My Life is like a Whirlwind

That’s right. A whirlwind.


The kind that blows around for five minutes about ten feet off the ground in a dusty patch of Nebraska; in other words, utterly mundane.

Obviously, it has been wonderful to meet Cate in the city for her lunch hour and to spend time with her and the fam for dinners, but that’s about all I do these days. Since the disappointment of Fake-Sports-Marketing-Job-2.0 a couple of weeks ago I have entered mild crisis mode. After rebuffing the offer from the company which shall not be named (I feel kinda bad for belittling what they do/did so much in one of my previous entries, so I’ll just never mention them by name again), I applied for a series of jobs in cafes, restaurants, and retail establishments. One of my favorites (sarcasm) was for a management training position at Hungry Jack’s, or as American’s and Australian’s on the east coast of the country know it, Burger King. If accepted in this role I would be trained to manage a Hungry Jack’s franchise, certainly not an ideal way to spend my time here, but it would be better than operating the fry-o-lator. A couple days ago, a representative from the company called me and said he would email me the details for the interview; namely the location. Yet, the interview is meant to be tomorrow, and I have not heard from them, I also have no means of calling them back because the call was from a private line. Alas, so I sit and wait to hear back about other positions for which I have applied and continue looking for new opportunities.

Of course my life isn’t really as boring as I make it seem; just last Friday Cate and I joined her parents to see Roberta Flack accompanied by the West Australia Symphony Orchestra (WASO) in Kings Park. I’ll include some pictures of the event and the park itself, both exuding class and style. The WASO does a series of outdoor concerts every year with pop artists then charge an arm and a leg (I heard tickets were going for $100!). But no matter what the motivation of the WASO, the concert was handled very nicely. Roberta Flack only sang a couple of her own songs, but rather, opted to cover more well known contemporaries like Stevie Wonder. Cate and I splintered away from the business talk of her father and met an African- American man who had married an Australian woman! He and his wife have lived in three Australian cities over the past ten years and when prompted to give some advice to someone in a seemingly similar situation give this pithy reply, “hang in there.” Thanks, guy. ANYway, this chance encounter (only my second with another African-American male in Australia) was a reminder that I didn’t really need, but was and is good to keep in mind. Just because we are both African- American males does not mean that we would instantly hit it off or have all these points of connection. But that really is another topic for another time.

OH! Before I forget, happy birthday Nicole Patrice Davis, 20! Wow, so old, so mature, look at you go/ grow/ glow? I’m not sure when I will actually post this entry, but know that I was thinking about you on your birthday even if I did not call you (I was going to, but I figured you would not want a 6am wakeup from me J ) I love you and miss you!

Now, other than my quartet of lunch dates with Cate each week, Roberta Flack, and finding a job, there has been just one thing that has been consuming my mind. Rugby. It has come time to see whether or not rugby is just a new sport to add to my canon of those that I follow doggedly OR if it will become something much bigger than that, my new sporting passion. Football took hold of me the final couple years of high school and the first two of CU and in many ways, I gave a good deal of my life to it as well. I missed out on family vacations because I was so dedicated to my training schedule, not a drop of alcohol ever passed my lips until my football career ended, and to top it all off, my right shoulder, both knees, and my feet are not quite right (100% functional, but definitely well worn, haha, it’s an eBay ad for my body). To make a long story short, I’m diving in head first. Rugby is the next athletic summit I will attempt to climb and it’s going to be a slow process, but ultimately one which is already paying dividends. For starters, I belong to an athletic team again. Unless you have been a part of a sports team that takes itself seriously you really would not understand the significance of joining up again; and if you have, then you already know the thoughts of sacrifice, championships, and camaraderie that are dancing through my mind. Secondly, and very closely related to number one, I have a uniform again! I’ll be able to proudly don the Blue and Gold (again! J) of the Nedlands Rugby Union Football Club. Finally, and I’m not sure how high this actually ranks on my scale of importance, but it warrants mentioning; I will be in great physical shape again. I did a lot of work to get to this point, but the past few days of sprints with Cate got me pretty sore through the hamstrings and when paired with today’s first practice on grass it reminded me exactly why I loved and yet disliked football. In sport, there’s a constant tension of, “God gave me these tools, how can I best cultivate them and use them to His glory?” And, “God, do we really have to run eight more windsprints?” The soreness I’m feeling right now is the good kind, when you know that you’ve put in a hard workout and your body will be better for it in the end; but trust me I’ll keep you posted on my soreness quotient as the season picks up speed.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got… Except that Cate and I are going to see Coldplay live and in concert on Friday night! Yes! There will DEFINITELY be pictures from that show! Hope all is well with you in whatever corner of the globe you are reading this, and by the way. Thank you for taking the time to peer into the inner spewings of my brain, I really appreciate it. And if I ever get too narcissistic, please, please call me on it.


