the apples (and leave apple crumbs on the lawn!).

They are so beautiful that I'd take them anyway!

We also have kookaburras nearby which are unbelievably loud, but it's kind of cool having them in the suburbs now because we used to only see them in wildlife parks. Their call sounds like a crazy laugh, and we had a neighbour who kept a bird in a cage. I think it was a parrot. The parrot started immitating the kookaburras, but really badly. It came out like a really sick, demented laugh.

I found a .wav of a "laughing" kookaburra on this page. Too bad I can't also hear the bad parrot imitation!

We have budgies, but only as pets I think. I've never seen one in the wild. I've heard that if you release them they get attacked by the native birds.

Apparently, a few of them manage to survive in the wild here, even in the winter, if they succeed in finding something to eat. I was very surprised when I read that. Of course, it's not like it's a wild bird here: those escaped from their house.

Your Blue Jay and Cardinal birds look very beautiful.

If only I got to see them more often! They are rare around here.

I need the embarrassed smiley back. I don't think there are any wild animals in Australia with horns, so creatures with complicated upside-down tree roots on their heads are all the same to me unless I'm concentrating.
(haha, that makes me sound so dumb! I know what a moose is.)

Nah, you did put the "antelope" with a question mark, and it's not like I was expecting an Australian Astroboy fan to easily remember those species!

I used to think that when you watched TV, the people on TV could see you. I figured they must have a big wall of TVs in the studio so they could look at everyone at once. This was confirmed, I felt, some years later while watching a cooking show. My brother and I were mucking around with the TV, pulling the switch on and off to make his voice stutter in a humerous way. Then, if memory serves me correctly (which it probably doesn't), totally by chance the TV cook said "please stop turning the TV on and off". My brother looked at each other in total shock and thought "HE MUST KNOW!" hmy: hmy:
He probably said something more along the lines of "don't switch off, we'll be right back", but that was how we interpreted it.

An actor in a very popular TV show here was once asked by a child, in real life, how he was coming in and out of the television set, to which he replied "through the wire". The child was apparently satisfied by this answer, simply replying "Okay!". I thought it was neat!