As an official representative in New Zealand of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and That Other Bit We Don't Talk About I've tasked myself with writing a rebuttal to my now world-famous list of things Kiwis do that put Brits to shame. It's a not-insubstantial task, not least since the things I miss about home tend to be a specific group of people rather than the football hooligans and the rats. Anyway here goes. Just remember: if you disagree with any of these, you're wrong. 1. TVPop quiz. What manner of creature is this? This is what's known as a "Kardashian". If you even consider watching TV in the N of Z you'll no doubt be confronted by several of this species, and others, since your viewing options basically amount to Made In The Real Housewives Of Keeping Up With The Bachelor, or reruns of shows from countries beginning with "United". Occasionally they might throw in some news or another episode of bloody Shortland Street but your options are still limited and you may find yourself resorting to things you didn't think existed outside of vaguely-racist parodies of the place; such as the World Sheep Shearing Championships (which I stumbled over recently). Man I miss the BBC. On the plus side they still run infomercials here during their incredibly drawn-out ad breaks. These are always an exciting blend of idiots failing to use day-to-day objects in monochrome, and the same super-excited New Zealand accented voice over telling you to HOLD EVERYTHING! because if you CALL NOW! you'll get a free blender and a book on wasps. 2. Home InsulationLook, before I say this I acknowledge that there's a perfectly good earthquake-shaped reason why a lot of houses in this country are made of wood rather than bricks. I get it; bricks falling on heads is a lot more of a problem than a giant piece of flat-pack furniture tipping over. That said there's no earthly reason why none of the houses here seem to be designed to stay at a temperature different to "The Weather". To add to the climatological woes, pathetic electric heaters (which are environmentally dreadful) replace vigorous gas central heating in a lot of places. Mine is currently broken. "Double glazing" is a term mostly reserved for cakes too; although occasionally they'll nail a sheet of acrylic to the window frame in a bizarre facsimile of the real thing. Currently the best solution in my residence is the lounge-based heat pump that sputters along divulging lukewarm puffs of air that smells of damp and Legionnaires Disease. 3. Shopping ChoiceNew Zealand: I went to great lengths to extol your generous shopping hours in my last post, the least you could do is give me something to buy. I'm not even particularly worried about the lack of ready meals (of which there are almost none), and maybe I've been ruined by giant hypermarkets and commercialisation blah blah blah *puts on hipster flat-cap and moans about the modern era*, but I miss having the option of cereal that isn't either muesli or Organic muesli. I want lamb mince that isn't 98.3% fat. I want orange juice that isn't a bottle full of pulp you have to drink with a pick-axe. Heck, while I'm dreaming, I want to be able to buy pots, shirts, a memory card, a book on wasps, and some caramel digestives in the same store. Is that too much to ask? Their inability to make decent sausages is also a continuing disappointment. All this beef or (worse) "beef flavoured" business is fine and dandy if you're from Yorkshire and were raised in a ditch, but finding reasonably priced Cumberlands with actual pig in them is beyond impossible. This stings particularly seeing as how meat is (gram for gram) one of the cheaper foods here: all the veg being home grown means to afford your average cucumber you first need to sell your lungs. 4. DrivingI took an Uber to work this morning and my pleasant Fijian driver told me at length how courteous all the drivers here were. The takeaway from that, is that drivers in Fiji operate giant spiked death machines and communicate entirely in gunshots, because drivers here are dicks. The countryside is noteworthy for stringent speed limits and tailgating; if you're really lucky you'll be able to move over and let past the pickup truck that's been harassing you for the last eight hundred kilometres without crashing into a farm. But the cities aren't exactly problem free since they exist in some bizarre superposition of mostly intersections (boo) and the occasional, reluctant, roundabout (yay). I mean I'm sure there are other countries where turning traffic gets a green light at the same time as the pedestrians, but that doesn't make me feel any less likely to be smeared into mulch by an overeager bogan in a pimped out Subaru. 5. LocationI'm going to try and phrase this as tactfully as I can without explicitly referencing a certain event that transpired last year in the UK. In any case (perhaps on a more serious note) the locals in Kiwitopia are almost without-exception very jealous of how conveniently us Britishers can hop on a plane/train/ferry and be in another country in a matter of minutes. You don't quite appreciate how isolated this fair land is until you've been here and your average vacation deal is "Cheap flights to Fiji for only $800 per limb!". It probably explains the prevalence of holiday homes here (which they inexcusably call a "bach", pronounced "batch") but damn do I really appreciate how easy it is (for now...) to go on weekend city breaks when you live in—say—Bristol as opposed to a tiny hamlet outside Dunedin (Google it) surrounded by wind and penguins.
Oh and if you're a New Zealand local, you might have to Google "trains" too. They're rarer than actual kiwis.
1 Comment
Tracy Abbott
12/6/2017 07:48:23 pm
Love this! Thank you - so accurate.
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Author28 year old computer scientist/physicist with major depressive disorder, a need to write, and a deep-rooted mistrust of beetroot. Categories
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