Whingers


One of the most frequently used words in the vocabulary of Australians is ‘Whingeing’. According to the dictionary it means complaining, moaning, grumbling. A whinger is someone you don’t want to be, but somehow is easily said about everybody else. In fact, most people here would tell you that South Aussies generally are just a bunch of whingers. Bosses tell their employees that they should stop whingeing, and all injured sports people are by default whingers. There’s even a radio show you can call that will broadcast your message live, as long as it starts with “I am not a whinger, but …..”

All in all it is safe to say Australians love to whinge a little bit. So from that perspective our integration is really going well. Since a couple of weeks we are whinging our hearts out about the weather. It is mid-winter now, and believe it or not: it can be freezing cold here. An average day temperature of 15°C may be decent, but at night it can get as low as 3°C. Mind you: in a house with just one small gas heater. That’s bloody cold mate, even if you are not a winger. Mikaela is wearing thermo gear at night! Now how sexy is that?!?

So do you feel sorry for us now? (whinge, whinge ….)

Comments

Anonymous said…
Sorry mate, no pity at all. 15 degrees and rain, thats what we had last week in our summer! Altough today it's almost 30 ....

Paulus
July 25, 2008 at 9:43 PM
Anonymous said…
Haha - no pity here either! In town temperatures are generally about 5 degrees higher then here, up in the Hills! Which means we've actually had some proper overnight frost, and on an occasion or two we even had to scrape the ice off our windshield. Not something we had really expected to ever have to do after coming over here...

And it definitely gave us something to whinge about. I don't think I've ever complained about the cold in any Dutch winter as much as I have in the last two Aussie winters!

Still - spring is officially upon us now, so we can be looking forward to some bloo - ehr...nice warm weather again!

Cheers from Hahndorf!
September 3, 2008 at 8:15 PM
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