More Food Related Wonderings

I wrote this post a while ago and am just now posting it cause it's not great, but I'm going away tomorrow for two weeks (to the South Island), so I wanted to leave something. Enjoy!

What I always find really interesting when I’m travelling is how tastes in one country got to be the way they are, and why they’re so different from tastes in another country. This is exemplified to me by the fast food options in Australia and New Zealand. (Can I say before I go any further that this isn’t exactly a well-researched blog post, though I did Google a few key facts and took the top search result to be accurate. Because if I can’t trust Google, who can I trust?)

Now, one could say, Australia and New Zealand weren’t formed all that differently from the United States. Especially Australia… colonized by the British, settlers then pushed back and murdered the native people, brought in their own lot (who happened to be convicts), and decided to form a new country. Except they never quite got there, and so their head of state is still technically the Queen. Ouch. And, ok, Australia did all of this founding business quite a few years after America and, yes, they never had a falling out with the mother country in the form of a bloody war, but still. Australia is THOUSANDS OF MILES further away from the UK than America is. I feel like the tastes of the two countries should be ENTIRELY different. And so I get back to the topic of fast food.

So let’s start off with pizza, because hopefully you’ve already read the epic pizza-related post below. Now, I know why pizza’s good in New York. We have a lot of Italian immigrants, or people of Italian descent. This is not a big secret. I’m not going to speculate on why Italians didn’t go to Australia in the 1800s or whenever they came over (see, well researched. Quality journalism.) because, well, Australia is really far away. So ok, I know that intellectually it makes sense to have better pizza in America. But that doesn’t excuse the excuse for pizza they serve here.

Now don’t even get me started on fast deli sandwiches or bagels. Just… don’t. I might cry. Deli sandwiches, as in sandwiches made to order, don’t seem to exist, and bagels are… I can’t even explain. I cry inside when I think of a New Zealand bagel. Why don't they have delis and bagels here? I guess some of it could have to do with a lack of Jewish immigrants, but it's weird. So let’s move on to the positives!

And here is where I get confused. Because one of the biggest fast food options in Australia and New Zealand is Indian food, or, basically, curries. You can go into a shop and order a curry with naan and rice for about ten NZ dollars (US$5. This place is cheap), and have it to take away in about ten minutes. This I enjoy, because I love Indian food and can never get enough of it at home. The thing is, though, that Indian curries are also very popular in England. I know why that is, once again… lots of Indian immigrants in the UK! So, the question is… did the tastes of the UK move Down Under and bring with it a love of curry, or did people from India also immigrate over this way and bring the curry with them, thus developing SEPERATELY a desire for fast and delicious Indian food. I could probably find this out with a little googling, but as I said… it’s a research-light day. Basically I can’t explain why, but I can tell you that there is a wide availability of delicious curry in Australia and New Zealand, and this is a good thing (and possibly makes up for the pizza).

The second delicious fast food phenomenon in this here region is that of PIES. Now mentioning a pie over here does not imply delicious fruit filling, it means MEAT. Lots and lots of meaty filling. There are tiny shops all over New Zealand which seem to deal exclusively in pre-made meat pies, all ready in a warming device/oven type thing to take out and consume with your hands and possibly some tomato sauce (not ketchup. See earlier post). Some of them have the addition of cheese. Apparently there is a “butter chicken pie” (butter chicken is a type of curry) that combines these two fast food phenomena, but as much as I like the two separately, the idea of a combination is revolting to me (and my arteries). I know steak pies are big in English pubs, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen little shops like they have here full of pies over in the UK. I could be wrong, but there you go. Perhaps this one just evolved on its own in this little corner of the world. Good onya, mate!

Now I shouldn’t finish my post without saying that, yes, the garangutan American fast food chains are of course present here as well. It’s not all curries and pies. They of course of McDonalds and KFC and Burger King. (Interestingly, though, in Australia BK is called Hungry Jack’s: same logo, different name. In NZ it’s Burger King.) Alas, it seems nowhere is safe from the desire for burgers, fries, and deep frying things, and I don’t think I have to ponder how that trend made it over the seas.

The Pizza from Hell

Last night was interesting. As a flat, we usually don’t order out food a lot. But yesterday Tamsin got an email from a chain called Hell’s Pizza, saying that there was a special deal on—gourmet pizzas for only $13! And we didn’t really know who was supposed to be cooking that night anyway, so we decided to bite the bullet and order in. I surrendered my laptop to Tams and we started to decide what to have.

