Guest columnist today

Dennis sent the following in an email to some of his friends at work. Thought you might enjoy it, too. Don't expect a lot from his photos; they're taken on his phone :-)

Notes from The Land of the Long White Cloud Rev 1.0

Just so you don’t forget about me, I decided I would periodically send a short note about weird random shit from Kiwiland.

1.       Megastore: This is almost an exact replica of Home Depot. I went in to buy a space heater (because they don’t believe in central heating) and it turns out that you can negotiate for stuff which I thought was pretty cool. Ended up get the space heater for $15 bucks under the sticker price after some haggling.

2.       Gas Station: Pull up to any gas station in Auckland and you find your typical ice box for buying bags of ice except there is one door for ice and one for bait. BTW the bait was way bigger than any fish Trey has ever caught.
 

 

 3.       They have a really weird driving rule that if you are making a left turn (remember you’re driving on the left), anyone in the opposing lane making a right turn has the right of way. That is unless there is someone behind you going straight. Try to figure all that out when you don’t even know if you’re driving on the correct side of the road.
 
4.       Most school kids don’t wear shoes and run around in bare feet all day.
 
5.       9 times out of 10 they guess our accent is Canadian (ouch)
 
6.       Bing Cherries are about $15/lb. (glad I had my fill before I left)
 
7.       Haven’t been able to decide what I like better. Lamb and Mint flavored potato chips or Chicken flavored. So many choices here.
 
8.       Cold weather blows in from the South and warm weather from the North. Kind of weird for a Clevelander.
 
9.       Aussies vs. Kiwis. Definitely an underlying cultural tension between these two countries. EP’s accounting guy probably summed it up the best by saying that Kiwis think the Aussies are boorish and arrogant. Aussies think the Kiwis are a bunch of simple-minded farm boys. Probably not too much unlike the North vs. South 100+ years ago. Trey has even seen it at school when the teacher was reading a passage in a book about a giant robot from outer space bombing Australia and the whole class got up and cheered.
 
10.  Maori (indigenous people) word of the day: Puke = Hill

 
- Dennis