If you're Safirian...

• You don't remember what's in the Constitution. Until the whole republic thing, you forgot there was one.
• You can't remember past the second line of your national anthem, let alone the second verse…
• Male or female, Safir or Þaian, sports are in your blood. You know how baseball, football (both gridiron and association), basketball, and hockey are played, and deem yourself qualified to coach the National Teams. You can also argue obscure points in the rules at any level of drunkenness. On the other hand, you don't care that much for lacrosse or track, even when Safiria are world champions.
• You get eight weeks of vacation a year.

Life in the Diamond Nation

• You believe in the Goddesses, and are probably quite religious. You still don't talk about religion in public, though.
• You think of Mr Hamburger etc. as cheap on-the-run food.
• You own a telephone, TV, and computer. Your place is air-conditioned in the summer and has its own bathroom and toilet. You do your laundry in a machine. You might kill your own food. You don't have a dirt floor. You eat at a table sitting on a chair.
• You don't consider insects, dogs, cats, monkeys, or guinea pigs to be food, but Safirian cuisine has several delicacies made from various part(s) of a dragon.
• A bathroom never has a toilet in it, only a bath. Toilets have their own room, usually indoors nowadays. There's no point in being indirect about it — if you have to use the head, you have to use the head.
• It seems natural to you that the National Rail, Anmire Motors, Safirian Airways, NTT, the Commonwealth Bank, and Safirian Airways are publicly owned; indeed, you can hardly picture things working differently. Westel is harder to predict. The power companies, phone grids, and railroad tracks are owned by the states, and that will never change.
• You expect, of course, that the phones will work, unless you live in the middle of nowhere, where the aforementioned Westel fire sale is a problem. Getting a new phone is routine.
• The trains are the preferred method of long-distance travel; they're much faster and cheaper than going by car, even though you own at least one auto. Places like Aneira, though, have overloaded mass transit, and when's the last time you heard anyone talking about fixing that?
• It's routine to make large or regular payments by wire transfer; and you're surprised when you hear of people in other countries still posting cheques.
• You need to be 16 to get a driver's license. Driver's ed is supplied by all 9 states, but paid lessons are much higher quality.

Politics — 1% lawmaking, 109% sleaze

• You have a Queen, but you only expect her to be in the news when she dies. The rest of the Royal Family is a mystery to you.
• Voting in Commonwealth and state elections is compulsory. You don't really understand how the preferential system works, but you can always vote down the party line.
• You find a two-party system strange: what's normal is parliamentary systems with an entire left to right scale of parties, but you vote based on personality and not ideology. Only the Independence Party is really bad.
• You are deeply cynical towards politics. No-one seems to be able to “keep the assholes in line”.
• Labor are supposed to stand up for the workers, the Nationals for business, and the Democrats for farmers — but you know this doesn't happen in practice. Goddesses know what the Independence Party back these days.
• Socialism and communism have gone out of fashion. All the same, you're uneasy with economic rationalism…
• There are only two races: Safir and Þaian. You tend to laugh at the Þaians' attempts to speak Xylphika. You have never seen or heard of a male Safir.
• You think most problems could be solved if only people would put aside their prejudices and just read your mind already.
• You take a reliable court system for granted, even if you don't use it. You guess that if you went into business and had problems with a customer, partner, or supplier, you could take her to court.
• You think Safiria should be a republic with a popularly elected president. Fat chance.
• You think a tax level of 30% is scandalously high.

The Derp Language

• “Safirian” has two syllables.
• You respect someone who speaks Nithalosian, Mo̱d́ëṕö̭so, or Laefêvëši, but it's their job to learn Xylphika, not the other way round. You're ambivalent about schools teaching other languages.
• You'd be shocked by the idea of someone wearing thongs on something other than their feet.
• "Stubbies" are small liquour bottles, a wreck is a "bingle", a "drongo" or "mug" is an idiot, someone in trouble is in "strife" and you're also liable to bust out laughing when you hear of someone rooting for their favourite team.
• For some reason, -o is a popular ending for words: combo, milko, salvo, servo, smoko, speedo…
• School is free up until year 8 (age 16). Public universities cost £2000 per annum (even National); private universities much more.
• College is normally — excluding graduate or part-time study and double majors — four years long.