Zip it up.
And zip it out.








Oh, and just for fun, below is a picture of my house in Mandurah.

Picture Time

This is my first of many picture updates and naturally, this set is very "Cate/Jordan" heavy, but deal with it.  Hm, these pictures are a lil bit out of order, but, this is the way I uploaded them and it would be a lot more trouble than it's worth to arrange them correctly so... enjoy! :)  I'm including two captions under each photograph; "a)" matches the photo on the top and "b" corresponds with the bottom.

a) Australia Day fireworks at the Perth foreshore. b) Not really sure what, if any, particular significance this picture has, but it looks pretty nice.

a) Durty Nelly's? Wow.  Impressive work for our boy from tha Lou.  I know he spells it, "Derrty," and I also know that this is an Irish Pub in Perth, but it's still pretty awesome.  b) This is one of the beautiful coastal/ sunset shots that was captured about five minutes from my house in Mandurah.

a) This is the interior of Greens and Co, an obviously cool place that we often frequent after church.  b) Hanging out on the beach.

a) Uh, not really sure, but I like it.  b) Gorgeous backdrop at the Emirates Western Force rugby game at the Subiaco Oval.

a) Proud force supporters!  The force behind the Force.  A sea of blue as powerful as the Indian Ocean.  A congregation of believers worshipping at the altar of sport.  The most dominant sporting entity in the worlds most isolated capital.  I only made up about 40% of that stuff... b) More fireworks on Australia Day (January 26th).

a) Happy Australia Day!  Ah yes, while I was wearing this outfit (Australian flag boardshorts and the Australian national soccer team jersey) I was harassed by a drunken fool who felt the need to inform me that, "It's Australia Day, not Jamaica Day!"  Ugh.  b) Rugby boots and ball; they just kinda fell like that... I didn't arrange them so perfectly, how big of a dork do you think I am?

a) Beach fun, mere days after Cate's wisdom teeth extraction (hence the puffy cheeks).  b) "What part of Jamaica are you from?"  "Right down by de beach, mon!"

a) I asked her permission before I took the photo and one could only assume that eventually any picture I take might end up on my blog... On second thought, she probably was still groggy from the anesthetic, but oh well, it's too late.  b) :)

a) So cute!  Pop Rocks!  She loves em!  b) This is the first picture we took together after being apart for seven months, flying to the other side of the world (both of us, she was in Austria), and not having showered for 24 and 16 hours respectively.  Awesome.  No, seriously, the best collection of moments in my life :)

