Impressions of New Zealand - Part 1 of 5

Since I landed three weeks ago, many oddities about New Zealand have struck me as particularly curious ordownright silly. To summarize my experiences over the past three weeks, I decided to compile a list of 50 observations about New Zealand and Dunedin culture. I basically took out a notebook, sat at a bench on the university campus for about two hours, and came up with a list of 50 things. They are presented here in five easy-to-read segments.

1. Dunedin has a lot of tight clothing

2. And not a lot of tight bodies

3. For Chartered Accountants, two weeks of unemployment seems like an eternity. For individuals with PHD's in Classics, it's about par for the course.

4. People who are nerds in high school become high school teachers. People who are nerds in university become professors.

5. Sangria is, was, and always will be, the devil.

6. The mullet is alive and well in some parts of the world.

7. Merchants here don't bargain, but love a good deal. I actually had a retail worker downsell me rechargeable camera batteries.

8. The prevalence of smoking in a society might be directly related to GDP per capita.

9. Cell phone users are annoying in every country.

10. Cell phone companies - even more so.

Picture below is of Billy the Exterminator, who has an AWESOME show on A&E. Yep, I definitely watched a 6-hour marathon on my last day in Canada.