New Zealand: A Guide to Popular Culture

I took a very big leap in college. A nearly 10,000-mile leap, in fact. I spent a full semester of my college career living in Wellington, New Zealand. And, while I felt like I adjusted to life away from home rather easily, I never quite got over feeling… well, very American in most situations.

While ditching my Yankee accent and wind-resistant North Face jacket was impossible (the latter especially so in “Windy Welly”), I did my best to fit in other ways. And, while I’ll probably never be able to correctly pronounce Maori words and place names, or fully understand the rules of rugby, I like to think I integrated myself in enough little ways that nobody could accuse me of not trying.

In order to integrate, though, I had to really pay attention to my surroundings. And this inevitably meant immersing myself — to some extent — in New Zealand pop culture.

Some un-American things I noticed during the integration process:

Fashion

In the U.S. (or at least in Ohio, where I went to school), it is perfectly acceptable to roll out of bed, throw on some sweats and flip-flops, and attend a full day of classes. Not so much in Wellington. Like many of their European counterparts, kiwis in Wellington (and, I’d hazard a guess, in most larger New Zealand cities, as well) actually care about what they look like. I was constantly noticing how fashionable everybody around me looked when I was decked out in my worn jeans and Chuck Taylors.

Fashion trends seem to make their way to New Zealand after sweeping through Europe, but before making it to the States. I was sporting skinny jeans, boots, and colorful scarves as a kiwi wannabe months before my American friends caught on. I came home one step ahead of the game, with my wardrobe stocked up with cardys (cardigans), and fashionable boots in three colors.

But one thing I noticed about fashion in New Zealand that I doubt will ever make it to the Midwest is the apparent unisexual nature of it. In New Zealand, it was just as common to see a teenage guy sporting skinny jeans and a button-up sweater as it was a girl. I even saw one or two men — grown  men — wearing Ugg boots downtown. (However, these, I realize, were probably an exception…)

Food

For the most part, food in New Zealand isn’t that different from what you can find in the States. You still find McDonalds, KFC, and Starbucks in every major town (though I never saw a Taco Bell). Pizza is still a pretty big food staple (although they put a lot more toppings on their pizza than struck my fancy). And you can find American products in most grocery stores (though Easy Mac just didn’t taste the same). But there were enough differences to make note of.

They don’t use ketchup in New Zealand. They use tomato sauce, which is kind of like ketchup, but darker and sweeter. If you really want the Heinz, you have to shell out for it at the grocery store.

Breakfast (or “brekkie”) in New Zealand often consists of Museli (a kind of granola-like cereal), yogurt, and fruit. Or you can have the classic eggs and “bangers” (sausages).

Like in Britain, fish and chips are popular in New Zealand. But so is lamb. With New Zealand’s ridiculously high sheep-to-human ratio, you can find lamb on the most unlikely of menus. Like Subway, for example.

And then there are all the cookies, sweets and desserts that I miss so much. New Zealand is known for its hokey pokey ice cream, which is basically vanilla ice cream with bits of honeycomb and/or caramel in it. Many other sweets end up being “hokey pokey flavored,” such as Squiggle cookies. Tim Tams are another favorite (although these are technically an Australian product), and my mouth waters just thinking about their chocolate-covered goodness. I also miss the mass supply of Cadbury chocolate, and Jaffas, which are small orange-flavored candies with chocolate centers. Mmmm.

Television

I never expected watching television to be an eye-opening experience. So color me surprised — over and over – when New Zealand TV continually caught me off guard. In the U.S., we’re used to pretty conservative primetime programming. We’re not likely to see any naked breasts or hear any vulgar four-letter words during ABC’s 9 p.m. hour, for example. Those kinds of shows are usually relegated to HBO or other pay-to-view channels. In New Zealand, however, concerns about “obscenity” during primetime don’t exist like they do here.

I remember early on in my stay, I sat down with my flatmates one night to watch an episode of New Zealand “Nightline.” They were running a story having something to do with Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl a few years back. They kept playing the clip, except that, in New Zealand, they didn’t censor it. Since I didn’t actually see “it” happen on TV, and because I’m not really the type to go and seek that sort of thing out on the Internet, that was the first time I’d actually seen it. But there it was, Janet’s boob just flopping out in the open on public television. While I was surprised, it didn’t seem to phase my New Zealand roommates at all. And, the more I watched New Zealand TV, the more I understood why.

