New Zealand ranks 8th in the OECD for paid leave — the highest outside continental Europe. Christmas is in summer, the whole country shuts down at once, and since I wrote this they’ve added a brand new public holiday based on the Māori lunar calendar.
My partner scoffed when Starbucks “introduced” the Flat White in 2015. New Zealand had been drinking them since before I was paying attention to coffee. Here’s the story — and the dispute.
Rude as. Bugger. Togs. Speedo. Part 2 of How to Talk Like a Kiwi — including the Toyota commercial that made ‘bugger’ famous and the one that explains the difference between togs and underwear. Yes, really.
Edmund Hillary took Weet-Bix to the summit of Everest. Kiwi kids have been eating them for breakfast since 1926. I’ve tried them. I still don’t quite get it. But I respect it.
New Zealand has amazing food. It does not have Jimmy Dean sausage, chicken fried steak, or Cheese-Nips. I’m managing.
New Zealand doesn’t refrigerate its eggs. Neither does Europe. America does. Turns out there’s a very good reason — and the American method might actually be the riskier one.
In January of this year, the owner of a section of beach in the heart of Abel Tasman National Park was put up for sale. The owner listed the beach as “rare and stunning location offers a once in a life time opportunity for private ownership of your very own beach and land package in idyllic…
I got a voicemail from a recruiter about a role with a company called “In Zed Bus.” I Googled it for ten minutes before realizing she meant NZ Bus. Welcome to Part 1 of How to Talk Like a Kiwi.
Wellington Kiwis will sneer at your Starbucks cup. Auckland Kiwis couldn’t care less. And at the bottom of the South Island there’s a store that claims to be the southernmost Starbucks in the world.
A three-minute film about two Chinese refugees who came to New Zealand as children, became the country’s largest kumara growers, saved an entire crop from extinction, and refused to be paid for it. Watch it.