I still find it hard to write about NZ.... I love NZ in a way that I wish I could love Argentina... NZ as given me everything I needed, and only asked me to do my job and be fair...
Nowehere else a person with no past, or future, like me 10 years ago, walking the streets without knowing not even one soul in the country and 300 bucks in my pocket, could today be in the position I’m now.
Every person in NZ came from somewhere else, escaping, wanting a new better life... if the 1st person born in NZ was still alive it would be around 900 old, their parents used a technology to arrive here that still be used today in many parts... the 1st European born in NZ, if alive would be around 200 years... that is only a few generations back... that is so unique... we all had the opportunity to make a better life...
But I don’t love NZ for only that, is much more that inspires me and makes me feel that I’m coming “home” every time I land in Auckland.
NZ was born by consensus, 2 very different people decided to make an agreement instead of keep killing each other as it was the way every where else at the time... that simple fact is unheard in any other history... if it wasn’t for that... we will be no different from Australia, and I have not meet any NZder that like to hear that...
Yes... the treaty was misleading, abused, non respected, whatever... all agreements have some of that... and as with a pendulum, when you forcibly keep it on one extreme, it would swing to the other extreme, but is only a matter of time until it find balance and works...
For me that mixture of origins is what make our country so unique... Jeff Wilson going completely off while doing the Haka before a game, Tane the Masterton maori guy I meet in Armenia that is doing his PhD in Soviet Engineering history... the success of a movie like the whale rider...
The fact that I treasure (even as a foreigner) that unique diversity is what made NZ my home and has rooted me to the country. Election time is bashing time in NZ... foreigners this and that, Maori this and that... the only positive outcome I see about the rednecks complaining about immigrants (like their forefathers!) not adapting to the local culture, not learning the language, abusing of the environment... is that finally they understand how Maori must have felt about their forefathers...
Taxes are important, and having money as well... but remember that Bush campaign was based as well, on tax cuts!
And that NZ I love is even more manifest, for me now that we moved to Waiheke, chill out, beautiful, with nice people, beach life, and 35 minutes from my twice-weekly dose of city and university. Felix and Vibeke are enjoying it big way... I’m very happy about having moved there...
And tomorrow (16/9) is my 40th birthday... big birthday the 40s apparently... mid life crisis... but so what... I still do radio shows, play in gigs, are the height of my professional career, making good money, extremely happily married to a beautiful and great woman, mother and friend, have two very cute and cool characters as children, dropping full moon surfs, swimming across bays, lucky enough to have fantastic friends from all ways of life and times ... and as my mate Niel here in Manila said... I still live in a world in which that guy who I don’t know anything about, that is working in a road repair in the most polluted and hot city in the world, whose life realities are so different to my ones while being stuck in the traffic in the back of a manila taxi... we still find the humanity and time to smile and greet each other... even if we never are going to cross paths again... I’m a happy man.
