And you think you’re so clever and classless and free
Returning to the nest is a funny thing. I haven’t been in
And like everything I see the good, the bad, and, unfortunately the damn ugly. We flew into
Seriously, who in gods name are you trying to kid? The departed Pride of Gympie (or whatever Queensland backwater it was) always struck me as rather sophisticated when put next to the 98% of Australia’s population that hails itself as little Aussie battlers or some other garbage. And he (or rather she, I should say) knew how to manipulate that mass to line their own pockets rather well, as the raft of post-Stingray TV tributes, interviews and the kids on the covers of Women’s mags is indisputable evidence of.
But the to the ugly, well the mass of real ockers that felt that it was alright to travel in sweat infested singlets, or put their feet on the top of the seat in front were mostly generously described by Brigid as gruesome, and so they were. But before anyone accuses me of Ockerism or any such bigotry (you can save that for the post that was meant to go here and may still appear, on the current relationship between the Australian tourist and Bali), let me say that the bunch of New Zealanders who jumped on GA712 for the last leg to Auckland, were little better, and we, as a family shrank into our seats in case our passports should tie us to the Gold Coast massive returning to Hamilton for the holidays.
Forget the harbour, forget the vistas, forget everything else, the really good things about
I have to say, too, the other good, and often underrated aspect of
Which tidily leads to the bad: the ugly pretensions affected by so many in this city. The ostentatious wealth, often funded by loans and overdrafts, and pretentious verbiage you encounter everywhere. I read the Sunday Herald’s magazines, or Metro, I look at the garbage written about fashion week, I drive down
I hate that side of
This is a city that treats Nicky Watson as a celebrity and titters excitedly when some second level American actor comes to town. It’s quaint.
Not that I, for a moment, would live anywhere else in the country. I’d go nuts. And all the things I’ve just complained about in AK are magnified tenfold in
So, to the ugly.
Well, it has to be the violence. The damning violence which plagues this country. I don’t know if its driven by alcohol or, as I said a long time back, by the contact ball sports, or the P epidemic that is a vicious plague everywhere I look but aggression and intolerance that I see on every street, from the abuse to the road rage, and the way it spills over into the random violence that fill the newspaper front pages daily, terrifies me. Yes I know I live in Indonesia, a country which has had terror related bombings and suffers government travel warnings but Indonesia, or at least Bali, doesn’t have the day to day senseless murders, assaults and attacks that are so much a part of New Zealand life. We have no road rage and Asian drivers must shake at the verbal assaults received daily simply because they drive with a little less aggression than their locally born compatriots. Not that birth helps, my fourth generation NZ born Chinese former neighbour receives daily taunts of “fucking chink” and the like on the road.
Oh, we are so sophisticated….
2 comments:
great post. exactly how i feel about the place. love it, but it needs to pull it's head in a touch.
funny. I emailed your comments about Auckland vs Welly to my capital-bound (as in, bonded by job) partner and she took umbrage on behalf of her adopted home... but really can't wait to get out and back to the Big Smoke.
yeah AK's just a big Polynesian town really, faster than any others but still pretty slow. hey, we're in the Pacific right?
must disagree with your road rage assessments though, if anything the slow-driving Asians you're talking of are way, WAY more dangerous than most drivers: indecision/bad calls etc cause accidents in town more than speed - and I'm a cyclist! in Auckland! go figure.. but true, many's the time a slow, cautious and clearly quite fearful Asian driver's nearly totalled me by pausing in mid-road or generally just not adapting to the pace of the streets they're driving on.
no excuses for racism (or violence, ever) but there should be some kind of training for new drivers in NZ, along the lines of, well you're in Auckland and people hate being slowed down unnecessarily... actually I noticed the same thing in Apia recently, maybe it's a Nesian vs Asian thing?
my ten cents (can't do 2 no more)
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