Learning to live backwards

Getting used to Auckland, on most levels, hasn't really been particularly difficult. Like the United States, New Zealand is a modern, westernized country, and the people here, at least in the country's largest city, have a pretty similar lifestyle. There are subtle, if still incredibly noticeable, cultural differences, but at the end of the day I haven't found that getting myself established here is any different from the times I've gotten acclimated to a new city back home. My first day in Auckland actually felt a lot like my first few days in Washington, DC, when I lived there during my year off a couple falls ago.

In New Zealand, however, every day is opposite day.

First, there's the conspicuous fact that July here is not the heart of summer - barbecues, trips to the beach, and all - but the dead of winter. As I mentioned in my first post, an Auckland winter isn't particularly intense. It gets much colder on the south island (I'll return to this in a second), but up here the temperature pretty much hovers around 55-60 degrees during the coldest time of the year. Given that I spent my last week in the United States in San Francisco, where even when it's supposed to be summer the mercury doesn't spike much higher than 60, this hasn't been too much of an adjustment.

Still, it's winter. There are no leaves on the trees. It gets dark at 5:30. November will be some of the best weather I see while I'm out here. Meanwhile, it was rainy and a bit colder last night; the vibe outside walking around had the look and feel of the gray bleariness that generally accompanies the late fall back home.

Which in turn begs the question: if Axl Rose had been a kiwi, would the world be singing along to a cheesy yet legendary rock ballad about the cold July rain?

And coming back to the subject of the south island: yes, it does get colder the further south you go. Auckland's winters are mild, like those of the lower mid-Atlantic states in the US, not because of a more southern orientation but instead because it is one of the northernmost places in the New Zealand.

When hopes and dreams go sour here, do people lament that their best laid plans have gone north?

North is south, up is down, winter is summer. My world, or at least my natural perspective on things, has literally been turned upside down. And yet, while getting used to the new seasonal normal has been somewhat of an adjustment, it's not nearly as weird as seeing cars drive on the other side of the road.

To be sure, this isn't true of every location in the southern hemisphere. It's more of a British thing, and like Australia, New Zealand was, in fact, colonized by the British. Still, when I first got in the car at the airport on Monday morning, the first thing I did in my head was question why cars here have two steering wheels.

Of course, cars here don't actually have two steering wheels. It was just weird to see our driver sitting behind the wheel on the right, rather than the left, side of the car. After a week, this is still probably more strange than the actual sight of cars driving on the left, which looks surprisingly natural. I still haven't ridden shotgun, but whenever that happens, I shouldn't be blamed if I'm somewhat of a front seat driver. Culture shock.

The hardest thing to get used to about the driving, though, is all the little things that go along with it. We've been taught since we were children to look both ways before we cross the street, but has anyone ever paid attention to the fact that we're also conditioned to look a certain way first? In the United States, where we drive on the right, we look left first when we cross the street, then right. Here, needless to say, it's reversed, which makes crossing a little dangerous at first. I keep looking left, seeing nothing but tail lights, then looking right again, only to jump back quickly at the sight of multiple cars zooming toward me in an unfamiliar lane. My jaywalking instincts have been scaled back significantly as I do my best not to qualify for a Darwin award.

The fact that we drive on the right in the states means that you're supposed to keep right and pass on the left. In New Zealand, you can get a ticket for that. We're also predisposed to keep right in any kind of foot traffic. Here, as I found out walking up the stairs at the movie theater yesterday, this too is reversed. It took a couple of perturbed, what-the-hell-are-you-doing sort of glances for me to realize that I was indeed supposed to be walking on the left.

As it turns out, then, left is also right. And they sell their beer in 15 packs. I never really realized it, but back home, we buy and sell ours in multiples of 6 (12, 18, 24, 30). Here, the only way you're getting 30 beers is by buying two 15 packs.

Actually that's not backward. It's just weird.

What is backward, however, is the difference here in the way toilets flush. Is there a difference? This was probably the most frequent question I was asked in the weeks leading up to my departure, and I must say, I haven't yet gotten to the bottom of it. Before I left home I established that toilets do indeed flush counter-clockwise in the States and, presumably, the rest of the northern hemisphere. So do they flush clockwise here?

The one in my flat appears to, but I can't quite tell. There's a big blast of water, and while it looks to be spinning the other way, at the very end the water clearly spins back counter-clockwise before stopping. Random quirk, or mythbuster? You be the judge...

(Image courtesy maps.google.com)