Find out what occupies Angela's time living in New Zealand.
I'm so ticked this month about a topic, it is doubling as my blog. Read at least the first article of this February blog entry, THAT is my latest rant. THESE LOSERS MUST GO!!
There are good things and bad things about everything, right? There are definitely good things about living in New Zealand, and there are bad things - depending who you are and what you're after. So what happens when you find something that you don't like about living in the country, what do you do?
Apparently you create a website and invite everyone else who is as negative as you to talk on there and bitch and moan and gripe in order to warn others of the incredible evil that's out there! A productive way to spend your time.
Take at look at www.expatexposed.com. Nice, huh? Tag line: Wish you'd known? Then spread the word. The site is "an information and community site that lays out the downside of emigrating to New Zealand, and helps expats help themselves through networking and mutual emotional support." Boo hoo, mutual support because they came to the country and didn't like it.
Here's a recent post in a location on the site apparently known as "the angry dome."
I cannot believe how freaking stupid the people of this country are when it comes to their housing. I mean seriously, everythingthing [sic] here is a cold, damp, miserably wet sh*thole [sic]. What other country in the world would thinks that a pre-1920's [sic] house is worth 200K+?! Who would put up with such miserable living conditions for so long? It is driving me nuts!!
They bitch that groceries are expensive, fuel is expensive, utilities are expensive. And do they ever bitch about how cold it is. In winter, if you didn't know, IT'S COLD. Really? Yeah, but you shoulda known that BEFORE you came! Seriously, it's so awful here, it's practically ... Zimbabwe. Horrible! Now they are doing whatever they can to escape and spread word of the evil that is New Zealand. Some haven't gotten out yet, but one day, one day.
Now, I know you're thinking that I'm one to talk, cuz my little rants are essentially bitching in disguise. But not really, they are mini bitches and they are meant to be funny and they help others see the whole picture. And then I move on. I rant for a few paragraphs, then I move on. The operative phrase being, MOVE ON.
Honestly, GET OVER IT!! Get a life and move on. You didn't look into it carefully enough. You made a mistake. You don't like it here. WHATEVER. It's done, why spend the money and the time sounding miserable and inspiring others to be miserable. It's really not that big of a deal in the scheme of things. Maybe you'd like Zimbabwe better.
I'm not sure if anyone else – aside from Don who is the recipient of all my verbal rants – can relate to this, either in New Zealand or otherwise. I've been told that this new irritant is because kiwis are so nice and accommodating, and they are everywhere, so maybe this happens in Auckland and Hamilton and Whangerei and Wellington as well as Nelson.
Driving to town or back each day from our house, there are always cars on the road. There are many side streets and driveways along the way. The speed limit is typically 50kmph. Just a little background.
When I drive, I get behind a really nice kiwi and we're driving down the road. Up ahead is a car on a side street waiting for a break in traffic in order to turn left into the traffic. Then, for no apparent reason, the blasted kiwi in front of me just stops in the middle of the road to be nice and lets the car into traffic. Just stops. In the middle of the 50kmph main road to town. Causing many of us behind to break hard. Just to be nice. This happens about three times a week, at least.
Doesn't this reek of accidents? YES, I think I've near missed a major accident about a dozen times already from this sort of behaviour! It's like the total opposite of the States where NO ONE lets you into a merge lane – here EVERYONE lets you in and could care whether they cause a wreck to do it. COMPLETELY irritating.
The shopping experience here is different in many ways, not the least of which are the pushy sales people you encounter everywhere. Everywhere, meaning not just clothing or shoe stores, but pharmacies, sporting good stores, and even travel agencies, you get bothered endlessly by as many sales associates that can reach you before you run for the door.
In the clothing stores, I can be hounded by various sales people to no end, wanting to show me something or help me choose something. The minute I want to try something on, the sales associate becomes part of my posse, choosing accessories or adding on pieces she thinks work well. It is hard to be left alone, so I put on mean Angela face and usually can manage with that. Plus the minute I open my mouth they guess I'm an arrogant American, so I have that trick in my bag.
The pharmacies here stock so many employees it's really bizarre. They want to spritz you with perfume, try a lip gloss on you, or ask what your ailment is, as soon as you walk in the door. It seems to me they must be paid on commission -- looking at the job ads, all the pharmacy job openings ask for sales sales sales, you must make your sales! I miss Walgreens with my quirky sales woman with the glasses who was sooooo overly friendly you just couldn't make fun of her. She was too nice and could care less what or how much I bought, she just wanted to help get my things in a plastic bag and out the door.
