sarcasm does not traverse accents well

First to comment on the title.  On any given day I interact with 7 different accents of the English language ranging from the Canadian to the different areas of Australia. One thing I’ve really noticed other than kiwi’s have to much slang is that sarcasm doesn’t translate well. It makes sense due to all the subtle differences in tone that we utilize for sarcasm. I think we are all getting better about it, but only because we are getting to know each other better, it has nothing to do with our individual accents. When a stranger opens their mouth to speak, I now expect it to be with an Australian accent; at first I was slightly surprised each time.

            I moved out of the hostel as previously eluded to in the previous posts. Now I have stayed in very few hostels, so I can’t comment on the quality of this one as compared to others, but to me it seemed very nice.  There were a few factors that just made it not the right fit, price being a big one.  The room I moved into is my own room some 5 blocks away for twenty dollars a week cheaper than sharing a room with 3 other people (granted they were fellow interns).  I don’t have to pay for washing or Internet here and I do not need to fight for refrigerator, storage, or personal space.  Second being work related. This next week I start at 5 am every day to get the first pressing done, that means realistically I need to go to bed no later than 9; I’d like to see you try and do that in a full hostel of unemployed backpackers. 90% of the backpackers there were Europeans (germans mostly) looking for grape picking jobs because if they do 3 months worth of agricultural work they get a 2^nd year on their work visa.  I got tired of answer questions about grape picking or telling people that my winery was not hiring.  When you work in the industry that drives the entire local economy, it does not take long to start feeling like a resident. Especially in our in of work, you meet a lot of locals who all share a similar passion you and happily bring you into the community. It was strange starting to feel like a resident of the area but living with a bunch of travelers, most of which could really care less about the local wine.  The house I moved into is owned by a woman in her 40’s, no kids or husband, who works as the head microbiologist for a larger wine conglomerate know as treasury. Talk about a cool job.  She does a lot of Lab setup, quality control and proper trials, but knows close to all there is known about the microbiology of wine. Scientific discussions have and will continue to ensue. And she is awesome. Also living in the house is a girl from Modesto who graduated from ucsb in the spring with a biochem degree. She is actually the one who sort of enabled me to be able to move in, so, thanks Alyssa.  We all pretty biochem/microbio interested in relation to wine, I’ll probably start taking notes. That and did I mention that the door into my room is from the kitchen, its okay if you want to be a little jealous, its still a nice surprise for me every time.  Did I mention that they both work in labs, and labs have to keep any bottle of wine that goes off for bottling for 3 months then it can be discarded, and what better way to discard a 60 dollar bottle of wine than to drink it.