Jampacked Weekend

Friday: Night; Western Force professional rugby. Awesome! My first live pro rugby match! Sadly, Western Australia, but mostly Perth let me down. Rugby isn’t really a big deal on this side of the country; over here they fancy sports like cricket and Aussie rules football. As a result of this apathetic feeling towards rugby the stadium was only about half full for the season opener! For those of you in America, I’m having a hard time trying to explain how shocking this was to me. The Western Force play in the “Super 14,” this league is comprised of 14 rugby clubs in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (arguably, three of the best rugby playing nations in the world, at least judging by the number of rugby world cups won between the three: five (there have only been six rugby world cups contested, the next will be held in New Zealand in 2011… but I digress)). Following the preceeding logic, the quality of play in the Super 14 should be just as good as, if not better than any other rugby league in the world, yet, the only professional rugby team in the western 80% of Australia cannot even fill up its stadium for their home opener? Take a walk into my imagination with me… let’s say there were only 14 teams in the NFL and these franchises were spread pretty evenly through the US, Canada, and Mexico, can you imagine EVER being able to find tickets to one of those games? OK, I know that such a comparison isn’t really fair since the sporting culture in America is, dare I say it, much stronger than it is in Australia; plus there are a lot more people in the state of California than all of Australia, so I guess I can let the seeming lack of fan support slide, I just expected more from you Perth. Anyway, the game was very exciting right down to finish, but sadly the Force weren’t able to pull out a victory.

Saturday: Morning; Cate and I helped to coach some little kids basketball teams and it was great! I miss all my children from the Boys and Girls Club so it was nice to get back into that groove again. My team was comprised of eight-ten year old boys and girls and after a heated discussion, we named ourselves the cheetahs. I had to leave my kiddies to referee another game, but apparently I had prepared them so well in the 15 minutes that I knew them before the contest began that they were able to soldier onward to victory. Afternoon; Cate was scheduled to play a basketball game with friends from church so we drove over to the gym, Cate in full uniform ready to go, only to find that her game had been forfeited due to a lack of players. On the upside, Cate and I got to play some three on three basketball with four random guys who were at the gym (this is good news because Cate, understandably, does not like playing pickup with just anyone since many of the pick-up players at CU were so out of control that she feared for her health. As a result of this general precaution we rarely actually get to play basketball together unless it’s one on one, which really is a limited amount of fun for both of us. Cate is a MUCH better basketball player (dribbling/shooting/ you know, basketball stuff) than I am, but I’m a really good faker so I can get by playing basketball because I’m faster and stronger; so we end up tweaking the rules for me to level the playing field and it’s a pretty good time, but we would both rather just go all out in a non- one on one setting. Night; Valentine’s Day? Oh yeah! Cate and I got moderately dressed up and headed out to a wonderful steakhouse near the docks in Fremantle (suburb of Perth) called Char Char Bull. The evening was really lovely and we were just finishing up our meals (surf and turf featuring prawns as the surf bit with lemon, lime, and bitters (llab for short) which is a delicious drink composed of bitters, lime juice, and lemon-lime soda) when a waiter brought us two more glasses of llab. He set the tasty beverages down on the table and said they were compliments of the two gentlemen sitting about 15 feet away from us. Now upon receiving our round of llab, two thoughts wrestled in my head 1) Um… guys don’t buy other guys drinks unless they are interested in said guys, however, I am clearly taken… by a woman. 2) Maybe they overheard me talking to Cate about how they seemed to be a little too playful with a female member of the waitstaff and they felt bad for presenting themselves in such a bad light and as such, felt compelled to buy us llab to make up for it. Cate and I just could not get over what these two guys might be trying to say/ do, so we asked our waitress (the one whom they were being overly- friendly with) what their deal might be and she just told us that they were two nice guys who came in the restaurant all the time. This lowered my guard enough that I thought we should go over to the table and thank them, but they were gone by the time I had actually decided to get up. So, we will never know the mystery of the llab, but instead will always be left with the question, “why us?” Sure, we are a fantastically cute couple… but it was Valentine’s… at a restaurant…there were plenty of cute couples that night, heck, one couple got engaged right next to our two drink buyers, but they chose us. Freaky. Oh well.

