Things We’ve Learned About New Zealand, Pt. 1

Any time you’re in a new country, there will always be new things that you encounter that you might find weird. For Tamara and I, having both lived in Australia before, we are finding a lot of things in common between our experiences in Australia and New Zealand. But we have still encountered several things even during our short time in NZ that are new to us.

    - The houses in NZ, similar to those in AUS, are not very well insulated since it doesn’t get very cold here in the winter (usually only freezes overnight a few times per year where we are in Hamilton). However, this part of NZ is a lot damper than Melbourne, where both of us lived in AUS. When combined with the windows in many houses being single-paned, the result is that the insides of windows tend to get a lot of condensation in the winter. Because this is a common occurrence here in NZ, they’ve come up with a way to deal with that condensation: a window vacuum! Like the name sounds, it is a handheld electric squeegee vacuum that sucks up the moisture from the window (see below); it’s like magic! Out of the 2 weeks or so that we’ve been in our current place, we’ve had to vacuum our bedroom windows about 6 times, each time getting at least 100 mL of water. 

    - Unlike AUS, NZ doesn’t really have any dangerous spiders (except for one species that’s been introduced that’s apparently not too common) or snakes. Here in Hamilton, unfortunately they do have cockroaches and a couple got into our house one night, although not the big ones that we’ve seen in places like Albuquerque. But strangely enough, one of the other creatures we’ve discovered entering our house the most has been slugs! The second evening we were here, we found 5 or 6 little slugs crawling around on the inside of our bathroom window! We discovered a gap in the window seal that was their most likely route of entry; after blocking that gap, we haven’t had as many. But still…who would’ve thought that slugs would be a common household pest?

    - Another thing we’ve found so far is that the cost of living is quite comparable to living in Oregon in many ways, except when it comes to food and petrol (gas). Groceries here are quite expensive - $10 NZD for a rotisserie chicken, compared with $5 USD in Oregon (1 USD = 1.75 NZD roughly); or for milk, the price for a liter of milk here is similar to a gallon of milk in Oregon. Apparently, food prices are an ongoing debate in NZ, with the consensus view that high grocery prices are because there are only two supermarket chains in NZ: Countdown (same as Woolworth’s in AUS) and Pak n’ Save (where Tamara has been doing most of our shopping). Petrol is also quite expensive, with prices usually around $2.20/L (~$8 per gallon). But one of the cheapest food items we’ve come across so far has been pizza – we paid $6 for a medium BBQ onion and beef pizza on Friday night that was quite good quality for the price. 

    - The weather here in Hamilton is quite unpredictable. Like Corvallis, it tends to rain a lot in winter. But unlike Corvallis, the rain is very spotty here, and the weather prediction services aren’t very reliable. As an example, on Wednesday night the weather forecast predicted thunderstorms from 7 AM – 5 PM Thursday. In actuality, we had a couple of intense rain periods during the day, but was otherwise only partly cloudy, and there was no thunder or lightning at all. One fun side effect of the rain being rather spotty is that we’ve seen quite a few rainbows!

    - Apparently, mullets are more acceptable here in NZ…we’ve seen multiple guys here in NZ who have mullets. And these are full mullets, complete with the sides of the head shaved!

    - Everyone in NZ likes to drive everywhere. Public transit in Hamilton consists of buses, but most people take cars. When combined with how quickly Hamilton is growing and the lack of new infrastructure, the result is that traffic is pretty bad at peak times, even though Hamilton only has about 175,000 people. On top of that, they’re currently doing roadwork on one of the major roads to the university, so traffic near campus is even worse than usual. Without traffic, it would take about 17 minutes to drive to the university from our current place. With morning traffic, it takes closer to 26 minutes.

-Stephen

One of the many rainbows we've seen while in Hamilton

Slugs on the bathroom window!

Window vacuuming