THE MEANING OF OZ - All you need to know!

G'day Olga
You're certainly on a roll as we head towards Australia Day tomorrow.

Chucking in cricket.

While chucking generally is the expulsion of intestinal contents with some force, chucking in cricket is a whole different world.

Chucking, by a bowler, is despatching a ball with the arm flexed at a degree greater than that currently allowed, which, I think, is currently 10 degrees, but is about to change.

It is considered that a bowler utilising this method gains an unfair advantage over the batsman he is bowling to (not sure how!). If the umpire consideres a bowler "chucked" a ball during a game, it's called a "no ball", a point (run) goes to the batting side, and the bowler has to bowl another ball, thus giving the batting side another opportunity to score.

If a referee considers that a bowlers regular action is suspect, he reports that bowler, and he has to have his action examined by all manner of technical thingummies, before he is permitted to bowl again.

The Sri Lankan bowler Muttiah Muralitharam (aka Murali) has been reported countless times by match referees, and undergone countless examinations. Despite this, or as a result of this, Murali had, until recently, taken the highest number of wickets of any bowler. Even the Australian Prime Minister called him a chucker, although all (or some) has been forgiven after the tsunami cricket charity match and love in in Melbourne.

A zac is agbout a dime!

Thanks, margo!
I always knew chucking was a bad, bad thing, but never knew why.
Now I know!

Now, perhaps you could enlighten me about a "silly mid on" (or something like that. I've always wondered ....

Nah, just kidding.

Hot enough for you up there?
It is AMAZINGLY hot here! Summer at last!

finally got a bit of sun - it's been overcast and raining intermittently since Saturday. I'm watching the tennis, so I see it's bloody hot in Melbourne!

Yes, folks, as margo just mentioned, tomorrow is AUSTRALIA DAY![/color]


It's a national holiday in the heat!


A day for barbeques, tinnies, a glass of wine or 3 on the back verandah as the sun (finally!) sets ... Oz in January - I love it!

Oh, it is, it is, margo!

And true to form, too. Today's the first day for Victorian students to return to school, after the long summer break. It is ALWAYS unbelievably hot at this time. Never fails! Lucky there's a holiday tomorrow so's everyone can recover!

That's the latest from Melbourne (where I am)
Just over 35 C (that's above 95 F)
At 3:30 pm it appears to be rising.
Oh, it's gonna be a very hot night!

Hot dog, summer in the city!

.. And they're playing tennis in this heat!





Turning up the heat: Maria Sharapova stormed into the Australian Open semi-finals today, beating US Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova. Perhaps the secret to Sharapova's success was her unorthodox method of keeping cool in the searing heat at Rod Laver Arena.

Bookmarking for further study

Hi colorbook!


Uhoh! I think my computer is getting over-heated. It's behaving strangely. I think I'd better let it have a wee sleep & cool down. Now!

Bye!

Did you know we have an Australian of the Year? No? Well we do. An Australia Day (tomorrow) award. And her she is. Great to see a "she" & not yet another bloke! :

Plastic surgeon named Australian of the Year
January 26, 2005/the AGE




The woman who brought spray-on skin to victims of the Bali bombings was tonight named the 2005 Australian of Year.

Prime Minister John Howard awarded Dr Fiona Wood, a burns specialist at the Royal Perth Hospital, the title at a ceremony on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra on the eve of Australia Day.

The mother of six shot to fame in 2002 with her treatment of badly burned victims of the Bali bombings in which 202 people died, including 88 Australians.

Dr Wood, Western Australia's only female plastic surgeon, is already a National Living Treasure.

The spray-on technique, an alternative to painful and often disfiguring skin grafts, works by taking a sample of a patient's own skin and harvesting cells from it.

The cells are cultured for five days and the engineered tissue is then sprayed onto a wound.

Dr Wood coordinated a team of 250 staff to treat about half of the victims of the Bali bombings evacuated to Australia for medical treatment.

She is also co-founder of Clinical Cell Culture, a private company recognised in medical circles for its world-leading research and breakthroughs in the treatment of burns.

Dr Wood was chosen for this year's honour from a group of eight nominated Australians, including actress Nicole Kidman.

Aid worker Rodney Cocks, Angel Flight founder Bill Bristow, environmentalist Dr Michael Bossley, indigenous actor David Gulpilil, Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Air Vice-Marshal Julie Hammer, and wood chopper David Foster were also nominated for their contributions to the country and their communities.

Dr Wood was nominated last year for Australian of the Year, but former Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh took the top honour.

Also announced at the Australian of the Year Awards were Senior Australian of the Year, Young Australian of the Year and Australia's Local Hero.

Khoa Do, who came to Australia as a refugee from Vietnam, took the Young Australian of the Year honour for film-making.

His film, The Finished People, about homelessness and hardship in Sydney's western suburbs, won him international acclaim.

The man who helped to make Australia's first plastic bag-free town, Tasmanian Ben Kearney, was named Australia's Local Hero of 2005.

Portuguese-born businessman from the Northern Territory, Antonio Milhinhos, who famously donated his entire supermarket stock to victims of Cyclone Tracy, was named Senior Australian of the Year.

