This is not the socialist paradise you’re looking for
You’ve probably heard of New Zealand, even if you don’t know much about it. You know it’s somewhere, vaguely, down around Australia…ish. What you do know: it’s a magical land of environmental purity, pacifism, and hobbits or something.
Which is great, because if favoured presidential candidate X doesn’t get elected in 2016, you’re totally moving to New Zealand. You might even go on reddit to do some research. Hey, you even threw in a bit of te reo to show how different and special you are. Kiwis will love you, right?
Assuming you even qualify for immigrant status (lol), there’s a few things you should know before upping sticks. So swap out the rose tints for a proper prescription.
Rugby is not our national sport
Mercilessly mocking you and your deepest and most dearly held beliefs is. And we’ll do it with a straight face so you won’t be able to tell if we’re serious or just joshing. You can give back as good as you get or you can beat us at our own game and get to the punchline first. Don’t bother getting offended, that will only make it worse. Your best bet is not to be genuinely passionate about anything. Except rugby and drinking. Everyone’s passionate about that.
Kumbaya my lord
… sang no one in New Zealand, ever. I’m pretty sure there’s a special dispensation in our strict gun control laws that allows us to shoot anyone singing Kumbaya (also anything in Elvish) on sight. Call it cultural self-defense. While we’re not all freewheeling hippies, we do hold things like universal healthcare and social safety nets quite dear. We pay higher taxes to fund them out of our generally lower incomes, but you’d have a fight on your hands to take them off us. Mental health services are viciously underfunded with the result that our suicide rates — especially among youth and Māori — are particularly worrying.
The kumara does not sing of its own sweetness
Oh, you have a degree from an Ivy League university? Your bonus at Goldman Sachs was half a mill last year? Look at how impressed I am right now. We don’t care. We care about who you are. And right now, it sounds like you think you’re better than us. We already feel inferior, like, 99 percent of the time (except in rugby and drinking). You’ll need to become familiar with Tall Poppy Syndrome. It’s this thing where people who think they’re all that get collectively shamed for ‘over-achieving.’ This is not a positive trait for Kiwis in general. Luckily, it’s changing slowly. In the meantime, your sense of American Exceptionalism is probably going to just piss people off.
Clean, green, obscene
So you’ve seen the ads: 100% ‘it’s a brand, not a guarantee’ Pure New Zealand. You’ve imagined hiking through lush rainforests, and swimming on pristine beaches. Well, you can still do that. Hundreds of thousands of Kiwis do. What we can’t do is ignore the poor environmental record that’s seen many of our rivers polluted by runoff from agriculture (our major industry) and deemed unsafe to swim in. Or the plight of endemic sea mammals like Maui’s and Hector’s Dolphins, which are extremely rare. Soz, dolphins.
We’re at the arse-end of nowhere
There are no weekend trips home from New Zealand. If you want to leave the country, it takes your whole weekend just to travel wherever you’re going. There’s no spring break in Puerto Vallarta, no last-minute trip to Mardi Gras, popping up to Montreal or a week of retail therapy in Paris. It takes 12 hours to get half-way to anywhere, 17 if you do it on the cheap. Except for Australia. There’s always plenty to explore in the South Pacific – just don’t expect foam parties and the international DJ circuit to turn up in Honiara or Port Vila. On the other hand, with the money you save on blow in TJ this Christmas, you can instead make a roadtrip out of our oversized roadside novelties. And don’t forget the Bucket Fountain, may its splashy goodness be upon you.
Oh. Watch out for Moa. They are the unspoken menace.
That being said…
The land of the long white cloud is fucking awesome, and those of us who do call it home are generally proud to do so. If the prospects of lower wages, higher taxes, gun control, 6pm store closings, and half-strength G&Ts don’t sound too awful to bear, you’ll be rewarded with a laid-back lifestyle, plenty of laughs, rugby and binge drinking. This way to immigration.govt.nz.
Lynda Brendish is from New Zealand, where she presumably plays rugby and drinks.
***
Time zones are the bane of my existence. I know that sounds melodramatic, but here’s the thing about New Zealand: it’s a tiny, isolated island at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The closest significant landmass to us is Australia, a mere 1,500km (or 900 miles) away. We share a time zone with a few other small Pacific Island nations and one region of Russia’s coast.
For most people, day-to-day, that doesn’t matter. Where it does have a huge effect: when you want to travel, and when you have friends in different time zones.
I fall solidly into both those categories.
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Time zones make sense; they’re a necessity in the modern age. I get that. But it makes communicating with the people you care about a slight inconvenience at best. At worst it’s stressful enough to make you burst into tears when your Skype starts to ring.
