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We in Washington, USA, hate Western Australia... (self.perth)

tpk5 が 投稿

...in a good natured way of course. I swear fully 25% of all web forms that require us to enter WA (our state abbreviation) recognize that as "Western Australia". You would think it would be obvious that if the country is chosen as USA that my address would not actually be in Western Australia.

Do you ever have the reverse problem and end up cursing the web site for trying to route your delivery to "Perth, Washington"? As a side note, I don't think there is a Perth, Washington but if you google it, it seems almost everyone is confused about that fact.

Anyway, you're bigger, but we're more populous. I also think we're older as Washington than you are as Western Australia (Wikipedia says you used to be the Swan River Colony, which, while an awesome name, is not WA). So, on the balance, I believe we should keep our abbreviation and you should adopt a new one!

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[–]metaospelling activist from 6149 30 ポイント31 ポイント  (5子コメント)

I think the answer is obvious. Our WA is an acronym. Yours is an abbreviation where for some reason you've capitalised the second letter. Since you're just making up rules at this point you might as well change to WS, which is also useful as an acronym because of course you say Washington State a lot anyway to distinguish from DC.

[–]OptimalCynic 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (4子コメント)

Or follow Michigan's lead and use WN.

[–]Devar0Highgate 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Arbitrary land! No wonder they still use imperial measurements over there.

[–]tpk5[S] 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!

[–]metaospelling activist from 6149 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Isn't Michigan just MI?

[–]tpk5[S] 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Wait what?

[–]Raffton 39 ポイント40 ポイント  (4子コメント)

I've never had a problem, you pick Australia first and life is all good from there.

The one that does get me though, is seeing all these photos on reddit from 'WA' and getting a bit sad when I realise the awesome scenery is about as far away from us as you can get.

[–]FoetusBurger 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Mate, have you seen the awesome scenery we've got down here? Not to mention your much better the weather is year round

[–]VMaxF1 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

In case anyone's wondering (this isn't meant to be a "well actually...", just for interest's sake), as far away from us as you can get is, depending on where in Perth you are, roughly 50km off the coast of Bermuda in the North Atlantic: https://www.antipodesmap.com/

[–]CyanideRemark 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I love that an old fashioned loose term for Australia & NZ from the old world (Well Ol' Blighty at least) was "The Antipodes" from this very word.

[–]whisky-rum-gin 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I have seen the occasional web form - when tabbing thru the fields you get the state dropdown list before the country dropdown which sometimes defaults to USA - have cursed Washington a few times, yes

[–]Reads_the_articles 36 ポイント37 ポイント  (11子コメント)

I'd say we experience the reverse problem the other 75% of the time!

But honestly, in my experience, most sites that allow for country selection have been pretty good at filtering states by country. I can only recall a couple of times where it has been an issue.

As for changing? Good luck getting us to do that! There's not much unifying this vast and varied section of the country besides being west of everyone else, and adopting names already in use is kind of what we do. We have a town called Denmark for crying out loud! Not to mention our state capital Perth taken, I assume, from the Scottish.

[–]tpk5[S] 13 ポイント14 ポイント  (10子コメント)

Perth is fine, I see no problem with pilfering from the British. "Denmark" is a bit lazy however. Of course, we have a town in Washington named "George" (after the 1st US President) which is underachieving in its own way.

Come to think of it, I don't even know how I'd get to Perth if I wanted to. Probably LA or Vancouver to Sydney and from there to Perth? Maybe Seattle to Hong Kong and then Perth?

EDIT: Seattle to Dubai to Perth, 1 stop

[–]aussiekingaHigh Wycombe 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (1子コメント)

So people live in George, Washington? That is awful.

[–]tpk5[S] 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Right? I feel like a city name should not be cute or comedic.

[–]cheerupyoullthinkof1 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (1子コメント)

I don't even know how I'd get to Perth

Swim

[–]Muzorra 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

As most delivery services tend to note, if you're trying to get to Perth within a reasonable timeframe and costs you basically avoid the east coast like the plague. Crossing from within Aus is just a giant question mark. Better to go around.

If you do come, and you haven't spent time in San Diego or somewhere like that, for a gradual acclimatisation you probably should arrive in Albany. But, being a small town, the only way to do that is probably a tramp steamer from Melbourne filled with shady characters with mysterious pasts or something. Don't know if they run all that often.

[–]Devar0Highgate 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Come visit. See which truly is the superior WA.

