Busytown: Sons for the Return Home
258 Responses
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Paul Williams, in reply to
Australia shares an almost identical language - including colloquialisms and slang, it's increasingly hard to tell young Australians and New Zealanders apart beyond Australasia even when they open their mouths, we share a media, common values, an economic zone (NZers are the only people who can register a company in Australia offshore as domestic), a military history, matching legal systems and more. There is no other place in the world we can say that about.
I tend to agree. There's certainly some significant cultural differences in professional life, particularly if you work in government, but less so in social life.
One of the curious things I learned is that, professionally, sometimes the apparent similarities obscure real differences. I often found myself coming out of discussions thinking I knew what had been agreed and finding that I'd misunderstood. That said, I got my first job very very easily which reinforces your main point (and which represents a major threat to NZ).
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BenWilson, in reply to
Actually, I think you'd be very surprised how many have travelled and how many have been to New Zealand
Surprise me with some numbers. I'm searching myself, but these are hard figures to come by.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Actually, I think you’d be very surprised how many have travelled and how many have been to New Zealand
Surprise me with some numbers. I’m searching myself, but these are hard figures to come by.
I think it is true that serious travel is more common in the kind of demographics we hang with, but "middle-class white kids" is still a big demo in New Zealand. My guess is that distance makes us more likely to undertake extended travel or to live in other countries.
I do see Australia as a foreign country. We share remarkably little of each other's news, and it feels somewhat culturally different when I'm there. Simon's difficulty in distinguishing the accents is, I suspect, a function of living in neither country. The two places look, feel and sound different if you live in one of them. I lost the ability to tell the difference when I lived in London -- and gained the ability to tell a North Dublin accent from a South Dublin one.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
more common in the kind of demographics we hang with
I suspect that for those of us of a certain age the only way to experience any of the world was to leave NZ and go there. And since it was such a huge long trip anywhere from NZ we went and stayed for as long as we could afford (or longer) in order to try and see everything.
Whether that perception of being trapped in NZ was real I'm not sure but for many of us growing up at that time it seemed real.
Contrast that with now when the internet brings other places and other cultures to you at home or it appears to. Again the reality of experiencing another place in vivo is quite different but somehow it seems like we are less separated from the rest of the world than we were.
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richard, in reply to
I will decloak briefly and say that trim is something that has simplified dramatically over the last 100 years. Looking it at it, the overall frame trim involves something like 25 separate pieces of wood (it wraps round into two rooms) and has moulding on top of the larger boards -- whereas in modern construction might get away with three pieces of wood to do the same job.
It did cross my mind some time ago that we should have put the marks on something more portable :-)
Thanks for all the advice!
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Paul Campbell, in reply to
Whether that perception of being trapped in NZ was real I'm not sure but for many of us growing up at that time it seemed real.
Well growing up at a time where access to foreign exchange (and as a result travel) was very limited - when I left to go to the US I went down to the bank to arrange stuff, they asked for my credit cards there and then and cut them in front of me .... my plan had been to use those cards to travel with and have someone pay the bills for me in NZ .... traveling overseas seemed impossible to many of us - without an internet people who left just disappeared - the world seems much more inviting now
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
Looking it at it, the overall frame trim involves something like 25 separate pieces of wood (it wraps round into two rooms) and has moulding on top of the larger boards
From Jolisa's comments I guessed it might be that kind of house. That's why I, in my ridiculously overcomplicated way, suggested talking to a cabinet maker. They work with those complex layer upon layer trim designs all the time and what looks impossibly complex to normal folks is a breeze for them.
But as somebody much smarter than I suggested, transferring the marks to a traveling post is much more sensible and could easily become a neat rite of leaving for the boys.
To borrow the cabinetmaker's term you could create a story stick for each boy.
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A tree house doesn't have to be small, but the tree does have to be big.
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BenWilson, in reply to
A little research here, the 1 million Kiwis abroad is probably inflated - it seems more likely to be around 600,000. So 15% of the population. The number of Thais abroad turned out to be somewhat easier to find. Roughly 6 million Thais out of 70, so about 8.6%. Brits, highest estimate 6 million abroad out of 61 million so around 10%. Australians, a very surprising 1,000,000 out of 21 million, so only 4.8%. Americans weren't so easily answered but I'll go with the high side of 6.6 million, out of 307 million gives 2.1%.
Germany, a popular contender, had data that I didn't even want to read, their guesses on overseas population are deeply Godwinned since they were used to justify several of the invasions in WW2.
