More observations

22 Jan
Well the big news is that Obama is now prez, and that makes everyone here happy. We were at a bed an breakfast, and watched the parade with our corn flakes. That’s about all we know, as we havent’ hooked up to internet in a few days.

Well on to more observations about how the country runs. One of the many things that come as a a pleasant surprise is that when you walk up to a fairly nice motel/hotel, they say, "You are a walk-in, so it’s $20 less than if you had made a reservation." Go figure out the logic there. I can come up with some reasoning myself, but my bias toward the way they do it in the states, which is to get the most money possible out of walk-ins, clouds my ability to come up with any story that I would even believe myself.

Other random observations:
When you sit down to eat, they always give you a carafe or bottle of water. That makes so much sense. I drink a lot of water with dinner, and it’s a constant battle with the waitress in the US to keep my water glass filled. I think that my thirst comes along with the diabetes, but whatever the reason, this really works out well for me.

I think I’ve seen about 3 stop signs since we’ve been here. In most cases, when you come to an intersection, there simply be no one else there, so why stop? They make great use of yield (actually they say, "Give Way") signs. And you can’t turn left on red (think right on red) , if there is a stoplight. I guess the thought is that there just aren’t that many traffic lights in the country, so who cares.

The roads here are not for people not paying attention. It’s not difficult to drive in this country, but the roads are a bit narrower, occaionslly narrowing to a single lane, and much curvier than we’re used to and the speed limit is, as I’ve mentioned before, 100. There is very little margin for error, so you have to pay attention to what you’re doing, which just isn’t necessary in the States. Here, you actually have to drive the car. And they have a very screwy law, that if you are making a right hand turn across oncoming traffic, that an oncoming person making his left hand turn has to yeild to you. There are articles written about that… NZ is the only country where that is true, and it really bollixes up the tourists, or at least me. They keep threatining to change to law, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Depending on the climate….. there are places where it rains pretty much all year, like the west coast where it rains pretty mucy all year…. Most people don’t own a dryer. It’s considered a waste of energy to use a dryer if you don’t absolutely have to. So there are clotheslines in the back yard. Hanging laundry is a delight and takes me back to my childhood. Clothespins are plastic now. I was expecting wood, but I guess things change in 50 years.
There are a bizillion parks, and none of them welcome dogs, similarly in urban areas, there are signs saying, no dogs. I think in the parks, the thought is that there are a lot of ground birds on the verge of extinction, so I suppose that makes sense.

We spent the night in Ranfurley a few nights ago, a town of about 100 people west of Duneden. On the main street, which is a block long, there was an accounting firm, and a major appliance dealer. HELLO!! NOBODY LIVES HERE!! Or anywhere within 50 miles of here.
Now here is something that’s nice. Every little town has public toilets all over the place. They are clean and well cared for. It just sets you off on a thought train. We’ve eliminated them in the states because they are a magnet for illicit behavior of several different kinds. Here, people just behave themselves, so there are a lot of things that can work because individuals keep their end of the social contract. I think about that a lot as I’m reading Paul Krugman’s book, "Conscience of a Liberal".

It's Sat the 24th, now and we are in Timaru, south of Christchurch on the coast. It was hot today... upper 80's, and they tell us it has been in the 90's for the past few days. This country does not have air conditioning in the hinterlands, and we are in the hinterlands now. The whole country appears to have a bunch of micro climates. For most of the vacation we've been very comfortable, but it hasn't been warm enough to swim. ON the west coast in particular it was very cool, and rainy. Invercargill was almost cold, and the wind blows all the time. Go figure.