Now that I've become fully-adjusted to living in the future (I am a man of Philip K. Dick-ian proportions), I suppose I can tell you a little about the area of Auckland that I'm familiar with.
My flat is in Grafton, which is one of the oldest parts of Auckland because of the hospital that was built in the mid-1800's. This means that if ghosts are hanging out in Auckland, I'm at ghost-ground-zero! Or, more appropriately, it means that if I trip on something and fall on my face, at least the hospital is nearby!
I didn't really notice the relative age of Grafton compared with other parts of Auckland until I crossed the Grafton Bridge (a really old bridge over the highway that is part of my path to the University). It's a pretty normal bridge until the very end, when all of a sudden it's a bridge over an old graveyard. And the graveyard is literally in the middle of inner-city sprawl. It's pretty bizarre. Here are some pictures of the graveyard. Picture skyscrapers 100 feet away and you'll get the picture.
Here's some Kiwi slang I've picked up:
"Take-away" = To Go
"Olds" = Parents
"Pongo" = Smells Bad
There's a complete sentence there, I know it!
My life is still in the organization stage. I have been meeting lots of people--my residence is pretty much full of international students. This means I've been learning lots of important cultural information, like what the Ninja Turtles were called in Peru (Tortu-Ninja, apparently).
I've been reading a ton and understanding a little. Here's a pretty awesome quote from Thomas Merton I came across (It's from The Seven Storey Mountain):
"The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!"
Also, here are some good lyrics by my man, The Boss:
"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?"
How would pongo be used in a sentence? The cat litter pongo? Or is it more of an exclamation, like something I would say while scooping cat litter? :)
ReplyDeleteFunny enough, I just ran across the correct usage of it in a Kiwi novel that I'm currently reading:
ReplyDelete"Have you ever been to Sydney?" Simon asked. "The flying foxes in the Botanic Gardens are extraordinary. They wheel around in massive flocks at dusk. And they absolutely pong."
So it's pong, not pongo, and that's how you use it!