I Didn't Upgrade My Seat on a Flight. You Won't Believe What Happened Next!

Airplane crashes have dominated headlines lately. If I were an investigative reporter, I’d scour FAA logs (click that “lately” link). I’d plug numbers into Excel, generate graphs of incidents vs time, and publish trends. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d tie the crashes to the FAA firings, shaping the story to prove my point. Happily for us both, I’m neither of those. I’m just a guy who flew to Dulles last December for a wedding, and chose not to pay to upgrade my seat. That decision turned out poorly.

Nightlife and Vegemite (Slightly NSFW)

My best friend in elementary school lunched on Vegemite sandwiches daily. He used, as I recall, some sort of oval-shaped bread — French, perhaps, or sourdough. Two thick slices of bread concealed a veneer of brown, sticky substance between them. He never tired of Vegemite. His mother hailed from Australia, and his father once beat Bobby Fischer in chess. The chess part probably had no influence on the contents of Andrew’s brown bags, but the Australian part certainly did.

A Roo Awakening

No country owns an animal like Australia owns the kangaroo. OK, China and the panda play in the same league. But China and its one-trick panda can’t match Australia’s array of exclusives: koalas, platypuses, echidnas, wallabies, wombats, emus, Tasmanian devils, and more. Australia’s geographic isolation has created a mix of species that techies would call “proprietary” and scientists call a high level of endemic fauna. You and I just say, “OMG that’s a lot of cool animals!” You can’t call a trip to Australia complete until you put eyes on kangaroos, koalas, and other animals you won’t see anywhere else. We spent portions of three different days in zoos, and got an eyeful of everything but echidnas. The lone, bashful echidna we had the chance to see, a resident of the Melbourne Zoo, stayed hidden. Something else we didn’t see at the zoo: Jhett. By the time we went to the zoo in our second week in Australia, he’d left for a week-long work placement assignment for school. We missed having him with us!

Getting Around Australia

Imagine a world where Isuzus still zoom down the highways, passed by the occasional Peugeot. Congratulations — you’re picturing Australia. Isuzu and Peugeot may have pulled out of The United States, but they stuck around The Land Down Under. They face stiff competition, though, from some States stalwarts, like Toyota, Mitsubishi, and Nissan. They say NIH-sun, though, not NEE-sahn. And their Nissan Rogues go by the name X-Trail.

For a lot of cars, you know the make but not the model. Kia Picanto? Toyota HiAce? Jhett’s Suzuki Jimny? I find it strange that different models sell in different markets.

Testing Australia's Medicare

One of the many issues fracturing the people of The United States is how to administer healthcare. Is healthcare a right? A privilege? Should we keep healthcare private, or should the government provide healthcare to all? The Australian government provides healthcare to its citizens. Time for an experiment! I decided that, on this trip, I would purposely test their healthcare system. Just kidding. None of this was on purpose. It all just happened. But I did get to experience Australia’s healthcare system firsthand.