- AAP

The Sydney Morning Herald asked it's readers this very important question. & these are their responses:


Do you think the Aussie accent is losing its strine*?
What evidence have you noticed for or against this argument?
Please keep your comments brief or they will not be published.
("strine"*=Australian. As in having a "strine accent")
This is what you said.:

I've noticed some young people are speaking in contrived American accents to appear cool presumably. I like the Aussie accent and I hope we don't lose it. I've never understood the cultural cringe. Somebody said 'our' Nicole has a typical urban Aussie accent. If that is so we're buggered. last time I heard her she had an American twang creeping in, fair enough, she earns a lot of dough there.

I have a deep voice with a fairly thick Aussie accent (grew up in the bush then went to Uni and lived in cities). People from the U.S. don't understand it when I say my first name, they say "huh? Tarney? Tiny? what is that?". I have to say it an American accent.

Tony Corbett

~

"i love how the aussie accent is fragmenting.. take the word "you" for example.. in the west of sydney people say "yi/youse" in the east "yu" in the north "yew"

in melbourne "yuw"

in adelaide "yuy"

and in brisbane you but with rocketing inflection..

god bless us"

LR

~

What a bloody joke? Who cares how we speak or pronounce words! Does it really matter that we may use an American saying or a British one? For every Aussie that speaks like an ocker you will find one that speaks with an English accent or an American twang. I want the job of those sheilas at the uni that studied this for so long. What a waste. At the end of their punishing schedule what are they going to recommend. That we all have elocution lessons. Australia has an extremely diverse range of accents and that's the end of it. I dont want everyone in Aus to speak the same.

Gary Phillips (... etc)

(all comments)
http://www.smh.com.au/yoursay/index.html

Australia Day or Invasion Day? Some things we contemplate on Australia day:


Day of shame, day of triumph
January 26, 2005/the AGE

Australians have a responsibility to acknowledge the first peoplesof this land. It cannot be shirked, writes David Day.


For some years now, Australia Day has seen commentators berating us for not making a greater celebration of the day that marked the beginning of our nation. Other commentators berate us for celebrating the day that also marked the beginning of a tragedy for Aboriginal peoples. Both sides are right about the historical significance of January 26, 1788. It does mark the beginning both of Australia's shame and its triumph. This partly explains the muted way in which we tend to celebrate the day, for there is much to be ambivalent about.

When Captain Arthur Phillip and his officers splashed ashore at Botany Bay, they believed they were bringing civilisation to what one of the officers described as "a remote and barbarous land". But it was not an act of selfless charity. They had come to conquer. They had not come to live in an Aboriginal world but to dispossess the Aborigines of their land and compel them to live in a British world... <cont>

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/Day-of-shame-day-of-triumph/2005/01/25/1106415593988.html?oneclick=true
`

..& are we celebrating being Australia on the wrong day? Today's AGE editorial:

... For Aboriginal Australians, January 26 is not, and will never be, a day of celebration. This was highlighted yesterday when Aboriginal activist Michael Mansell issued a statement saying that the day "glorifies the invaders as pioneers". He likened it to celebrating the coming of power of the Nazis at the expense of the Jews. While Mr Mansell's rhetoric is stronger than we would employ, The Age has long advocated finding a new date to mark our achievements. Until now, the Government has resisted all such suggestions. But it is significant that on Monday Governor-General Michael Jeffery opened this year's celebrations at a dawn service at Uluru. He emphasised the need for Australians to embrace indigenous history and customs and called on schools to teach Aboriginal culture as a means of linking black and white Australia. "There is so much to learn from it: family life, community life, sharing, the traditions of training young men and women to become adults within the tribal thing, the Dreamtime, story time. All those things, I think, have a national impact," he said....


http://www.theage.com.au/news/Editorial/Australia-Day-a-day-but-not-a-date-to-celebrate/2005/01/25/1106415591269.html

... & Leunig sends his Oz Day regards, in appreciation of those of us who didn't make today's Honour List: http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au/

And another scorcher predicted, here in Melbourne. Phew!:




Alicia Molik will face her greatest test today when she plays the world's top-ranked player Lindsay Davenport in what are likely to be blistering hot conditions on Melbourne Park's centre court.

With the Melbourne temperature expected to climb to the high 30s, Molik's Australia Day quarter-final may be played under the closed roof of Rod Laver Arena.

Meet the Young Australian of the Year!:

Migrant fairytale for young achiever


Young Australian of the Year, Khoa Do.
Photo: Chris Lane


Khoa Do was barely two when his family fled war-ravaged Vietnam by boat. Now, he is the Young Australian of the Year.

...As the 25-year-old writer and film-maker reflected last night on his rise from humble, desperate beginnings into a role model for Australian youth, he admitted the news had come as a "huge surprise".

"I'm really thrilled to receive this award," he told the Herald. "I hope it might just inspire young people from other backgrounds to find their own way in life and maybe make a difference."...

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/01/25/1106415597833.html

I thought there were 20 million of us who fitted that description!

Everything (& more! :wink: ) that you'd ever dreamed of asking about Australia Day:


A day Down Under
January 26, 2005/the AGE

Did you know that before 1949 there was no such thing as an Australian citizen? Or that the record for throwing an eight kilogram tuna fish is 37.23 metres? Thornton McCamish digs deep to tell you all there is to know about Australia Day.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/01/25/1106415591470.html

Some of us are more "unsung" than others!