So all up, NZ's still looking good as a major contender for one of the most traveled nations in the world. But any other data to the contrary are welcome. I expect that James Butler's guess that Pacific nations might be right up there is right, just as a numbers game.
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We bought a little house recently (barely 2 bedrooms). On one door frame is a record of the 13 year old's growth spurt in 2006. I'd guess he grew 20-30cm plus that year, he grew nearly 3cm in one month alone. I wouldn't be surprised if his mum was more than happy to leave behind the record of that terrible year of hormones and empty larder and rocketing boy in that tiny space.
My thought on moving is to take everything that you can get in the largest shipping container you can afford. You can always give stuff to the sallies when you get it here and unpack. It is really annoying to unpack and realise that the cheese grater (for example) is an important part of your daily life, and it is a pain having to go out and buy a new one. Especially when there was room for it in the shipping container.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Germany, a popular contender, had data that I didn’t even want to read, their guesses on overseas population are deeply Godwinned since they were used to justify several of the invasions in WW2.
Really? Still? I would've expected the post-war ethnic cleansings of the Sudetenland and East Prussia to have left a few sore spots, and have read of Germans visiting Kaliningrad to check out the ancestral homeland, and perhaps even see if they can get some of the ancestral property back. But for such data to still be so Godwinned seems a bit odd.
And is overseas the right word? Overrivers, certainly.
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Sacha, in reply to
But any other data to the contrary are welcome
You did catch my mention of Ireland, right?
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recordari, in reply to
My thought on moving is to take everything that you can get in the largest shipping container you can afford.
I would tend to agree with this. Particularly if you are going to have a shipping container in the first place. Might as well fill it, right?
But then I might be a hoarder, or, as someone here once politely suggested, a 'collector' even?
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BenWilson, in reply to
Particularly if you are going to have a shipping container in the first place. Might as well fill it, right?
I'd still caveat that with leaving out the car or motorbike. I thought that way, but regretted it. There was a lot of unnecessary pissing around with a vehicle, where just selling it in one place and buying another in the other can be done in a matter of days.
Btw, your email seems to be broken. I wanted to apologize for earlier tone.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Yes, their stats are fun. Roughly the same as NZs, but they do seem to have spread out a lot more.
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recordari, in reply to
Btw, your email seems to be broken. I wanted to apologize for earlier tone.
Odd, I just sent myself a test message and got it. But anyway, thanks for that. I just didn't want to derail a thread that was going so well.
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Sacha, in reply to
Roughly the same as NZs
80 million?
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
Simon's difficulty in distinguishing the accents is, I suspect, a function of living in neither country.
I guess there is that. Brigid and I play a game on the train in Bangkok sometimes to kill a moment - you see an antipodean (they stand out strongly) and try to pick whether they're Australian or New Zealanders. The voice sometimes gives it away but it's increasingly hard and when the voice is identifiable at least half the time we're wrong. The two nations' tourists seem to walk, talk, develop bodily, dress and react to external stimuli in almost homogeneous ways, and increasingly so. Far more so than than Canadians and Americans - perhaps the closest equivalence I can think of.
I think we like to think the gap is more identifiable than it perhaps is to observers.
Australians, a very surprising 1,000,000 out of 21 million, so only 4.8%
I'm very surprised by that given the number you encounter everywhere compared to the pleasurable and much rarer encounter with New Zealanders. I guess that's because we are mostly in Oz and then clustered in the UK and Eastern US.
We share remarkably little of each other's news
Right now the glaring difference is probably that they have news. A foreigner arriving in NZ right now could be forgiven - looking at the first six or so pages of the NZ Herald and almost the nightly entirety of TVNZ and TV3's nightly bulletins - for assuming that we simply don't cover external news here.
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After 20 years away I lost the ability to distinguish Aussies and Aucklanders - I could mostly still tell South Islanders though - it was really embarrassing - mind you living where I did in California/Bay Area/Silicon Valley I'd run into a Kiwi maybe every other year (unless I sought them out or went skiing)
It only took a few months back home to get my ear back and now the Aussies sound totally different
One of the weirdest things living somewhere where no one has your accent is actually hearing it - after my first 6 months living in SF I heard someone talking on the radio, KPFA, something about nuclear free zones, it was '84 ... her accent sounded really familiar, I just couldn't place it, I listened for 10 minutes before I had that OMG moment .... it wasn't just "oh, she has a kiwi accent!" it was "I sound like that"
Every time we came home to visit we'd sit in the departure lounge quietly listening to the people around talking .... it was wonderful
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
We share remarkably little of each other's news, and it feels somewhat culturally different when I'm there.