The worst might be the travel agencies. I've never seen such a sales zoo! The hiring ads for travel agent employees are also for sales people, you must sell this trip or that travel package, or you're booted. I don't remember travel agencies being such machines in the States. But here, it's a mega business. Almost every kiwi we've talked to book their travel through agencies, they don't go it alone and book themselves via the internet. Travel insurance: the agencies sell it by the bucketloads and the kiwis all buy it! They sell it like Best Buy sells an extended warranty, it's cutthroat. I won't go in there to book travel as long as I can avoid it, I think it's a scam. How much of a discount can they possibly find in a monopoly-laden country with one airline and three international airports (2 of which go mostly only to Australia)?
For those of you who don’t know me, I am a clothing-aholic. I love clothes and love to shop for them, and I think I’m pretty good at it. It's a skill that's inside me, I don't know that I can teach it, frankly. It's part of who I am. :)
So you can imagine what an adjustment is has been to move out of the materialism capital of the world, the USA, to a small country where fashion is not so much on the agenda of most people. The one thing that is consistent around New Zealand is: this country has terrible fabric choices for clothing. There is an abundance of man-made material that hurts the eye and skin (and smells after one wearing). Even a famous Nelson-based NZ designer sells her custom items that are hundreds of dollars and well made, but they are polyester or acetate or nylon or something. BLECH. And you should see the mass market stuff, it’s just awful. Polyester everywhere. Shine everywhere. Stretch everywhere. I thought Kiwis didn’t want to sparkle, but they do in that stuff and worse ... and don’t they know it holds odour!
Whenever I do go shopping -- and it's honestly not that often -- the first thing I do when I find a garment that interests me is look at the tags about what material is used. I'm constantly looking up skirts and dresses, searching down the seat of trousers to find that tag so I can determine if I look more, or move on. Man made is an instant move-on.
For a country that is notable for its wool, you would think you’d see more of it in various forms: wool trousers, wool blazers, great wool sweaters. No, you see none of it. (Perhaps a harsh exaggeration, but not too far from the truth.) I think the best wool must be shipped overseas. And in turn, we ship in from China all that mass produced crap. Crap crap crap. Get me to an American MALL!!
One exception: the fabulous merino wool wear, to die for really. Worth the $$. I highly recommend it!
As Americans, we are bred to love TV and spend hours and hours watching it each week. Don and I have cut down on our TV watching time thanks to TIVO and its (less than stellar) equivalent here, My Sky. No, we don’t watch fewer programs, but the time it takes to watch them is drastically shortened because we skip through commercials and other garbage stuff. So less quantity, same quality ... some might say.
For TV lovers, it’s great to live in New Zealand because they have an amazing concept of television here: no reruns. They don’t show television programmes twice, and they don’t stop in the middle of a series to show reruns when there is no programme to watch that week. We don’t see fluffy re-cap shows mid-season in the place of an episode.
Rather, shows here run straight through, and all year long. I get to see all 20-something episodes of Grey’s Anatomy over 20-something weeks. Then 24 kicks in for the following 20-something weeks. Or Desperate Housewives, or The Sopranos. For the first half of the year, we watched a collection of shows each week, and once they ended, a new collection started, all new, no reruns, all week after week.
And, they are good about showing reality shows like The Amazing Race or Survivor very close to air times in the States so that you don’t get spoilers.
Bravo for no reruns!!
Bloody irritating! On our recent trip to Wellington it became abundantly clear to me how ridiculous the policy is of New Zealand's operating hours. Some call it trading ours, the hours shops are open. It's not a national law or anything, shops can be open whenever they want. But currently, the trend is to be open Mon-Fri 9a - 530p, most are open Sat 930/10a - 5p at the latest, some to 4p. Most are closed on Sunday, although a handful of shops are open 10-4 or so. You will also find that some shops stay open late one night per week, often a Thursday or Friday and pretty much only until 7p or so. Wow, go crazy, why don't ya.
I discovered in Wellington, despite being in a large city with significant population and tons of shops, that the stores' trading hours were no different. WHAAAAHHH?? You must be kidding me, they still close at 530p weekdays, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of city workers are leaving their office buildings at that exact time after working all day to earn money to SHOP. Guess what, the weekends are WORSE! We were shoo-ed out of stores around 430p on Saturday even though the store was supposed to stay open until 5p.