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New Zealand is also right next to the International Date Line – we’re the first country in the world to see the dawn. Which was particularly cool in 2000. It’s less cool when it’s 5pm on a Tuesday and the rest of the world is stuck in Monday night.
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Sometimes the longing to talk to friends – to just let them know that I’m thinking about them, that I miss them, that I wish we were together drinking beer or eating cake, that I just have to message them, even though they definitely aren’t online and probably aren’t awake.
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Okay so there are some pretty cool loopholes thanks to time zones. Movies are released in New Zealand on a Thursday. Which works out to almost a 48-hour head start when things line up in the right way. This is rare, though, and it’s a small comfort.
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There’s a somewhat-common refrain through my pocket of the Internet. It’s a desire for a return to Pangea; that if the distance and the differences were smaller, the missing would be less.
I’m skeptical.
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Sometimes time zones are magical, though. There’s something so beautiful about waking up with your friends at 3am to watch the All Blacks (national rugby team, basically as big a celebrity as you get in New Zealand) play England or South Africa or whoever else is trying to topple them on any given day.
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Living in New Zealand makes you brutally, painfully aware of just how big the world is, and how far away we are from everything. This is in small things like the price of shipping our online shopping, or the crackle over the long-distance phone call.
Mostly, it’s waking up in the morning and remembering that the person you love isn’t down the street, but 10,000 miles and 7 hours difference away.
Caitlin Anderson also lives in New Zealand, where she specializes in making Mallory tear up.
Tags: caitlin anderson, commonwealth day, lynda brendish, new zealand, oh my god what are foam parties, what does soz mean
Stop hogging the bylines, Mallory >:[
I liked this tho. Lots of great stuff, partial to the time zone talk in particular. Fuck time zones, for real
It’s an amalgam of reader-submitted stories, Danzy! I’m not going to create author accounts for that; that takes a bunch of MY VALUABLE BLOGGING TIME.
Also Lynda and Caitlin are just elaborate alter egos of mine. This entire site is a catfish.
I can confirm I’m just Mallory’s alter ego.
Just create the one and call it “Toastroid Contributors” or something! Then you can fill the bio with details re: the platonic ideal of a toastroid
Then I gotta go find a picture for Gravatar and it takes forever!
This girl I’ve known since childhood got the jesus real bad about ten years ago, and apparently Jesus told her to go spread the word in NZ. She’s since come home, married her pastor’s ten-years-younger son, and gone back for more gospel-spreadin’ fun in NZ. Last I heard from her, there was a grumpy “this is what socialist medicine gets you” newsletter saying her husband might not be accepted for a visa/citizenship (idk) because he has a heart problem. Lady, you want to go to a foreign country and play 19th-century missionary to 21st-century indigenous folk, I think the kiwis get the final say here.
Good for you, New Zealand. Make it difficult for people to live out their weird fantasies in your home– we have enough places around the world do to it already.
I am snorting at my desk at the phrase “got the jesus real bad”. It’s perfection.
Wait, 10 years younger than she is or 10 years younger than his dad?
he’s ten years younger than her. they got married when he was 20.
New Zealand is a tie for my favorite (favourite?!) accent ever. The tie is with Scottish accent. Take comfort in that, Kiwis!
Oh man I went to see Rhys Darby do some stand up and he did a cow pooping clapping routine that no one but me laughed at because I guess N.Z. and Lancaster, Pa. are the only places where you grow up watching cows poop?
Thanks for this, Caitlin.
I saw Rhys Darby do stand-up in LA around 2007. He did this awesome bit about Rainbows End, which is New Zealand’s only theme park. (it’s kind of like the Little Lebowski Urban Achiever of theme parks). It was hilarious, but I think I was the only one who got the jokes. I assume his comedy has got broader since then.
Take me back to the rainbow, that rainbow kind of magic. Rainbow, rainbow, rainbow’s end, that rainbow magic. Great fuuuuuun at raiiiiinbow’s END.
On reflection, that probably sounds a lot better in the original ad, where a group of four Samoan guys sing it barbershop style.
I’ve been reading The Toast ever since it started and I love it dearly…I’m a fellow Kiwi and I had to create an account to commend the writers of this piece because it is SO RIGHT ON.
I would have stood up and applauded but I’m in a library = inappropriate.
As a Kiwi and a friend of librarians, I encourage you to stand up and applaud. It’s just what the libraryin’ world needs right now.
