I have now been living in Sydney for four weeks. Already I am being told that I have lost the sharp edge off my kiwi accent, but that still does not stop at least one daily occurrence where I either can’t understand something simple someone is telling me or vice-versa.

To aide my fellow kiwi’s when they grow wings and come over here too I have been collecting a list of my most interesting and funny situations where kiwi slang/words have been greeted with blank confused stares.

• Blobbing / To Blob Out – This one even has its own entry in Wikitionary, To relax idly and mindlessly.
• Dairy – In Australia known as a Convenience Store.
• Flat (or Student Flat) – In Australia Flat refers to a type of house in particular a granny flat.
• Flatting – This word does not exist in Australia. The closest word with the same meaning would be shared housing. Somehow that doesn’t have the same ring to it as it’s kiwi counterpart. (Also I get the feeling that the whole right of passage going flatting coming of age type situation is different here.)
• Hori – I had a very hard time explain this one. Wikipedia explains it as used for something that is unattractive or shoddy
• I speak good England! – Not really kiwi slang as such, but more when someone says something with either terrible spelling or grammar.
• P – Pure Methamphetamine. In Australia known as just crystal meth.
• Paper – University term for the equivalent of a school subject, in Australia known as a course. Where paper in Australia refers to a research paper.
• Refill pad – This is a British English word, but here is known as a lecture pad or loose lead ruled pad.
• Sweet As – no worries.
• Toying / To Toy With – Messing with, teasing, playing games with.
• Tramping – Hiking or Bush Walking

I have also noticed some interesting differences in styles and behaviour. The three key areas would be:

• Clothing – Take note, black tshirts and jeans are not everyday wear. Shorts are very much in – mostly because it is too hot to get away with jeans all year round.
• Hug/Hugging – It is common to greet and say goodbye to friends in a social setting with a quick hug in New Zealand. I did this to a friend over here and they took three steps back not sure how to react. Looking into the background of this more it seems that this cultural difference stems from a combination of New Zealand’s large Pacific population and Eastern Europeans who both commonly greet with a hug and a kiss to the cheek (although the kissing has never been NZ culture to my knowledge).
• Sunglasses – Almost everyone in New Zealand will wear them whenever they are outside, not as common here.

There are also two good Wikipedia posts on New Zealand English and New Zealand Words.

Just saw this ad on Facebook

Not something you would ever see in New Zealand.

The herald reports that it is likely that the current taskforce on getting NZ economy back up to speed with the Australian economy will recommend replacing the Kiwi Dollar with the Aussie.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10598348

The Government’s transtasman taskforce is to investigate scrapping the Kiwi dollar and adopting an Aussie one.

Don Brash, chairman of the 2025 Taskforce and former governor of the Reserve Bank, confirmed he would report back in November on whether a common currency would help raise New Zealand living standards to Australian levels.

Brash said New Zealand would be more likely to cancel the Kiwi currency, replacing it with cash stamped “Reserve Bank of Australia”.

The notes would probably retain images like those of Sir Edmund Hillary and Sir Apirana Ngata, so they would look Kiwi – apart from that vital difference in the fine print.

A major benefit would be a fall in interest rates to Australian levels, making business more productive. But economic authorities would be concerned this cheap money would spark a property boom. Currency union would mean New Zealand could no longer adjust interest rates to control booms.

The sooner we do it the better. And while we are at it can we just hurry up and become another state of Australia, and make both countries (or the one) a completely independent republic at the same time. Or are my dreams just too good to possibly come true?

Last night TV3 reported on Don Brash leading a new taskforce to decrease the income gap between New Zealand and Australia. http://www.3news.co.nz/News/NationalNews/Don-Brashs-new-taskforce-to-tackle-the-trans-Tasman-income-gap/tabid/423/articleID/113412/cat/64/Default.aspx

Now I knew the gap was large, but not this large:

Last year the average Kiwi wage after tax was $32,000 a year, while in Australia, the average wage was NZ$49,000 – around 38 percent higher.