Sunday: Morning; Delicious eggs (with chilli powder)/ham/ OJ breakfast. Mid-Morning/Afternoon; Cate has invited three co-workers over for lunch so we frantically rush around the house and to the grocery store to prepare our lunch feast. Grilled chicken, nicely spiced, with roast potatoes, and a garden salad. Nothing really happened at lunch, just eating and talking. Evening; we were meant to go to church, but instead decided to just relax at home watching The Office (America), good times.

Mini Update

Today is Friday, February 13th, 2009; the time is 7:35 in the am.

In an about face, I decided not to take the raffle-ticket-selling job, but of course there was no backup job waiting for me. Over the past several days I have redoubled my efforts and have resigned myself to the fact that some of the things I really wanted to get involved with (namely a bible study group at Cate's church (which I suppose is also my church now, haha) and rugby) might have to be tabled for a while because initially, I was just looking for 9-5 type jobs that would allow me to participate in those activities, but now I have to cast a wider net.

In less sombre news, this will be a BIG weekend! Tonight Cate and I are going to the Western Force (Super 14 rugby, some of the highest levels of rugby in the world) season opener! Tomorrow we are helping to recruit local kids to play basketball, then Cate has a game of her own, and then we have valentines day/night dinner at a restaurant with which Cate is surprising me! On Sunday morning I am watching the NBA All Star Game with some guys from church then rushing back to Cate's house to help her host a little bbq lunch, then church, and finally, I'll head back down to Mandurah.

I promise to try to get some pictures up on the blog at the beginning of next week!


Zip it up. And zip it out.

Here. We. Go.

At the request of my mother; I am not remotely in the path of the myriad Australian natural disasters. Rest assured.


The past week has been laid- back, to say the least. Because I was still unemployed I spent my days reading ("About a Boy" and now "The Best American Sports Writing of 2008") and then I would take the bus into the city and meet up with Cate for lunch. We would usually finish lunch around 1:30, she'd go back to work and I would have 2.5-3 hours to kill. These afternoons spent roaming the central business district of Perth were pretty fun, although, there really are just two or three long streets of shops to explore and within that number, there's a limited number of shops I would even want to enter. In the evenings, Cate and I have been spending out time running, cooking dinner (limiting our eating out, really and truly), and watching television shows... on DVD, haha.

This lifestyle has been pretty relaxing, and it has definitely been nice to have some time off work since I went straight from the Boys and Girls Club to The Container Store before I got to Australia, but it was/ is time to get back to work; Taylormade Sports agreed. I found this company on a job-seeking-website and they billed the position as a combination of sports marketing and retail which led me to believe that I would be working in some sort of Australian Sports Authority-esque environment, which is actually a pretty exciting prospect. The company gave me a call and we set up an interview for last Thursday. I arrived at the office building, which had an eerily similar feel to the set-up of the "sports marketing" job I got and then rejected immediately after I graduated from Columbia. I was even talking to Cate on the phone as I sat outside the place telling her that the layout of the office park that the interview was taking place in reminded me of that horrible experience, but she reassured me and I realized that, surely, Taylormade Sports would be a legitimate place for me to work.

As I walked into the actual office of Taylormade Sports, my fears reached new levels as the layout/ atmosphere ( two supposedly attractive female receptionists in their early twenties sitting in an alcove of sorts; neither of them actually appeared to be working as facebook, myspace, and/or some sort of internet chat program was displayed on their screens; their top 40 pop music station was playing way too loud for an office where any sort of meaningful work could possibly be done; blah blah blah...) nearly identically reflected that of my previous foray into this field; but again, I left these irrational comparisons at the wayside of my mind and focused on the interview. I impressed my interviewer (and owner of the company) enough that he invited me back for a second round interview, which would be more of an experience with some members of the company out in the real world (just like the aforementioned job I had to refuse).

