Some sample questions from the August draft of Becoming an Australian Citizen:
1. In what year did Federation take place?
2. Which day of the year is Australia Day?
3. Who was the first Prime Minister of Australia?
4. What is the first line of Australia’s national anthem?
5. What is the floral emblem of Australia?
6. What is the population of Australia?
7. In what city is the Parliament House of the
Commonwealth Parliament located?
8. Who is the Queen’s representative in Australia?
9. How are Members of Parliament chosen?
10. Who do members of Parliament represent?
11. After a federal election, who forms the new government?
12. What are the colours on the Australian flag?
13. Who is the head of the Australian Government?
14. What are the three levels of government in Australia?
15. In what year did the European settlement of Australia start?
16. Serving on a jury if required is a responsibility of Australian
citizenship: true or false?
17. In Australia, everyone is free to practice the religion of their
choice, or practice no religion: true or false?
18. To be elected to the Commonwealth Parliament you must be
an Australian citizen: true or false?
19. As an Australian citizen, I have the right to register my baby
born overseas as an Australian citizen: true or false?
20. Australian citizens aged 18 years or over are required to enrol
on the electoral register: true or false?
How would you rate? You can do a practise test here. But is it just me, or is all this deadly boring? Australia is so much more than these things. Indeed, you could argue that these questions are not at all indicative of life in Australia.
So sore. 10-odd km yesterday and 17-odd today. Four more weeks and I look forward to sitting down to dinner with a bottle of wine (or champagne) and just celebrating. I mean, there’s birthdays, wedding anniversaries and the like to celebrate, but I think what I’ll really be celebrating is the end of the running season. My body has had enough I tells ya!
The Swandives theme has changed again. Very short attention span, I have…plus I love a good redesign. Actually, I’m sitting here waiting for the men’s 100 m sprint final to be televised on SBS. (Despite pledging that I would no longer watch the channel until Mary Kostakidis was back on air…but you just can’t beat it for top sports coverage. Plus. Les is still at the helm.)
Oooh…final’s on…oho! Boilover! American Tyson Gay beat the race favourite Asafa Powell! Man, I didn’t think he could do it, but Powell ran third. Wow. Gay has some serious acceleration going on! Ok. Now I can take some Nurofen Plus and go to bed.
Oooh…I think it’s happening. I’m suffering Facebook fatigue. Mikey is always teasing me about my Facebook obsession. And I don’t deny it. I have been a wee bit obsessed of late. But what I’m actually obsessed with is the truth of six degrees of separation.
Today I discovered that the girlfriend of one of my uni friends knows this bloke who was school mates with an old boyfriend of mine. I went to this bloke’s 21st (a fab night actually…byo computer and the boys networked them and we played Doom all evening - some of you may remember). It’s just fascinating.
Or the recent LinkedIn suggestion of a guy I met via ICQ chat, and have only ever talked to online. But we move in the same business circles and must know people in common in order to be suggested. It’s so weird that it works so well.
Just an update - I came 25,000 in the City2Surf. On the nose. So yes, technically I did worse than last year, but in reality it was a lot better. Mikey was the same - he ran faster but came about 500 places further down in the rankings. Oh well, you live and learn.
It’s official - I ran the entire 14 km of the City2Surf. No blisters, no stopping. And I was even running pretty fast at the end. I’m pretty proud of myself, even if the time I post will no doubt be worse than last year, when I had to walk for a bit. I started further back in the pack than last year and it must have taken me all of six minutes to reach the starting line and that’s when the fun really began. Spent the first three kilometres dodging people. I think overall I must have run an extra 2 km?
Apart from that, this time it all came together. Actually, I now have a fuller understanding of what a bad way I was actually in last year - there were swathes of the run I don’t even remember. This time I had the chance to have a look around and take it all in and even though it was a lot hotter and I had more trouble with the crowds, I had lots more fun.
My fave part (apart from the finish obviously) is still the metal band on the top of the pub at Rose Bay. The three hot blokes in bright pink budgie smugglers were also a highlight. The dude in the Borat outfit no so much. And I didn’t see any gorillas (although I’m sure there must have been at least one).
Pulled up ok too, except for some minor issues with my knee. It’s sore. I’ve never had problems with my knees before and I’m a bit worried. I don’t want to be one of these people who can’t walk at 80 because they spent their youth running to get fit; it kinda defeats the point. And no jokes about what constitutes ‘youth’ here. Tis my blog, I get to define the parametres.
Ack! At least there’s only six weeks to go before the end of the running season.
The Myers-Briggs personality type indicator is one of the most enduring personality profilers around, and having recently been subject to it as part of a work-thing, it’s been top of mind of late. So what do get when you put a whole heap of Introversion (I) types in the Entertainment Centre? Why, the quintessential Cure gig, of course.
Actually, whether or not you agree with the validity of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, it’s quite an amazing thing to watch a entire audience internalise some very full-on sensory output. One of the things I love about live music is the magic moments of feedback that happen between a band and an audience, where the energy transfers from stage to stalls and back again and you end up with this amazing, unspoken interaction that makes it worth grinding through all the boring mundane moments of life to experience. Thinking about it, it doesn’t sound as if people internalising music would engender any kind of feedback at all. But it’s just not the case.
The Cure’s ability to mix pop with heavy rock, to layer sounds and beats, to play around with familiar tunes and turn them into something extraordinary - well, it seems to create this weird harmonic with all these internalising people, until they literally vibrate. Looking around last night I saw thousands of people vibrating with the energy from this band. And it was joyful, even when the lyrics were dark. And it was tribal, even if people weren’t specifically interacting with each other.
They played for more than three hours. I am so glad I can say I’ve seen them live.
It’s Friday night (thank goodness), which normally means I’d be parked in front of the TV watching Big Brother. But there’s no more Big Brother. And it’s a week or so until Idol begins. I’m looking forward to Dicko being back on board as I really rate him.
Anyway, as I predicted Aleisha won Big Brother, over Zach, the flamboyant gay boy. Yes, I can pick ‘em. I think Zach’s a legend and I’d have loved to see him win, but I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t. Australia loves the ordinary. But the most interesting thing about Big Brother this year was that, amid the vote counting fiasco, a bit of magic occurred: we actually got to see some reality tele.
You see, the votes were apparently so close that it took almost an hour extra to count them all, forcing the poor crew to pad it out in the meantime. I’ve heard a lot of criticism about that but all I can say is: to the knockers - you try doing it. It’s bloody hard, and I think Gretel and Mikey et al did a fantastic job. But that’s by the by. The real gold happened when, needing to get through the show and still count the votes, the decision was made to let the parents of the finalists into the house.
What followed was the most wonderful 8 minutes of reality television you could imagine. There was the emotional reunion, which was expected. But then everybody sat down and actually ‘talked’. Not like people on tele. Like they were a family, with all the baggage that families have, catching up with each other. The audience didn’t know who they were talking about and it didn’t matter - just watching the interaction was enough. It was sweet, with a depth and a pathos that you just can’t contrive. It rose above the pre-planned, scripted psyco-rubbish that is Big Brother’s bread and butter, and it went somewhere wonderful. And it happened because of something unplanned.
All those who bag the show or bag the host or both miss the point entirely. They’re so busy getting their knickers in a knot about a rubber chicken throw that they fail to see the nuggets of gold that sometimes appear in the Big Brother vein.
