Sunday 20 December 2015

An Australian christmas

Ever since we moved, it has been hard to get in the Christmas spirit. Because of the difference of seasons and weather from the Northern hemisphere, Australians celebrate Christmas in a much different way from Americans.

As an example, these are the Australian lyrics for 'Jingle Bells'. There are notes below to explain some of the different lines. The lyrics also include some Australian words and terms.

Dashing through the bush
In a rusty Holden Ute
Kicking up the dust
Esky in the boot
Kelpie by my side
Singing Christmas songs
It's Summer time and I am in
My singlet, shorts and thongs

(chorus:)

Oh! Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells
Jingle all the way
Christmas in Australia
On a scorching summer's day
Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells
Christmas time is beaut
Oh what fun it is to ride
In a rusty Holden Ute.


Engine's getting hot
We dodge the kangaroos
The swaggie climbs aboard
He is welcome too
All the family's there
Sitting by the pool
Christmas day, the Aussie way
By the barbecue!


(chorus)

Come the afternoon
Grandpa has a doze
The kids and uncle Bruce
Are swimming in their clothes
The time comes round to go
We take the family snap
Pack the car and all shoot through
Before the washing up


(chorus) 
Rusty Holden ute


Verse 1
Line 1: Bush is Australian for forest or another type of wilderness.
Line 2: Holden is a popular Australian car company. A Ute is a Two Wheel Drive car with a cargo tray.
Line 4: An esky is a portable cooler. A boot is the trunk of a car.
Line 5: A Kelpie is a type of medium-sized dog bred in Australia for herding sheep.
Line 7: In Australia there are two seasons: Summer(More like the Wet season in tropical regions) is from October to March. Winter(the Dry season) is from April to September.

Chorus
Line 4: The Australian summer is literally scorching. In July, the ultraviolet index reaches 13 in Brisbane, but only 10 in eastern American cities like New York and Washington D.C. This is due to the thin ozone layer around the south pole.

Verse 2
Line 3: Swaggie is short for swagman.
Line 6: Many Australian residents have pools, because of the intense summer heat.
Line 7: Australians tend not to use words that are more than two syllables long or too difficult to pronounce. This leads to shortening words like university(uni), Australian(Aussie) and breakfast(brekkie).
Line 8: The 'Aussie' way to celebrate Christmas is to cook meat(sometimes kangaroo meat) on a barbecue.

Friday 18 December 2015

A HUNDRED POSTS!!!

A hundred posts! This is a major achievement for all writers in Lyra's Letters.

To celebrate, we've made a list of the top 10%, or ten best, posts from the last twenty-one months, and reviewed them. We've also made links to those posts below, so you can read them!

Before we begin, let's add some extra information:

Of the 100 posts, no less than 54 were informational. Personal comes second at 15 posts. We also posted 7 notices for various reasons. The remaining 33 posts were poems, links, knowledgeable/personal, and other.

So, here are the top ten:

10. "Poem"
By Arwin G

Being the youngest author of the blog, Arwin deserved to have one of his posts on the list! The article, a poem as the name suggests, was one of the first ever published on Lyra's Letters. Note: Due to some technical difficulties, there isn't a "T" at the beginning of each line.
http://lyrasletters.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/poem.html

9. The North East
By Daniel G

The North East was a post about the author's travels in the rugged sandstone country of Queensland's central plains. It covers Carnarvon Gorge; the Bunya Mountains;  Cania Gorge; the Blackdown Tablelands. It is accurate and looked better than many "personal" posts. So it earned a place in the list.
http://lyrasletters.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/the-north-east.html

8. Explorations of the Solar System
By Wytse G

Explorations of the Solar System is primarily about planets, and highlights the new pictures of Pluto as well as covering a lot of history. It is informational only. It is also one of the best posts published this year.
http://lyrasletters.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/explorations-of-solar-system.html

7. Ascent of the South Side of Mount Barney
By Daniel G

This is perhaps the best post that is completely about personal experiences, and the only one about hiking and not vacations. It is the experience itself, and not the writing, which makes this post good. It was written about two kids and their father tackling the 1354m summit of Mount Barney. Interested? Click on the link below. . . .
http://lyrasletters.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/ascent-of-south-side-of-mount-barney.html

6. Medical uses of gold in the past
By Wytse G

This post was originally written to enter a contest in The Helix magazine. It was a winning article. It won the contest mainly because of the vocabulary used, and that it was short instead of taking up pages. For these reasons it was included in our list.
http://lyrasletters.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/medical-uses-of-gold-in-past.html

5. How a wooden stick started World War II
By Daniel G

So, how did it? How could a minor invention in the Middle East begin a world war countless generations later? That's what this article explains, by working back from 1939.
  http://lyrasletters.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/how-wooden-stick-started-world-war-ii.html

4. Childhoods of my grandparents
By Wytse G

This is undoubtedly one of the longest posts, but instead of dragging on a single topic it is filled with information. It is about the 1940's, when my grandparents were, at the most, my age. It is about a world seldom imagined or thought about except as being a time when TV was new.
 http://lyrasletters.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/the-childhoods-of-my-grandparents.html

3. The stars of the Earth
By Daniel G

This post is the one best purely informational post on the entire blog. It incorporates some history, but focuses mainly on whatever people mine. The best thing about this post is how well it incorporates many different sources of information in a compact article.
http://lyrasletters.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/the-stars-of-earth.html

2. My vacation in the Australian Outback
By Wytse G

This post focuses on a vacation all of us took, which traveled across the desert and under the shadow of Uluru. It was an exceptional piece of writing about an exceptional vacation. The post was the first of three about the vacation, so we made three links. Being a combined experience/informational post adds a twist.
http://lyrasletters.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/my-vacation-in-australian-outback.html
http://lyrasletters.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/my-vacation-in-australian-outback-2.html
http://lyrasletters.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/my-vacation-in-australian-outback-alice.html

1. How to get rid of an Australian land leech
By Daniel G

This post was not particularly well written, nor about a particularly interesting subject. It was one of the first posts ever written. The special thing about the post is how classic it is. When it first came out, it was quite popular and quickly received a large number of views and comments. In other words, it was an instant hit.
http://lyrasletters.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/how-to-get-rid-of-australian-land-leech.html

Sunday 13 December 2015

Advice corner

Arwin's advice corner!

I will answer all questions every week on sunday.

Ask questions in the 'comments' section below.

An Illusion

Here is a link to the video "The Monkey Business Illusion", one of the weirdest optical illusions I have ever seen. I encourage you to write in comments how much you saw!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY

Thursday 3 December 2015

The present we got on st. nicholas' day

The present we got on St. Nicholas' day,
We thought it was good so we bothered,
To run down the stairs but unto our dismay,
All that we found was our father.