In suburbia, totally different story at the malls. They get the picture, and the picture is GREEN: they stay open on Fri and Sat until 9pm or 10pm and both times I've been to a NZ mall (ChCh and Wgtn) they were totally packed with people at later hours. Cha-ching.
I find this trading hours practise baffling. I know that people have to have lives and the work-life balance is a big deal here. But with more sales, you can hire more people, duh. The rest of the world knows it and if you are a business owner you still have the bottom line as your top priority. If I worked downtown Wgtn I would hate to have to get all my shopping done before 530p. No wonder the downtown is empty on weekends, it's not worth the effort to go into the city to shop on weekends.
Those of you who know me will read that one-word title and think, “things haven’t changed for Angela, she still hates traffic.” Yes, true.
Don and I now drive to work and we are faced with Nelson traffic. Nelson traffic doesn't even compare to Denver traffic. However, Nelson traffic doubles our typically 5-minute drive to town into 10 minutes every morning.
There are two roads into town, both only two-lane roads. Both are packed, one with actual work traffic and the other, we came to find out a few weeks ago, with unnecessary traffic. The unnecessary traffic is caused exclusively by schools; schools are located on the route to our work places and the roads are filled not with school buses, but with individual cars.
Those cars are parents taking their kids to school every day. And I don’t mean small kids: high school-aged kids, older kids, kids who normally should be on a bus or a bike or two feet. There is school bus service in Nelson that appears to not be well used.
It appears that way because the 2-week school holidays took place a few weeks back, and the road to work was EMPTY. Meaning, there was my car and about 3 others, and that’s it. This on a road that is usually a 5km train of cars from our house (and beyond) into town. On a typical day, we sit and just roll down the hill at 10 or 20k/hr for our 10-minute commute.
But on school holiday, breezy, easy, peasy. Nothing, no cars, no traffic, 5 minutes. No kids=bonus!
For such an environmentally savvy place, this blows my mind. One bus could hold 40-50 kids, that is 40-50 fewer cars on the road for ONE BUS! C’mon Nelson, get it in gear and get a decent bus system. Don has heard that parents choose to take their kids to school, even delaying the start of their work day to haul their kids around. This is one easy area where Nelson could be greener. And we would be happier commuters.
My rant this month is about feet. Now, I don't really like feet, I'm not keen on people touching my feet and I don't want to see other people's feet. I like to walk around barefooted myself, but in the house and yard and vicinity. By and large, my opinion is that feet are not an attractive body part.
And so what did I do? I up and moved to a place that seems to embrace the barefooted person. It is permitted--and even legal for pete's sake--to walk around town and into shops barefooted. You won't see signs saying "No shoes, no shirt, no service" in this country, but you'll see Joe and Sally waltzing around the park, walking their dog, and strolling through the CBD. Worst of all? Picture barefooted Joe and Sally with their dark-bottomed bare feet buying a six-pack at the grocery store right next to me. Can you say BLECH??!! The GROCERY store?
One recent weekend I saw a couple roaming through Nelson's version of Bed Bath and Beyond on a Sunday with no shoes, as if they just woke up, threw on some shorts and a shirt, and headed off like Fred and Wilma Flintstone in the peddle-car to the store to walk around and show me their toes and dirty soles. I DON'T WANT TO SEE YOUR FILTHY FEET WHILE I SHOP!
I think I’ve mentioned before on an occasion or two how much I detest the radio stations in this country. It’s not their fault really, I should really lay blame where blame is due: pop music and R&B music SUCK. The radio stations just feed the public what it wants, and it seems the public wants crappy music.
I cannot believe the drivel I have to listen to that passes for music out here. I could not be more sick of the hot chic bands, the hip-hop girls who prance around their videos in bikinis singing the worst songs ever—clearly sex sells because talent, harmony, and lyrics do not. Worst of all: covers. Who in the world told some chic she could use the music from Depeche Mode’s awesome “Personal Jesus” for her insipid dance tune?
I am sick of Justin Timberlake's falsetto, sick of Eminem finds, sick of Lily Allen, sick to death of the Pussycat Dolls and wretchingly ill from the rest of the hip-hop girl wannabes…and their hot blokes with braces. I can’t get an ounce of decent new rock music here or hear of any great news on bands or up-and-comers like I could get with KTCL in Denver. I still visit their website regularly to see what is playing, and then visit itunes to get a snapshot. (I’m too lame to steal music.)
So if any of you have recommendations on good bands, great music that fits the KTCL style, especially if it doesn’t make the Casey Kasem countdown, please shoot me an email and let me know.
