Sorry for this week's preoccupation with the anthropological details of Australian day-to-day life, but hey, stuff keeps coming. Today, for work purposes, I took a cab ride. The total came to $39.20. I gave the driver $40 -- or, in other words, about 80 cents more than most Aussies would have forked over.

"Keep the change," I said, feeling a moment of magnanimous generosity.

Tipping is just one thing, if you'll forgive the pun -- heck, don't forgive the pun; it's inexcusably bad -- that tips the scales between the US and Oz. Here, you don't tip bartenders, you don't tip bellhops, you don't tip baristas. (Though my favored barista in Sydney is a topic for another day.)

"I was in New York," a co-worker was telling me today, "and my mate there, he runs a bar. So we were OK, getting served drinks and everything. But it's crazy, mate -- a bloke can't get a drink at most places unless he puts an extra dollar on the bar. You order your first drink in New York City and you don't tip, forget it after that. You can't get a drink."

I nodded my head. He was right. And not just in New York City; those rules apply everywhere.

"So tipping must be a big thing in the States, right?" he said. "I read that in Lonely Planet, I think."

On that note, I wanted to resuscitate that wildly inconsequential See/Don't See game.

• Don't see: grocery stores that sell cantaloupes

• Do see: grocery stores that sell rockmelons

• Don't see: laywers and attorneys allowed to comment (at any point) to journalists during criminal trials

• Do see: judges who wear ridiculous wigs, ala this fellow

• Do see: weather patterns that can move from east to west

• Do see: standard paper that measures 8.25 inches by 11.69 inches, rather than the standard 8.5 by 11

• Do see: people who wear Yankees hats

• Don't see: people wearing Yankees hats who necessarily follow the Yankees, much less know of baseball's existence

• Do see: places where you "hire" a car

• Don't see: places where you "rent" a car

• Do see: "H" pronounced as "haitch," not "aich." I must admit, this makes sense.

• Don't see: urinals

• Do see: troughs

• Don't see (and this bugs me quite a bit): "centimeter" used as a verb; If its counterpart, the inch, can be so resourceful -- "The sun inched toward the horizon" -- why can't the same sun centimeter toward the horizon? I checked several dictionaries, and though they list inch as a valid verb, they do not allow the same of centimeter. Seems to me a blatant act of Metric segregation.