Shows like “Nightline” and “20/20” in New Zealand frequently featured segments on prostitution (which is legal there), strippers, and/or women who worked on the “Naked News.” Even the local news showed video clips of a topless motorcycle parade. “Outrageous Fortune,” one of the most popular New Zealand TV dramas, had more swearing and gratuitous sex scenes in it than I’ve ever seen on a TV show. And here’s the best part – it aired at 9:30 p.m. on Tuesdays on a government-funded channel. And, whereas a “Sunday Night Movie” in the States usually means something that Disney churned out, in New Zealand it meant something along the lines of “Snakes on a Plane.”

New Zealand TV isn’t all curse words and sex, though. In fact, a lot of shows are syndicated from either the U.S. or Australia, although they’re usually a season or two behind. Shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” are popular among young New Zealanders just like they are in the States. And New Zealanders like their soap operas, too. The most popular by far is “Shortland Street” (or “Shorty”). I was forced to sit through an hour of “Shorty” drama nearly every evening with my two female flatmates, pretending like I cared about the trials and tribulations of the employees of a fictional Auckland hospital. “Shortland Street” was often followed by “Home and Away,” an Australian soap opera that I understood to also be pretty popular.

Slang

In watching so much New Zealand TV, and because I lived with three New Zealanders, I quickly started picking up on New Zealand slang. As in every culture, there’s a lot of it, and it’s always evolving. But I came away with some favorite kiwi words and phrases, and so I’ll share them with you.

In New Zealand, you don’t get drunk. You get “pissed,” or, if you’re black-out drunk, “blotto.” But, if it’s “pissing down” outside, it’s probably just raining really hard.

You take the “lift,” not the elevator, and your trash goes in the “rubbish bin.” You also go to the bathroom in the “loo.”

You don’t eat dinner, but, instead, you “have tea.” (This really confused me at first. One of my flatmates one afternoon asked, “What are you having for tea?”, to which I responded, “I don’t really drink tea.” Totally not what she meant.) You can also “have a feed” instead of a meal. And if what you ate was tasty, you could say, “That was yum!”

In my apartment, you didn’t eat grilled cheese. You had a “cheese toastie.” And it wasn’t peanut butter and jelly — it was “peanut butter and jam,” because in New Zealand “jelly” refers to Jell-O or fruit snacks. Also, “chips” are French fries, “biscuits” are cookies, and any sort of candy or sweets are called “lollies.”

And don’t forget – if you’re ordering a meal to-go, you’re ordering it for “takeaway.”

If you like something a lot, you like it “heaps.” If it’s really cool, it could be “flash” or “mean.” Conversely, something bad or sneaky is “dodgy.” And if something doesn’t go your way and you’re upset, you could say you’re “gutted.”

You say “cheers” for thank you, and “no worries” for you’re welcome.

You wear “jandals,” not flip-flops. A sweater is a “jumper” if it’s a pull-over, or a “cardi” if it’s a button-up.

Not only is soccer “football” in New Zealand, but it’s also shortened to “footie.” And they call American football “gridiron.”

If you want to ask someone if they want to do something, you say “Are you keen?” And if you want to reassure somebody that things will be okay, you say, “She’ll be right.”

If you’re going to make a trip to Australia, you’re going “across the ditch” (the “ditch” being the Tasman Sea) to “OZ,” where the “Aussies” are. (And, as a side note, New Zealanders like to make fun of the Aussies nearly every chance they get.)

As a heads-up, in New Zealand, a “rubber” is a rubber eraser. And that little dot at the end of a sentence? That’s a “full stop.” I got called “disgusting” one day for referring to it as a period.

A “nappy” is a diaper, and Band-aids are called “plasters.”

Someone who is very straightforward or blunt is known as “straight up.” And if you wanted to agree with such a person (or anyone, for that matter), instead of saying me too, you could just say “same.”

If you’re going to the corner store or mini mart, you’re going to the “dairy.” If it’s the drug store you’re headed to, that’s the “chemist.”

One of my least favorite (but one of their very favorite) phrases is “sweet as!” to indicate that something is really cool. The practice of adding “as” after an adjective in order to add emphasis is common. So, if you saw someone dressed trashy, for example, you could say, “She looked trashy as!” My question was always — trashy as what? Or what is that as “sweet as”? I guess I’ll never know.

Lastly, to round this list out, the letter “Z” is pronounced “Zed” in New Zealand. So when they abbreviate the country “NZ,” it’s actually said “En Zed.”

This is, of course, not an exhaustive list of New Zealand popular culture. I’d be pretty naïve to think I could sum up the kiwi culture in just one blog post, after having lived there for only five months. But this covers the sorts of things I came in contact with during my short stint as a student there. And maybe someday it’ll help future kiwi wannabes be prepared for life Down Under. Or, at the very least, be amusing to curious readers.