So... the first interview was on Thursday. On Friday, I came into the city to have lunch with Cate, then we got a drink to celebrate the weekend. A few hours later we went to a friend's house for dinner, great food and company. On a related note, it is very interesting to be confronted with sheer naive ignorance. Let me say that this family was very outgoing and personable, as am I, so I think they perceived a comfort level that might not quite have been there for me; or maybe they are just SO outspoken that they would have said what they said at any rate. The middle daughter of the family, 20, asked to no one in particular (which was odd since I was sitting at the table), "why are they called Afro- Americans? I thought an Afro was a hairstyle?" A legitimate question, especially since no one calls us Afro- Americans anymore, for that very reason, haha. The father commented on the, "particular largeness of the Afro- Americans playing in the Super Bowl." I guess he missed all the particularly large white men also playing in the game, but I guess people see what they want to see. And finally, my favorite; the mother. She certainly takes the cake, but she is definitely one to say whatever is on her mind. The second thing she said to me after our introduction was, "Oh my! Do you work out?" At the protest of her daughter who saw how such a comment might make me a teensy bit uncomfortable, she retorted, "What? Look at him, he obviously does!" That was cute. Later in the evening a discussion broke out about the mother's lack of understanding of 50 Cent's "Candy Shop." Again, much to the chagrin of her daughters, she protested that, as a girl, she would go to the candy shop and get lollipops all the time. I politely told her that I was pretty sure that Fitty had something else in mind when he wrote that song and she replied, "So! You DO understand that ghetto slang! You knew what he was talking about! Say something from tha' hood! Talk ghetto!"

As is often the case in situations like these, I am reminded of a Dave Chappelle stand-up act. Once, Dave had just finished performing in the south and he went a Ponderosa-style restaurant where you order at the front and they bring your food to you at your table. He was looking up at the menu and prepared to order while still deciding saying, "I'll have..." And the white cashier interrupted him by interjecting, "The chicken!" Dave's response, "What the %$#@?" The clerk's retort, "Look here buddy, it's no secret around here that blacks... and chickens, are very fond of one another." Dave continued in his mind thinking, "Wow, that was really racist. I'm not even mad, just stunned that someone could be so blatantly racist." These are the things that churn through my mind in real life situations, haha. Hm, that's pretty interesting, three of the most blatantly racist things to ever happen in my life have a) all been in the last 2 years b) twice involved white Australian women asking me to speak ebonics and c) not happened in the US or involved white Americans at all (the third involved an Indian cab driver in Toronto)

ANYway. Saturday rolled around and Cate and I prepared a delicious feast of bacon and eggs. Just as we were sitting down to eat, the doorbell rang and guess who it was! The Jehovah's Witnesses! I'm going to keep THIS story short, but basically, these guys using the same Bible as protestant Christians came to the Taylor at 9am on a Saturday morning picking and choosing verses to support their outlandish claims. What they failed to do was, I don't know, read the verses in context? All I can say is that I hope our chat with them gave them some things to think about because they really would pluck three verses from the middle of a chapter to support a given point, but LITERALLY would not have read the verses before or after it to contextualize what they were saying; or maybe they did and were in denial about them? But, after we talked to them for a good 30-45 minutes, we finished breakfast and then walked around for a bit before Cate's basketball game (they lost, but she starred!). We then went our separate ways as I joined some friends from church to watch a professional Aussie Rules Football (AFL or footy, there will be more about this in a later post) game while Cate joined friends from work to say goodbye to a coworker. We reconvened late that night to catch a bit of the England/ Italy rugby match that was being broadcast live in a few pubs at midnight. Sunday. Beach. Church. Coffee/Tea/ Cake.

