Observations: The Good, the Bad, and the Unusual

This section will be an ongoing collection of observations that I have made since I've been here. This is a strange place-this Kiwiland-and there are no shortages of differences from the American way of life.

The Good:
1) Auckland is a very multicultural city. It seems that there are people here from every country and culture in the world and for the most part everyone gets along. I see people walking down the street that I have no idea where they could be from as there are some interesting-looking people around. This is very different from Pittsburgh which is a pretty homogeneous town. I like the multicultural influence of the city.

2) As a result of 1) above, the food selection is terrific (for the most part - see some things they are missing in the bad section below). There is a place called Food Alley just up the street from my office that has about 15 different Asian food places all of which are delicious. A huge meal costs less than $10 NZD which is about $6 USD. There are a ton of Doner Kebab stands which are fabulous. I'm sure we have Doner Kebabs in some places in the U.S. but not really in Pittsburgh that I'm aware of. For those of you who don't know what Doner Kebabs are, they are a Turkish food, generally lamb or chicken, smashed together into a big meat conglomerate and put on a spit that spins around slowly cooking the meat. It is then shaved off and put in sort of a pita or flatbread. I always get chili and garlic sauce on mine but you can get other weird sauces as well.

3) The office that I work in has a bunch of other expats. It seems that, typically, the Kiwis work here for a few years then go on their "OE" which stands for Overseas Experience. This can last years and often forever. Therefore, there are a lot of jobs that need to be filled by people with around my level of experience. Looking around my office, I would say that significantly more than half of the people with between 4 and 6 years of experience are expats like myself (I have 4 years of experience come this January). Most of the expats are from England, but there are several others from the U.S., Ireland, Scotland, several Dutch, French, Vietnamese, and others. This makes it a fun place as there are a lot of other people looking to go out and explore the area on weekends or holidays and makes for a close-knit group of people.

4) The Kiwis are a very active group of people. They enjoy getting out and doing things like running, biking, hiking, and playing other sports. In fact, Auckland just had its annual Auckland Marathon. I think that over 100 people in our office participated (some did half or quarter marathons). I can't think of 10 people that would have done this in Pittsburgh. I've tried to join in the active lifestyle here. I signed up for a half marathon in February (as of today (Nov. 29), I would certainly die if I had to race this but I'll let you know if things change over the next couple of months. I also joined a touch rugby team, a rowing thing (called "DragonBoating"), and am thinking about playing a bit of lacrosse again as there is apparently a local league that I just found out about. These are some major strides from previous activities that I participated in such as sitting on the couch and watching TV and movies or doing auditing marathons.

5) The country is absolutely beautiful and the people are proud of this. If you talk to anyone around here, they will have a million suggestions of things you should go do and see and I'm sure that all of them are worthwhile.

6) You can pay for cab fare using credit cards or EFTPOS and it is not a big deal. EFTPOS is like our debit cards and people here use it for everything. In most cities, it is impossible to pay for a cab using a credit card or else they make a big deal about it, but not here which is refreshing.

7) There is no tipping. Other than perhaps at a fancy restaurant where you might go for a wedding anniversary or some other special occasion, there is no tipping. You do not tip cab drivers, waiters/waitresses, bars, etc.

8) Tax is already built in to everything. What you see on the price tag is what you pay. When I bought my car here there was no additional tax which saved me hundreds of dollars.

9) There is something called ACC coverage that everyone here has. It a program where the government pays the medical costs associated with any accidents. Apparently, if you get injured in any way, you don't have to pay anything to get it taken care of. I think this is a great program, and it gets rid of a lot of ridiculous lawsuits. A guy I work with was playing netball (kind of like basketball) and took an elbow to the lip. He had to get a few stitches. The doctor asked him if it was an accident so he told him how it happened. The doctor declared it to be an accident and sent him on his way. No unnecessary paperwork and no bill.

10) When there is construction, the Kiwis like to put up big billboards or plywood, but they decorate these with hand-painted artwork. It makes the area look very nice and some of the artwork is pretty impressive. Sometimes it is pictures and other times advertisements, but even the advertisements are handpainted. I even walked by one the other day that was a piece of plywood with a bunch of chalk hanging off of it on strings and it allowed people to draw or write whatever they wanted. Surprisingly, there weren't even any middle fingers or choice words on the board either.

