Kiwi Slang   -   US translation   -   Used in sentence




Back of Beyond  -  Somewhere in the middle of nowhere...usually lost   -   "Has anyone seen Jay?  I bet he is back of beyond again.  Better notify search and rescue."



Bloody  - A type of curse word used to emphasize feeling and has nothing to do with blood...usually-   "That was a bloody tough surgery."
                           


Bloke -  A Man - "Stop your whining and be a bloke"


Mate    -   A Male friend  -  "Mates before dates"


Bogans  -  A backwoods unsophisticated person lacking in education and manors -  "Get out your bloody banjo mate.   We are back and beyond and those blokes over there look like a bunch of bogans."



Bob's Your Uncle -  That's the way it is so don't complain -  I'm scheduling you for your colonoscopy Mr. Witherbee  and  Bob's your Uncle."



Box of Fluffies -   Feeling good -   "How are you feeling after your colonoscopy Mr. Witherbee?" "I'm a box of fluffies doc".



Bugger  - An expression of  disappointment - "Doctor W  made me have                                                a colonoscopy."   "Buggar mate."



Buggered -  Indicating an injury or problem with a part of your body -  "I didn't follow Dr. W's sage advice and now my leg is buggared."



Carked it   -  Died  -   "My husband did't follow Dr. W's  sage advice and last week he carked it."



Chocka   -  Full or overflowing  -  "Nobody is following Dr. W's sage advice and now the hospital is chocka."


Choice    -  Expression of being pleased    -  "Chris, Joe is finally following my sage advice and is now much better."  "Choice  doc."



 Chur  - Thank you  -  "Chur Dr W for saving my husband's  miserable worthless life."



Chilly Bin  - Cooler   - "Lets fill the chilly bin with brewskies mate  and head to the beach."


Dag    -   A funny person  - "That Donald Trump is such a dag."  "Not!"


Dear    -  Expensive   -  "Dr. W's bill is dear but worth it."


Dairy    - Small corner convenience store - "I don't care if cigs at that dairy are bloody dear                   I'm  going anyway so Bob.s your uncle."


Dole  - Unemployment benefit  -  "He didn't follow Dr W's sage advice and                                          now his legs are so buggered he is on the dole."


Dunny -   Toilet  - "You can use whichever dunny you feel best matches your sexual identity."


Fizzy Drink -  Soda Pop - "Dr W told you not to drink so many fizzy drinks and now your teeth are all  buggared."


                                                   MORE TO COME


 
                                   

I haven't written  anything lately because  Helen arrived three days ago.  We've been apart for two months and so I've been busy.........................enjoying a gourmet meal every night.  I've also found that " a tidy house" means different things to different people.  Anyway  we took a drive into the mountains today up wide river valleys  thick with uncommonly green grass and happily grazing sheep with not so distant snow capped peaks .  This is a good place to be a sheep.

                                                                    Arthur's pass

                                                                 Kea Parrot

                                                   It is snowy and rocky so it must be climbed

What's happening? For my whole life I was OK living in squalor.  Not your 81 cats, TV hoarders type squalor but you basic 6 out 10, comfortable, gentleman bachelor type squalor.  You know.  The kind that you can still see most of the floor. Some where between Animal House and auntie Em's house after the tornado..But recently I've been getting a warm and fuzzy internal satisfaction from keeping a tidy home, having a closet full of neatly hung and clean cloths and dresser draws full of clean socks and undies.  I know.  It's like: "Who are you and what have you done with Jay? " Right? The fact that Helen is arriving in a few days has absolutely nothing to do with my new embrace  of civilization and recent adherence to the local health code.

I've now gotten to know some of my patients well enough to talk politics.  This area of New Zealand is pretty conservative, a bunch of farmer types,  who are not too crazy about Jacinda Arden their lefty lady prime minister and the "greenees" running the show up in Wellington.   But it seems that a lot and maybe most of the people down here have a pretty favorable opinion of Trump.  They just wish, as do we all, that he would stay off twitter and keep his big fat mouth shut.

The medical system here is a little wack. There is a huge shortage of Family Doctors especially in rural areas and so there is a heavy reliance on temporary docs coming in from all parts of New Zealand and from every English speaking country around the world some of whom only stay a few weeks  or months at the most .  There is absolutely no continuity of care and it takes months to get an appointment to see a specialist for any non emergent medical problem and it takes forever (6 month to years) to get any kind of non emergency surgery like a total hip or knee or hernia or gall bladder. Meanwhile people are hobbling around in pain.  It kind of gets me upset to see this but it is their system and I don't hear many people complain about it. If this kind of thing happened in the US there is no doubt in my mind that the people would rise up, grab their torches, pitch forks and other sharp, pointy but portable farm and gardening implements and march on Washington or Olympia or were ever needs marching demanding immediate gratification for all their health care wants.

Last weekend I drove about 100 miles south to a little town called Franz Joseph, named after some old king dude from Prussia and famous for a glacier coming down the valley above the town.  The town is like a little Leavenworth and everything is glacier this and glacier that but the glacier IS pretty cool.  The sign said the glacier is retreating up the valley - about a kilometer the past 100 years but also said that it has retreated about 18 kilometers the past several thousand years so fossil fuel CO2 is not the whole story.

I am kind of getting into rugby mostly because everybody down here goes nuts over it and  there are no other sports.  I've been to a few games and pretty much know most of the rules.  I even sometimes watch the "All Blacks" (like in the movie "Invictus") on TV but now the season is over and it's on to cricket.

