Parlez vous Francais, horribles Australienne?

SHE was about as stereotypically French as you could get.

Not in looks. Short, slim and blonde, she looked more German or Scandinavian upon walking into the reception. At the time I was trying to guide two English girls to their campervan depot so they could ride off into the sunset, but apparently the jokes while doing so were a little too much for her.

"What time is it? I want to know because I am waiting."

"I see this, but I still need to finish serving these ladies before I can check you in. I'll be with you in a moment."

I checked her in, thankful the unnecessarily long shift was nearly over. With a bit of luck she'd be out of town before I opened reception at 7am the next morning.

No such luck.

Around 7.30 she came down to reception, laden down by the five or so bags that must have contained all her travelling essentials - and then some. After checking her out and refunding her key deposit, I decided to try strike up a conversation as she got her bags in order.

Turned out mon petit ami was off to Hong Kong before heading pretty much anywhere other than Australia. The people were horrible: it seems no one would offer to help this crazy little French woman as she struggled down the street with her many, many bags. Australia was a rich country, but the unlike the people in South America, New Zealand, Europe - pretty much everywhere else in the world - people here would just ignore her.
Funny that, because my experience in Europe was that the only help you'd get was from Old Mate relieving you of your valuables.
We are a young country as well, only 200 years old. Ah, I said, but out Indigenous culture was the oldest in the world. Beats everyone else by a good 20,000 years or so (give or take).
Nope, she was only interested in the European history of Australia. Rightio then.

Then it got onto languages. She brought it up, not me: by this point I was being lectured rather than participating in a proper cross-cultural conversation. Amongst our many faults as people was that Australians are too lazy to learn other languages. In this at least we were (begrudgingly) lumped in with other English speaking countries.

Now on this I reckon I had her. My theory is that it's a lot easier to learn other languages somewhere like Europe. Travelling by road from Paris, you're only 450km from London, just under 600km to the major German city of Frankfurt, 900km to the Italian city of Milan, and just over 1000km to the Spanish city of Barcelona. Not to mention the proximity of the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium or even the Principality of Luxembourg.
Travel 450km north from Brisbane and you'll end up just north of Bundaberg, where the only time they speak foreign languages is when they're on the local rum. Head 900km east of Adelaide and you'll finish in Wagga Wagga, where the only thing that may seem foreign are some of the footy fields. Go 1000km in any direction from Perth and you'll be smack bang in the middle of nowhere!

The point I make of all this is that if you're learning a foreign language in Europe, you don't have all that far to go to practice. Hell, if you're an European Union citizen you can even go live there for as long as you want. Here in Australia at least, the nearest French-speaking part of the world is New Caledonia, and last I checked you had to jump through some pretty major hoops to live and work there. Instead of spending a couple of hundred Euros to pop across The Channel, we have to spend a good couple of thousand dollars and spend at least 24 hours on a plane just to reach any European city.

Or how about this. Just say Hypothetical Stuart (HS) studied French throughout high school - that is ages 12-17. HS was very diligent in his studies, routinely in the top three in his class and showing an aptitude for la belle langue.
Then HS goes to uni. He's studying all kinds of things and generally being a very busy young lad, before heading off to a country town to work in the local newspaper. At no point does he have the chance to put into practice any of his high school French, which means that when he finally arrives in l'hexagone, he only remembers a few words and is forced to repeat the phrase parlez-vous Francais a hell of a lot.

Finally, to drive my point home further, I would like to point out that in Canada parents can put their children through French-speaking schools. I have a friend from the prairies of Alberta that is fluent in French - not just because she learnt it in school, but because she had the chance to use it all the time. Not only that, but within their own country they can visit and/or live in the very French part of Canada otherwise known as the province of Quebec.

Not that this would have made any kind of impression on this woman. I started to talk, but was cut off by her superior knowledge of four or five different languages. After finally getting her bags together she asked if I could hold open the door while she waddled through. As she walked past I wished her au revoir et bon voyage, before walking back inside and muttering under my breath "and don't come back, you fucking self-important piece of shit".

Well, we are horrible people remember? Wouldn't want to let her down or anything.