11) There is a great cafe culture here. While there are some chain restaurants (and it is nice to get a little comfort food from McDonald's or Wendy's once in a while), most of the restaurants are one-off places. Also, there are little cafes all over the city and people take some time out to go there and enjoy a snack or a coffee while sitting outside and watching the people go by. It's very refreshing, really. They have great coffee at these places, too, that come in big cups the size of bowls. I haven't even been to Starbucks once yet here because of this.

12) I'm still not really into wine, but apparently New Zealand makes some of the best (at least white wine) in the world. I do really enjoy the wine festivals here, though - I think it's the sophisticated adult-version of an excuse to let loose.

13) Grain Waves - This is a branch of chips (or "crisps" here) that is quite delicious. It is no replacement for Doritos, but I bet I will miss them when I leave.

14) Meat Pies - we don't really have much of these in the U.S. They come in many flavors like Mince, Mince & Cheese, Mince & Double Cheese, Steak & Cheese, Pepper Steak, etc. They are delicious - especially with a little sweet chili sauce (see below). I prefer the cheap, pre-heated kinds that you can pick up at any gas ("petrol") station in town.

15) Sweet and Hot Chili sauce are plentiful and delicious. Used here about as commonly as ketchup ("tomato sauce").

16) You only need to show up about 20 minutes before domestic flights here. There are not ridiculous security rules (i.e. you don't have to take your shoes off to go through the metal detectors) and things are much easier. In fact, for my flight to the Great Barrier Islands, we didn't even go through a security line at all and didn't have to show any ID to collect our tickets.

The Bad:
1) Stores here tend to close at about 5:00 and many are not open on weekends. For those of us normal folks that work, this is not of the utmost convenience. In fact, speaking of convenience, there was just a new Convenience Store (That is actually its name - "Convenience Store") that opened up down the street from me. I was happy as this meant if I want to get some pop or a quick snack, I can just go there instead of the supermarket which is slightly further away and usually has long lines. However, this "Convenience Store" closes at around 7:00 at night or so (I haven't figured it out still as sometimes it is closed around 5:00 and others it is open at 10:00 still). Furthermore, I headed over there last Sunday morning and found out that it is not open on Sundays. I don't know about Saturdays yet, but I don't understand how it can call itself a "Convenience Store" with these types of hours.

2) I'll call this one the "Pharmacy Rule". A few weeks ago, I was feeling a bit sick like I had the flu or something coming on. I headed over to the pharmacy to get some over-the-counter medicine. When I showed up, there was a lady who started asking me a million questions like she was interrogating me (I assume she was the Pharmacist but who knows really). Anyway, after knowing all my symptoms, she picked out a medicine (something similar to Tylenal Cold&Flu I think), but when I went to pay, I had to give her my ID which she recorded. This was annoying, but apparently it is so I don't go make Crystal Meth with the drugs or something. Anyway, this is just the background info. So, the following weekend I got sunburned (apparently there is no ozone layer here and they blame that on America, but that's another story). I went to the supermarket and bought some groceries and picked up some Aloe lotion for my sunburn. I waited in the long checkout lines and the woman rang up my goods. When she got to the Aloe lotion she apologized and said that it is a "pharmacy item." Of course I thanked her for her observation and asked her to continue to ring me up. She said that she could not because it was a "pharmacy item" and I had to pay for it in the pharmacy. I told her that did not make any sense as it is only lotion and to please continue to ring me up. Again, she said that it is a "pharmacy item" and I must pay for it at the pharmacy. When I asked what the logic was behind this, all I was told is that it is a "pharmacy item." So I was fuming at this point, but there wasn't much I could do. I took my lotion to the pharmacy and paid for it there then had to go back and wait in the big line again. I asked them at the pharmacy why I had to pay for the lotion there and all they could say was "it is a pharmacy item." This explanation makes absolutely no sense to me. I understand if it is medicine like in my example above because maybe they need to track purchases to catch drug manufacturers. However, I will reiterate that I was buying Aloe lotion and last I checked I had not heard of people snorting or injecting Aloe lotion.