I'm quite intrigued by this. I - and I guess many others on here - come from an era when the gap between Australia and New Zealand was much clearer than it is now. Pre-internet and pre-80 TV channels Australia had a mystery, a murky fascination and reputation as bigger, harder and much faster. It was sophisticated in both good and bad ways and far less naive.
When I moved to Sydney in 1979 I quickly worked out that mostly the reputation had substance - Sydney was another world of badness, hardness, money and glamour that we simply didn't come close to emulating.
However over the next couple of decades gap disappeared somewhat. Auckland may still not be Sydney in many ways but we lost our innocence rather quickly and by the time I was going trans-Tasman every two or three months in the mid 1990s to early 2000s (38 times in 10 years!) it had become a fairly seemless transition from one to the other - mostly we did and thought the same way.
I reckon this has broken down even more in the past decade as a trip to Sydney for a weekend becomes common for many and our League team plays as part of the internal Oz competition. Ak to Sydney's cheaper than flying to Wellington sometimes.
After the earlier post I asked a bunch today whether they saw Australia as a foreign land and the response was split age wise. A couple of people over 40 very much saw it as a foreign land, whereas the sole 20 yr old said 'nah, it's just another 'burb.'
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
Every time we came home to visit we'd sit in the departure lounge quietly listening to the people around talking .... it was wonderful
Heh - I do that, or things like it. Even after just a few months away the departure lounge on a flight to Auckland is mesmerizing.
Coming back to Auckland in the mid 1980s, after three years away, when I boarded an Air NZ flight and was offered a Steinlager I had to fight back a very happy tear.
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Sacha, in reply to
offered a Steinlager I had to fight back a very happy tear
Nah, that's just wrong, eh. :)
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My impression is that there was also a shift in Chinese Government Policy away from sending students abroad for English or international education to one of providing better quality services in China. This is more speculative though, as based on anecdotal evidence of teachers choosing China over Sth Korea and Japan.
Regarding promoting education:
As of April 2011 a 24% rise in Chinese students studying abroad. It’s beyond the scope of the Chinese Government, with more money families have more options.
Primarily due to:
Which in turn could be in part due to:
Which despite theoretically meaning:
As I’m sure you’re aware Recordari, this is inadequate and below the current requirements of most internationally recognized universities and possibly influential in the drop off of NZ universities in international rankings. There is a perception of New Zealand as providing a second tier education at warehouse prices.
There are certainly more international education providers in China now, But at the tertiary level they are largely inferior branded versions of the product offered by their western franchises, offering semi-internationally recognized qualifications for exorbitant prices as gateways to foreign based universities. The international schools are better and their clientele will generally graduate to better ranked foreign universities.
Generally speaking, The attraction of the New Zealand beyond the obvious aesthetics is that it’s a second chance for Chinese students who failed the local university entrance exam or were unable to complete highschool, and it’s seen as a soft touch for immigration, serving as the perfect springboard for emigration to more attractive countries such as Australia or Canada. Essentially
but our ability to provide a supportive, welcoming multi-cultural environment seems to have been evolving. It is a strength that’s valuable in many ways.
Isn’t a qualification that sets the prospective student cum job seeker in better steed.
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I’m not sure about the US education system Jolisa, But the main thing I found upon returning to New Zealand from the UK as a child and especially as a teenager was that the local education system was vastly under-demanding so it may be a good time to encourage the young ones into some hobbies. At the very least take a comparative gander over the respective syllabi. If your sons are having to repeat too much material, it can play havoc with their motivation. Potential issues could arise when they start covering new ground again. Keeping them challenged in the meantime would be more conducive to their development. But as I said, I've no clue about the US system, maybe it’s a non-issue.
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I lost the ability to tell the difference when I lived in London – and gained the ability to tell a North Dublin accent from a South Dublin one.
I lost the ability to understand much of New Zealand speech. In Australia. I'd have to struggle and strain often to make sense of what people were saying. But then, I could listen to someone and fairly accurately tell you what part of Sydney they were from, despite having never lived there, and only been in Australia four years. Not everyone has these experiences, of course.
Dropping in this wonderful photoessay, What are Young Chinese Thinking? because it deserves to be shared, and this is a slightly less arbitrary discussion than most.
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