Posts by Danielle
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Never, good sir! I shall go down fighting!
-
In NZ society, to behave in a manner was considered appropriate, I would have pretended not to see the driver or notice he had nearly hit the kid when he swerved towards him, and I would have not made eye contact with the distraught Mum
Can I call a bit of a 'NO WAI' on that? (Also known as 'bullshit'.) I think reactions to that particular situation would vary widely depending on personality, rather than some nebulous idea of national behavioural characteristics. In other words, I would totally have yelled at that guy, and in my currently rather brief time as a parent I've also noticed that mothers and fathers pretty much *always* make eye contact (or more) with each other in stressful situations for their children.
-
I am sure when NZers go to Canada they are frequently shocked and offended by facets of my culture that are completely different from their own.
When I think of Canada, the first word that springs to mind is 'offensive'. Heh.
(I should note that the story about telling off the dude outside the TAB did, in fact, make me feel vaguely and reflexively indignant on behalf of a gang member feeding his child chocolate and a fizzy drink for breakfast. Which is... interesting.)
-
I now feel smug for having made my coffee in one of those for years.
(You'd probably scorn my cheese purchases, though.)
-
Al Capone's Haberdashery and Bullet Shop
I simply cannot stop laughing at this. An actual tear of mirth rolled down my cheek.
If you teach at One of the Ten Worst Schools in Auckland, According to Metro (TM), are you more working-class than someone who teaches at Auckland Grammar? (Someone in my household may be interested in the answer.)
Instant coffee is only vaguely palatable if you tell yourself that it is a 'hot beverage', and do not liken it to actual coffee in your mind. (Was instant coffee terribly posh when it first came out? I imagine it to have been part of the grand 'science and technology will make all things jazzy and modern!' movements of the postwar period. Like infant formula.)
-
But it would honestly seem a bit pointless trying to explain/mansplain on that now.
Aw. I was up for a bit of mansplainin' on a cloudy Friday the thirteenth...
-
Once, long ago, when I was doing my MA in history at the University of Auckland, a fellow student in a seminar simply refused to acknowledge that class existed in New Zealand because 'my mother lived next door to a watersider's wife'. And then there was this long, frustrating exchange between her, and the lecturer, and the rest of us, which went along the lines of 'but the fact that you said that, and drew the distinction, means that there is, in fact, class in New Zealand. Geddit?' And then she would repeat her claim in various ways, and we would repeat ours, and finally we just had to drop the entire discussion because she did not get it, and never got it. And she was a graduate student in New Zealand history. It was a thoroughly weird experience that has stayed with me for over a decade.
My grandfather's family looked down on my grandmother's family because they were Maori. My grandmother's family looked down on my grandfather's family because they were Irish. I'm not sure who won that battle. And everyone on my Cajun side was so incredibly working-class that they didn't even speak English until after World War II. My husband and I are the first people in our families to get university degrees. Now we call ourselves "self-hating bourgeois". Heh.
-
I was astonished, and wished to be back in Canada where that kind of crap would have been strongly discouraged in grade school by disgusted peers who'd have said "grow up" or "stop being such bitches" by the time they were 8 or 10 years old.
Dyan, I am willing to believe many great things of Canada. My mother lived there for several years in the 1960s and has nothing but nice things to say about it. I love the Kids in the Hall, Neil Young, the New Pornographers, Samantha Bee, and Anne of Green Gables. But I am afraid I must say this: it stretches the bounds of my practically limitless credulity for you to assert that Canada is a land without such bitchiness.
ETA a smiley or something, because I'm not entirely serious.
-
be all Mike Moore about it
It'll be a long, cold night... oh, never mind. I'm too discouraged to even make mean jokes.
-
people are sick to the back teeth with being treated with smug reverse snobbery for daring to disagree with a certain socially liberal POV
There's a lot of sound and fury in your posts, Tom, but I'm not exactly sure what it signifies. Which people? What's the 'socially liberal POV' they're sick of? And if it's solely that you find listening to the concerns of people who aren't exactly like you problematic, then I'm kinda going to have to call 'tough shit', you know?