3) Traffic Lights and Round-Abouts. Well, I've already gotten over the fact that we have to drive on the left side of the road here, and it's really not all that bad after the first few weeks. However, the traffic in this city is terrible. It's a fairly large city (~1.3 million), but not nearly large enough to have such traffic problems. I attribute it to the ridiculous round-abouts and traffic lights that make absolutely no sense.
First of all, I'll discuss the round-abouts. For those of you in the U.S. that have never been to Europe or various other foreign countries, many of them have round-abouts in the road. This is when you come to an intersection, instead of having stop signs or stop lights, they have a circle that you enter and have to yield to cars coming on your right. Now, I think in some cases this makes sense. For instance, if the road is not extremely busy, then this allows the flow of traffic to keep up without having to stop unnecessarily at a light. However, once the traffic gets pretty thick, these no longer make any sense. All they do is slow everyone down and during rush-hour, there are extremely long lines of cars waiting to get on to the round-about. The problem is this: If there is essentially one main road (a highway or other busy road) off of the round-about that cars from multiple intersections are trying to get to, then the first group of cars onto the roundabout basically hold up the incoming cars at all of the other roads trying to get onto the roundabout. So I suppose they are good for one road, but bad for the other 3-4 trying to get on the roundabout. This drives me crazy when I have to drive to work at certain clients. Kiwis seem to be proud of their roundabouts, but I think this is only because the traffic lights here are awful as well.
The traffic lights here make me go insane. First of all, you are not allowed to turn left on red which makes no sense as it is the equivalent of turning right on red back home. Secondly, you have to wait forever at traffic lights. I think this is caused by several factors. All of the intersections here have about 6 roads that intersect - I have no idea why, but that is the case. Secondly, the lights are not timed well - during rush hour there is no extended greenlights for the main roads - therefore only about 8-10 cars in downtown on the main road get through the green light at any given time. Additionally, you cannot turn right on green until you get the green arrow. Even if there are no cars coming the other way, there is a red arrow that does not allow you to turn. Furthermore, it seems that the intersecting roads need to take turns to merge onto the main road. This is hard to explain, but if you are turning left onto a main road at a light and there are cars facing you that want to turn left (thus going the other direction), you would expect that both of these lanes would get green arrows at the same time since they are going opposite directions and there is no risk of them crashing into each other. This is not the case here - they take turns which just holds everyone else up. This also means that it takes forever to get a walk signal when you are a pedestrian trying to cross a busy street. Pure and unnecessary chaos.

4) The street signs are ridiculously small and misplaced (if they even exist at all) - I had to buy a navigation system my second day in this country.

5) You can get speeding tickets for going 11 Km/Hr over the speed limit. This is approximately 6 miles per hour. I know this from experience, but I think you can get tickets for exceeding the speed limit by even less. Also, they have speed cameras here so you can get unexpected speeding tickets in the mail.

6) There are no Doritos here. There are corn chips but they are not nearly as good. Also, I cannot find good pizza anywhere. They put barbecue sauce on all of their pizza - even at Pizza Hut. I am craving a good cut of Fiori's. Also, nobody likes anything spicy here. I guess I can get spicy Thai and stuff like that, but no good hot salsa. I've been trying to make my own but cannot find fresh jalapenos anywhere. When I order things as spicy here, they assume I want it "Kiwi Spicy" which means not spicy at all. One of my colleagues is Indian from Fiji and he took me to a good Fijian Indian restaurant. When I ordered mine "hot" he had to tell the person in Indian that I actually did want it "hot" as the person was going to make it mild anyway. (Update: I finally found some Doritos (well, actually my fellow American friends, Steve and Deon found them). They are in the international aisle at the Pack 'n Save by Sylvia Park Mall. Unfortunately, they only have 6-packs of little bags without a great selection, but it is a terrific taste of home to get once and a while)

7) There are no good choices of diet pop. The options are Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Sprite Zero, or Pepsi Max. I really want some Diet Doctor Pepper or a good Diet Cherry Coke. I cannot find regular of these drinks either. Also, there is no rootbeer but I can survive without that. (Update: I finally got some Diet Dr. Pepper. I asked the local convenience store owner if they could get some and he obliged. Unfortunately, it costs $2.50 per can but it's a nice treat once and a while).

8) In order to get internet service in my apartment, I needed a phone line set up. The cheapest phone line rate is $40 / month. I now have a phone in my apartment and have had it for 3 months but have never made or received a call on it and have paid $120 now (not to mention the $40 for the phone itself).

9) There are no normal deodorants here. I like a good stick deodorant or the Old Spice click-up kind. Now that I ran out of what I brought over, I had to go shopping for more and all I could find are spray-on (like Axe) or this gross, wet kind that you roll on and it makes your armpits wet for 10 minutes until they dry. Not too happy about this.

