Apologies to Kermit the Frog for hijacking the title of his well-known lament, but in the past few weeks there have been times that I have found it a little frustrating being Australian. (NB: Green and Gold are Australian sporting colours)
Now before other patriotic Aussies report me to the Meat Pie and Vegemite Brigade, I want to say that I love living in Australia. Where I live on the east coast it is particularly magnificent – within 10 minutes I could be at the Lake, in less than 30 minutes I could be at any one of a dozen different beaches. Within an hour I could be in the scenic Hunter Valley sampling some world class wines or relaxing on the Central Coast and in less than 2 hours I can be in Sydney. What’s not to love?!
BUT despite the fact that I live in such a fantastic country, it is hard to deny that Australia is, as so eloquently stated 
by one of our ex-Prime Ministers, at the “arse end of the world”. (Actually, I think he may have said Australia is the arse end of the world, but I choose to paraphrase).
Aside from some passing language difficulties (more on that another time), the time difference between Australia and the US and UK is a source of great frustration. I always seem to be signing off from Twitter just as others are greeting their tweeps and warming up for the day.
There have been some great discussions launched on Twitter and I always seem to miss them, although I was lucky enough to come online to catch the last half of the recent #BEAtwittyparty hosted by Rebecca at The Book Lady’s Blog.
I’ve also been stewing in my own envy with the regular updates from Book Expo America from Amy (My Friend Amy), Natasha (Maw Books) and Trish (Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’?). As supportive as my husband is, I don’t think he’s going to let me charge a ticket to New York so that I can attend a book fair. *sigh*
I’m also half a day off with the daily posts like Booking Through Thursday and so on. While everyone else gets the whole day to think about it, but I’m already in the middle of making the evening meal for my family when it is posted.
Oh well, I guess being slightly out of step time-wise with the rest of the world is the price we pay for living in the Land Down Under.
To take my mind off my time-lapse frustrations, add a comment with your favourite thing about the Sunburnt Country.
We struggle with this ‘out of sync’-ness with a lot of our family and friends in Ireland, the US and Canada. I am also extremely jealous of the 7 hour flight between Ire and the US compared to our mammoth trek any time we want to visit anyone!
However, at least we’ve the bonus of being ahead of them in time so that we don’t have to deal with being both the ‘arse end of the world’ and the last to hear what’s going on in it? Also, after having lived o/s, I have to say there is no place quite as wonderful ours!
We lived in China a couple of years ago, in a polluted city of six million people.
I love that here in Australia we have clean air and mostly clean water. I love that people mostly queue politely and fairly. I love that I can go bush and not see too many people.
But I wish we were closer to the rest of the world!