Tag: Life in New Zealand

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We didn’t flood the new carpets / Why it pays to put due dates on your invoices

Scott and I just spent about a week gradually moving out of our old rental and into a new one. The first order of business was replacing the carpets, a project we’d agreed to take on in exchange for not having to pay rent until the lease on our previous rental ran out.

On our first full day in the house, after the carpets were in, we triggered a small flood during a failed attempt at replacing the ancient water filter. It wouldn’t have been so bad except that the main water shutoff valve is broken (now we know!), so it’s impossible to shut the water main off completely. I’ve never been so grateful for my travel towel.

I was expecting to have to pay the emergency plumber Big Bucks for coming out in the middle of a three-day weekend. Amazingly, the invoice he sent later that day came to only $46 NZD (~$31 USD), a small price to pay for having saved the new carpets, yay!

But that invoice was missing a very critical detail: a due date. In fact, none of the invoices I received over the last couple of weeks — one from the plumber, one from the carpet people, and one from a doctor — included a due date! Clearly I need to share my latest video around:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ELeU0HEkOM

Spoiler: Continue reading “We didn’t flood the new carpets / Why it pays to put due dates on your invoices”

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Tūrangawaewae: the place where you belong

When does one fully belong to a place?

I first learned the word / concept of tūrangawaewae during a lesson in Māori pronunciation at work. The colleague who offered the class described tūrangawaewae as the place where you feel like you belong, or your spiritual home, regardless of where you are actually from.

The Māori Dictionary defines tūrangawaewae as follows:

domicile, standing, place where one has the right to stand – place where one has rights of residence and belonging through kinship and whakapapa.

Also from the Māori Dictionary (and all these links contain recordings of the words so you can hear how they sound), here are the definitions of the two parts of the word:

tūranga: stand, position, situation, site, foundation, stance

waewae: leg, foot, or footprint

Also important:

whakapapa: genealogy, genealogical table, lineage, descent. Reciting whakapapa was, and is, an important skill and reflected the importance of genealogies in Māori society in terms of leadership, land and fishing rights, kinship and status. It is central to all Māori institutions.

What I like about my colleague’s explanation of tūrangawaewae  Continue reading “Tūrangawaewae: the place where you belong”

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Shitty things men do to women at concerts, and how not to be complicit

I am still really shaken by something I experienced / witnessed last Saturday night at a concert. Don’t want to read the distressing details? Here’s the take-home message:

DECENT MEN: if a friend of yours, or any guy you witness, is behaving like a #metoo wrecking ball at a show, or anywhere, let him know that what he’s doing is not OK. At the very least, check in with the women he’s preying on to make sure they’re alright.

***

I had been looking forward to the Unknown Mortal Orchestra show for a while, and reaallllly wanted to enjoy it. (A note for the uninitiated: they are NOT an orchestra!)

…but very unfortunately, the whole night was tainted by the behavior of a predatory dude working the floor where in the area where Scott and I were standing. We watched him making the rounds, repeatedly going up to women and attempting to manhandle them (embrace, kiss, and literally pick them up, dragging them away from their friends).

Then came the moment when I had to physically shove him away from my own body.

Continue reading “Shitty things men do to women at concerts, and how not to be complicit”

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Te reo Māori lesson 1: it’s not pronounced “may-OR-ee”

Not into a long read? Click here (and then on the little speaker icon) to listen to a Māori speaker pronounce the word Māori correctly.

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It feels important to preface this essay by saying that as inquisitive as I have been since moving here, I still have a very limited understanding of the complex and interwoven effects of colonization, the Waitangi Treaty, race relations, and increasing rates of immigration on the many different people who live here in New Zealand. I share what little I’ve gathered below not out of any sense of authority, but out a belief that comparing notes and having open conversations about these issues is one way to pay respect to the people who were here before I arrived.

The history of colonization here in New Zealand Aotearoa included, as it did in so many places, a prohibition on the local Māori language (also known as te reo Māori, which translates to “the Māori language”), complete with punishments for those who dared to speak it. Te reo Māori might have disappeared completely had it not been for the language revival efforts of Māori leaders in the eighties.

Knowing this, and as someone who fully inhabits the world of words / language / metaphor, I’d like to do justice to te reo Māori as a way to honor the culture and the people who lived the longest in this place I now call home. And so I have very much appreciated the opportunity to pick up a bit of this language at work, and in particular, from my boss Pat, a proud Māori who regularly mixes Māori words in with English when he speaks.

At first, our relationship around te reo Māori consisted of him relentlessly correcting my attempts at proper pronunciation. Continue reading “Te reo Māori lesson 1: it’s not pronounced “may-OR-ee””

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Botox for buttholes (and other fancy GI health tips)

ToiletGirl.jpg
Scott found this photo tucked into a used book at Green Apple Books and I love it.

