Note To Future Self

I expect most folk in the frozen North missed the news, but we held an election in this timezone last Saturday. And we decided to kick the Queen, that old pie-biter, outta here…

Just kidding.

The short story is we shuffled a bit to the right from the “pro-business, kindof progressive” party (Helen Clark, the outgoing PM from the Labour party, left) to the “pro-business, kindof conservative” party (John Key, the new PM from the National Party, right).

(images from Wikipedia)

Given this makes very little difference to you, our diligent reader, here are a few random factoids instead:

1. We vote on Saturday. It does make a certain sense, doesn’t it?
2. Any permanent resident (who’s been in the country for more than a year) can vote, citizen or not. Technically, we’re on work visa and can’t, but all my furriner co-workers did.
3. It’s a parliamentary system. There’s just one house, then whichever parties can get a majority in parliament (solo or by coalition) huddle up, form a government, put forward a Prime Minister, etc who must be approved by the Governer-General (there’s HRM again, always at the reins of power). Of course, with two major parties, you typically know your PM options well in advance.
4. OK, this is the tough one. No test on this, I promise. NZ currently uses MMP (Mixed member proportional) voting. Parliament has 120 seats. (not literally, of course. I think it has benches). Approximately 70 of the seats are assigned to districts (approximately due to another complication, see here for more agonizing detail), or electorates.

   When you step into the voting booth, you’re asked to cast two votes (just two — national elections are done separately from municipal and there’s no state-level here). The first vote is for your electorate seat, which is a straight-ahead mano e mano competition. The second vote is the party vote where you choose one of the political parties (Labour, National, Green, Stark Raving Looney, Legalize Sheep Dip, etc).

   Now this is where things get complicated. Any party which wins an electoral seat or which wins 5% of the party vote gets a number of seats in parliament in proportion to their share of the party vote.

   So, let’s say National wins 50% of the party vote, so they get 60 parliament seats. But suppose National candidates only won in 25 of the electorates … well National gets another 35 seats (from those 50 spare seats mentioned before) to dole out from their list or worthies.

   This can lead to some interesting cases, like overhang where a party wins many electorates, giving it a representation in parliament in excess of its Party vote percentage. This is typically the case with Maori party, who have seven electoral seats, but won less than (um 7/120th) of the party vote. In that case they just add a couple of extra seats to Parliament (uh, again, not literally) to make up the difference.

   As a system, it provides an interesting mix between local representation, and support for minority opinions (i.e. Green party). It’s also no crazier than the electoral college.

5. Due to an electoral law, it’s illegal to show any sort of political advertising (posters, TV, bumper stickers) on election day.

   In fact, when we tuned to the local interweb news site for election results at 4 on Saturday, we were greeted with:

   
   
   (click for a larger version)
   

   What? No vapid, babbling commentators? No maps turning red and blue? No snap decisions which turn out to be completely false?

   How civilized.

6. And one more. The left-ish Labour party is red and the right-ish National party is blue. It still takes me a second….

For whatever reason, we’re perpetually on guard for the possibility that we’ve “been here too long.” That all of the zany foreign Kiwi-ness might have soaked into our daily lives and become the norm.

For the first year, I was acutely aware that the, er, currents of fashion seem to have blown with a great and confounding vigor through the young ladies of NZed. I’ve even been known to exclaim that young women between, say 14 and 24 shouldn’t be allowed to dress themselves.

As example of this, I would often cite our hapless local newspaper’s weekly food and style section, and the “What They’re Wearing” column. Every week, a local fashion leader, say a boutique owner or a shopgirl, is featured modeling what presumably she feels is her most fabulous outfit; showcasing both her fashion nous and her stores’ best items.

For months, “What They’re Wearing” was reliable, harmless weekly entertainment. A safe opportunity to laugh at the provincial locals and their crazy clothes.

Then, without much fuss, the young ladies started looking an awful lot like the girls at he grocery store, and walking around the universities, and you know, perhaps layering four different too-tight-here-too-loose-there technicolor petticoats really is normal walking-about clothing.

Have we really been here too long?

[apologies for the quality of the scanned newsprint...]

Fresh back from another week in Motueka, a few of our faithful readers have reminded me that it’s been more than a month since the last post.