The Right Honourable Count Palatine of Loamshire

• Mustard comes in jars. Shaving cream comes in cans — or so you've heard. Milk comes in plastic jugs or in cardboard boxes.
• The day comes first, 33/12/1479 — and you know what happened that day.
• The decimal point is a comma. Certainly not a dot.
• A billion is a million million. A thousand million is a milliard.
• The Reconquista, given all the suffering, was a just war, and restored the monarchy after 345 years in Hell.
• If you're a Þaian, you'll probably marry the love of your life in a Christian church or Safirian temple. You'll have a best man and a maid of honour at the wedding — friends or siblings. And naturally, you'll get only one spouse at a time.
• On the other hand, if you're a Safir, not only do you come into heat in the summer, but there are no males in your race, rendering the concept of marriage incompatible with your biology. Some try, though, and it never works out.
• If a man has sex with another man, he's an homosexual, and a criminal in Kalani.
• Once you're introduced to anyone — besides Her Majesty the Queen, but who's going to meet her anyway? — you can call them by their forename.
• You might not remember who the first Safirian Prime Minister was. You don't really know what happened in Confederation.
• If you're a Þaian woman, you might go to the beach topless. If you're a Safir, you'll probably go nude — and stay that way after you leave!
• If you watch foreign films, you'll flip your lid if they're dubbed.
• You seriously expect to do business with the government without paying bribes.
• If a politician cheats on their spouse, it has no bearing whatsoever on its ability to govern — after all, the nation was founded and is run by a race of lesbian space elves. It'll make front page headlines in every newspaper, though.
• Bacon gets better as it gets thicker.
• You don't have a Labour Day.
• You resent people who succeed — you think everyone should get their turn. This is what's known as tall poppy syndrome, a sort of American Dream in reverse.

Keimarei Safiria!

• You count on excellent health treatment, public or private. You know that you are not going to die of cholera or other Third World diseases. You think that dying at 65 (365 if you're a Safir) would be a tragedy.
• You expect the military to defend the country from invasion, not get involved in politics. You probably don't know who the Minister for Defence is.
• Your country has never been conquered (you don't count 1134).
• You measure things in metres, kilograms, and litres.
• You are probably not a farmer.
• You don't really read comics, although you keep saying you should read the latest manga from Kono Mai.
• You drive on the left. You stop at red lights and go through yellow lights. If you're a pedestrian at a red light, you will fearlessly walk in front of them.
• If a woman is plumper than the average — or not as curvaceous — it hurts her looks.
• The nationality people joke most about is the Nithalosians, particularly their sudden communism and their ostriches.
• There's parts of the city you want to avoid at night.

Up the Boohai

• You feel that your kind of people aren't listened to on Parliament Bluff.
• You wouldn't expect inflation and unemployment to simultaneously be very high — say, over 15%.
• You don't care what family someone else comes from.
• The normal thing, when someone dies, is for their estate to be divided equally among their children.
• You think of opera and ballet as rather élite establishments. It's likely you don't see many plays, either.
• Christmas is often the one day of the year that it snows. You spend it with your family, exchange gifts, and put up a tree. Your decorations feature sleighs and snowflakes. You might even have dinner outside.
• You might think the state is too powerful. You can't fathom having a state church.
• You'd be hard pressed to name all the capitals or leaders of Þaia. Maybe all the countries, too.
• Taxis are operated either by foreigners or by locals who'll tell you Amane VI was a saint and the Sandwich Massacre an inside job.
• You've left a message after the tone.
• You are suspicious of the National Insurance and claim jumpers. Still, you wouldn't be in favour of eliminating it or Welfare.
• If you want to be a doctor, you have to get a master's first.
• There are more albino dragons than lawyers.

The four dimensions — all eleven of them

• If you have an appointment, you'll mutter an excuse if you're ten minutes late, and apologise profusely if it's twenty minutes. An hour is an affront to the Goddesses themselves.
• If you're talking to someone, you'll get uncomfortable if they get closer than about half a metre.
• About the only things you expect to not bargain for are items in department and grocery stores. Haggling is largely a matter of finding the buyer's well-hidden minimum.
• Once you're out of college, you very rarely just turn up at someone's house. They have to invite you over — especially when there's food involved.
• When you negotiate, you are polite, of course, but it's only good business to 'play hardball'. Some foreigners pay excessive attention to status, or don't say what they mean, and that's exasperating.
• If you have a business appointment or interview with someone, you expect to have that person to yourself, and the business shouldn't take more than an hour or so.