Differences

Anne and I will share, I am sure, very different views of what New Zealand is like. Maybe it is because I am almost done my MBA, or just my love for business and politics, but what I notice is framed around those schema.

Coffee and dining is a different game in New Zealand. It’s a mild variation – like CFL vs. NFL. No tipping is the first significant difference. The price on the menu is what you pay, and the prices are not inflated by 20% to account for the tips, so there is defiantly restaurant food arbitrage in my eyes. I cannot complain because I nearly made the equivalent of $75,000/year simply waiting tables at Earls through university (once accounting for the tax free nature of most tips). Interestingly, there seems to be no compromise in service. Servers are just as happy, and just as attentive as servers in Canada despite not walking out with a mitt-full of cash at the end of the night. I think tipping has become so expected in our culture, that there is no incentive to actually provide better service since the tips you make will hardly vary either way.

New Zealand, like Australia, has not succumbed to big-box, dominate-our-world type shopping, where every 10 km you pass by a retail complex that looks shockingly similar to the one you just passed- a Best buy, a Starbucks, a Linens n’ Things that is now vacant etc. Instead, there are coffee and other retail shops located just as frequently but they are all branded differently. It is refreshing, and also a bit of a gamble when you order a tall, non fat, extra-hot sugar free, no whip, half caffeinated,….latte. In Kiwi you pronounce this – Latte.

The roads here are also amazing. Despite that fact I am driving a small motorhome that likely holds 50 liters of water and sloshes from side to side every time I take a corner, I am living the Indy-dream every time I get behind the wheel. The roads are windy and slow, and people accept that, as passing is very rare.

I find it so interesting that cultures that are so similar, can also be so different at the same time. Combine that with a business mind, and I am bombarded with endless ideas of what would be successful here.