Fine. You want a post, here you go:

Kiwis love trailer hitches. Surprisingly, it’s not a for a lack of large sports utility vehicles. Must be something subconscious. Or maybe it has to do with all those horse floats.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to accumulate photos for a “crazy tow vehicles” featurette, but my shutter-finger hasn’t been fast enough (best so far: a Lexus SC430 towing a massive trailer full of tree trimmings).

Luckily, my neighbors obliged, at least well enough for me to write the darned post:

One Jaguar (an XJ8, if you must know) towing a … generator? Who knows. It would be better if it was towing a massive barbecue, of course.

Filler number two: By far the most testos-terrific car a middle-aged man could possibly desire down here is this thing:

The improbably named Holden Maloo. The El Camino is dead. Long live the El Camino.

Sweet as.

Let this be a lesson to you next time you get the urge to nag me about blog posts….

Being a truly civilized country, we use metric (ISO) paper sizes. So “normal’ paper is size A4, which is altogether taller and slimmer and more euro-chic than boring old “letter” paper.

Oh, and we use two-ring binders. Two!

Sorry, slow news day.

A kiwi walks into the grocery store to buy some yams.

He walks out with:

Wha…?

I have to admit the whole sweet potato/yam thing threw me for a loop in the US. But what the heck is this thing?

I’m not even sure how to cook it!

The kiwis have an endearing national habit of making things as difficult as possible.

Take netball, for instance. Devised as a gentler version of basketball that women could play without risking uterine collapse (and played under the name “girls basketball” in the US prior to the 1970s) netball has been converted into a viciously competitive sport through pure perversity. It is always played on outdoor courts. Anyone who has played basketball will no doubt remember with a wince the rashes raised by skidding along the parquet. Netball, to assist players halting immediately upon receiving a pass, is played on textured asphalt. Of course, practice usually begins as close to dawn as practicable, so there’s the greatest possible chance of having a rime of frost on the court.

The kiwis obstructive talents are not limited to sports. Faced with the relentlessly logical metric system the kiwis refuse to sell goods – especially items which are to be measured and sub-divided by the cook – in sizes divisible by ten. Long division improves the moral fibre of the nation. Take, for example, this bar of chocolate.

In the US, because every one knows we are innumerate, baking chocolate is sold in 1 oz squares, scored deeply in case the cooks needs only 1/2 oz. Here in New Zealand, in blessed contrast, baking chocolate comes in 270 g bars.

As you can see, in a major concession, the bar is divided into squares. Six down and eleven across. A quick mental calculation of 270/66 = 4.09 g per square. Fortunately, the 0.09g turns out to be a moot point, as the scoring is too shallow for the cook to snap off squares cleanly.

Alas, I fear that despite this valiant effort, the kiwis are fighting a rearguard action. The other week I bought a short length of chicken wire for a repair project. The young cashier looked at the slip of paper on which the salesman had jotted the length and price, turned to me and said “what’s 1 out of 3?” I was so gobsmacked it completely slipped my mind that the mesh had actually been measured and cut at 30 cm rather than 1/3 of a meter.

A letter to the editor from the Christchurch Star for you,

There is one thing I am getting really sick of in this politically correct society we are living in — the constant blame on drinking and speeding for the road toll in this country.

… Yes, alcohol and speed are part of the problem, but the main cause is the very poor standard of driving. … Some people just don’t care how they drive — they don’t indicate, they run orange and red lights. … It even shows in the way they park their cars, even push their trolleys in the supermarkets.

But I am sure in the end they will lower the [drunk driving] limit, spoiling yet another normal pastime. Nothing will change but those bad drivers will still be there, just a lot more sober.

Ah yes, drink and driving. Normal pastimes right next to mom and apple pie, er, mum and citrus slice.

There have been a couple of high-profile auto-cides recently, and quite a bit of sturm und drang about “boy racers” (aka young men with Japanese imports), but very few discussions about the general pathologies of Kiwi motoring. Anna and I have some theories, which we’ll share if they turn out to be interesting. I think the summary is “you can’t drive like New Zealand is the Wild West anymore.”

On the plus side, we drove the South Island’s 8 kms of divided multi-land road (aka the Northern Motorway) this weekend. There were offramps and everything. Brings a tear to my eye, just thinking of the great Bay Area freeways we left behind.