#21807
Postby superFoolish » January 10th, 2017, 10:21 am
I have a variety of answers for questions that inappropriately end with "today"...
Them: Are you paying by card today?
Me: What day is it?
Them (puzzled): Tuesday? [the question mark is intentional]
Me: Yes, I always pay with a card on Tuesdays; Wednesdays is strictly cash-only.
Them: Is that all for you today?
Me: No, I have plenty of other things to do today.
or
Me: No, I'm going to come back later and do some more shopping.
Aussies don't cope well with sarcasm (or humour in general), so they just look confused and say something similar to, "Oh, okay".
Don't get me started on the inane checkout-talk... "How's your day going"?
I'm not brave enough to reply, "None of your bloody business, just get on with serving me, instead of reading what is written on the card that is stuck to your side of the till". Or, "My whole family died in a car crash this morning, and I'm the only survivor. How's your day going"?
Australian humour is mainly toilet-level, so many Aussies have a lot of trouble understanding that a joke is being made, unless it involves reference to 'personal' anatomy or obscene language. I often have conversations along the lines of...
Me (jovially): [any light-hearted commented.]
Them (confused): Really?
Me (dead-pan): No; I'm joking.
My brother and I believe that our most commonly-used phrase, since we each moved to Australia, is, "No, I'm joking".
One positive effect of the Aussie lack of sense of humour, is that simply making the most childish-pun makes one the most hilarious person in the building.
When watching a film (or 'movie', as they call them over here) at the cinema, a slightly amusing comment made by an actor - the type of humour to which I might respond with an internal 'ha' - results in much of the audience screeching with laughter.
The pay-off is that now, at 6:20 pm, it is 30 degrees C, and the swimming pool in our back garden beckons.