Potato paTAHto; Tomato tomAHTo

When you’re living with people from a different place than you, no matter for how long, you continue to find differences in accent or culture that provide constant fodder for laughs, teasing, and general conversation. The thing is, I find that I never notice things about my own culture (in this case I’m talking American, or perhaps more accurately northeast suburbia American) until I’m somewhere else and living among people from different backgrounds. Some things I just assume are the same everywhere. I mean, everybody knows that the seasons are opposite in the southern hemisphere, but I had no idea that Australia and New Zealand mark changes on the first of the season rather than the equinoxes (making today the first day of fall). This doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to me, but I guess it’s just one of those differences I have to accept.

Another difference is the Australian (and New Zealand, to a lesser degree) love of beetroot. They both loving putting beets on their burgers, and Australians frequently try to dump canned beets on your plate as a vegetable. I do not tolerate this nonsense. Maybe I’m a totally weird American, but I distinctly remember the first time I was confronted with beets (outside of the cartoon Doug, of course). It was in England I was maybe twelve. I tried to tell my friends the other night that we didn’t really eat beets in America, which was met with (somewhat feigned) incredulity. They then spent half an hour trying to convince me that Americans actually LOVE beets, meaning New Zealanders can’t import enough of them because we are always stealing them. When this tactic failed, I was asked which “vegetable-hating state” I was from, again? Well apparently New Yorkers are famous for their hatred of beets. Everybody else loves them. News to me! (And, to get back to my actual point, perhaps a bit of proof that sometimes it’s hard to believe that things you grew up with aren’t the same everywhere, even if they were mostly just teasing me.)

Of course I’m usually coming up with these differences all the time, but now it gets time to writing them down I’m forgetting them all. One thing I find particularly offensive is the profusion of a substance known as “tomato sauce.” You might think (and people try to tell me) that this is pretty much identical to ketchup. False. Tomato sauce is considerably runnier and sweeter than ketchup. On the few occasions when I am dragged into McDonalds (which, of course, is supposed to be my Mecca), I relent only when I realize that this is an opportunity to get REAL ketchup, none of that sauce stuff. That difference is one of the things that I really wonder at—how did the change from ketchup to tomato sauce occur, and why is one more popular in America and one more popular over here? Or did they evolve separately? Frankly, it baffles me.
While I’m on the subject of cultural differences, I think I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the differences between New Zealand and Australia. If you’ve watched Flight of the Conchords you may have seen the episode in which Bret and Jemaine, the main characters, are discriminated against for being New Zealanders. At the end of the episode, however, it is revealed that in fact the “racist” man in question had thought they were Australians, and had no problem with New Zealand. This is a common mistake, of course. People mix up Australia and New Zealand all the time, much to the chagrin of the citizens of both countries, who regard each other with contempt. When I told a cattle rancher in Australia that I was going to New Zealand, he replied promptly that there were only three things I needed to know about New Zealanders: “over paid, over sexed, and over here.” (I did read yesterday that the number of New Zealanders leaving for Australia is almost 1,000 a week, in a country of only 6 million people. Pretty staggering.) People often compare the two countries to America and Canada, but it’s quite a different relationship, with many more differences in culture and accent. The one I found most amusing when I was over here with both my New Zealand friend Tams and Australian friend Lily was the different way the two countries treat possums. In Australia, they are a native animal and somewhat endangered, and are thus revered. People stop their cars if a possum is crossing in front of them. In New Zealand, however, possums were introduced (by those bloody Australians, of course) and endanger native birds, which are largely flightless due to the lack of native predators in New Zealand. Possums are therefore widely reviled, and cars frequently swerve out of their ways to hit them. This may seem like a simple difference of geography, but hearing people from the two countries talking about it made me realise that the different reactions highlight real differences in mindset that the two countries have.

My second to last example (I apparently make up in quantity of examples by the length of my discourse on each one) is the proliferation of things like pre-made cookie dough, frosting, cake mixes, etc in America. We always hear that Americans have so many products designed for convenience rather than health, price, or taste, but I didn’t realize how much this was true until I started craving some good old-fashioned break-and-bake cookies. I hope most Americans know what I’m talking about, and realise why I crave them, but for anyone who doesn’t, this is basically refrigerated cookie dough that you can buy in a variety of flavours in a block with score lines. You simple have to break the pieces apart and put them on a baking sheet in the oven to get “home-made” cookies. I explained this to New Zealanders and they all looked aghast. If you wanted homemade cookies why not just make them yourself? If you didn’t, why not just buy them? What, in short, was the point? Clearly they don’t realize how delicious this dough is raw (let’s face it, we all sneak at least a few cookies’ worth of dough away before baking), or how nice it can be to eat cookies right out of the oven without the hassle of… well, doing almost anything. Plus, they’re delicious. The same is true with pre-made frosting. It’s just better than what I can make with stuff that’s usually in my cupboard. But if you didn’t grow up with these products (and this is probably a generational difference as well as cultural), it just seems bizarre. I’m still being teased that the thing I miss most about America right now is cookie dough.

And then there are, of course, the more “important” or “serious” differences. Don’t get me wrong, these interest me as well, but I’m not as good at writing about them (or perhaps I should just try another day). One example of these is what New Zealanders call “tall poppy” syndrome. Apparently Americans are much more used to talking themselves up then New Zealanders… it’s true, we do have a propensity to brag, and certainly talk of our own achievements. If a New Zealander dares to say that she has done such-and-such and is thus awesome, she’ll quickly be cut down by anyone listening. It’s just not done. Gun laws and our history of slavery are other subjects that I’m mocked about frequently… I’ve never been proud of our ability to carry guns and our history of slavery, but I had never before thought of how people without those laws and that history viewed Americans because of them. Oh, and apparently they can’t sue people for every little thing here. Weird.

Anyway, those are just some differences I’ve been thinking about recently. I’m sure I’ll think of more soon, but I think this post is PLENTLY long enough. Stay tuned for a picture diary of my Sunday coming soon!