> > 3) You can name more than 12 towns which were once known as "The Hellhole of the South Pacific"
>
> Why?

It's just one of those things. The first Europeans to come here in any numbers were whalers, sealers, and generally disreputable nautical types. So nowadays every small, harmless seaside town likes to brag about how it was once really a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

> > 19) The sound of Howard Morrison singing "How Great Thou Art" was surgically implanted into your mind at birth and you know you will never be able to wipe the memory completely

It's hard to explain Howard Morrison. He's one of those 1940s-style easy listening type guys who has apparently lived forever unchangingly, a la Cliff Richard. The song is a hymn which he popularised in God-alone-knows what decade, and for some reason it's become so deeply entrenched in the national psyche that there's no escaping it, whether you like it or not.

> > 21) You cried when Billy T. James died

Oh, poor Billy T. He was the greatest (some cynics would say the only) of the great NZ comedians. He had a radio show and then a TV show throughout the late '70s and '80s and passed away tragically some time ago. IMHO, the whole country has gone seriously downhill since that day.

> > 23) You know why it was funny when Split Enz sang about how "the sound of Te Awamutu had a truly sacred ring"
> > 24) You have been to Te Awamutu but so far have always managed to escape again

They did a song which started "She came all the way from America, she had a blind date with destiny, and the sound of Te Awamutu had a truly sacred ring". Te Awamutu is one of those small towns of painful mediocrity that gets used in jokes a lot, and although it has a population of about two men and a dog, for some reason everywhere you go you seem to meet thousands of people who say they originally came from there. There's nothing actually awful about it, it's just so ... sort of ... Te Awamutu.

> You do know that that's actually "27 Signs", no? You did that just to keep us on our toes, right? 27 for the price of 25. I'll take it.

LOL. I hadn't noticed. I wrote the subject heading first and then thought of the last two just before I posted it.

Brunnen-"what are the odds on someone from Te Awamutu reading this and flaming me?"G