Let’s partner up baby

Partner is a funny word. It can mean so many different things. You describe someone as your partner and what are you saying? Are they a business partner? Dance partner? Work partner? Heterosexual life partner? (God I miss Carlton Scott) Alone and free of context it is an ambiguous word. The Aussies have added another use to it just to keep you on your toes. They use it how Americans use significant other. It denotes someone in a gender, legal and living situation neutral manner who you are in a serious romantic relationship with. And in a nation where it is not uncommon for people to not get married, but instead opt for what I would call a common-law marriage, it is certainly a useful descriptor to have around.

The thing though is that it is used all the time. About the only time I have ever run into the term significant other in The States is in formal situations, like an invitation to a party, or when people are hesitant to put traditional labels on their relationships. Even for very serious marriage like relationship I more often hear people using the terms living together, cohabitating or live in boy/ girlfriend to describe the relationship. Significant other is only used when people don’t really want or need to know the nature of someone’s relationship. Partner however is used as a day to day descriptor in any number of situations.

I first ran into it when my boss was talking about his misses (another term thrown around a lot). They are not married, but have been in a very long term stable relationship, have lived together for years, and have two kids. What I would call a common-law marriage. He describes her as his partner. Other co-workers in the same situation use the exact same term. It isn't isolated to that however. On a radio interview I heard the interviewee asked what the worst thing he had ever done to a partner was. Based on the context and his answer I am sure in the US they would have said girlfriend. I also overheard a guy at a bar use it when getting his girlfriend’s purse back after leaving it there the night before. The oddest was when a co-worker was telling me a college story and he said “my ex-partner, or well I guess girlfriend to you. We weren't living together or anything.” Clearly he recognized that I wouldn't fully understand the term partner as he was using it and wanted to clarify.

Personally I kinda like it. It allows someone to describe their relationship without giving any details that may affect how people react to them. Things such as sexual orientation and cohabitation are kept private, as I think they should be. I will say it is still odd to hear and throws me for a bit of a loop since my American mind interprets it to mean a marriage like homosexual relationship. Just another word I am going to have to get used to having an alternate definition. Don’t even get me started on fanny or thong.

Orange shirts, the metric system, and my first impressions of Perth

not burnt orange but oh well

So 12 days into this thing and it is still an adventure. It'll be nice when it settles down and simply becomes my life, but for now I plan on enjoying the ride. I have spent a week in Telfer and I think I will like working there. It is a good group of people in the technical team, and there is a ton, or tonne I guess, of opportunity. One of the interesting thing about working there is that everyone wears the same high vis shirt. Even secretaries and IT guys who are never in the pit. They all wear the same thing. They look like the one to the left, although the striping pattern is a little different at Telfer.

There are obviously other differences at Telfer. Everything is in metric(shocker there), which is and isn't proving difficult for me to adjust to. Sometimes my brain understands it right off the bat, other times I have to take a really long time to think through what something means. The other engineers were surprised to hear that in physics I did problems in both unit systems and figured that would make it harder. I guess so, but honestly the only thing that changes are constants. I guess I have to keep track of twice as many constants which is harder? Who knows.

Went on a "city tour" today with the reality agent who I will be working with. Looked at some different neighborhoods and generally confused the crap out of me as to where we were in the city. It is a very clean city from what I have seen, and I should be able to get a nice place right on the river just outside of downtown for not too much. Lots of cool little neighborhoods from the look of it and tons of beaches to the west of the city. Outside of downtown, which is very small, a lot of neighborhoods have a small town feel to them. By that I mean there are little "main street" type of places that are the center of shopping and resturants in various suburbs and neighborhoods. Very cool.

I have figured out mostly how to get my American sports fix between various apps on my phone, first row sports, and the Slingbox I set up in RVA(thanks CJ!). Now that we are entering the sports dead zone that is summer(baseball sucks!) it will be a perfect time to pick up a local team to follow. Winter here(remember the seasons are reverse down here) is when the AFL and the two rugby leagues play. Perth is represented by two AFL teams, one Super Rugby team(rugby union), and are working on getting an NRL team(rugby league). I am leaning towards following rugby union since I already understand and like it, but the Western Force are terrible apparently. The sit at 2-9 with 5 games left. Not sure I need another Redskins preforming type of team in my life. Although knowing you will have an awful season is easier on my mental health then Caps or Hokies type of seasons.

Moving forward I will aim to update this weekly. Some posts will probably be quick little posts about one thing, and other might be like this rambling mess. I will work on taking more pictures to share with everyone. As promised there will be pics of kangaroos coming soon, although I still have yet to see one. Seen lots of dingoes though. If anyone has anything they want to hear about specifically please let me know. I am more then happy to take requests, although until I am settled in I probably can't give very informed opinions on a lot of things.

So far in BFE the internet tubes don't reach

So this is gonna be way shorter then intended since I am doing it from my phone. As my fb and g+ friends know the Telfer village wireless doesn't reach my room in the back of the camp, and I don't have a cat5 to plug in with. My phone is my only source of internet at the moment.

Anyway just a few thoughts on Telfer. The mine is massive. The technical team for the surface operation alone has more people then the entire pro staff at Kemmerer. It is also very diverse. While mostly Aussies, there are guys from the UK, Zambia, New Zealand, Paula New Guinea, Ghana, and Canada to name just a few. It is a good group though and my boss rules. Hopefully 12 hour days don't get too old.

So anyway life moves on down under. A longer and more complete post will follow shortly when internets are more readily available.

So nearly 36 hours after leaving my parent's place in Springfield I am in Perth. The flights weren't bad, and not having a clock to look at made time fly by honestly. I am exhausted and am going to take a nap, so I am simply going to list a few observations I have made in my 2 hours so far in country.

-The light switches are upside down. As in you hit them down to turn them on. Also they are really small compared to ours.
-Toilets have 2 flush options. Half flush and full flush. I think this is brilliant.
-At some of the bigger intersections I have noticed that the walk signal is entirely it's own phase in the traffic light cycle. This means you can jaywalk diagonally through the intersection legally.

More to come once I have napped and had time to collect myself a little bit.

So hi from down under y'all!