Thursday, May 22, 2008

A guy from the New Zealand office has been a visiting. He was presented to me today with instructions that I teach him how to use our Helpdesk system. Frankly I could have done without it as I had fucking work to do!, but it wasn't his fault and I didn't hold it against him.

The training actually went very well. I showed him some things he could run that would slow the system to a crawl and also showed him how to crash the whole thing. Very satisfying. A good day's work.

Nice guy. We had a laugh and he had the kudos of possessing expert knowledge of bad horror films. He also claimed to have worked as an extra on the forthcoming, New Zealand shot "Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans", playing the part of a 'Werewolf slave'. "Underworld" was such a piece of shit that I never bothered to watch the sequel, and I will not be seeing the latest instalment, but actually being an extra in a movie, even a bad one, obviously meant that he got BIG respect from me. He also shared the news that the nickname for Rhona Mitra on the set of "Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans" was Moaner Mitra. Not a pleasant woman, apparently.

We discussed our personal backgrounds and it turned out that he was actually from the UK and that he had emigrated to New Zealand only 3 years ago. To me this was kind of astonishing. He definitely spoke in a strong Antipodean twang. I know that exposure to new people and cultures can change the words, slang and phrases that you use. We have a relatively new guy at work who uses the word 'legend' quite a lot, as in phrases like 'Will Smith - he's an absolute legend!" or 'If Rangers win the cup, it will be totally legend!', and I find that now I am doing the same. But how long does it take to totally lose your original accent completely? I suppose it depends on whether you work at losing it. My Dad left the Republic of Ireland for the UK when he was 21, never went back and he always spoke in a thick Irish accent until the day he died. Nobody except the family could understand a word he said.

Post grinds to a halt as Jerry forgets the point of what he was trying to say...
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've found that the assimiltion comes quickly enough. One tires of haveing to repeat everything you've just said to a shopkeeper because they've not listned to your request, but focussed on your accent instead. And I imagine theat New Zealanders would think nothing of taking the piss out of an English accent, even people they might have only just met. That would have to get boring after a while.

Friday, May 23, 2008 10:11:00 am
medusa said...

My grandfather had a german accent, but his kids claim they never realized it (he died when my mother was in her early 20's and the other kids still at home.) Not too long ago, they had an old reel-to-reel tape of his converted to digital and listened to it, and were all surprised to hear that he really did have an accent - when they lived with him they were so used to it they never noticed it.

Saturday, May 24, 2008 2:15:00 pm

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