This soon proved to be far more difficult than I would have ever imagined. I started off with: “I’m really just fine with cheese pizza. That’s what I like. Just cheese pizza!” Now, I had already encountered the New Zealand and Australian obsession with PILING things on their pizza, but I didn’t think this was such a foreign concept to them. But I was suddenly faced with everyone staring at me blankly. I think it was Tamsin’s boyfriend Daniel who finally said, in a tone of the utmost incredulity “cheese pizza???” I started to get a bit worried. “Um, yes. Cheese pizza. Y’know… tomato sauce. Cheese. That’s it.” The New Zealanders looked at each other. “Like a margherita pizza?” “Well… yes, basically.” I don’t think I’m making things up here when I say that most Americans think there is an important distinction between plain cheese pizza and a margherita pizza. Mainly that a margherita pizza is, well, fancier… you can usually SEE bits of mozzarella in it. And there are sometimes whole tomatoes! I just wanted your bog-standard greasy cheese pizza but I didn’t want to get into semantics with this lot.

The Hell’s Pizza web site seemed to be malfunctioning. We couldn’t get at the menu. So Tams started researching other pizza places in Wellington… apparently now that we had seized on the idea of having pizza, nothing but the best would do. She found a few and showed me pictures, asking if this was what I was imagining when I said “cheese pizza” (always said with audible air quotations). None were a perfect match, so I acquiesced to going local and having their crazy pizza, if we could ever order it.

Finally the Hell’s Pizza site seemed to kick into gear. But now we were faced with options. So many options. Not only do all of these pizzas seem to have at least five toppings, they had names all in keeping with the “hell” theme. This was going to be an ordeal. We started browsing. I liked the sound of “Sinister”… salsa, re-fried beans, jalapenos (and about a thousand other toppings), it sounded pretty delicious, if not quite what I imagined pizza should be. The others agreed this could be one of our options… and look, there was even a button to add cheese! Moving past the fact that this was being called a pizza when it didn’t even have cheese to begin with, I tried to explain to them that I it wasn’t that I needed cheese on my pizza, it was that I wasn’t really interested in all these other toppings. They seemed unconvinced. Obviously I was a cheese addict, if I wanted cheese pizza. It was suggested that I could just “go crazy” on the block of Edam in the fridge.

It was a few minutes after Tamsin discovered that there was an option to add or take away any topping, including salt, that I retired to my room and left them to their ordering. I would eat whatever came.

So when I re-emerged ten minutes later, I assumed they had finally ordered. Oh no. The site had malfunctioned again. But we knew what we wanted now… so couldn’t they just call? Well apparently our special promotion involved saying the phrase “show me the money.” Perhaps because of their extreme aversion to exhibitionists, none of the New Zealanders would stoop to that. They were apparently content to starve. So I put aside my intense fear of ordering food over the phone and called up. An hour after we had set out, dinner was ordered.

Then we hit the next roadblock. Between five of us, the meal came to $50. I had $35. Daniel had some “shrapnel.” Nobody else had cash. New Zealanders rarely carry cash—they can charge almost everything (except, apparently, pizza deliveries) to EFTPOS cards (like debit cards). This seems at once smart (less chance of being mugged for cash!) and extremely inconvenient to me, but there you go. So off the others trooped to the ATM in the village. Of course the pizza arrived before they did, meaning I had to run around the house looking for cash (and thankfully discovered that we did in fact have enough).

So, after that epic adventure, how was the pizza? Well, it was no American pizza. Other than the Mexican-themed one, we had “Grimm,” with an apricot base, chicken, pine nuts, spring onion and a few other things, and a meat-heavy one. In this and my other pizza-eating experiences over here, focus seemed to be on the toppings rather than the crust, which was neither New York-thin nor Chicago-deep. Just non-descript, doughy, blah. The one I had chosen (which remained my favourite) was the least favourite of the others because it “didn’t really work as a pizza.” None of them really worked as a pizza to me, but then I’m just an ignorant American. They were fairly tasty, and I ended up disgustingly full. And I guess that's really the point of pizza anyway.

And now if you think I am done talking about takeaway food Down Under, you are so wrong. I already had a 2-page post written up before last night, which I will post soon. But to give you a break from food I’ll provide a short anecdote from last weekend, entitled “The American on the Bus”:
Last Saturday I was getting on the bus with my flatmates. The fare was $1.50, I paid $2 and then walked down the bus, forgetting to get my change. I dashed back as soon as I noticed and the bus driver looked at me and then said to Tams, “she’s crazy!” In way of explanation, Tams told him I was American. I was now walking off, but the bus driver said something to Tams. When we sat down I asked what he had said. “I’m not sure… maybe ‘no problem!’” Daniel, who had been behind her, swiftly corrected her, “oh no. He said, ‘we don’t want the Bomb here!’”
I may never live that one down.
Good night.

