Cry Me a Tasman

New Zealand is a small country. Area wise NZ is about the size of Colorado, and its population is less than that of John the Robert's native habitat, that cesspool of humanity and humidity known as Greater Houston.

So perhaps New Zealanders can be forgiven for having "little country" syndrome, the same way I have come to forgive 5 foot nothing Jason McClain for being a dick in high school. (Life as a short, red headed atheist who was the world's biggest Misfits fan at an all boys Catholic school in Texas must have been rough.)

But the reaction to this Australian expat's blog has taken the traditional Kiwi inferiority complex to new levels, damn near equating New Zealand itself with the personality cult status afforded Kim Jong Il or Fidel Castro, if only Dear Leader/El Jefe were a small flightless bird or a silver fern.

Here's what all the fuss is about. An Australian couple (from Tasmania of all places) moved to Auckland and started a blog a few months ago about their experience as Australians living in New Zealand. While literally thousands of Kiwis move to Australia every year and just about every Kiwi is either related to or at least knows someone who has made the move, Australians aren't exactly clamouring for flights further south. Nor do Australians know much about New Zealand - several Australian friends I knew in Japan were surprised that New Zealand had its own currency or that it's capital city was Wellington.

The need for a blog detailing life in NZ for the few Australians thinking about living here seems clear.

But then someone told the thin-skinned Kiwis that this couple didn't like New Zealand beer (Auckland beer probably does suck, but the beer down here in ChCh is gooooooood) and thought that Rotorua stunk (it does). And this "story" about the bloggers who "hate" New Zealand ended up in the papers and was even the top of the hour topic of conversation on the breakfast news show this morning.

I suppose I'm not really surprised. Three days after the New Zealand election, there was a front page story in the Press (Christchurch local rag) "reporting" that a columnist from the Age (Aussie paper) thought Kiwis made a huge mistake by electing John Key over incumbent Helen Clark. A few months later a German television network ran a story about street racers in Christchurch bothering tourists, which duly landed on the FRONT PAGE of the Press.

And in today's Press, the story at the bottom of the front page compares the drop in hotel prices in uber-hip Queenstown to the plunge in prices in Mumbai and Reyjkavik. The audacity to compare our supposed troubles in attracting tourists to the tragedy in Mumbai and financial chaos of Iceland, while shocking, is yet further proof of this innate and irrational defensiveness that Kiwis harbour.

Relax. New Zealand is beautiful, and it is a great place to live.

Christchurch is the most livable city in the world. I can walk to work in 20 minutes. I saw Steve Earle play one of the best shows I've ever seen in a state of the art theatre that was halfway to work (that's ten minutes for the mathematically challenged). The skifields are a 90 minute drive, and the beach is 15 minutes on the bus, or 45 on the bike. We've got flower shows coming out our yin-yangs, international buskers, a world class rugby stadium, a kick ass library with very comfortable chairs and every magazine known to man (Downbeat anyone?), and enough Thai food to keep Thailand going should global warming wipe it off the map.

We love it here. I'm not leaving. But I'm not going to Rotorua either.

And I'm still allowed to bitch.