4 posts tagged “canada”
I recently discovered that the much-loved Fosters ad that aired incessantly during the 2000 Olympics - to refresh your memory -
- is actually almost directly lifted from this ad for Molson beer in Canada -
As appealing as both ads undeniably are... don't they just reveal
the huge chips we have on our respective shoulders? As has been pointed
out by several people, it's a little sad
that ads that are supposed to define Australia and Canada's unique
identities spend half the time insisting that we're nothing like the
United States. I still love the sweet polite Canadian guy in the ad
though, although I am succumbing to another Canuck stereotype by
admitting this...
Pics from Crystal today.
If, like me, a small part of you is still quietly mourning the day that Australia's Wonderland shut down to make way for the M7 highway a few years ago, you will appreciate this discovery of mine.
The other day I was with some Canadian friends, and I was reminiscing about my primary school years, when Sam and I would spend entire days at the local theme park in Sydney. We'd make sure to go there on days when we knew it would be virtually empty, so we could stride around the place feeling like we owned it. We'd go on the same rides again and again and again - once in the front cart, once in the back cart, once in the middle, then once in the front again... there was no end to the excitement.
I was particularly nostalgic about the Bush Beast (you know, the big rollercoaster out the front with the Wonderland sign on it) - the fact that it was such a rickety old wooden structure, with so few modern safety features, that a significant part of the fun of riding it was that you had reason to genuinely fear for your life. It was blissfully free of the chest braces and crotch crushers that make many modern rides so clinically unexciting. There's nothing like it these days, I said with a sigh. When we lost Wonderland, the kids of Sydney lost one of the last things that was built for sheer excitement without being stifled by modern public liability concerns.
At that point one of my friends mentioned that there was a really similar rollercoaster at a theme park in Toronto, as old as anyone could remember and all rickety and wooden like the Bush Beast. Then another friend jumped in to say how he loved that loop-the-loop type rollercoaster that went really fast - once forwards, and then once backwards. Then they remembered a tall tower-like ride where you would ascend slowly to the top with your feet hanging down, and then be dropped to the ground in a stomach-churning freefall. And a river-type ride where you would sit in a tractor tire and get sprayed by fountains as you rolled down the rapids - perfect for a hot summer's day. And a pirate ship that would sway from side to side, higher and higher till it did a 360...
I listened to my friends' reminiscences with increasing incredulity, dumbstruck by what I had just discovered. When I was finally able to form sentences again, I squeaked in uncontainable excitement:
"There's a Canada's Wonderland??!!!!!!!"
I would like to go to Toronto, please. Now. Oh Canada, is there no end to your awesomeness?
I hope everyone had a good Christmas.
Alec and I didn't end up going to California - it was just an unfeasible distance for one person to drive in such a short time. Instead we decided to head up to Vancouver for a couple of days. We stayed at Al's uncle and aunt's place, a stone's throw from downtown. The weather was atrocious, so after a little shopping downtown - I am now obsessed with Roots - we hung out at home with Alec's cousin Roger and his girlfriend Rina, who proved to be all-round champions and even cooked us an amazing dinner. In the final hours of Christmas eve we headed off to midnight mass at Roger's church, St Augustine's. It was quite a nice service, and I surprised myself by remembering the obscure 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. verses of Christmas carols that I barely even remember learning - obviously something from 11 years at a Uniting Church school stuck. The power of the subconscious mind, huh.
We spent a lot of the next day helping to make Christmas dinner. Alec's family was having 25 people over for the night, so they really put out a spread - 2 turkeys, some other sort of roast meat, vegies, and all sorts of bikkies and candy and other goodies. I learned how to make stuffing: one of the great mysteries of life finally solved. I headed home on a Greyhound that night; Alec stayed an extra day or two with his rellos.
On Boxing Day Radhika had organised a formal potluck dinner at her house. According to the invite all the girls had to wear dresses and the guys had to wear a collared shirt and tie, which unsurprisingly had the more smartass guys in our group asking whether they could come along without trousers on. I managed to get a nice LBD at the Boxing Day sales for $50, discounted from $200. Gotta love a bargain. When I got home I cooked up a storm and made rosemary lamb pie, rocket and haloumi salad, and strawberry lemonade. Everyone turned up looking absolutely stunning and carrying yummy food - it was a good night. I'll have to post up photos here once I have them from my friends.
The disappointing news of this week was that our ski trip to Schweitzer got cancelled due to last minute dropouts. I was extremely bummed out - I was really, really hanging out for this trip. It would have been great to celebrate new year's in some obscure mountain chalet in the middle of Idaho - no, seriously. Oh well, skiing day trips and new year's eve plans are being cemented as I write this, so I don't believe the weekend will be a complete writeoff.
In other news, I was wasting time on the internet the other day (as one does) and came across this:
They are making a movie of one of my absolute favourite books as a kid. I absolutely adored this book. I sat down and read it in one day when I was ten and then many times over after that. It was the first book that ever made me cry. But I'm sorry to say that, just judging by the trailer, the movie looks terrible. They've turned it into a Lord of the Rings movie! I'm hoping they just decided to put in the most sensational parts of the movie into the trailer to attract attention, and that the book hasn't been transmogrified into some scifi/adventure flick. If they do what they did to Dinotopia, I will be ropable, mate.