SAJ's Guide to the 2012 Queensland Election...

CAN you feel it?
The excitement?
Can you control yourself?
CAN YOU CONTROL YOURSELF?!?!?

Course you can. It's only the Queensland state election, where voters like you and me get to choose between a woman with an upside-down mouth; a short bald man; and the man in a hat. Or at least the sheep people following the man in the hat.
Given Australia's commitment to democracy through compulsory voting, all locals over the age of 18 have to vote in this election. Queensland voters have only changed ruling parties three times in the 31 years I've been alive, but are looking a very good chance to turf out the ruling Labor Party and replace them with the opposition LNP. That being the case, let's have a look at the main parties and their contenders for that most glamourous of world political appointments: Queensland Premier.


ANNA BLIGH, Australian Labor Party (ALP)
Anna Bligh became Queensland Premier in September 2007 after her grinning media tart predecessor Peter Beattie resigned to give his kids a break from seeing him on the tv all the time. Since becoming Premier Bligh's government has dealt with a number of crisis, including the Queensland Health payroll debacle where thousands of people were either unpaid, underpaid or overpaid when they migrated to a new IT system.
This resulted in Blight having a very low approval rating until the Queensland floods, when her "We Are Queenslanders" speech helped stamp her as a true leader, in the process sending her approval ratings back into positive territory for the first time in centuries. Unfortunately for the ALP this warm glow soon faded when the government went back to screwing things up, Bligh distinguishing herself with a vicious attack on LNP leader Campbell Newman for his family's business interests on the last parliamentary sitting day.
Is quite short but not an issue as she is female.

CAMPBELL NEWMAN, Liberal-National Part (LNP)
Campbell Newman is an ex-army officer who left his job running the Brisbane City Council to try and run for Premier - a bold strategy when you don't even have a seat in Parliament yet (apparently all the other kids kept saying "seat's taken" when he tried to sit down). Like a diver attempting a triple-somersault-half-pike-double-twist-turn-around-once-and-do-the-eagle-rock to win the Olympics, Newman's decided to do things the hard way by running for the seat of Ashgrove, where by all accounts local member Kate Jones does actually know how to tie up her own shoelaces. Was only picked because no-one knew anything about any of the sitting LNP members.
While Brisbane mayor Newman distinguished himself by building lots of tolled tunnels and bridges, a rude shock to locals who would rather not pay to drive thank-you-very-much. No word on tunnels to Fraser Island or the long-awaited Toowoomba Metro System, although he has strangely come out and said no to the Cross-River Rail project, preferring instead that all trains over the Brisbane River follow each other in a giant conga line during peak hours.
Is quite short, which is apparently an issue as a male.

AIDON MCLINDON Katter's Australia Party
Close election expected, new right-wing party named after a maverick national politician starts getting media time... shit, are we really doing this again? For Pauline Hanson's One Nation in 1998, read Bob Katter's Australia Party in 2012. The Man In The Hat has been busy, driving old London double-deckers around and dancing with "flash mobs" to take his words to the streets. Expected to win at least a few seats, although matching One Nation's 11 in 1998 will take some doing.
Oh, who's Aidon McLindon? Apparently the state leader. Wears glasses I think. Not sure how tall he is though.

EXPECTED OUTCOME
Just about everyone outside (and quite a few inside) the ALP have their money on the LNP. Bookies, professional punters, hairdressers, that bloke that always wants to talk when you're standing at the urinal: they're all going with the little fella. Bligh isn't being helped by the national ALP leadership schemozzle either, with local lad Kevin Rudd saying he didn't get a fair go last time and that he wants to play at being Prime Minister again. For the LNP, no-one's saying who would be Premier if the party wins a majority but Newman fails to land his 10m dive, very possibly on account of all possible candidates being a bigger buzz-kill than Buzz Killington.

SAJ'S VERDICT?
LNP by about 5 seats, Newman to scrape through, majority of Queenslanders to go down the pub and celebrate the fact that we don't have to go to the polls again for a while.
What's that?
Council elections April 28?


Oh for f#$%'s sake...