I have an extremely large left inferior parietal cortex. This is the part of the brain responsible for learning languages and is significantly larger in bilinguals than those people who don’t speak a second language. My cortex grows proportionally with the amount of wine I have had. I become downright eloquent after a few glasses, but after a whole bottle I find my cortex quivers briefly and then goes into lockdown. Sometimes my cortex is a little unreliable. Sometimes, it likes to screw me over. I first took it on an English speaking adventure 13 years ago. Armed with a Sony Walkman the size of a family encyclopedia, I stepped onto a Singapore Airlines flight from Germany to Melbourne, a blemished, orange-haired exchange student, ready for anything.

Except English.

Somewhere over Iran a trolley smelling like a combination of cabbage soup and my grandma’s 25 year old tube of hand cream was wheeled around and stopped next to my seat. “Porksick - olanja?” the pretty flight attendant enquired cheerfully.

I stared. I checked with my cortex. Do we know this one? Definitely not.

I considered my options. To say no to this exciting new Singaporean dish would just be boring.

“Yes!” I finally decided. Why not try something new? The flight attendant scoffed, then repeated, as if talking to a sick mule: “Pork - sick - or lanja?”

“Definitely! Yes!”

She sighed and shoved a white lump on my tray, next to something soggy and green. The white lump tasted like the foot of a drowning victim. With the help of the in-flight menu, I worked out that I had in fact been involuntarily served chicken, out of a choice of pork, chicken or lasagna.

The rest of the flight I soothed my displeased stomach by listening to extremely un-cool music on my walkman. I covertly tapped my feet to the sounds of Bryan Adams singing Summer of ’69, first line I heard?: “I had my first real sex dream!”

I then carefully repressed for the rest of the 30 hour flight all thoughts concerning why his fingers might be bleeding as a result.

I finally arrived at Melbourne airport, where I was greeted by an army of immigration officials. I clung to my passport as they screamed, “Stan behind the loin!”

I carefully watched what my fellow hopeful travelers were doing with their loins, but they weren’t moving at all. Since, as a German, I am not familiar with the concept of queuing, I decided to bravely push through the crowds to be first at the immigration counter. Just as I was about to reserve one with a beach towel, the officials started shouting words at me, of which I did not understand a single one. It all sounded like oyoyoyoy to me. I held my passport high, nodded and prayed for rescue.

Finally I found myself in front of my host family, clutching my backpack with shaking hands, beetroot-red and extremely nervous. I stammered my first more or less cohesive English sentences. The extremely lovely host family gave me hugs, the lowdown on the current weather conditions and asked about the health of my family. This gave me the excellent opportunity to mention, (within five minutes of meeting them) that my father was going to be retarded soon. I declared this whilst sipping on a coke and smiling happily.

They were shocked. They patted my back. They glanced confusedly at each other. The one hour drive home - let’s just say, I was the only smiling person in the car.

A couple of hours later, when I was getting a little puzzled by their ongoing outpourings of sympathy for my soon to be retarded father, a light dawned and I finally discovered the difference between being retired and retarded.

From that moment to this, my life in Australia has varied between being terrified and howling with laughter at the strange things my cortex tells me are being said by all you weird and wonderful Australians.

Next month: what’s a dog corpse got to do with it?

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