The alternative Kiwipedia
That, that, dude looks like a lady.
A rose by any other name; although the word bogan is uniquely Antipodean, the lifestyle it describes is a universal phenomenon. Formerly, and perhaps more affectionately, referred to as ‘salt of the earth’ or ‘the working classes’, every country has bogans, they just have different names for them. Terms of endearment, including ‘White Trash’, ‘Chavs’, ‘Rednecks’, ‘Pikeys’ and my personal favorite, ‘The Great Unwashed’.
Doctor models new hat for short people. Still has to stand up to be noticed.
Few moments in New Zealand life are more uncomfortable, than the arrival of the bill at the end of a group meal.
Kiwis are inherently programmed to try to make everything in life as ‘fair’ as possible. So the thought of simply dividing the tab, evenly, by the number of people present, fills the average Kiwi with the sort of confusion and terror normally reserved for an All Blacks v France Rugby World Cup match.
Which makes squaring up the tab in New Zealand, one of the most difficult, most convoluted group agreements to reach, since the David Bain jury. Both of them.
A typical Kiwi chin-wag
The three cornerstones of all Kiwi conversation. In parts of New Zealand, it is possible to have an entire dialogue with just these three, short, phrases.
You're going the wrong way!
Per Capita, New Zealand is officially one of the fittest countries in the world. But Kiwis don’t just like to exercise. Oh, no. They like to be ‘competition-ready’.
Half as nice, at twice the price
A recent addition to the bar menus of most New Zealand cities, it seems Kiwis have gone a bit mental for small plates of food that don’t quite fill you up, but somehow end up costing just as much as a regular meal.
Not to be confused with the original Spanish tapas, which is usually a plate of over-salted patates braves or slices of roadkill chorizo, given away free in bars to keep the customers drinking, and ward off the flies.
Really?
Georgie Pie – New Zealand’s own answer to McDonalds, featuring meat pies instead of burgers – began life in the 70s. But in the early 1990s, a ‘perfect storm’ of events significantly boosted the fortunes of the company, triggering a rapid over-expansion of franchises which, like all great empires, eventually caused the company to implode.
And even though Georgie Pie is also the single biggest contributing factor to an alarming rise in teenage bowel cancer during the same period1, Kiwis, particularly late 20s and thirty somethings, still get all misty eyed at it’s memory, and fall over themselves in support of any to bring it back. So why is this?
Do they know who we are yet?
Few phrases, uttered by respected international media pundits, excite Kiwis more than; “This will really put New Zealand on the map…”
Long hiding in the geographical and cultural shadow of Australia (the 1980s, at the peak of ‘Crocodile Dundee-mania’, was a particularly dark time for New Zealand), Kiwis are forever searching for people, ideas or events to support – sometimes to the point of scary, national obsession – which might truly focus the eyes of the world onto our fledgling, self-conscious islands.
Other People’s Shit