Where are all the Kiwis?

What’s different about driving in New Zeland? Well, just about everything. Let me try to explain.

First of all, they drive in the left hand side of the road. Not too difficult to figure out as long as there are other cars on the road to follow along behind. The problem occurs when you are pulling out and no one else is on the road and you have a quick panic attack and second guess your decision to pull all the way across to the other side of the street. Its just not natural after driving on the right hand side of the street for almost ten years. But no biggy. It just takes some getting used to.

Ok here is one that I still have trouble remembering. You know how when you are driving in the states you can make a right turn on red so long as there is no traffic coming? Yeah, the same thing doesn’t hold true over here for left turns on red. Apparently that is illegal. So silly. Who would have thought that a red light could always mean stop? I have always been under the impression that they were more like suggestions that absolute rules but I was kindly informed by the police officer at the airport that I was labouring under a serious misconception and should remedy that impression immediately or further action would have to be taken in the future. Nice guy.

But by far the strangest and probably the dumbest rule that tends to cause the most accidents over here and should really be changed (I’m a bit biased against this one if you can’t tell) is the right hand turn rule. Sounds harmless enough, right? The basic rule is that if you are turning, you must give way to all vehicles that are not turning. No problem. In all other situations, you must give way to vehicles crossing or coming from you right. Confused about why this is the silliest rule of all? Well, let me see if I can explain the ramifications of this blanket right hand rule. Say you are driving down the road and are going to turn left (since you are driving on the left then by turning left you are not crossing any lanes of traffic) in the US you would have the right of way to make the turn. But no no no. Not in New Zealand. Here, if there was another car that was coming from the other direction and going to be turning right into that same drive that you were going to left into, they have the right of way because technically they are on your right because they drive on the left hand side of the road. In theory, this works well because it keeps them from backing up traffic on that side of the road. In practice, however, people aren’t always thinking about the other land being on the right and more often than not make that left hand turn without even looking to see if someone is making the right hand turn. Then BANG!!! Fun, huh? I thought so.

But this being New Zeland, even rad safety is done with the laid back cruisey-ness that defines the spirit of this place. While driving yesterday past the field where there was some sort of big rugby match (the obsession with rugby here almost matches that of football back home and is a whole other story) there was one of those flashing signs telling cars as they go from two lanes to one to “merge like a zip.” It didn’t register immediately what this sign was trying to get across. Then I realized that the sign was reminding drivers how to merge properly… like a zipper. How cute is that?!?

I have been working alot lately… I mean alot alot and dealing with extremely unhappy campers which is making me more and more irritable. Normally, my days off every week are just enough to allow me to relax and get all rejuvenated and ready to start all over again. But this week, on my first day off, I agreed to relocate a van to Te Anau. They pay $70.00 cash in hand and while its not a ton of money for the 4 to 4 and a half hours the return trip takes, it is an amazingly beautiful drive and I don’t have a car so it was a great excuse to get out of town for my day off. All was going so well until on the way back the van broke down and I was stuck on the side of the road for two hours waiting for the tow truck to arrive. It was so cold that I had to bundle up in the used duvet from the back of the van to keep warm while I waited. The poor hitchhiker that I had picked up earlier had to stand out in the rain and wind for more than 20 minutes before someone else stopped to pick him up. But on the bright side, while I waited there was the most beautiful rainbow in the field just next to where my van was perched precariously close to a 5 foot ditch. I just snuggled up in the drivers seat with the duvet and put in my ipod and watched the rainbow. They even paid me an extra relocation fee because of all of the break down drama so it could have been so much worse.

But, needless to say, it wasn’t exactly the relaxing day that I have come to need to be able to tolerate the increasingly impatient vacationers that come to pick up these giant camper vans. So because of that “lost” day, I decided to call in sick on Thursday so that I would have two full days to chill before I went back to work. This shouldn’t have been an issue because we were unseasonably quiet and there were two other people working on the desk. The problem was that I had completely forgotten that our regional director was coming down from Auckland that day to assess our branch. Well, why on earth would he care about me and what I do there? I have only been working for the company for about 2 months and while I do have my fair share of screw ups, I have yet to cause any major hassle to the corporation. But, for some inexplicable reason, he decided that he would still like to meet me and had my supervisor call me to see if I would go out to dinner with this man and all of my co-workers. Not feeling like I had much of a choice, I reluctantly agreed and got all dressed and showed up to dinner with the intention of pretending to play sick.

This man is ridiculous. He is one of those people that wants you to think that he has way more power than he actually does. He spent the entire night belittling everything that we do in our office and trying to tell us how to make things work better which would not be so obnoxious if he had spent any time in our branch and had any understanding of how things work down here. He is one of those corporate types that cant deal in the real world. He needs to stay cooped up in some office somewhere and keep crunching numbers and leave the actual branch management to someone who has a clue.

So here is what you should not do at a work dinner: 1. don’t call your boss a moron (either directly or impliedly) they don’t appreciate that 2. Pick a fight over how often commercial vehicles should checked by a mechanic (suggesting that it is irresponsible to only have them checked every 22,000 kms doesn’t go over too well) 3. offhandedly mention that it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if there were more lawsuits in New Zealand in order to keep large corporations from taking advantage of consumers 4. Lean your head up against the wall at the restaurant and sigh loudly and role your eyes each time he says anything, reasonable or not.

Surprisingly, I did not get fired immediately. He did come in to the office the next day but he didn’t really say much else to me. Weird. I wonder what my manager will say about the whole thing when he gets back on Monday.