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djfiggy visiting, giving the opportunity to get out and see stuff. We saw the Dali exhibition on Wednesday with Brandt and Silverblue, and that was interesting. I can't really make blanket statements about somebody with as diverse a body of work as Dali; some of his stuff doesn't do a lot for me, but Galatea of the Spheres is a favourite (and just about all of it becomes more interesting with more understanding of the process behind it).
Yesterday we went out to Phillip Island and saw penguins (cute, in a vicious sort of way, and I think we have a candidate to replace kookaburras for Generic Weird-Sounding Bird Noise in movies).
Also went climbing yesterday; I'm quite sore today, but I think it's good sore. I didn't try anything too difficult, but I feel like I got a fair bit of exercise.
Have been reading 'The Story of English' (McCrum, MacNeil, and Cran, not to be confused with other similarly-named work). This is a fascinating book, particularly in the way it deals with English as a universal language of communication versus the appearance of regional varieties.
My only quibble: "most Australians tend to attribute the half-familiar New Zealand accent to a remote part of their own country. A New Zealander in Sydney might well be asked if he or she came from Tasmania... if a New Zealander and an Australian from the same social background shared a railway carriage only an expert phonetician could tell them apart on the basis of pronunciation."
As the book notes itself, only a couple of pages earlier, Australia doesn't have much regionality of accents; while I'm told there are subtle differences, I've never been able to hear them. The most noticeable accent/idiom differences here are, for want of a better word, class-based.
OTOH, there is a well-known distinction between Australian and NZ accents - I don't know if it's obvious to outsiders, but I don't think any Australian in that railway carriage would have much trouble telling who was from NZ. (Unless the NZer had been in Australia long enough to shift accents, which does happen.)
djfiggy visiting, giving the opportunity to get out and see stuff. We saw the Dali exhibition on Wednesday with Brandt and Silverblue, and that was interesting. I can't really make blanket statements about somebody with as diverse a body of work as Dali; some of his stuff doesn't do a lot for me, but Galatea of the Spheres is a favourite (and just about all of it becomes more interesting with more understanding of the process behind it).Yesterday we went out to Phillip Island and saw penguins (cute, in a vicious sort of way, and I think we have a candidate to replace kookaburras for Generic Weird-Sounding Bird Noise in movies).
Also went climbing yesterday; I'm quite sore today, but I think it's good sore. I didn't try anything too difficult, but I feel like I got a fair bit of exercise.
Have been reading 'The Story of English' (McCrum, MacNeil, and Cran, not to be confused with other similarly-named work). This is a fascinating book, particularly in the way it deals with English as a universal language of communication versus the appearance of regional varieties.
My only quibble: "most Australians tend to attribute the half-familiar New Zealand accent to a remote part of their own country. A New Zealander in Sydney might well be asked if he or she came from Tasmania... if a New Zealander and an Australian from the same social background shared a railway carriage only an expert phonetician could tell them apart on the basis of pronunciation."
As the book notes itself, only a couple of pages earlier, Australia doesn't have much regionality of accents; while I'm told there are subtle differences, I've never been able to hear them. The most noticeable accent/idiom differences here are, for want of a better word, class-based.
OTOH, there is a well-known distinction between Australian and NZ accents - I don't know if it's obvious to outsiders, but I don't think any Australian in that railway carriage would have much trouble telling who was from NZ. (Unless the NZer had been in Australia long enough to shift accents, which does happen.)
