Sunday 27 September 2003

Like the start of a bad joke

Saturday (yesterday) was the big day of the year for Australian sports fans (apart from the Melbourne Cup in November, when every Australian becomes a horse-racing expert) being the Aussie Rules Grand Final.  Pubs all over every capital city and in tiny one-horse towns are crowded with people watching the game live on television, shouting encouragement to their team or booing and yelling abuse at the other team.  The same scenario occurs in sitting rooms all over the country, where huge groups of friends gather to shout, boo and get equally shickered.  I'm so not a football fan, nor is Tuxedo (although what Europeans call football is what we call soccer) so the event wasn't high on our list of priorities. I didn't even know which teams had made it to the Grand Final - WA's two teams having bombed out of the competition some weeks earlier - let alone the point scoring system.  Turns out I was going to learn a lot more. 

Back on Monday, while Fifi was deforesting Tuxedo's person, we'd been chatting and found we had so much in common with her and her boyfriend Magnum; they'd been through the LDR (long distance relationship) thing, had grappled with paperwork for visas, had lived with Fifi's parents until Magnum's visa came through and they could get jobs and "escape".  It was amazing - Fifi and I decided we actually had the same parents, the similarities in behaviour (and volume) was so so similar.  Plus, Magnum is a professional photographer (hence the nick; not a private investigator) and computer geek so it was pretty likely he and Tuxedo would get along.  Fifi and I get along really well - she's bubbly and warm and open, a very down to earth and appealing person. 

After all that, we just had to get together for a night out.  Friday night, movie and dinner.  Yay.  Anyway ... come Thursday, Fifi called me and said that Magnum was working late on Friday night, so that was out, but how about going to the (pub's name) to watch the Grand Final and drink?  Well not surprisingly I wasn't too keen, but we decided to go anyway, figuring that it might be fun to spectate the spectators (translation: mock) and there'd be plenty of opportunity to chat.  And anyway, drink. 

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Somewhat to my surprise, we had a really good time.  Most of the folks on our table (about ten altogether - friends of Fifi's) weren't rabid footy fans either, so most of the afternoon was spent chatting, drinking and mocking the diehard fans around us.  It was Collingwood vs. Brisbane Lions, I discovered (Brisbane won, third year running); I even learnt how the goal/point scoring system worked!  After several hours we moved onto another pub, but most people were fading and peeling off.  The four of us went for noodles at Han's Cafe, then headed home.  A good day.

One of the best bits of the day sounds like the start of a bad joke.  Tuxedo is Irish, Magnum is Scottish (as predicted, the two of them got on really well and spent much of the afternoon deep in geektalk and making Fifi and I laugh - similar senses of humour and use of language), and one of Magnum's friends was English.  Thus:  An Englishman, Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar ...

There must have been a punchline in there somewhere.

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