What Krauts and Kiwis read

Meist gelesene Artikel auf SPON: Promis, Fernsehen, Fußball – und ein bisschen Politik.

Most popular bei NZ Herald online: Autounfall, Apokalypse und Moppel-Models. 

Was ich ja super finde ...

Heute mal auf Deutsch – bin viel zu geschafft für Englisch. Also, was ich total super finde: Hier in Neuseeland scheint es, jedenfalls meiner bisherigen Erfahrung nach, nicht drauf anzukommen, was man ist, sondern darauf, was man werden will. Und wie sehr man sich dafür einsetzt. Gut, ich wollte eigentlich gar nicht Deli-Managerin werden, aber im Moment sieht es sehr danach aus, dass ich genau in diese Richtung trainiert werde. Und es macht Spaß. Ich stehe den ganzen Tag unter Strom und mache immer mindestens zwei Dinge zzgl. Sich-auf-die-fremde-Sprache-konzentrieren gleichzeitig. Abends fühlen sich sowohl mein Hirn als auch jeder einzelne Muskel an, als habe man sie mehrfach durch den Fleischwolf gedreht. Aber ich lerne unglaublich viel völlig neuen Kram und genieße die Arbeit in diesem Laden total. (Allerdings kenne ich mich auch gut genug, um zu wissen, dass ich das schnell wieder ändern kann. Ich hatte ja auch so meine Anfangsschwierigkeiten ... Also bitte fingers crossed, dass alles eher besser als schlechter wird. Merci.) 

Gut zu wissen

Hier arbeite ich – also da, wo das Kreuz ist. Die blauen Markierungen sind nur die nächsten erdbebeneinsturzgefährdeten Gebäude. Davon gibt es in Auckland laut der Tageszeitung NZ Herald ziemlich viele. Na ja. Passiert schon nix.

Wen kenne ich eigentlich in Malaysia?

Mein Blog-Publikum. 

Kleine große Stadt

Was ich ja sehr lustig finde: In Auckland leben ein Drittel aller Neuseeländer, die Stadt nennt sich selbst "SuperCity" – und wenn man für eine Stunde in die Innenstadt fährt, trifft man drei der ungefähr sieben Leute, die man hier kennt. 

Kiwi language

When I came to New Zealand, I thought the language would be the biggest problem in finding a job. Well, unless you want to be an English teacher … it’s not. Everybody here seems to be used to have many foreign people around and therefore is very patient with non-native speakers. But there are a few things about Kiwi-English you should know. First of all: It has nothing to do with what you’ve learned at school. Forget about things such as complete sentences or words. Kiwis like their language to be short and simple. When we were looking for a place to stay, we first emailed people, but soon discovered that most of them preferred receiving TXTs (text messages) on their mobiles. So we started txting: “Dear Carl. We just noticed your flat offer at gumtree.co.nz. We (a young couple from Germany) are very interesting in visiting the flat. Could you please give us an appointment? Thank you very much. Melissa”
210 carefully selected characters, answered this way: “mo 7 pm cheers c” No further comment on this … Cheers by the way is a very important word in NZ. You can use it to express all kind of different things. It means Hello as well as Goodbye or Thank you. Another expression you hear really, really often, is to grab. People grab olives at the deli counter, wives send their husbands to grab some milk, I always forget to grab my key when I leave the house. Well, grabbing certainly isn't the nicest sounding word, I've ever heard, but it does its job.

Regarding all this, my first impression of Kiwi language was that it’s very rude. Then I started to work at Nosh, talking to customers all day long and soon discovered: NZ English can actually be quite … well … let’s call it … sweet. Because sweet perfectly puts in a nutshell what people here talk like, when they don’t just pass on information but have a kind conversation with you.
Just as Cheers and to grab, That’s sweet and sweet as are expressions Kiwis use all the time. They can tell you that something or somebody is all right or even really cool. So if someone from New Zealand calls you Sweet as you can be sure you’ve got a friend. If the same person on the other hand calls you anything like Darling or Honey, just don’t think about it too much. To my boss, who knows me for about two weeks now, I am Sweetie, many of my customers call me Love – and I really don't think that either my boss or my customers are in love with me. They all just want my cheese. 

I'm back!

It’s Friday night* and I’ve only got one working day left this week. Yeah! What’s bad about my job: too many hours, too many vegetarian-unfriendly things I have to do. What’s good: very cool people, free English lessons all day long and a tiny little bit of the creative chaos I love to work in. And I get to read the NZ Herald during my breaks, what can be really funny sometimes. 

Today I read about Hop, the new Auckland “smartcard ticketing system” that makes it easier to pay public transport fees: You simply have to swipe your hop card when entering and leaving the vehicle. When I first heard of this, I was quite impressed because even Weltstadt Hamburg hasn’t got anything like that. (Bremen, which by the way is the most beautiful city on earth, has got such a system, too.)

Then today I read an article about the problems there are with launching Hop. The main trouble is that people tend to forget swiping their card when they leave the bus (to guarantee a maximum of confusion, Hop is not yet available on trains and ferries – and not even on every kind of bus). As this neglect costs an extra fee of around 5 dollars, many then try to hop (harhar) on the bus again to swipe their card. And this can be dangerous and lead to serious injuries and even death, when the bus is on its way again.

I am really very, very curious about how all of this is going to go on – and now, I’ll hop to a glass of red wine.  

*Blogger was unavailable yesterday evening