Cultural Pollution

Oscar Wilde said something like "England and America are two countries separated by a common language."

We've had a couple of Australians staying with us this week and we've been learning a lot about their strange species of English. As you would expect, we've had more than a few moments of cross-cultural confusion. Like when they ask me when I'm leaving for uni (short for university, which I would just call 'school') or where the toilet is (not in the bathroom, 'toilet' is the bathroom). Also, there was a remark about how Australians can't buy alcohol at grocery stores, they have to go to the bottle-o. Yup, bottle-o..

Now, confusion about where to find a 'toilet' is pretty innocuous, even kind of cute, but, according to our resident Aussies, cross cultural confusion can be dangerous when it comes to knowing how to get help in an emergency. Apparently they have a different emergency code. They don't dial 9-1-1, they dial 0-0-0 ('triple 0'). Sadly, demographic most ignorant of the 'triple 0' convention is not tourists, but Australians who watch American movies. Dialing 9-1-1 instead of 0-0-0 has been such a problem that if you call 9-1-1 in Australia now, you'll get the 0-0-0 emergency response operators. Talk about high-stakes cultural pollution..