Singular Scene

So Singular in Each Particular

Kiwi to English Dictionary

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Once upon a time there was a blogger called Morphess who curated this rather brilliant collection of Kiwi language idiosyncrasies. She quit blogging years ago, the blog languished in the vapour of the interweb and also in my archives as I was the technologist who looked after the site and kept it online for a while there.  She quit out of the blue, things went a bit tits up, I think, but her archives are still here (Caro, if you want them back, all you gotta do is email me)…

As a dedicated Kiwi myself I have decided that this list is far too good to be kept off the internet and as a consequence I’m posting it here.

Caroline, we miss your blogging, and if by some strange quirk you’re reading this and want me to take it down get in touch!!

Kiwinese.     English.

Sport.

Football     Rugby.

Soccer     Football.

Sport     Sacrosanct.

Half back     scrum half

First five-eighth     fly half

Sprigs     studs
Fat mans track     notional path up the centre of rugby pitch

Gumby    complete lack of coordination.

Miscellaneous.

Rumpus room    playroom

Wagging    missing school or work

Joker     bloke

Piker    someone who throws in the towel

Pit shop     Pet shop

Fairy     ferry

She’s a hard road    difficult

Judder bar    speed bump

Bach     holiday home, pronounced batch

Crib     holiday home in Southland and Otago

Sicktion     plot of land

Coaster     person from the West Coast of the South Island

Westie     person from West Auckland, associated with having a mullet.

A shocker    mildly disappointing

Woop woops    out in the sticks

Waikikamookau     fictional town way, way out in the Wop Wops.

Toyota     bugger. Long story to do with television advert.

Airgun?     How are you going? Greeting

Cocky    Farmer

Cow cocky     Dairy Farmer

Manchester     Linen.

Box of birds    O.K.

Box of fluffies    O.K.

Choice     O.K.

Sweet as    O.K.

Good as gold     O.K.

Stink     not O.K.

Onya     good for you!

Bro’     I’ve forgotten your name

Pun     Pin

Pin     Pen

Dairy     Corner Shop

Metal     Gravel
Yeah, yeah     Possibly

Paddock     Field

Dam     Pond

Number Eight Wire     Used for everything
Awesome     Average

Beer     bear (teddy)

O.E.     Get drunk in London pub with your Kiwi mates.

Glad wrap     cling film

Joker     man, not necessarily a funny one

Queer cattle     strange folk

JAFA     Just Another F*%&ing Aucklander.

Bush    Forest
Tramp    Walk
Rattle Ya Dags    Hurry Up

Hard Yakka    Hard Work

Turn To Custard     Go pear shaped

Grouse!     very cool indeed

Great Big Dick     Large Verandah

Sook     cry baby

She’ll be right.     I’ve just cut off my arm with a chain saw.

Apparel.

Togs     bathers

Skivvy     roll neck shirt

Swanndri     big coat/dress like thing. Much favoured for hunting and killing things in.
Gumboots     Wellies

Jandals     Flip Flops

Pants     Trousers

Food & Drink.

Trum mook    low fat milk

Hokey Pokey Ice cream    disgusting/delicious (depending on your tastes) vanilla ice cream with bits of Crunchie.

Bring a plate    ….with some food on it.

Chilly Bin     Cooler

Smoko     Tea break. And it’s illegal to smoke.

Supper     Late night snack

Lollies     Sweets
Chips     Crisps

Hot Chips     Chips

Pattie     Burger

Our Mate     marmite

Rice Bubbles     Rice Crispies

Weetbix     WeetAbix

Smokers     tiny, pink aniseed-flavoured sweets.

Colonial goose     stuffed leg of mutton.

Lemmincktons    lamingtons (vile cake)

Flet White     Cup of Coffee

Ice block     frozen juice on stick.

Do You Want A Wine?     Alcoholic beverage, not an excuse to talk about your mother.

Things not to say at a dinner party.
I met a really nice Australian the other day.

So, the English won the rugby.

Paul Holmes seems like a nice bloke.

I live in Auckland.

Did you see the cricket?
I’m so glad Michael Barrymore lives here now.

What’s all this about the foreshore?

With thanks to Jessie, Mike, Lil, Martin, Llew, Martha, Clods, Deirdre, Jono, Antipo, Flying Kiwi, HotnSpicy Kiwi, Duh-Mension, Fi and Deeleea.

Dust Up

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My Contribution to the image pool today of pix from Sydney’s wild Red dust storm…

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

From Room to Room

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The whole business of quietly withdrawing from one congregation in favour of attending another is an introspective one.  To do such a thing invites speculation about why one might make such a choice, invites gossip and judgment as someone who (for all intents and purposes) has got lost along the way, so it’s impolitic for one’s own mental health to make a big deal about it.

Which isn’t to say it’s no big deal.

