It’s Hard To Beat A Stupendous Sanger

We’ve finally gotten a bright, sunny day typical of May and I got to stuff myself with an absolutely sublime sanger, so it’s gonna be tough to make today much better.

It started off as a bit of a mess, though.

I got up early in the morning as usual to go out on a bike ride, but when I headed outside, it was pouring rain.

I’d already been trying to talk myself out of it, which I shouldn’t have done considering my health check results were good except for being too fat and needing to lose weight or the results would worsen.

Being stuck at home then gave me a front seat view of a health crisis as I noticed an ambulance gurney at the tower opposite ours. We are located in a neigborhood where 75% of the district is aged 75 or over, so this sight is not rare and ambulance visits are a near daily occurrence. Being a gossip, I watched to see who would be carried out and prayed that it would not be too serious. I was shocked when it was one of the youngest residents of the tower being carried down by three paramedics. I pray that the resident will recover quickly.

Wouldn’t you know it? As soon as I changed out of my cycling kit and prepared to knuckle down to tackling the day’s duties instead of frivilously messing about on a bike, the weather improved. Drastically and dramatically. It’s now warm and bright and sunny and positively ideal for a bike ride. So, naturally, I need to work inside. But the flowers are gonna love this. They are putting on a display of beauty even more exisquisite than Mrs. Kangaeroo’s sandwich, and almost rival Mrs. Kanageroo herself. (Well, a very distant second place.)

Also enjoying my presence is Dino, who still doesn’t appear fully recovered after ailing for months now. Our little dinosaur is clearly better than she was, but still struggles pooping and is listless. She has commandeered my PC’s exhaust outlet, which emanates hot air that she appears to find comforting. I hope there is nothing serious going on.

Cop A Gander At These Rippers Too...

  • |

    Back To The Basics To Take The Strain Out Of Strine

    Kangaeroo.com originally started as a bit of a joke site focused on Strine–the word to describe Australian English that is a play on the word “Australian” as pronounced in a broad Aussie accent. In the earliest years of the site, language played a central role in content. I created categories like やばいリンガル, which was loosely for words that were a little bit on the naughtier side, or yabai, in both English and Japanese. Then we had 豪cabulary that honed in on individual words that are distinctly Australian with the category being a portmanteau of go (豪), the kanji abbreviation used in Japanese for the now virtually archaic name for Australia…

  • ディンゴが見ればあなたはどこへGO?

    Where Will You Go If You See A Dingo? Stretch a fence from the Queensland coast to the cliffs of South Australia and you have the Dingo Fence. At roughly 5,600 kilometers, one of the longest structures ever built by humans, longer than the distance from Tokyo to Jakarta. Its entire job is to keep one animal out: the dingo. 考えRoo が最後にディンゴを見たのは、ディンゴフェンスに沿って南オーストラリアの荒野を自転車で走っていたときだった。 遠くの丘の上で、じっとこちらを見つめる一匹の犬。オオカミでもなく、普通の犬でもない。 それがディンゴだった。 What’s a dingo? The dingo (Canis familiaris, sometimes classified separately) is Australia’s wild dog, believed to have arrived with seafarers from Asia around 3,500–5,000 years ago. It is now the continent’s largest land predator, feared by sheep farmers and protected as a native species in national…

  • Wattle Day

    It’s officially Wattle Day in Japan today, and I’m absolutely delighted to have a thriving wattle growing in our garden. I guess a little explanation is necessary. March 8 is Mimosa no Hi, literally, the Day of Silver Wattle. The flowers mark International Women’s Day, and the idea of giving women silver wattle (called mimosa outside of their native Australia) emanated from an Italian communist politician in the 1940s because the beautiful yellow flowers were more readily available than other floral items frequently presented to women around the world at the time. It’s not a national holiday in Japan, and not really widely acknowledged. It’s still a man’s country here….

  • Dead Heart: Australia’s Desert Centre

    Australia has a heart. It is also, rather oddly, called dead. “The Dead Heart” is an old expression for the arid interior of Australia. The phrase became particularly influential after geologist John Walter Gregory used it as the title of his 1906 book The Dead Heart of Australia, following his expedition around Lake Eyre. The name reflects an older way of imagining Australia’s inland deserts as dry, empty and lifeless. Modern knowledge tells a much richer story: central Australia supports a remarkable range of plants, animals and human cultures. Even so, “the Dead Heart” remains part of Australian English and Australia’s historical vocabulary. Meaning 「Dead Heart」は、オーストラリア中央部の乾燥した内陸地域、特に砂漠地帯を指す古くからの表現です。この表現を広めた重要な人物が地質学者John Walter Gregoryで、1906年にThe Dead Heart…