I think the main thing about New Zealand is that it’s acceptable to be barefoot anywhere there. Offices! Public ferries! I guess when you’re 900 miles from anywhere, it’s just like, why not?
this is INCORRECT. please cease spreading lies immediately. barefoot tourists are the bane of our shared lives. if you are in fact a kiwi, i refer you to the togs/undies ad.
Hahaha, I don’t know. I’m not a Kiwi but my husband worked there for a short time a few years back and his definitely-Kiwi officemates went barefoot. Perhaps the people I saw on the ferry were evil tourists though? I kept my shoes on while visiting, I promise.
No but seriously I want to know more about this barefoot thing. Who does it? Who hates that people do it? Tell me everything.
I mean, our footpaths are just as gross as yours. I would say, literally no one does it in the office? Where was your husband working? Hamilton? I guess it depends on the ferry. If it’s just a little ferry that lasts five minutes and takes you from one beach to the next, shoes aren’t mandatory. If you’re in a little town you could get away with no shoes in the supermarket if it’s mid-summer… We’re more relaxed in January, but the undies/togs rule is a very important one, and if you come back you should memorise it, or someone will spit in your flat white.
A New Zealander here to clarify her perspective on the shoeless thing. Certainly back in the day it was so – growing up in the early 80s I seldom wore shoes in summer. And I was weirded out by the fuss a few years back when Britanny went into a service station barefoot – that’s totally something I might do. But the previous poster is right – it’s a bit togs / undies. Not ok in the city, not ok in the workplace (though I tried telling this to a bloke I teach with who doesn’t wear shoes EVEN IN WINTER and is working with IMPRESSIONABLE YOUNG PEOPLE, but he just kept on doing it, so maybe I just need to get over my grown people feet issues.
Oh, and I sang a LOT of Kumbaya as a young person – Lynda can never have gone on Brownie Camp.
He worked in Wellington, BUT it was an office full of geologists, who are notoriously casual the world over, so perhaps that explains it. This was oh… 5 years ago? And there were many barefoot folk on the ferry from the North to South Island. But clearly I stand corrected about how acceptable this is! Probably I was too jet-lagged to notice their fellow Kiwis giving them the stink-eye. 🙂
I YouTubed the undie/togs video and it was hilarious, so thanks for that.
this rugby business though
Wait, does anyone actually think “Kumbaya” is from New Zealand? It’s totally a U.S. thing.
No, I don’t think anyone thinks that; I believe her point was that people who think of NZ as a perfectly peaceful paradise are more than a little off.
I figured that out after I posted. I was thinking about deleting it, but I thought I’d let my lack of reading comprehension stand.
Kiwis! Hello my dears, lovely writing!
Also, pronunciation of Māori – I swear we used to say Mao-ri when I was young (mao to rhyme with cow) and in the last few years people started saying it more like moor-ee with a slight rolling of the R. I’ve been told the newer one is correct. Right?
yeah, apparently correct Māori pronounciation doesn’t include dipthongs, so you’re meant to articulate each vowel separately – “Ma – or – i”, very fast.
Mao like Mao like the Chairman, then rolled-R ree.
But if you want to get it completely right, here you go: http://www.korero.maori.nz/forlearners/basics/pro…
I thought it was like a nasal “Moh” then with the tongue-tipped R.
I dated a guy from New Zealand. He was terrible, but he was really actually Canadian and had a bug up his you-know-what about NZ. Hated it there. (I think maybe he was traumatized by the rough-and-tumble culture y’all describe.) He didn’t even have an accent, after having lived there most of his life, because he trained himself out of it. So, that’s another reason why I give New Zealand the benefit of the doubt.
Is this where I can admit that I always imagine New Zealand being north of Australia, as if the space between Australia and China was so much bigger that there is another row in between with New Zealand?
The longer I am staring at this google map the worse I feel about it.
Wait, isn’t that New Guinea? If people would quit it with the “new” already. What I want to know if the location of Old Zealand.
Zeeland, Holland.
All I think I know of New Zealand is (oh god I’m sorry for how insulting this is already) is Top of The Lake. Soooo, beautiful, yet a rapey wasteland if you’re a woman, I guess : / I’d be curious to hear if NZ’ers found it offensive.
Personally I loved Top of the Lake because it was a well-written, well-acted, female-driven drama that showed a darker side of New Zealand. No, we’re not all rapists and meth-heads, but I think it’s just as insulting to think we’re all happy hobbits and noble savages… I loved that Top of the Lake touched on some of the complexities of Kiwi life, but it could have just as easily been set in a rural Alaskan or Scandinavian town, I think.