The last time I blogged about it I hadn’t actually made any kind of commitment to doing such a thing, I was a dual citizen of two churches.  In many ways I still am, I worship with one congregation on weekends but the majority of my close friendships are still back at the ‘mother ship’ and I’m still up there teaching and contributing.  So for many people who weren’t accustomed to seeing me on weekends anyway things may not have changed.

In the grand scheme of the situation the choice to make that leap came after one particularly astute (prophetic actually) friend asked me this question… in fact she phrased it as follows.

“Dee, all I can hear God asking you is, What do YOU want??”

It took me 4 days to come up with an answer… I mean, if in fact you believe God is asking you a question like this you take time to answer… what do I want?? Money? Fame? A Relationship??  While I was mulling the question over prayerfully I finally concluded the following and while I’m sure God could have been asking the question in any of the other contexts this was the answer I absolutely couldn’t get away from in the end.

What I want is this… to love going to church on a Sunday. 

The truth was I hadn’t done so for a very long time.

With that answer in mind it was really easy to make the choice to commit to my new faith community and having done so I’m really thrilled to be part of a church family for whom the people are more important than the community itself, for whom God is more important than anything and whose relationship with God is real, earthy, intellectual as WELL as spiritual.  It’s a place whose people are accepting, real, and who are in the best possible sense a body of Christ.  (Which before you leap to any kind of conclusion isn’t to say that the opposite is true of the former.)

I have no wish to speak ill of one place or the other, I have no wish to look back in anger or sadness, or to have expectations on this new place to be anything other than a collection of people doing their best to follow God and make an impact in the world around them…  God is bigger than both, both have their good and bad points, we’re human after all,  and all IN all I’m a small part of a very big picture.

And in the grand scheme of things, was it church that changed?

No. Not at all. 

It was me.

To be continued

To Date

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So, this is what I managed to get done so far this week.

Monday. EFTSkincare went live.  It’s been a long and streeeeeetching project. But it feels good to tick that one off the list.  So, if you’ve got a kid with skin probs… check this stuff out… I can’t remember the last time I had a zit so I’ll be giving it a pass…

Once that was done I spent most of the day working on the redevelopment for the next site. I have to confess I’ve been rather enamoured by WordPress of late… I know, I’ve been a Movable Type freak since I started blogging and I still love it… but have you seen the themes for WordPress? And the number of plugins?  I know… WordPress is a tease so I’m looking at it as expanding my repertoire… rather than ‘switching codes’ (didja see that? Pun totally intended…)

What day is it today? Wednesday… Oh… so, what did I do yesterday?

Tuesday… Tuesday’s uni day… I jumped on the bus and spent the day in the library as this tweet attests..
I’m not sure how it happened that this semester I ended up making Tuesday’s all about spending all day up on campus.. I guess it’s because I have classes from 3-5… yeah.. 5pm
finish.  FAIL! So, tis a far, far better thing to spend the time required for commuting doing sensible things like my readings for class etc as this tweet attests…

Ooops….

So, today…

For most of this semester I’ve been teaching all day on Wednesdays.  This has been both good and painful… Good in that I get paid to teach, something I LOVE doing.  Bad in that it writes off the whole day for any other kind of studying or working thing. Realistically I probably ended up losing money doing it… however, the payoff in terms of resumé cred is worth it.

Anyway, last week was the last class so today I had my pick of things to do and I started with a meeting and a proposal.

*rolls eyes* no, silly, a proposal that I offered to my former employer to do some social network analysis (SNA) for them… it’s a uni thing… I’d tell you about it but you’d keel over bored.. trust me.

I then ducked over to the college office to do my semester’s marking.  Groan.  2 hours I’ll never get back.

Then I went into Manly to meet up with a designer I’ve been doing some stuff for to work on this, my other next project… BTW that’s a staging site, the final design isn’t finished…

THEN I came up home to write up the abstract for the essay/proposal for the SNA.  All this before 5 pm when I was supposed to be in class.

I ditched class.

And while I was ditching and finishing up my abstract (which is now submitted) I did this. http://thatphotographerchick.photomerchant.net/  I know, it looks JUST like my old photographerchick.com site (I did show you that before, didn’t I?).  But if you look closely you’ll see that punters can ORDER photos… I nearly peed my pants I was so excited when photomerchant finally took the project out of beta that I signed up on the spot!!!  This site is still in staging too but should be going public later this week!!!

So… I think it’s pretty safe to say I’ve been busy.. and hopefully you’ll get a glimpse as to why I’ve been such a uninspired blogger laterly… my choices are either blog about work*, or blog about uni… and let’s face it… there ain’t a whole lot of fun in that…

*Oh, the irony… I have a no blogging about work ethic so I’ll show you my projects but I won’t complain or tweet about my clients… boring because, I could say SOO much…  Sigh, this intergity business has its downsides…