10) People are always pessimistic about the weather. I think it has been great since I arrived. We get rain on occasion, but it usually only lasts a few minutes then blows over. It seems like even on nice days people just say to enjoy it while it lasts. I don't get it, but I guess that is because I am used to Pittsburgh weather which is worse than most places.

11) Nobody can decide which side of the sidewalk to walk on. I know in Pittsburgh, we don't always formally walk on a certain side of the sidewalk, but here it is out of control. I would think that since they drive on the left, perhaps they would walk on the left as well. Not the case. I feel like I am playing a game of human pinball when walking through downtown.

12) There are no dollar menus at the fast food places. A double cheeseburger at McDonalds is $3. Even factoring in the exchange rate, that is still more then $1.50 USD. Doesn't seem right.

13) Driving home from Dragonboating today, my friend from work, John (who has asked numerous times to be mentioned in my Blog) reminded me of something that has been driving me crazy over here, and once again it has to do with driving. For some reason, they do not have any of the signs posted above the street that tell you which lanes will be turning which direction up ahead. Instead, they have the arrows painted on the street itself approximately 100 feet from the intersection. Therefore, in most cases, cars are already backed up and covering the arrows so by the time you realize that you are in the wrong late it is too late and you are screwed. I really do not understand this one.

14) No free refills on pop. You pay $3.00 for a thin glass full of ice and a splash of Diet Coke at a restaurant and they won't even refill it for free. This is true with the fast food places as well except for Burger King.

15) No changes to earlier flights. I was in Queenstown hiking the Routeburn track. I had a flight home on Sunday at 4:45 PM. I finished the hike early and got dropped at the airport at about 2:00. I looked at the board and was happy to see there was a 3:00 flight to Auckland. I went to check in and asked if there was availability on the 3:00 flight and the woman said that there were a few seats. I asked if I could move up to that flight and showed her my ticket for the 4:45 flight. She said No!! I asked if I could be put on standby and again she said "no". I told her how that made no sense since there was availability and, in fact, this would be beneficial to the airline because then if anyone was late for the 3:00 flight, my seat would now be open on the 4:45 flight for them. The woman was getting frustrated and said, "You're and American aren't you." When I told her that I was, she said that she knows that is how it works in America but it is not the airline's policy here in New Zealand and I would have to buy a whole new ticket if I wanted the earlier flight. I didn't want to cause any trouble and get kicked off of my existing flight so I just shook my head, took my ticket and sat down. I still cannot believe the logic there.

The Unusual

1) A common saying here is "Sweet as." For instance, if I tell someone we are going for drinks after work and they should join in, they might say "Sweet as." My question is - Sweet as what?? I don't get it, why not finish the sentence? If someone said that to me back home I might say "That sounds good." I would not say "That sounds." From now on, when someone says "sweet as" I will say "sweet as what?" just to see what they mean. There is a funny video that some Aussies made to make fun of the way the kiwis talk about a beached whale who is "Beached As." It's pretty funny (you will probably think it's just stupid if you haven't been here). Check it out.

2) Another common expression here is "You alright?" (although I think this is British moreso than Kiwi). This is used in the same way that we would say "How's it going?" It just seemed strange at first because I would probably only ask if someone was alright if they had fallen down or were crying or something so I was a bit taken aback when people first started asking me that. I wondered if I looked really stressed out or angry or something, but it turns out they were just checking in.

3) Many people don't wear shoes here. It is strange. Sometimes I'm walking through the city downtown and I see people (not homeless people, mind you) walking through the streets without shoes on. This is a big city people! Why don't you wear shoes?? There is broken glass laying around and other objects that you would not want to step on in. I don't understand this. The signs that we see in restaurants about "no shirt, no shoes, no service" would certainly not apply here as I see barefoot people in the shopping centers and foodcourts all the time....strange.

4) I have no idea what continent we are part of. It can't be Australia because New Zealand is its own country. I guess that means Asia, but it doesn't seem like an Asian country.

5) Swearing does not seem to offend people here. On radio and TV you hear the f-word all the time and it's not bleeped out. Doesn't really bother me, but I think it would be funny to see how some people reacted to hearing that over here. Check out the example below of a picture I took of a carton of fries from a local fastfood place called "Burger Fuel." I don't think you would see this printed on McDonald's packaging.