Monday, Monday, Monday! At last, the day of the interview had arrived (sorry for leaving you get-jordan-a-job people hanging for three paragraphs) and I prepared myself to dazzle my potential employers. I walked into the office and my heart dropped out of my chest and onto the floor, SMACK! It was 7:50am on Monday morning and the company from which I was hoping to secure employment was having a dance party to motivate their employees. Those of you to whom I have told the story will recall that this was EXACTLY how they started the day at the horrible job that I did not take back in St. Louis. At this point I was mired in the deepest denial, I think I was telling myself that these things must all be coincidences, they could not possibly be related. Maybe even worse than all of that, all the guys who worked in the office were somehow exact replicas of sleazy New Jersey guys who use way too much hair gel, have orange tans, diamond stud earrings, and workout too hard (basically, just imagine the guy from the "My New Haircut" youtube video, if you haven't already seen it, I might not recommend it because of some coarse language, but I cannot control what you do on the internet...). Thankfully, I was teamed up with a guy who seemed pretty normal. He asked me if I drove and I told him that I did, so then he asked me if I could drive us to the site where we would set up, I told him I could (for those of you who do not know, nearly this exact same thing happened with the freakishly similar job before. Granted, in St. Louis, I was asked to drive because my interviewer's car broke down, whereas, yesterday I was asked to drive because I would need to drive back to the office by myself while they stayed at the site for the rest of the day). We arrived at the mall and set up our post. Keep in mind that this is a sports marketing job, and to be fair, we were dealing with sports and marketing, but not in the way that a rational person might think. Their task, and mine if I were to be hired, was to sell raffle tickets in a cross promotion with a local AFL team. Proceeds from the ten dollar raffle tickets went to youth sports foundations (and to us as the marketing company of course) and there are some pretty swanky prizes. My interviewer goes to different malls, airports, sporting events, and grocery store from day to day and sells the same raffle tickets. But here's the huge double whammy. He, and all the other associates at Taylormade Sports, sell the tickets between 9am-5:30pm, when most people are at work, (but then again, malls close at 5:30pm everyday but Thursday when they close at 8pm or 9pm for late night shopping). The second half of the whammy is that my interviewer, his assistant, pretty much everyone else in the company, and myself if hired all work on commission. 20% of each ticket goes into my pocket as commission... and that's my only salary. At this point I was internally beside myself because I could not believe that I had managed to get myself into nearly the same situation, but at least I would not be selling car wax at gas stations this time! Almost immediately after I had that thought, my interviewer took out a booklet with the company's structure/ business plan. They are a part of an international corporation called The Cobra Group (TCG). TCG has several different arms, one is Allsport, Taylormade Sports falls under that umbrella. As I was looking through the description of TCG, for the second time in two hours my heart stopped beating. None of the "coincidences" that I had been dismissing existed at all, they were not accidents. One of the five arms of TCG was "Fastwax," the EXACT company that I was given a job with nearly nine months ago! How could I have been so stupid?

I was freaking out pretty hard at this point, but I had to finish up the day. I went back to the office, had a little chat, was offered a position with Taylormade Sports, but told him that I would need some time to think about it. Thus commenced the longest several hours of deliberation. Clearly, this was a crappy job, but equally as obvious was the fact that I didn't exactly have people knocking down my door to hire me. So after all of this thinking through the different scenarios, Cate and I came to the conclusion that I should take the job for a few weeks, frantically look for a legitimate position, and by legitimate I mean one with at least an hourly wage, preferably a salary, but beggars with Ivy League degrees can't be choosers.

So there you have it. I have a job and I start bright and early tomorrow morning. 7:30am with a techno dance party; yes, this is actually my life. I'm off to enjoy my last day of freedom.

Peace

Super Bowl XLIII

As you all know I'm a pretty huge football fan. The Super Bowl is the climax of the season from a playing standpoint, but clearly the game is about a lot more than just football. There are commercials, parties, hours and hours of coverage, picking a team to root for (assuming that your team did not make it), and general festive attitude everyone one goes.

This Super Bowl was very different.

Obviously, I'm in Australia or else no one would be reading this. Because I am here in Perth, I just finished watching the "live" coverage of the game (it is 2:40 pm on Monday February second). Sporting events during the daytime just do not hold the same excitement factor as those in the evening or at night. As a result of the 10:30 am game time in Perth, I watched the big game alone, with minimal excitement, or even snacks, but this was the least of my worries.

