Overtake, Undertake

When you pass a vehicle on the outer lane, it's called 'overtake'. But when you pass it on the inner lane, do you then 'undertake'? :P
(Motorists drive on the left side of the road in New Zealand)

This was taken from a truck that I was following in Petone, Wellington.

Puke Hunt

Let's have a little game. Below is a map of an area somewhere in the middle of the North Island. See how many places you can find that starts with 'Puke'.

Click on the image to enlarge.

Puke Ko in a Ponga Tree

In New Zealand, Puke ko is a bird. Not the male organ but the little animal that flies. But in this case, this is a flightless bird. It's pronounced as poo-ke ko and actually spelled as pukeko but I have a little problem with the space bar in my keyboard ;) .

Last Christmas, I heard my son sing 'On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... a PUKE KO in a PONGA TREE!!' I almost slapped him in the face. 'Nawalang galang na itong bata na ito! ' (This boy has lost his manners!). As it turned out, it's a Kiwi version of the song we all know.

I have a video of his whole class singing it IN CHURCH but Tricia doesn't want me to post it.

How to Speak Kiwi

Before anything else, I thought that I should first familiarize you with how Kiwis (people from New Zealand) speak english. I've attached a 'pronounciation guide' so you'll see what I mean. Just click on the image to enlarge it.

Everything is up-side-down in New Zealand. Aside from driving on the 'other side' of the road, their accent is different from what I'm used to. The sound of the letter 'e' becomes an 'i'. And the 'i' sounds like an 'e'. For instance, when they say 'yes' or 'pregnant', it sounds like 'yis' and 'prignant'.

'Fish' becomes 'fesh' and so on. So if you want to buy beer, you go to a store that's similar to a 'Sivin Ilivin' and get a 'sex pack'. Our favorite would be this Real Estate TV show where the host would say something like " ...this house has 3 bidrooms, 2 bathrooms and a BIG DICK (big deck)... And this commercial for a furniture store '...we've got the beast beads (best beds) in Wellington..."

The letter Z (zee) is called 'zed ' here, I think the same as in Australia. When I was working as a Graphic Designer a few years ago, I had a client seated beside me who kept telling me 'no, no... just type zed'. So I kept on typing z, e, d. And he kept insisting that I not type the 'e' and 'd' and instead just type zed. Which I did - z, e, d, zed! :P

Interesting Fact:
* In ilonggo, kiwi` means crooked (or baluktot in tagalog).