[–]VMaxF1 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Seattle to Dubai to Perth, 1 stop

If you're willing to cheat a bit and start by driving to Vancouver, YVR-SYD-PER is definitely the shortest way. From Seattle, as /u/borgeron points out, going via Hong Kong is quite a bit shorter than via Dubai. I thought there might be other one-stop options via Bangkok, Auckland (no flights from Seattle) or Beijing (no flights from Perth), but there aren't. Going Seattle-LA-Sydney-Perth is probably similar to Dubai, even with the extra stop, due to the 2500 mile extra distance via Dubai.

[–]borgeron 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

It's a bit quicker to do it via the Pacific ocean. I fly Perth to Toronto once every couple of years and I usually do PER > HK > YYZ

[–]xyrgh 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Lazy? The USA has several of Peru, China, Cuba, Germany, Poland and Mexico...

[–]OneMoreMan 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I flew from Perth to Vancouver earlier this year, via Hong Kong. Spent a week in Seattle too, so it's really not too bad doing it that way.

[–]CaptainBallz6025 82 ポイント83 ポイント  (5子コメント)

The only people that get confused online are Americans who insist that the world revolves around them.

[–]CyanideRemark 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I coined a term for this world view; 'seppo-centric'.

[–]Karemow 20 ポイント21 ポイント  (16子コメント)

I think we can all agree that only one of us can retain the abbreviation. Your mates, our mates, school oval on Saturday to settle this?

[–]tpk5[S] 13 ポイント14 ポイント  (15子コメント)

This coming weekend is right before our independence day, so many of us have unusually large amounts of cheap explosives on hand. So if you're sure about this...

[–]Karemow 10 ポイント11 ポイント  (6子コメント)

Well I'm a lot less sure now, but I'd be a right Marvin to back out at this stage.

[–]gc1989 9 ポイント10 ポイント  (5子コメント)

Nah back yourself in man, we can just hit up Coles carpark and grab a few trolly poles.

[–]Karemow 10 ポイント11 ポイント  (4子コメント)

I'll grab the beers and snags for the after-fight piss-up. Edit: And a gooner of course.

[–]tpk5[S] 10 ポイント11 ポイント  (3子コメント)

I am following this conversation about as well as I follow Spanish.

[–]gc1989 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Haha, Yea nah she'll be right cob.

[–]tmaammafh 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (1子コメント)

We're just talking about our national sport, Australian Rules Football. We get smashed and watch a bunch of blokes in short shorts hip and shoulder another bunch of poofters from another club. Cunts are fucked hey.

[–]OptimalCynic 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (0子コメント)

And sleeveless shirts. Don't forget the bulging biceps on display.

[–]DetroLloyd 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (6子コメント)

We'll just bring our roo and emu crew with us. All good

[–]aussiekingaHigh Wycombe 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (2子コメント)

The last time Emus went to war they did pretty well.

[–]WikiTextBot 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Emu War

The Emu War, also known as the Great Emu War, was a nuisance wildlife management military operation undertaken in Australia over the latter part of 1932 to address public concern over the number of emus said to be running amok in the Campion district of Western Australia. The unsuccessful attempts to curb the population of emus, a large flightless bird indigenous to Australia, employed soldiers armed with Lewis guns—leading the media to adopt the name "Emu War" when referring to the incident.

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[–]tpk5[S] 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I am learning lots of crazy shit in here.

[–]metaospelling activist from 6149 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

ALL the animals!

[–]chosenamewhendrunk 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Has anyone managed to train a dropbear yet?

[–]Karemow 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Boy, good luck with that. Cousin tried feeding a (seemingly harmless) baby and lost a finger.

[–]cheerupyoullthinkof1 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Try taking those on a plane mate, dare yah.

[–]hungry4pie 14 ポイント15 ポイント  (1子コメント)

I remember about 15 years ago playing an online game, and somoene in the chat asked where I was from, I said 'WA' and he was like "Oh hey, I'm in the state above you" or something. I was somewhat confused since, well, check out the map of Australian states.

That's when I learned Washing uses the WA abbreviation.

[–]Aodaliyan 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Similar story when I mentioned I was from Western Australia. Other people started introducing themselves as from Eastern US or whatever.

[–]SomeoneAUS 13 ポイント14 ポイント  (1子コメント)

I feel like you should be hating on people that cant design a decent web form.

[–]tpk5[S] 7 ポイント8 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yes, that would be more logical.

[–]mrmratt 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (3子コメント)

Reminds me of the issue wa.general (NNTP) used to have. Newsgroup for Western Australia, kept getting Washingtonians posting in it.

[–]tpk5[S] 12 ポイント13 ポイント  (2子コメント)

1994 called (on a land line), they want their obsolete communications mediums back (at a blazing 9600 bps).

