s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

The Kiwis have the same abbreviation habits the Australians do.

breakfast -> brekkie
present -> prezzie
scrumptious -> scrummie

BUT

I’m not a techie, I’m a techo.

Likewise:

conversation -> convo
afternoon -> arvo
musician -> muso

I’ve been trying to work out the rules, but it may just be a question of listening for common usage.

At any rate, we hung out with a lot of musos on Saturday at the Wellington Folk Festival. Ran into a lot of familar faces, including Glen (dumbek), Tim and Liz (oud and fiddle), and several of the other guys I met in my whirlwind first couple of weeks here — Paddy, Andy, and Rory, the latter two wearing their Utilikilts, and Tad, an American friend of Andy’s, from the Mid-West, now living in Johnsonville. Paddy also does a bit of woodworking on the side, and I bought from him two pair of rimu wood “bones” — clackers you play like spoons, that also happen to be near-perfect analogs for period Turkish castanets. Also ran into Richard, whom we’d previously met at the big Monday night gaming session at The Ferryman, and also at the Wellington Warlords miniatures wargaming session (Sunday afternoons in Kandallah). Had a nice conversation — er, “convo” — about potential upcoming games, and the concentrating effect that Wellington’s relatively small size can have on interpersonal relationships within various communities.

The Fest was held in a big Boy Scout camp out in Moore’s Valley, which is just south of Wainuiomata, on the other side of the harbor. (The whole big harbor, not the little Lambton Harbor that the Central Business District is clustered around.) Some nice little bush walks around the camp.

Later that night, we went out to dinner with Stephanie and Patrick, and several of their local friends who’d come out from California to work on LotR at Weta (a couple of whom we’d met earlier on Stephanie’s B-day). The animation work is largely done, so now it’s the turn of the folks who have to put it all together to put in the horrendous overtime. Yummy Italian food, and the Weta folks seem really cool. It’s a pity they’re pretty much gone as of next week. Maybe they’ve caught the NZ bug and we’ll see them again in a couple years.

Actually — we went out for Second Dinner. Or Supper, or something. ‘Cause Stephen had picked up some super-yummy steamed buns from the Asian grocery (“A-Mart”, formerly “Mr. Chan’s”) next to the New World, and we’d already had those. Yum !