New Zealand - Dunedin - 'O' for 'Awesome'

This university town is nestled into the rolling fairytale pasture hills of the coast of South Island. Saturday mornings they hold a sizeable farmer's market at the train station with everything from fresh blackberries to lamb kebabs, and it's the one place to get cheap produce in town. The shops all close on Sundays, and everyone's out and about in the parks. Everything is within walking distance, although Mike is adamantly anti-walking at most times, so we've been flagging down the buses a fair bit, with success being 50-50... I'm quite surprised how often the bus drivers fully ignore you at the stop and keep going. If you really need to catch that bus for sure, you pretty much have to jump in front of it on the road!

Contrasted with this Pleasantville lifestyle, there is a social, ready to party energy that radiates from the University of Otago. There are a million pubs and bars around, sports events and concerts on regular rotation, and generally at least one front lawn of afternoon beer drinkers per block throughout Dunedin. While that may sound like a generic description of any university town, there is plenty of personality here as well. For instance, when walking downtown with Ashley to the farmer's market on Saturday, she pointed out Loose Hair Salon and whispered that there were never any customers inside. Glancing in the window as we passed, she was right. And not only no customers, there was no evidence of business period. It was a white room with a few barber chairs and a till on a small table in the rear. The only person inside was an older Asian lady, who was brushing her teeth while watching the street. Can anyone say dodgy? I can't decide if it's a racketeering front or if that woman is illegally living in a commercially zoned space.

Or better yet, let's look at the kids running around Dunedin. When they're not dressed up in their whites to spend 10 hours of their Saturday playing the world's longest game, cricket, in a little league, their parents randomly let them run around in costume. Maybe it's a Halloween envy complex, since they don't have it down here, but seriously, the number of times I've seen a small Spiderman running around the grocery store or a Dora the Explorer skipping down the sidewalk is unbelievable. Not that I disapprove... I wish my parents had let me dress up in costume when we left the house as a kid. It's certainly good for a laugh now and for perking up otherwise dreary or unremarkable days.

And I should be fair... it's not just the kids who like to dress up. I attended the big professional rugby game on the weekend, where more than half the stadium had gone all out to support their team. Otago fans had dusted off their best blue and yellow ensembles, even painting all exposed skin in the team colours. Canterbury fans dotted the crowd in red and black as well. And let's not forget to mention their abundance of funny hats to complete their outfits. I'm pretty sure there were more adults decked out in costumes at that game than children.

Now, Mike, Ashley and myself had been talked into said rugby match on the pretext that it was THE sporting event of the year in Dunedin. Pretty big claim. Ah, but this was the level just under international league, we were told. And an epic rivalry, as the Otago Hilanders were playing the Canterbury Crusaders, the neighbouring province. Kind of like if the Leafs played the Canadiens in the NHL, we were told. A pretty big deal. Alright, said we. If it's THE sporting event of the season, we'd better go.




Sigh. It turned out to be THE (WORST) sporting event of the year. Otago's team hasn't really been much good in the past five years, and Canterbury was missing a few of its star players due to injuries. And it showed. The game was pretty crap. Each team dropped the ball without cause five or six times during the game. And the score was pitiful. It wasn't due to excellent defense, that's for sure. Otago managed to fumble into a try in the last five minutes of the game (at least, that's what I was told happened... Ashley and I had stopped paying attention part way through the first half) and then grabbed another 3 points on a penalty kick. Lame-o. Otago then had the nerve to brag that this was the first time that Canterbury had ever been held to zero in a game. I wouldn't broadcast that, boys. That game was an embarrassment, although it did provide an excellent opportunity to observe the crowds and get a glimpse into rugby fever.

The Kiwi crowds are pretty crazy and harsh for such a mellow, otherwise easy going culture. Upon each fumble or error, they chant loudly in unison "you f---ed up, you f---ed up!". Even to the poor ball boy on the sidelines when he tripped. He couldn't have been more than twelve. Otago fans were happy to cheer the victory and assault the Canterbury fans after the great victory too. Beer was sprayed everywhere, notably all over my right side. Two streakers made it onto the field, and holy cow, those security guys are way faster than they look. Might have been a better game if they'd played - they were made better tackles on those streakers than we had seen all through the game. Outside the stadium, a bunch of Otago boys swarmed a guy wearing a Canterbury shirt and dumped about ten beers on him.

Half time was also filled with entertaining antics. They had a giveaway of some kind. One guy was wearing a brown cloak and had to run across to the other end of the field while four other guys, plus the team mascots and the midget stadium host, tried to stop him. Or so we thought. Once they caught him, they seemed to be stripping off his clothes. Which was hilarious and baffling. Until we worked out that he had prize money stashed under the cloak, which was what they were after. The next giveaway, they had four girls trying to land a ball into a boat (again, did not understand the logistics of the competition) from about ten metres away. None of them were even close. So they gave them another go. Which resulted in even more embarrassing misses. And another go, when by sheer chance, one girl managed to ricochet the ball in off a guard rail. Don't even know what she won, but it saved us from watching the train wreck of effort they were putting into this game.

More importantly, at this time I also learned the origins of the expression 'O' for 'Awesome'. Heavyweight boxing champ David Tua appeared on NZ's version of Wheel of Fortune in the mid 1990s and when asked for a consonant, he requested 'O' for 'Awesome', which became a legendary moment of New Zealand's modern history. Indeed, Kiwis pronounce 'awesome' as 'o-some'. All in all, the day panned out. After all, as one of Mike's friends said, we experienced more of Kiwi culture in that hour and a half of bad rugby than we would in an average week of traveling around New Zealand. Fair enough.