Six Months Later

I have been away from home, and thus out of the US, for exactly six months today.
Apart from the whole does-it-feel-like-longer-or-shorter conundrum, this had made me think a bit. More specifically, it has made me think about how my perspective might have changed in that time.
Basically, a few weeks ago I was comparing something in New Zealand to America (as I often do), and a friend stopped me and asked “but couldn’t your perspective be messed up because you’ve been away for so long?” I answered hurriedly (perhaps a bit too hurriedly), “no, absolutely not.”
But then I went to Auckland last weekend. The first thing I noticed was just the slightest hint of humidity in the air. I was instantly worried. Wellington, for the record, doesn’t really get humid at all, probably because it’s always windy or something. And I knew in the back of my head that this really wasn’t humid at all. Not even registering on the humidity scale compared to summers in New York or any time in Hong Kong. But I noticed it anyway. When I mentioned it to Tams, she said “and did you notice how there are SO MANY PEOPLE?” Auckland is by far the biggest city in New Zealand, with a third of the country’s population living in the Auckland area. (Or at least I heard something along those lines once, and so am going to repeat it here.) I thought about this for about a nanosecond, and realized that I had thought that. Uh oh. I had gotten off the bus and the streets had seemed rather crowded. And busy. New Zealand has fewer people in the entire country that New York City does in its five boroughs. I was starting to get seriously scared.
So obviously, my perspective has changed in some ways. I’ve gotten used to different weather and having fewer people around. That’s not too surprising when you think about it, but it made me wonder if it had changed my outlook on other things. Can I really comment anymore on the prevalence of beets in America versus in New Zealand? What if I just can’t remember? Worrying stuff. Add to that the fact that I haven’t actually been in America since the financial crisis truly started or Obama was elected, and I suddenly start to feel very out of touch with American culture. A couple of weeks ago everybody on twitter started talking about a press conference Obama was giving. People never actually watched and listened to these things when I lived in America! Maybe things really have changed!
Honestly, I know I’m not that out of touch. I can remember what I normally eat at home, what the weather is like and what it feels like to be squished into a subway car with a hundred other people. I read enough American blogs and have enough contacts with America that I have some idea what the atmosphere is like over there at the moment, but I guess I can never be sure until I get home.
Which will be actually quite soon. Six months down, two to go!
(Picture: A view of Auckland from some hill lookout thing. Notice it is not actually that massive.)

My Sunday in pictures

Here are some pictures, at last. http://tinyurl.com/cxrnme
Click through and read the captions to hear about our (less-than) exciting Sunday.

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!

Botanical Musings

The way I see it there are three speeds of travel. Speed 1 is what I did over the (northern) summer* in Europe. We had eight major stops in 3 ½ weeks, meaning we spent 1-3 nights in each place. That’s pretty super sonic. This was really good in some ways, though, because it meant we rushed around and tried to see as much as we could. With the exception of our stops in Switzerland and Hamburg, we pretty much didn’t have downtime. We knew our time was limited, and we wanted to take advantage of every minute.
Speed 2 is slightly slower, and usually involves a lot fewer places. I think this is the most typical travel speed… most family vacations involve going somewhere for one to two weeks, with maybe one other stop or side trip. This speed is pretty good too, though in can be bad for the cultural sights mentality. I mean, if you have two weeks, you don’t rush to see every museum right away and (I find) this sometimes means that you realize on your last day you haven’t seen nearly everything that you planned to. But it is good for relaxing and for absorbing the atmosphere of a place.
Which brings me to Speed 3, aka move to a country for a few months and see what it’s all about. Guess what speed I’m on right now? And I have found some entirely dorky reasons to love it.
Now, of course, there’s the obvious, ie you get to see how people Really Live. For example, through extended observation I have determined that New Zealanders don’t believe in wearing shoes (ok, I actually discovered this on my first day here. But I have CONTINUED to discover it), they eat out of bowls much more often than other people (this could just be my flatmates), and they say things like “gutted,” “average,” and “yus.” (I have worryingly started to pick up on some of these expressions.) I noticed things like this in Australia as well—their slang especially took some time to pick up.
But the dorkiest thing ever that I have noticed through staying in one place for a long time is... the change in the flora.
Now. I should first point out that New Zealanders are really obsessed with their plants. Australians are too, but to a slightly lesser degree. More specifically, New Zealanders are obsessed with what is “native” and what is not… ie what was originally on these tiny islands and what the Evil Europeans (or the Maoris, less frequently) brought with them. I am constantly being instructed that I can’t look at certain plants because they’re “not native.” For example, my flat is on a hill, and when I walk out on a particularly nice day I look over at the surrounding hills and comment on their beauty. If I’m with Tamsin, I’m swiftly chided because those hills are covered with pine trees, which are not native and thus could not possibly by pretty. I am often questioned on what is native in America, and they never seem to accept the answer that I don’t know, or really care. They take nativeness really seriously here.
Anyway, of the plants that I am allowed to look at, I have noticed recently some awesome changes as the months progress. Now, to northerners this probably seems pretty obvious—duh, plants change when it gets to fall. But in the southern hemisphere that isn’t so true. In Australia, for example, the eucalypts that make up a lot of the flora don’t lose their leaves all at one time—they lose some leaves all year round, and shed their bark to get rid of waste. This means that you wouldn’t notice much of a difference if you were to visit for a week in August and then a week in December. New Zealand is the same in some respects… actually here I could be totally making things up, but I am pretty sure they don’t have deciduous trees. So you need to be here for a while to observe the small changes that do occur through the seasons. FOR EXAMPLE, when I first got to New Zealand it was December, and the Pohutakawa trees (also known as New Zealand Christmas trees) were beginning to blossom. They have beautiful red flowers and green leaves, and they flower through December and into January. So when I came back I was able to observe them some more, and then got really depressed as I started walking through carpets of red petals… there is now hardly a Pohutakawa blossom to be seen. Also, a few weeks ago I went up to a tree in our garden and saw these weird green pods. Now they’re orange! And falling off the trees! The same thing happened with purple flowers in Australia! It’s all pretty exciting, and is making me realize what’s nice about being in one spot for a prolonged period of time.
So I just realized that the rest of the post was probably far more interesting than the actual point of the post, and that this is way too long, but there you go. My dad was begging for a blog, so a blog he will get.