[–]gc1989 17 ポイント18 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Obsolete. Mate. You clearly have never been to WA.

[–]UnamusedAustralian 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (0子コメント)

If you really want to get some sandgropers riled up, tell us what speed you connect to the internet at... We will do some comparisons

[–]paradisenot 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Kinda annoying when looking up for doctor reviews from WA and get directed to Washington doctors instead of Western Australia. But other than that google did quite a good job in prioritising WA for Australian residents.

[–]crosstherubicon 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

You should try it from here. Everytime you fill in an address it cant cope with the fact that you don't have a zip code so live off the edge of the map, "here be dragons"

[–]RedLeader7 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Is that anything like when you're asked to select your country from a magical alphabetical list where USA comes before Afghanistan ?

[–]tpk5[S] 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Shit, that list is pretty great. All the people ordering goods from Amazon with a billing address in Luanda or Baku must be pissed though. Oh, you guys too.

Seriously though, a dev with an ounce of brains would just detect the country of the ip and get it right 95% of the time.

[–]Lunulae 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (3子コメント)

I'm from Perth, Australia and moved to Pennsylvania, USA a couple years ago. Made the expensive and unfortunate mistake of failing to write the full Western Australia, Australia on a package I sent home.

I just wrote WA, AUS because the whole thing didn't fit on the form at USPS. It went to Washington state and got returned to sender. I had to pay for it twice!

I write the full address in big ass letters in sharpie on the boxes now, just in case!

[–]Muslim_Wookie 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (2子コメント)

You've done what I would love to do, how'd you do it? Work? Marriage? Green card lottery?

[–]Sunsandshit -1 ポイント0 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Just out of curiosity, why would you want to move to the US? I've been there a couple of times and didn't see anything that made me want to move/stay there for a long period of time.

[–]chosenamewhendrunk 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

You know they still have Mondays over there.

[–]Maq_Ten 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (10子コメント)

As an American expat in Western Australia, I'm just not yet able to trust early month dates.

In the US, 3/6/2017 is March 6th.

In AUS, 3/6/2017 is June 3rd.

I don't have to translate after the 13th, obviously. But after 8 years, I'm still working on it. I pay more attention to domains or wait for the error message on online. I have to be more diligent when filling out forms.

[–]metaospelling activist from 6149 10 ポイント11 ポイント  (5子コメント)

Just remember that in Australia we do it the way that actually makes sense. Ascending order of magnitude. None of this chopping and changing nonsense.

[–]xheist 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

"D/M/Y" is even alphabetical

[–]Mad-For-It 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Guaranteed shit fight when you ask about this nonsense on r/askreddit done it several years ago

[–]metaospelling activist from 6149 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Americans will argue it's cus you say "June 2nd", but we actually mostly say "2nd of June". Probably because of the way we respectively structure our dates.

[–]TOKEN_MARTIAN 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

But numbers themselves are big-endian so Asian-style yyyymmdd is clearly the most consistent option.

[–]metaospelling activist from 6149 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I actually agree! I'm always naming folders and files and the like like that, so they sort properly. I suspect YYYYMMDD will win out one day.

[–]OptimalCynic 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (1子コメント)

If you have trouble, just remember your independence day - the fourth of July. That gets the order right.

[–]metaospelling activist from 6149 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Or just remember that 4/20 and 3/14 are wrong.

[–]justo316 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

As a West Australian, I still can't tell. You never know if someone has their computer/phone/device setup for US or Aus localisation.

[–]postingstuffSouth of The River 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Google fucks me up with this all the time. Especially with government searches.

[–]rysch 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Do you ever have the reverse problem

I remember one time googling for something and wanted more local results, so I added the words Western Australia. Suddenly the results were full of Washington businesses - with the word Washington bolded to show them as matching part of my entered search terms (which made me momentarily doubt my sanity)

My best guess, Google had taken my 'Western Australia', silently internally matched it with the acronym 'WA', and internally re-expanded that to include 'Washington'. They've probably fixed it now, this was years ago.

[–]skankhunt_43 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I used to live in the USA and I hated Washington. I was flying home to Perth for vacation and some one at head office said "nah we only fly back home which is Washington not Australia. "

Is there even a Perth in Washington state?

[–]letsburn00 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

My mother works at the post office and apparently constantly gets complaints about missing postcards. She reminds them that WA has many meanings and they usually shut up if they haven't written Australia.

[–]blagojevich06 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I got asked if I was from Washington a lot in the US, when I had to fill out forms at motel check ins.

[–]showmanicHighgate 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Oh it's on

[–]Agent641 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Fight you for it!