I’m excited for this because I have a soft spot for NZ. Thanks for this. 🙂 Let’s Hear It For New Zealand! (riff on title of piece.)
Also, Christchurch has a cardboard cathedral. That is interesting. However, I am very sorry about your bad earthquake troubles. 🙁 I do think you have a very beautiful country and hope all goes well in the future.
A further post to say that should any Toast readers come to my corner of NZ, you can be guaranteed that in my home I will most definitely not serve you a half-strength G&T 🙂
But try ordering one at a bar. You will be teh sad.
Truth! You usually end up with a watery lemon-tinged beverage 🙁
Why do you do this to me NZ? Now having second thoughts about my upcoming move. Please tell me that your delicious wine is not just a myth?
No, the wine is spectacular. Particularly if you like dry whites.
Need to have a tiny rant. I work in mental health and while it is somewhat underfunded, there are literally thousands of people working their arses off to reduce our suicide rates and improve life for those with experience of mental illness. The Like Minds programme is a world leader in destigmatisation. John Kirwan has done more for male mental health than anyone else in our nation’s history. Neither of these initiatives would be there without significant funding. And it’s not actually about funding services. No two people will take their lives for the same reasons, and most people who take their lives do so for an overwhelming number of reasons.
Maori are more at risk of suicide because (pick any) of cultural alienation, poverty, lack of education, lack of leadership, family violence, drug use, social isolation, inequality, higher involvement in crime, reduced likelihood to cope with relationship breakdowns, traditional understandings of mental health don’t jell with modern understandings, traditional understandings inhibit accessing help, on and on, ad infinitum. Adding more beds to a psych ward actually would do jack shit about this. These are all massive, horrible problems, and throwing money at them without any deeper consideration will not be effective.
Basically, my point is, funding mental healthcare is just one thing we need to do as a country to reduce suicide rates. Because while we have a government that wants shiny results for minumum expenditure, every NZer could take some personal responsibility for making life better for each other, for actually listening to what is causing people distress, and doing what we can to help. Facilitating help seeking, destigmatising mental illness, encouraging employers to get on board with positive mental health programmes, teaching kids when they’re little about mental health and wellbeing, staying in touch with friends who may be struggling, and not just burying our heads in the sand and saying “oh, it just needs more FUNDING'” would go a long way toward reducing our suicide rates.
I have got to say, the Christchurch All Right? campaign has been amazingly successful in helping out colleagues and students in a hellish third winter in our gorgeous, beat up city. It facilitates help seeking, destigmatises feeling shit, and promotes positive mental health in a non-didactic, scolding way. I love it. And I love the mental health pros who helped put it together.
http://www.healthychristchurch.org.nz/priority-ar…
Oh I completley 100% agree. The people in MH are hardworking, Maori suicide rates are higher because of a confluence of factors, funding mental health care is only one part of the puzzle. What I wanted to allude to, that might not have come across so well (I did cut out some stuff that might have made it clearer) is that: despite great things like universal health care, we are failing in some areas and have some social issues we need to think seriously (as a country and individually) about how to resolve. Suicide jumps out at me because it’s one I’ve been personally affected by in my family, so it’s top of the mind for me.
I will say that the underfunding to me, comes from the shutdowns of mental health crisis centres and I guess a perceived lack of help and support that was there for my step-dad.
I was more trying to provide a balanced view – the good and the bad, and its difficult to do that in a mostly-humourous piece of a few hundred words.
Oh I know, and I’m sorry, I kind of just conflated you with the media there. Their narrative is NOBODY IS DOING ANYTHING ABOUT SUICIDE without any analysis or insight into what is actually being done. I would absolutely agree that universal healthcare is not the panacea we’d like it to be, and there is VAST room for improvement in the area of mental health in terms of what the gov’t could be doing. But I’d like to see ordinary people doing things too, instead of shaking their heads when the annual figures are released and then just moving on with their lives.
I’m terribly sorry to hear you’ve been affected by suicide. The loss of three friends to suicide is what inspired me to go into mental health, and I can’t imagine how awful it would be to lose a family member. I hope your family got the support they needed – sometimes it can be hard to know what help is out there.
I've spent some time in the UK with Brit friends, and it took me a while to process the idea that when they called me a silly cow it was out of love and not utter scorn. At least, I think it was out of love…
I love All Right? Their "burst of all right" at the Tenors the other day was brilliant! http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/christchurch-lif…
Everyone who's working on that campaign deserves a dozen gold stars.I love the website, too. Love the cartoons, the crowd-sourced posters, the Facebook page, it's all brilliant!