*Now that it is nearing the end of summer here, it has become even more difficult to say I did things during certain seasons. I mean, when I first got here I could say “over the summer…” and people would understand me, but now they won’t know which summer I’m talking about! Confusing.

Beat This

I am in Wellington. I am bad at blogging. Moving on...

Central Park is, of course, very nice. On one of my last days in New York I walked through part of it, near the reservoir. Though it was late summer, everything was still green and beautiful. The sun was out. There were lots of people lying in the sun or jogging or whatever. You could see skyscrapers peeking over the tops of the trees, which is always one of my favourite things about Central Park-- you can easily imagine you are in the middle of... well, not the country, but a not-quite-city, but then you look up and remember you're in New York. It's pretty awesome.

Also good is the Sydney Botanical garden. It goes right up to the Opera House, and I'm pretty sure you can see the Harbour Bridge from parts of it (one of my favourite things about Sydney is you can see its landmarks-- Opera House, Harbour Bridge, from a lot of places in the city, not just when you're right next to them). There are many plants and trees labeled for your botanic education (which I am planning a blog post on soon), and some of the trees have infestations of flying foxes, which is apparently a bad thing but is pretty cool when you look up and see all these bat-like things in the trees. I mean, provided the stay in the trees. I would not like those to come swooping down on me. Anyway, good garden. In a city. Sweet as. (I am so down with the antipodean lingo)

Even Hong Kong park is pretty nice. It's always fun to walk through on a Saturday and play count-the-wedding-parties... I'm sure everyone in Hong Kong must have the same exact wedding photos. It has an awesome aviary (when it's not closed because of bird flu), and the extra bonus of having an escalator that goes from the park DIRECTLY into a mall. Only in Hong Kong.

But...
On a clear, sunny, crisp day like today, I challenge you to find a city garden/park nicer than the Wellington Botanical Garden. I just went for maybe a half hour walk in it, and it was gorgeous. There are bits that are dark and shady and you don't see or hear anyone else, and bits of open meadow where lots of people (though, you know, in New Zealand "lots of people" is a relative term) are lying out. There is a beautiful rose garden where you can sit and have a cup of coffee and a pretty good lunch, and there are bits of seemingly uncultivated wood with only the slightest path through them. You have to walk up and down hills the entire time, meaning you get some stunning vistas of Wellington harbour and houses nestled on hillsides. As much as I like seeing the skyscrapers from Central Park, it is pretty nice to know that I'm only just outside the centre of Wellington and yet it's all houses, not apartment blocks, and most of what I see is green. And then-- bonus!-- I can walk out the top and either take the cable car down into the middle of the city, or walk five minutes to my flat. Bliss.
The only way I think it could be improved is by having slightly better signage near the Magpie Lawn. I got a bit lost.
I didn't take any pictures today, when I saw the nicest bits I've seen so far, but here's a picture from the top, where the Cable Car comes out, just to give a bit of a feel.