One of the changes I’ve had to get used to upon moving to New Zealand is that medical offices exhibit very little of the American paranoia around client privacy. And so, in addition to things like Doctor Sam asking Scott whether we’d gone on the hikes he’d recommended to me during my last visit and our dentist giving Scott shit about the fact that I am long overdue for a cleaning, everyone in the waiting room at the gastroenterologist’s office got to hear about my upcoming colonoscopy.

I won’t go into the details about my symptoms other than to say they warrant the procedure; my grandmother had to have her colon removed at a relatively young age, so we’re proceeding cautiously.

The doctor explained that one of the possible treatments (depending on what they find, and how I respond to other options) may involve Botox. I missed all the articles about “Anal Botox” that apparently made the social media rounds last year and found this fascinating, immediately texting my brother: Continue reading “Botox for buttholes (and other fancy GI health tips)”

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Rainy Sunday recipes (and one for Summer)

Earlier today I ran across this Susan Ertz quote:

Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Really?! I love a rainy Sunday, and immortality sounds… exhausting 🙂

I’ve spent the last several rainy Sundays cooking up way too much food in my new multi-cooker. I know I know, I’m super late to Instant Pot Mania!

Of all the pressure cooker recipe sites I’ve checked out, Amy+Jacky is (are?) my fave so far. They’re from Hong Kong, and offer lots of recipes that are faster versions of things that I learned to cook from my dad (like jook). I LOVE their Cook’s Illustrated / scientific approach to discovering the best bone broth formula, and can vouch for the results!

Amy+Jacky are also really big on umami flavors, which means I’m suddenly learning that adding fish sauce and soy sauce to chili and beef stew recipes (etc) makes them taste So Much Better.

While I’d love to be cooking up a big batch of something hearty and yum today I’ve been cut off, for three reasons:

Continue reading “Rainy Sunday recipes (and one for Summer)”

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Getting over the fear of failure (I crashed my bike)

I made this video ages ago for work and even though we decided not to publish it, it’s still one of my faves 🙂 especially as it’s all about the inevitability of crashing, which I hope can paradoxically motivate all of us to get over our fear of failure.

Thanks to my colleagues Cat and Nadim and Kylie for the motion graphics savvy — turns out it’s not easy to, say, “draw” a red circle into a video, much less one that moves! — and to Luda for moral support always, including encouraging me to share this one ❤

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How to move to New Zealand from the US

Sometimes when people in positions of power do things I find absurd and infuriating, I get depressed, cranky, angry, and/or despondent. Other times, I’m more productive, getting all academic, or trying to draw personal connections so people might understand that these decisions will affect real people. Last Friday, I channelled my frustration into making this video guide to various visa options for Americans wanting to move to New Zealand:

To be abundantly clear: you can’t actually move away from climate change. Continue reading “How to move to New Zealand from the US”

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Reflections on a first Spring and Summer in New Zealand

It’s been exactly six months since Scott and I moved to Auckland from San Francisco, so it seems like a good time to write up a few more quick reflections on the differences between life in those two places:

  • Farmers markets are few and far between.
  • Storms actually affect the price of veggies; after one of the recent tropical cyclones hit, cauliflower and lettuce went up from ~$3 to ~$7 a head (all costs in this post in NZD).
  • Thanks to its Mediterranean climate (not to mention the drought), I’m totally used to California’s hills being crispy and golden for most of the year. It really felt odd to me that New Zealand’s bright green grassy hills stayed that way all through Spring AND Summer, even though it does make sense given the regular rains.
  • Leaving the house without a layer is usually OK. Really. Even in the evening. But you never know when it might rain, so keep the umbrella handy.
  • You can actually swim in the ocean(s) here! Without a wetsuit! And there are so many beaches right in the city that we haven’t even come close to checking all of them out. Ditto all the beaches within an hour’s drive of our place.

Continue reading “Reflections on a first Spring and Summer in New Zealand”

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Some longer reflections after four months in New Zealand

Here are a few more remarkable things about life in Auckland, longer-format this time, with some links for good measure:

This is NOT a litigious society. It doesn’t need to be, because the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) “provides comprehensive, no-fault personal injury cover for all New Zealand residents and visitors to New Zealand.” It’s funded by levies collected from motor vehicle operators (through licensing fees and petrol sales), wage earners (via income tax), and the government (via general taxes). Thanks to the ACC, your medical costs and even most of your lost wages (the latter only if you work in New Zealand) due to accidents are covered, even if an injury happens while you’re at work or playing a dangerous sport or on the premises of a business. How this actually feels different on the ground is that we regularly encounter all sorts of things that you simply would not find in the US, like massive public play structures that kids could actually fall off of, cliffs at lookouts without fences to prevent falls, people walking around everywhere (inside and outside) with bare feet, absurd pits of unmitigated mud at music festivals (I’m still somewhat traumatized by last weekend’s Splore experience), uneven stairways without hand rails, and the like. So much lost revenue opportunity for the poor insurance companies, ambulance-chasing attorneys, and safety device manufacturers, to name but a few! But it sure seems a lot more efficient to handle things this way.  Continue reading “Some longer reflections after four months in New Zealand”