It’s a good thing our citizenship test is a ways off, because there’s clearly still a lot we have to learn.

A fruit pie has won the supreme pie award.

What’s next for this poor wayward nation? Holden drivers that don’t hoon? Rugby shorts in mid-thigh cuts?

Here’s a proper pie for ya (with some friends):

“From today, we will begin chlorinating the city’s water supply…

[200 words that boil down to 'look this is an emergency. keep your pants on']…

“The water supply is expected to be chlorinated for a number of months.
However Christchurch is committed to an untreated supply and once Ministry of Health and city engineers are happy that the water supply is secure and wastewater damage is under control, then the decision will be made to remove the chorine from the water and return water levels back to normal.”

Whatever will they think of next?

So may we present our No. 8 wire Christmas wreath

Made up of, um, No. 8 wire (some 22 gauge as well), and a few cuttings from that laurel-y thing ’round back. We’re still figuring out the finer points of wreath making, so it’s, er, a bit droopy.

Here’s an in-progress shot.

Also, there was Christmas bread.

No. Just no.

I won’t even bother to say “Ask your mother.”

OK, but you can’t mix your own two-stroke till you’re eight.

I’ve been way too intimidated to volunteer. First, there are the obvious cultural differences (no, I don’t want to swap Pavlova recipes — yes, traditionally Pav is the man’s responsibility). But more to the point, I’ve the old white man’s guilt — what does a middle-aged under-employed over-educated father of one have to say to an out-of-work single teen father of eight?

But on my good days, I think. No, no, musn’t fall into that trap. I’m sure we have common ground.

Or perhaps not. No, definitely no common ground here.

On a sociological note. It’s the middle of winter break from school and the weather has been a bit ick. The city is heaving with planned activities to keep little 5-10 year old hands busy, and all of the city amenities (libraries, museums, etc) have been wall-to-wall with moms desperate to get their 3.5 kids out of the house.

So it’s only natural, when the weekend is nice, that mom will say something along the lines of: “get yer darned butt off the couch and take the kids with you.” And so, father-and-daughter dirt bikes in the park.

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 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...]

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….

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

Sorry, slow news day.