Well, we are supposed to have a rare beautiful sunny day tomorrow so I am off to climb a mountain but just a wee small one this time and so certain death is unlikely.

Peace out

The underwear situation went hyper critical last week so I did a google search and found out that that  big white thing over there is something called a washing machine.  whoed-a-thunk it?  Now if I can only figure out what that thing in the closet with the hose and teeny tiny wheels is.

I drove north up the coast road 70 miles (yes MILES,  screw the metric system) last week It was  outrageously  cool.  Waves breaking on huge limestone cliffs jutting out into the sea eroded over eons into fantastic formations separated by MILES of broad and wide grey sand beaches at the total mercy of only wind and wave. And where the road did occasionally turned inland you drove through dense Jurassic Park forests of man sized ferns and giant fern trees appropriate for any self respecting dinosaur.  By far the most beautiful coast read I've ever driven and, except for the road and  a very rare structure, completely wild.  The end of the road was a place called "Cape Foul Wind" ( I assume that has something to do with old time sailing navigation stuff but I suppose there are other equally plausible explanations) where any upwardly mobile seal worth his or her sea salt haul themselves  out on the rocky shore to see and be seen and to look down there long noses at the hoi polloi. I swear I took pictures and as soon as I figure out how to upload them into the blog ....so, stay tuned.

Today I drove south along the coast road into the "Southern Alps" region through buckets of rain.  As I drove south the buckets got bigger so I bailed.  I couldn't see much through the driving rain but again passing through primeval forests where dinosaurs seemed a real possibility.  I did drive through a place called Ross.  The sign said "Welcome to Ross:  The Gold Mining Capital of New Zealand"  so I am for sure  going back there and not for some of your tiny little cheap ass flecks of gold.  No sir-ee Bob.  I talking baseball size gold chunks minimum.

The clinic is fine.  The patients are great - mostly your blue collar and farming types, easy going and usually pretty happy with good senses of humor.  The medical problems and medicines are pretty much the same as in the US but the names of a lot of the meds are different so that takes some time to get used to.  Also, since this is a cradle to grave socialized system there are heaps of government programs for everything (quitting smoking, getting exercise, any injury no matter how trivial,  drug and alcohol addiction, home maintenance and on and on) and each program has a heap of forms to fill out.  In the US I had people to do this stuff but down here I got no people.  Forms and paperwork seem to be a global pandemic 

I was getting a little shaggy last week so I found myself a local barber shop.  Think a sheep after an unnecessarily aggressive spring shearing.  Also I bought a car.  A 2005 Subaru (they pronounce it "su-BAR-u, emphasis on the BAR.  Silly Kiwis)  forester-like wagon.  Nothing fancy but 4 wheel drive to get me to my many and very dangerous upcoming mountain climbing adventures.  More about cars some other time.  Right now I'm hungry so it's time to go over to the stove for another adventure in pyrotechnics.

OMG! OMG! OMG! I've only got 2 pairs of clean underwear left.  I don't understand.  I put my gross stinky undies in the basket by the big white box thing with the door on top by the back door like usual at home but nothing happens.  At home clean undies would just magically appear in the undie draw.  Same with socks and everything. The magic draw doesn't seem to work down here.
Helen!!! Help !! What should I do?

Well I guess there is only one reasonable option; go commando.

As I was looking in the mirror the other day I epiphanied that the life of a single guy is a lot like one really long camping trip. One's grooming rapidly becomes more "rustic" and bare bones functional. One's level of personal hygiene plummets a bit and the general tidiness index of your crib drops a few (thousand) notches.  And the 3 second rule?  Fa-get-about-it. 

Last Sunday I drove about 50 miles into the mountains to Arthur Pass.   A super scenic drive despite the rain. Up a wide river valley along rolling green pastures dotted with metric tons of sheep. Then a really really steep last 10 kilometers and UNDER a bridge with a pretty good sized stream gushing over the top. The pass is a gassy little valley that boarders the tree line. Not content to just drive on the wrong side of the road up a windy rainy mountain road eye ball to eye ball with death every inch (centimeter) of the way I also had to tramp (that's what they call hiking in N.Z.) 3 more miles up a mountain trail in a driving rain to a ski lodge for a cup of tea and a pint of beer then back home for another cooking adventure.  I tried to include some pictures but I'm not sure if they will work.

Also up high on the pass they have these mountain parrots called Keas.  They are supposed to be endangered but they were all over the place.  Very inquisitive and fearless little buggers.  They come right up to you.  On and in your car just to check things out.   Little genius birds.  There are a couple of u-tubes on them you should watch.

And FYI water swirls clockwise down here.

I've been cooking for my self now for a week and the smoke alarm batteries are dead.  I was going to buy more but I thought why bother.  Even the fire department doesn't come any more.  They will call on occasion if one of the neighbors reports more than the usual amount of smoke but even that is tapering off.  But just when I thought all is lost I found this stuff called Soylent Green in an out of the way little dark alley establishment unjustly shunned and generally avoided by the discerning shopper.  Anyway this stuff is specifically made to be an exact match to everything the human body needs.  One pill three times a day and your good to go.  It also comes in a powder to mix with your favorite liquid.  Water is recommended but I find it pairs better with a nice blended Scotch Whisky.  Single malt of course needs to be enjoyed without adulteration.  I am told "S.G." will be available in banana flavor next month.  Things are definitely looking up.