English or American?

Every now and again my friends here will teasingly comment that it is a shame I have not yet learned to speak English. There is a seemingly ever-growing list of things that I have not yet learned how to say correctly.

One word on which we have agreed to disagree is aluminum, or as kiwis say, aluminium. We have agreed that since our respective countries spell the word differently, we can pronounce it differently. That being said, the jury is still out on which country spells it right :)

Something we have not yet reached an agreement on is the correct pronunciation of the name of the Australian city of Melbourne. I pronounce it the way it is spelled but when kiwis say it, it sounds like "Mel-bin." Despite claims of that being the correct pronunciation, I have my doubts. I pointed out "color" is spelled "colour" here, but is pronounced the same way as in American, not as if there is "in" on the end. This apparently was not a valid argument for my pronunciation of Melbourne being correct.

"Ta" is a way to say thank you. It's quite informal; I might hand someone at work something off the printer and they would respond with "ta." I have not yet worked this into my vocabulary, but maybe someday.

Some other fun phraseology:
"How ya goin?" Means how are you, how's your day, everything all right, that sort of thing.

"Good on you!" This means good for you, that's great.

"That's all right." Used the same as "you're welcome."

"Good as gold." I hear this around the office a lot, often when someone gets the desired answer to a question, they say "Oh yea, that's good as gold, mate."

"Sweet as bro."  This is probably something that falls under the slang category. It can be interpreted as "cool" or "that's awesome dude."  I rarely use it, but when I do there is always at least one kiwi that gets excited :)

Last but not least, what do you wear to the beach in New Zealand? Togs and jandals of course! Now jandals I figured out pretty quick, not far off from sandals, so yea, sweet as. But Togs. TOGS? Huh? They don't say bathing suit, they don't say swimsuit, they rarely even say trunks or bikini, they say togs. I have been told I sound old-fashioned when I say "swimsuit", which makes me laugh :)
In case there is any confusion as to what togs are, here is an informational video :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC1GUmwzUNw