Monthly Archives: May 2014

This one made it to print

It snot goodbye

Published in On Our Selection News July 25, 2013

Goodbyes are pretty awkward.
In my time, I’ve been witness to countless beautiful goodbyes

in movies and television shows, and since I base most of my knowledge of life off television, I’ve been grossly misinformed. I have been led to believe that 84% of major goodbyes are said in airports, 8% in train/bus stations, 7.9% of other transport and approximately 0.1% involve a spaceship and a glowing finger. Every single final goodbye, I was led to believe, had a moment in which words were said through a knowing stare between both parties.

Goodbyes in real life, I have since found out, are much less powerful, and usually involve someone saying “sooooooo…” before trailing off.

Even the most casual of goodbyes are a nightmare. There have been too many times when I’ve waved someone off only to discover we’re walking the same way and then one of us will either have to make some kind of joke – which will mean prolonged small talk and then ANOTHER goodbye when you do finally split directions – or pretend to be busy so as not to notice the other person.

The trouble is that goodbyes aren’t always as simple as a “catch you on the flip side”. There are a lot of questions to think

about, especially when you aren’t expecting to see them in a long time.

What are you supposed to say to someone when you know the likelihood is that you will probably never see them again? Are you supposed to say something profound? What level of emotion is appropriate for the amount of time you’ve know this person and the significance of the relationship? In this situation, a length of a hug can mean the difference between a possible couch to sleep on abroad and the Facebook friend- count suddenly being one less.

Chances are that one of the two parties involved in the good- bye will over estimate the intensity of feelings and will spoil everything. This is something to avoid. No one wants to be that person who collapses in a fit of tears and wiping their nose on their departing casual acquaintance’s favourite jumper.

The trouble is that you have to think of some final words to finish on. If I were a film/show, I’d want my character to be witty and somewhat stoic but with the right amount of feelings to make the audience believe I had a heart of gold. So this is what I try to do in real life.

Try being the key word in that sentence.
And never is the difference between “trying” and “achieving”

so stark as when you’re trying to orchestrate a meaningful departure. I’ve had a couple of international exchange student friends, so I’ve had a few stabs at the goodbye-forever- performance. I once said “have a nice life,” to a departing friend, which I thought was good at the time, but looking back, we haven’t been in contact again…

I’ve tried the play on a personal joke technique, the old forced tears routine and I’ve even pulled out the group-hug-so-I- don’t-have-to-say-anything-profound card. And they’ve all been rubbish goodbyes – nothing like the movies. There’s no powerful soundtrack or meaningful glance that sums up your entire relationship; there’s just prolonged awkward silence and eye-contact avoidance.

It is very confronting to have the knowledge of when you’re going to see someone for the last time. Usually the people you aren’t too keen on drift out of your life, and you happily never see them again. Most of the time you won’t be aware that the last time you see someone is indeed your last encounter, so it is very rare that you get to consciously set the tone. So when you have that opportunity, the pressure is really on.

The best thing you can do is accept that the big goodbye is not going to be glamorous, and that you will probably embarrass yourself. There will be extended pauses and no one is will be sure of how to respond.

But these are the things that make goodbyes unforgettable. And if nothing else, goodbyes are about leaving a lasting mark on the person fleeing from your company. Maybe all that mark will be is a wet patch of snot on their shoulder as you go in for the teary hug, but at least it’s something.

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This one made it to print

True Colours

Originally published in On Our Selection News July 18, 2013

I’m a little wound up.

I’m worried about the Australian way of spelling – not the Australian way of life, but of spelling. You see, I’ve just typed the word “colour” into a Microsoft Word document, and there is a ghastly red squiggly line mocking me with its indication that I’ve spelt this word incorrectly. I thought I was writing what the Concise Oxford Dictionary describes as “a sensation produced on eyes by rays of light when resolved as by prism into different wavelengths,” but as far as Microsoft Word is concerned, I’ve just written incorrect dribble. It’s as though I’ve just smashed my head against the keyboard and tried to pass of the random combination of letters I’d hit with my face as a word.

What’s even more infuriating is when I’m sending a test from my smart phone and I use the word “colour”. This time, I don’t even get the courtesy of a rue red line – my word has automatically been bastardised to conform with the American spelling system. This means I then has to go back and correct the correction that the rude person called “AutoCorrect” corrected automatically without asking. Sometimes AutoCorrect is not only rude, but stubborn and won’t back down without a fight. Sometimes I have to go back three or four times to un-Americanise a word – it’s very impolite.

Cast your eyes upon this: color. It looks wrong, doesn’t it? I just tried to read it phonetically, and I said “coal ore”, which sounds more like something that will eventually kill all the nice polar bears (because apparently climate change only affects the polar bears) as opposed to something that can brighten a room. I’ll admit that phonetically, “colour” isn’t exactly the correct combination of letters, but it is nice on the eye.

I know it’s wildly ethnocentric (judging one’s culture based on the assumption that your own is correct or normal – thanks commu degree!) but I think we have a right to retain our signature, even if we did snag it from the motherland.

That is not just about “colour”, or the absence of a “u” here and there, it’s the fact that the youngsters of our nation may not recognise the difference between Australian English and American English. This is because we are in increasingly digital society – we spend a lot of time on computers and on our phones. This isn’t really a problem, in fact it’s quite brilliant, but it does have its downsides besides the cheeky repetitive strain injuries and obesity it is credit with causing. A problem is that the companies that make these devices we love so dearly (myself included), are American and so the default spelling setting on these devices are set to American English.

This wouldn’t be such a bad problem if it wasn’t fro autocorrect and spellcheck. They are both excellent idea, and have saved many a mark for correct spelling and provided plenty of laughs when they are slightly off the mark. But these tools are telling the user that the word they are actually spelling correctly, say “colour” for instance, is spelt wrong.

Look, Australian kids these days are very busy people. They have lapping to do, they have sandwiches to throw and YOLO hashtagging to do. I worry that in between these activities they won’t have time to go back and correct their auto-correct’s automatically American tendency. I understand that language is fluid and changes with time. Things change and I get that. But I feel like we need to hang on to our apparently unnecessary “U” or our curvy “S” in the place of cold, heartless and pointy “Z” in words like “realise”.

The world is heading to globalisation where languages will be shared and we will skip and dance merrily under rainbows with major trade deals, but that day is not today.

Show your true colours Australia, that’s why I love U. Because “colour” is beautiful like a rainbow.

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