International? you think so?

I was invited to a BBQ (what else?) this weekend by Patrick who is a Swiss bloke and his Mexican wife. I bought some Mexican 'Dos Eqios XX' beer and plenty of things to eat. Patrick, the host, has become a good friend and his wife is fantastic, they are truly International People as they have lived all over the world. Unfortunately they'll move to Calgary in 3 months. So I guess I got myself a place to stay in Canada. (It's only a 15 hour direct(!) flight).

Luis (Mexican) and his wife (Colombian) invited me to Saint-Patrick’s day with Guy (New Zealand), his wife (El Salvador) and a friend (Venezuela). So that's going to be a couple of Latino's, a kiwi and a Dutch guy celebrating an Irish festival in the China town part of an Australian city. It doesn't get any more international than that folks.

I guess that's pretty much the message here: international.
To give you another example: at work we have people from: Zimbabwe, Tasmania (we don't really count that as Australian, it's like the ”Friezen” in the Netherlands), New Zealand (the kiwis), South Africa, Swiss, UK, US (Alaska), Lithuania, Canada, China, Germany, India and the Netherlands. Now don't forget we are 22 in the bureau and only 6 are true Aussies.

You get some very exotic accents here. An Indian Taxi driver speaks quite differently than a Zimbabwean upper class bloke. The most difficult ones are the Chinese. Here are a couple of examples.

Dutch	Its four o'clock lets go for beers.
Chinese	èts fôh o'crock. Wrets gôh fôh beels, velly nâis.
Zimbabwe	Right'o chaps, its four o' lets go for a couple o' swift pints, shan’t we?
South Africa	Fuck! It’s fucking four man! I'm fucking off to pub to get fucked, real fucking fast.