A factor I had failed to consider when being reminded that I would be able to watch the Super Bowl in Australia was Australian announcers. As the pre-game hype began JUST half an hour before the game kicked off, I became terrified as I listened to the "commentators" talk about football. First of all, I never noticed just how different of an atmosphere is created when broadcasters and commentators dress professionally. The four guys that were in the studio for the Super Bowl discussion were indistinguishable from blokes taken off the street. This is surely not some laxity in Australia because over the past two weeks I have been watching quite a bit of the Australian Open and the broadcasters in the booth and studio dress as one might expect, but this is really a trivial issue because, thankfully, these fellows did not attempt to handle the play by play duties and left that to the American legends John Madden and Al Michaels who handled the game for NBC. But seriously, have you ever watched a sporting event spanning over several hours with someone who does not really grasp the essence of the action and therefore asks inane questions until s/he finally realizes that their behavior is getting annoying and just sits quietly and enjoys the game for what it's worth? These guys were like that, except, ostensibly, they were getting paid to keep talking and since none of them really knew what they were talking about, they just kept on making ridiculous comments laced with hyperbole about America and American football.

ANYway.

I'm not going to talk about the game because I'm sure most of you saw it, but I will offer my candid commentary on some of the other elements of Super Bowl Monday Mid-Morning/ Afternoon for me.

1) It's cute that some NFL players are apparently more proud of what high school they went to than what university; perhaps a good many of them did not graduate from said universities and thus it makes sense that they might use their high school in place of their college when introducing themselves in the traditional NFL broadcast style. However, Ike Taylor, cornerback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, took his game to a new level. When introducing himself, he said, "Ike Taylor........... Swaggin." In case anyone in the billion person viewing audience missed that, Al Michaels cleared it up by quipping, " No, 'Swaggin' is not the name of an institution of higher learning; but Taylor is referencing his, 'swagger.' And he'll have to play with a lot of it tonight because he's covering Larry Fitzgerald." Priceless. Even though I was banking on Fitzgerald having a big game, Ike Taylor increased that desire and thankfully I was rewarded as Fitzgerald absolutely punked Taylor, catching a touchdown right above his opponent's head. Gotta love it.

2) Brenda Warner got a new hair-do. Good for her!

3) I did not get to watch many of the famed commercials during the broadcast because these commercials are just tailored for the American audience, so I was forced to watch the local commercials that would have normally been running at 11 am on a Monday morning. A couple gems:

a) The other day Cate and I walked by a Subway and I asked her what the deal was with five- dollar- foot- long- sandwiches in Australia because they use the metric system here and, surely the price must be different. I imagined something along the lines of, "Six. Six dollar. Six dollar 30 centimeterrrrrrrrr." However, the reality of the situation was SO much better, and by better, I mean the most awkwardly worded commercial jingle ever. It had the exact same tune and melody but with these words, "Seven. Seven Dollar. Seven Dollar Subway Foot Long Subbbbbbbbbbbbbs." Perfect!

b) Everyone in America is quite familiar with President Barack Obama's (speaking of which; as I typed that spell check informed me that both of his names were spelling errors. Will the next edition of Microsoft Word include 'Barack' and 'Obama' as words? Just throwing that out there...) campaign rallying cry of, "Yes We Can." Apparently, the rest of the world is quite familiar as well. A commercial for the local GM dealership used a font that was nearly identical to that used throughout Obama's iconic campaign posters and advertisements. They also played a voice replicating Obama's in tone and cadence in the background as cars drove into the shot that said something along the lines of, "Can we get you a 2009 Jeep Cherokee for under $38,000 off the lot? Yes we can." At the conclusion of the commercial, the screen read, A Price CHANGE You Can Believe In.

Outside of my disappointment that the Arizona Cardinals could not secure a victory, that pretty much sums up my 2009 Super Bowl experience. Now, I'm back to reading, training for rugby, and looking for a job.