Austraaylian Oi!

There’s something about the Australian twang, you’d agree. It’s got this fascinatingly annoying drawl and that unnecessary addition of vowels. Home becomes ‘hoime’. Loan becomes ‘loain’. And when you apply for one, you roll it like a cow or else you get none! Get that maite? On top of this unique twang, there’s peculiarity in ‘pronunciation’ of simple words too. One of my university friends loved to eat ‘brocco-lie’. Annoying. And then the Strategic Management lecturer at Uni strategically and comfortably ‘nestled’ a proper noun like ‘Nestlé’ in an array of other such ludicrously pronounced words! Not done! But as they say – “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. So at the ripe age of 24, I was unlearning to relearn some old new words, my thick accent notwithstanding. One year down (under) and I was comfortably equipped with an ear (if not the tongue) for Austraaylian. Or so I thought. I was showing off what I knew of the cities while still discovering more of the breathtakingly beautiful country and still learning the brazenly bizarre Australian English! The fine line between the twang and the pronunciation was increasingly blurring. From chicken wings at Hog’s Breath Café to unlimited desi-thaalis at Maya Da Dhaba, from juicy burgers at Hungry Jacks to ultimate long island iced teas at Hard Rock café, we were soaking it all in! Having OD’ed on ‘outside’ food, my sister had this massive craving one night for the über gross, boarding school staple – ‘Maggi’ magic masala! Now this gross thing isn’t exactly ‘home food’ – and she’s not even a boarding school product! Anyway, it’s ‘gross’ because I got this major food poisoning from these maggoty noodles when I was in standard 3 or 4. One recess, when I opened my lunch box I saw the noodles stuck to each other looking like those horrible light brown slimy earthworms. And when I tried to use my fork to have these noodles, they cut like an old smelly nasty piece of moldy blob! I know they’re ‘instant’ and supposed to be consumed ‘instantly’…but this?? I have never touched Maggi noodles since then! Sorry, but instant gratification is not for me. In college, I’d sleep hungry (by choice), while my mates were burning midnight oil devouring this apology of a noodle preparation! At one point, these also came in some silly juvenile ‘alphabet’ soup variation!!! We were in college dudes! Seriously? Oh, but I digress. So on spotting one open-late ‘part-grocery part-smoko’ store at Surfers Paradise (that typically caters to the young & the restless & the horny) my sister promptly went in to get her fix of Maggi noodles while the rest of us waited outside. She was spending more time buying these noodles than they’d actually take to cook! With my patience running amok, I stormed into the store only to see my sister – partly amused, partly traumatized. Because maite, each toime moi sista asked the stubby-blonde-Sheila-from-boganville behoind the counter for ‘Maggi’, all she got was ‘Noi! Whaddya afta?’ And some more ‘Noi!’ And some more ‘Whaddya afta?’ Ah maite, moi sista was losing her shit awright coz this Sheila was a dill behind the till maite. Moi sista could see ‘Maggi’ and when she pointed what she wanted to the blondie, the blondie went dipstick maite – totes drongo I tell ya! As if she’d been drinking with the flies! Oh maite, she SUDDENLY started screamin’!!! She’d spit the dummy oi…Like a fruit loop she kept screamin’ ‘MAAJI! MAAJI! MAAJI!’ Moi sista and I ran like roos maite thinkin’ what’d she want from our ‘MOM’ afta all oi?