$17k per year in NZ Dollars difference, or $326.92 per week more, or $46.70 per day more. That is not a gap that is a gulf. How did it ever get that far apart in the first place?

Last year, over 48,000 Kiwis left New Zealand for Australia to experience its brighter beaches and bigger pay packets.

And I can’t blame them, the cost of living may be more (I may do a post investigating this if I can find the data) but increase in pay surely justifies it.

This must be one of the best political posts I have read in a while, read the full version here: http://poneke.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/away/

NZ’s political leaders want to destroy us with despair. Where is their confidence in our country? No wonder Australia beckons for so many

In Australia, where I have had the opportunity to have travelled about these past few weeks, everyone except the media (which anywhere, always, promotes doom and gloom) is constantly upbeat about the state of the economy and the country’s outlook. The Polyannas include not just Kevin Rudd’s Labor Government but also Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal Opposition. Yes, of course, the Opposition in Australia constantly attacks and carps on about the Government, but it does not attack and carp on about Australia.

Numbingly, in New Zealand, it is our Government that is constantly attacking New Zealand and running down its fortunes and prospects at every opportunity. Chief among the Jonahs is the dour Finance Minister, Bill English, who constantly claims we face a “decade of deficits.” Even worse, at the New Zealand Herald’s annual platform for corporate greed, he said all we can look forward to is a “demoralising trudge”.

And then people were surprised that New Zealand’s still very strong economy was immediately put on credit watch. If your finance minister so publicly and continually rubbishes your country and takes as much delight in company closures and layoffs as this one does, then the ratings agencies will sit up, take notice and act.

I would not try to argue that the grass is always greener elsewhere, especially the grass in Australia, which is almost non-existent in some places I have been, thanks to the usual droughts which that huge desert continent experiences.

But, my god, there is no constant running down of Australia’s prospects by its political leaders, who are united in their determination to keep unemployment low and the economy ticking along very nicely thank you. You do not hear Australian cabinet ministers boasting how many public servants they are sacking.

New Zealand went into this world recession – caused by the corporate greed which some people in New Zealand think is admirable – with among the lowest unemployment and public debt in the developed world. The latter was thanks to former finance minister Michael Cullen’s determination to use his budget surpluses to repay debt rather than splurge on the tax cuts loudly demanded by National through all of Labour’s term. Cullen’s Scroogeness meant New Zealand can afford the modest deficits that would be expected in such an international downturn. Instead we are back to the slash and burn of 1991, when unemployment hit 11 per cent amid similar applause from the same cheerleaders.

Australia entered the world downturn similarly low in public debt – though with slightly higher unemployment – and there is little talk there of a decade of deficits. In fact, Australia is yet even to experience technical recession, as there has been just one quarter of negative growth, not repeated, since the Greed is Good parasites destroyed the world’s financial system.

I fear for a country being as constantly bad-mouthed by its government as New Zealand is, for the constant denigration is likely to bear the fruit that could be expected, as demonstrated by the negative credit watch, which the cheerleaders applaud from their tax havens in Geneva and elsewhere.

I fear for this country not for myself but for my children. All three of them constantly talk of moving to Australia for work and education. Even from a distance, the allure of a country whose leaders do not constantly denigrate it is apparent to them. Having had a good look around a lot of Australia in recent times, I can understand that allure.

New Zealanders are not a bunch of losers, but many of our political leaders give more than the impression that losers are how they see us and a failed state is what they want us to become. Maybe they should piss off to North Korea and invite a few people with confidence to take us boldly and confidently into the future that so scares them.

And one wonders why so many of us go off to Aussie. Can someone remind me why I should stay when I finish my post-grad studies at the end of this year?

Ha ha ha and ho ho ho and a merry old land of OZ.

