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As an Australian living in NYC, I often repeat the phrases of my distant Darwin youth and discover that I've dropped another unexpected Australianism or Commonw

As an Australian living in NYC, I often repeat the phrases of my distant Darwin youth and discover that I've dropped another unexpected Australianism or Commonwealthism into a conversation that was ill-prepared to receive exotic visitors. --------------------- "How'd you handle the interview?" "I played a straight bat, mostly". --------------------- "I like your briefcase". "Yeah, it's a bloody ripper". --------------------- "I'm having relationship trouble". (paraphrased) "That's awful, I hope it comes good". --------------------- On the other hand, I don't know yet how to respond when, on mentioning I have an upcoming date, someone says "well, I'm rooting for you!" My employers, Pivotal, are pretty proactive in hiring Australians. There are usually between 5 and 10 of us in the NYC office at any given time. I'm never far from a familiar accent, a laconic quip and a charmingly familiar turn of phrase.

harry8 10y ago
The other one to watch is if you come back to oz to live nobody under 20 will have a frickin' clue what you're talking about. At least this was my experience at highschool when teachers returned after 20+ years in Germany & similar. All good slang most of which I probably understand now, but I didn't then.
voltagex_ 10y ago
Why Australians? (I am one, but I'm not sure I could live in NYC).
- ecdavis 10y ago
  The main reason is probably that Australians qualify for the E3 visa, which makes it substantially easier for US companies to hire us over other foreign workers. That said, there are plenty of other reasons Australians make great recruiting candidates for US companies. There are a lot of good Australian universities, the language/cultural barrier is minimal, and many Australians are wealthy enough to move internationally. For such a small country there sure are a lot of us spread around the globe. EDIT: Pivotal may have other reasons -- I don't work there, so I wouldn't know.
  - jacques_chester 10y ago
    You pretty much listed them all.
dcw303 10y ago
I've been away for 6 years, and not having many fellow colonials around has made some of our lingo sounds very weird to me. e.g - family on Facebook reacting to food posts with "Yummo!"

harry8 10y ago

The other one to watch is if you come back to oz to live nobody under 20 will have a frickin' clue what you're talking about. At least this was my experience at highschool when teachers returned after 20+ years in Germany & similar. All good slang most of which I probably understand now, but I didn't then.

voltagex_ 10y ago

Why Australians? (I am one, but I'm not sure I could live in NYC).

ecdavis 10y ago
The main reason is probably that Australians qualify for the E3 visa, which makes it substantially easier for US companies to hire us over other foreign workers. That said, there are plenty of other reasons Australians make great recruiting candidates for US companies. There are a lot of good Australian universities, the language/cultural barrier is minimal, and many Australians are wealthy enough to move internationally. For such a small country there sure are a lot of us spread around the globe. EDIT: Pivotal may have other reasons -- I don't work there, so I wouldn't know.
- jacques_chester 10y ago
  You pretty much listed them all.

dcw303 10y ago

I've been away for 6 years, and not having many fellow colonials around has made some of our lingo sounds very weird to me. e.g - family on Facebook reacting to food posts with "Yummo!"