They keep eggs at room temperature here.

Eggs! Eggs I tell you, in cartons, out on shelves at the grocery store. There I am, marveling at the salmonella factory in front of me in Aisle 4, when a woman comes along and places a carton in her basket, to eat most likely. How is this OK? Where do we draw the line between freshness and repulsiveness? How bout this, aussies: would you like to just purchase a live chicken from your local Safeway, hold it over the stove every morning and let it ovulate into a frying pan? I'm sorry, but when I mustered the gumption to pick up a dozen and open them to check for cracks, guess what I found. Not one, but two feathers in the lining of the carton, from the mother, presumably, since roosters make deadbeat baby's daddies. It was a bit too Au Naturale for me (i've since begun eating eggs here, even keeping them in the cupboard, but it took a while given the traumatizing experience of finding molting foul in the packaging of my perishables). They do break easier, but they tend to release a small chip of shell into my mixing or cooking aparatus every time.
I included in a blog post title once the term "Freaks" but unremembered to cover that topic. However, recent experiences have enlightened me to deliver said topic unto you. One of the larger demographics of people of whom my totally objective and unprejudiced sence of judgement has noticed a large population is what we normal folk would call freaks. Indulge yourself in a game of mental pictionary and draw for me, if you will, a hoarde of gothic looking youth attempting to be (in their mind) different and freeing themselves from the shackles of the status quo. I think what bothers my totally objective and unprejudiced sense of judgement is the fact that the act of being "different" for this group manifests itself in an appearance all too conserved and similar throughout its (the group's) ranks. If you want to be different, hey, great, be different. Be different from me, be different from S dot Jackson, be different from Calvin Coolidge even. But you might also want to try being different from the hundreds of other kids down by the train station also sticking it to the Man of Normalcy. Different is not wearing the same tight black jeans with torn black fishnet arm sleeves and black nail polish with a tie on backwards and dyed black hair, mascara, and facial piercings (though different might be taking those same facial piercings and connecting them via PVC strands to your genitals while doing jumping jacks to keep a yo-yo oscillating on your newly constructed conduit - you get the idea, step outside the box). Anyway, Melbourne plays host to numerous sub categories: gothic, emo, punk - all with one thing in common: they all think their claim to fame is being unique, when in reality, they all dress the same, hang out in the same places (the train station), and listen to the same music at said places. The reason this affected me was because I was waiting for a friend at said station, engulfed in a fog of gothic juveniles, when a rather large girl wearing the aforementioned uniform and black(ish) makeup applied with a cement mixer (as well as an also rather large lower back tattoo that may or may not have been 16th century venetian font or hieroglyphics, or a battleship going down in flames, I couldn't tell) sat down. Coming up to her was what (i think) used to be a blond girl (she was still a girl, i think, just w/ unwashed black dyed hair - think Christina Aguillera during her 'dirty' phase but with more unfounded childhood angst). I was forced to listen to the following exchange:
2: Hey, could I get a light.
1: Sure, no worries, mate.
2: Wow you're really pretty (interjection: umm, paging Anne Sullivan, your new student is here)
1: Thanks - hey, do you think I could come live with you for a little bit, my mom is throwing me out (dead serious)
2: Ya, that would definitely be ok.

What the hell?
Now I don't want to change gears too drastically here (or turn this into a sports blog) but I will: first, yesterday's NBA all star game was the worst in recent memory. No excitement, few cool dunks, zero no look passes, two diddy and three arnold sightings. Shaq even bricked two dunks. The highlight of all this was when it showed the injured all stars sitting in their dress code clothes on the bench, at one point focusing on the strangest of bedfellows: Yao and Allen Iverson sitting next to each other expressionless. They weren't conversing, if you were wondering. Do you think these two spoke to each other the entire game? What would AI's response to 'shi shi' be? Think they compared musical tastes, or sexual exploits? Perhaps Iverson expounded on his lyrical forray as his rap alter ego, Jewels: "I got killas where you eat, shit, sleep and beat your meat - die reachin for heat, leave you leakin in the street." He would at least have had the decency and cultural awareness to wish Yao a happy new year of the pig, right?

Alright, I've got a major gripe, and it's probably my biggest complaint about being in such an international setting, not to mention in a lab where everyone is from a different country: I constantly have to defend being American and listen to people badmouth our leadership. The first thought coming to mind would be to say "hey, why pick on me, I didn't ask to be born American," but that would be utterly ignorant. There's not one country I would rather have been born into, and anyone from the US that tells you otherwise is lying. Admittedly, I have it pretty good as a member of the white, middle/upper middle class. Would I be extremely comfortable if I were richer in the States? Yes. Would I be a lot more unhappy if I were in a lower class "projects" area of the States? Absolutely. Yes there are problems in our contry, and yes being impoverished would suck and is terrible, BUT, would you rather be impoverished in another country? Senegal? Somewhere in central america? Afghanistan maybe? I'm pretty sure the answer is no. And so it may happen time to time that we have a leader thought of not-so-highly by the people. You know what you can do if you don't like the current politicians? Vote for someone else, or complain. There are plenty of countries out there where you can't do either. Shit, you can go on live TV, on stations whose principle aired programs are for this type of thing even, and say "I don't like the job President X is doing with foreign policy," or "President X is a problematic leader, because he'd rather be carousing with women," or "I wouldn't even want President X coaching my son's baseball team cause he's got polio!"
The major thing people talk about here politically is US politics. And they argue with me about it, of course, because I'm the only American. It's as if no other country has any shortcomings, only the US. People here complain all the time about the prime minister, but are more vocal in denouncing our leader and his foreign policy (in fact the big complaint about the PM here is his willingness to support our president). They say (about President Bush) that "he's the most powerful man in the world, why should he be getting involved with other countries problems." Or "he's the most powerful man in the world, why keep getting going abroad for US self interest?" Everything I hear concerns the US interfering or concerning itself with "business that's not yours, or for your own benefit." Ever think about why the title of US President is described as the most powerful position in the world? It's sure not because we didn't concern ourselves with other countries' issues, or didn't pursue our own benefits globally throughout history. Since it's "inception" starting with the Dec. of Ind., the US has been proactive in foreign policy, with both advancements and setbacks/complaints. There's a reason people in other countries even discuss our politicians (you don't see people at home over coffee elaborating the ramifications of Norway's most recent parliamentary vote). Acting in self interest gets you somewhere, and in our case, the results (over the past 200 years) speak for themselves.
I don't really have a destination for where I'm going with all of this, just that I'm certainly not ashamed to be from a place widely regarded as the most influential, but I'm tired of having to defend myself about it. PS: This of course does not mean that I agree wholeheartedly with every political decision made under the current administration (I certainly don't admonish them all either). Obviously the US has it's share of problems, just like every other country, I just wish people wouldn't look w/ so much condescension at the US in political discussion, as if their country is flaw-free.