Busy doing nothing

We've been in the throes of a full-on blizzard today, with winds reaching the 100km/h mark at times, and as a result the students' trip to the crater has been postponed until some time after the Easter break. Consequently I didn't need to residence-sit after all, and I've been able to busy myself doing nothing, which to be honest is my favourite way to spend a weekend. I shall be endeavouring to stay up for the Australian Grand Prix later tonight (technically early tomorrow), and the caffeine drip will be hooked up nearer the time in an effort to avoid last night's fiasco when my attempt to watch the qualifying session ended up in an unplanned night's sleep on the sofa.

In the meantime I have the women's world curling championships to keep me occupied, and as I write Canada and Scotland are fighting for a place in tomorrow's final, which means that respective skips Jennifer Jones and Eve Muirhead will be onscreen for the next three hours or so. Not sure who's winning at the moment, but it's immaterial; whoever emerges victorious, all is suddenly right with the world.

Hurry hard!

Bringing down the house

Another boring weekend here. I remember that time seemed to freeze (along with everything else up here) last February, and the same thing is happening again. Maybe it's got something to do with Groundhog Day at the beginning of the month. I watched that film with my students this week, and I was tempted to show it again to them the next day, and the next, and the next. In the end I decided that, as much as I love the film, you can have too much of a good thing, although it would have made planning for the rest of the year a far easier affair.

In other news I see that David Kiely, the banker caught on camera looking at those naked images on his computer screen last week, will be keeping his job, but in future he has to keep his employers fully abreast of what he downloads at work (that joke copyright Dan Roberts). And I loved this story; Canada's finance minister, Jim Flaherty, partly destroyed an igloo at the G7 summit in Iqaluit when he made a mess of trying to exit through the narrow doorway. It takes hours to build an igloo but it took Flaherty seconds to wreck it; kind of a nice allegory for what's happened to the North over the last fifty years.

Bare faced cheek

Continuing the bear/bare theme that has unwittingly bestowed itself on the blog this week, I just had to share this with you. It would seem that a banker in Australia was having a quiet day in the office earlier this week and decided to alleviate the boredom by perusing some, shall we say, alternative figures (try 34DD) on his computer screen. On a normal day he would have probably got away with it; trouble was, one of his colleagues was being interviewed at the time - on live TV.

Keep your eye on the guy behind the speaker's right shoulder...



That was one hell of a boob (or two)!

I (don't) come from a land down under

I don't know why, but ever since our move to Canada I regularly get mistaken for an Australian.

It happened again twice today; well, it was once really, because on the second occasion I was asked if I was from New Zealand, which if I actually had been Australian is probably worse than an Englishman being asked if he's really from Australia or a Canadian being confused with an American.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I really don't detect any similarity between my accent and those of our Antipodean cousins, and for a cricket-loving Englishman to be mistaken for an Australian is not exactly a complement (no offence Tarni and Dave, but who holds the Ashes at the moment?). Maybe the lack of exposure to shows like Neighbours and Home And Away means that your average Canadian can't quite distinguish the Australian the accent the way we Brits can, but one would have thought that the likes of Crocodiles Dundee and Hunter would have provided enough of a reference point.

If I ever end up moving to teach in a different Northern community I think I will put on my best Australian accent from the moment I get off the plane just to see what happens. Maybe then I'll be asked what part of England I'm from. Or not.

Pass the Vegemite.