Saturday:

• Got up at 2am to head to airport to check in for flight.
• Arrived at Auckland Airport at 3.30am, checked in.
• Departed Auckland at 6.10am
• Flight was extremely bumpy, for the first time ever got Motion Sickness two and a half hours into the flight… so did lots of other people on the plane including an air hostess.
• Landed 20 minutes early at 7.50am
• Got on bus into Melbourne Central, arrived at Southern Cross Station.
• Walked to hotel, stopped at Mc Donalds for breakfast, checked into hotel.
• Went for a walk to look at town, found Federation Square, watched street perfomer, met up with friend.
• Went on tramp ride around the city
• Went on river cruise down the Yarra
• Went back to hotel at 4pm, fell asleep while mum went shopping
• Got woken by mum at 7pm, went out for dinner
• Got back to hotel, watched Sky News
• Went zzz

Sunday:

• Mum set alarm for 7am, she woke to me cursing at it.
• Had breakfast at Hotel, was really busy, lots of hungry hungry hippos.. people.
• Caught tram to Vibration Training place.
• Caught train to Dandenong
• Visited friends house
• Got driven to Sunnyvale
• Checked out these awesome Asian supermarkets… Think St Lukes but all Asian, had a sugar cane drink
• Got driven back to Caulfield
• Caught train back to city, got off at Parliament Underground Station not 100% sure where we were.
• Went shopping
• Caught tram to St Kilda beach
• Had dinner at St Kilda beach
• Caught tram back to town, which went on train tracks as well as roads… so cool.
• Watched Sky News and the 20/20 Cricket
• Went zzz

Monday:

• Woke at 5am
• Caught 5.45am tram to Southern Cross Station
• Caught 6.15am bus to Airport
• Checked in went shopping!!!
• Flew back to Auckland at 9.25am
• Landed in Auckland at 2.45pm
• Mum went shopping again.
• Got through customs just before 4pm.

This is how Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran will be executed.

Chan and Sukumaran will be taken from their cells with the minimum of warning, driven to a deserted beach or jungle clearing and shot without ceremony by a firing squad.

No one will be told in advance of the date or time of their executions.

Australian reporters have been told that the deaths of Chan and Sukumaran will be carried out by a squad of 10 men drawn from a paramilitary police unit called the Mobile Brigade.

Under strict secrecy demanded by Indonesian law, they will be told several days in advance and allowed to see close family or friends, or to make final telephone calls.

But the times and places of their execution will not be disclosed.

Decoy convoys could be used to fool relatives or the media staking out the prison on the day of execution.

Bagus Wahyono, who selects the execution squads after watching them shooting dolls, told the Sydney Morning Herald only two rifles, selected at random, will have live rounds.

The others will fire blanks to ease individual consciences.

The only other witnesses will be a religious representative, a doctor and one of the trial prosecutors.

The newspaper said Chan and Sukumaran will be dressed in white aprons with a red cross marking their hearts, and would be handcuffed to a post, tree or chair.

A hood will be drawn over the heads, and the order to fire given.

A final shot to the heart or temple may be required.

This is not an execution, it is murder. It is murder for fun. It is murder for the sake of having some target practice. It is murder, it is premeditated. It is murder because NO ONE deserves to be killed in this way. It is just sick and the international community needs to make a stand against it. Unfortunately the international community seems to have lost its legs in the past few years.

Andrew Chan And Myuran Sukumaran are now facing death by firing squad in Bali. A penalty that is opposed by the Australian Government.

However, the worst thing about the sentance is that the Australian Fedral Police (A department of the Australian Government) gave the information about the drugs to the Indonesian Police. This got these Australian citizens arrested in Indonesia and facing penalties that the Australian government is against. The Fedral Police could of arrested the members of the Bali 9 when they arrived back in Australia, and they would not be putting the lives of their own citizens at risk.

The end reality is that the Australian government has put international politics before the lives and safety of its own citizens. The very citizens that elected it to government to protect themselves and their nation. Shame on you John Howard, Shame on you the government of Australia, Shame on you.

True politicians, honest leaders do not sell out their own citizens.