Public Address | Cafe | Speaker: ReEntry

Ben Austin

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:47:29 +1300

I'm toying with this choice right now – my visa needs renewing in a few months and suddenly recession struck London isn't quite so welcoming as it once was. That being said I doubt many places are right now, but the angst here is so thick one can almost touch…

Figgie

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 08:46:56 +1300

While I see your point, I don't agree that this is an advantage of New Zealand that can't be gained elsewhere particularly university towns around the world. I live in Oxford where I am in constant contact with amazing intellects – Richard Dawkins was at dinner the other night as…

Sacha

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:23:24 +1300

Spent months listening to my heartbeat as it slowed down
asking myself, 'are we there yet?'

Beautiful.

Paul Williams

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:44:16 +1300

Quite simply, I want to be at home, not just in a house and a street and a city, but home in a place where I belong.

I struggle with this most days. For the first two – three years it wasn't an issue, not least of all because, before…

Kumara Republic

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:24:46 +1300

We hear stories all the time of the 'brain drain'. But we never hear about the sort of people who would fulfill their civic duty just by emigrating out of NZ. Sir Joh is the most obvious example, as is a sizeable chunk of Talkbackistan.

And there was a [[http://www.chinese.net.nz/bbs/redirect.php?tid=177&goto=lastpost|story in…

kmont

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:18:51 +1300

Oh yeah, and also I felt grounded and grounded in the positive and negative sense equally.

Clipped wings and slow mo'
Spent months listening to my heartbeat as it slowed down
asking myself, 'are we there yet?'

Culture shock can be quite visceral.

kmont

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:08:33 +1300

@Michael Savidge

For a while, being back felt like I had failed at something.

I still feel like that at times.

To @linger I hear you about the Japanese language learning. When you do return to NZ you will be very socially non-standard initally but don't worry there will be…

Joe Wylie

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:23:04 +1300

I know those Australia sweet potatoes – regret that I never learned to cook them properly, but they're nothing like kumara. Locally grown kumara appeared in Sydney in the late 90s. They were pretty good, but pricey.

First encountered what's probably the veg that Simon described in Bangkok in the…

Deborah

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:14:46 +1300

I haven't been able to find anything quite right here. There are perfectly palatable sweet potatoes, but they don't have the same texture as kumara. I wonder if the climate (45.7 degrees today!) has something to do with it.

Simon Grigg

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:33:08 +1300

kumara

We discovered pretty quickly that it's exact facsimile is pretty freely available here, known, in SEA at least, as Japanese Sweet Potato. The taste and look is identical.

Islander

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:51:53 +1300

O The Groke -tautoko.
Some of the academics I truly respect are now – on pensions. You got whittled if you had a deep interest in suss areas- and these included
Maori-European interface literature/NZ Victorian literature/or 'overly' regional NZ literature or examining the nuttier areas of fiction...some survived as they…

Joe Wylie

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:26:20 +1300

Skill and grace, eh? Nicely said, Sacha. Surely university English departments were every bit as vital as 'real world' venues such as the former Listener in growing the emergent 'canon'.

Of course there are lazy and complacent academics, but isn't 'bashed over the head' a little rich? A true story…

Sacha

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:08:08 +1300

In a way, of course, it was an advantage to discover the canon myself, rather than being bashed over the head with it at university

I think you may be underestimating the tremendous skill and grace of the teachers who were part of the canon(s), knew them well personally and…

TracyMac

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:26:25 +1300

If people feel that another country offers them what they want in terms of variety of work, cheap drugs, wider range of fellow perverts, warm beer or a range of lethal fauna, then why shouldn't they live there?

Too true. Funnily enough, though, I've found the acceptance-of-perverts thing has done…

stephen walker

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:51:14 +1300

my guess is that most people who go back after a long time living overseas do it primarily for family reasons--they have or will soon have small children and judge it a better place for kids, or they want to be close to other family, especially elderly parents.

the "contributing"…

Stephen Judd

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:50:13 +1300

Before I was born, my mum and dad lived in New Mexico for a bit – Dad was lecturing at the university in Las Cruces. One of the things that precipitated their return after about a year was my mother suffering from the sense of being a foreigner. (And New…

Islander

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:32:53 +1300

Like Jackie, while I've spent quite a bit of time overseas, though never for more than a couple of months at a time, this land is too deeply embedded in me for any other piece of Papatuanuku/Gaia to be home. I first went overseas in 1978 – and to Hawai'i…

Deborah

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:35:20 +1300

Yes, well, we just spent nearly a month back in the old country, and I want to come back forever. Australia is an easy place to live in (notwithstanding the 43 degree day we got here today – faaarrrkkkk!), and there do seem to be more opportunities here, and it's…

Jackie Clark

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:41:26 +1300

Interesting perspectives, as per usual. And I agree with others that if people don't want to be here, they won't be, and I don't know that there's anything much we can do about the diaspora. It is, after all, one of our traditions. Be it to venture over "there" and…

Kyle Matthews

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:44:16 +1300

I sometimes struggle to relate to NZers who have not traveled much, or are boastful of travel, or who view the OE as some kind of status symbol.

I suspect it will be one of my life's regrets that I missed the OE. I became a father before I finished…

Russell Brown

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:40:17 +1300

Yes, Daniel is going to be writing a series of these posts.

And at the risk of firing all my guns at once ...

I had what I now realise is the classic New Zealander experience of getting to Europe, loving it, but feeling the urge to go back (sometime)…

Geoff Willmott

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:36:05 +1300

I will read this blog with interest. Ending the 'prevarication' was probably the biggest and hardest decisions I have ever made, but I don't regret it a bit. I was away for 8 years and returned three years ago – some 15 years after RB, but this still struck a…

Simon Grigg

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:19:03 +1300

I've been overseas for about 15 of my 50 years (Singapore as a child, Australia, UK and now almost 5 years in South East Asia as an adult) and clearly, as my post total on this blog is evidence, I'm neither want or am able to let go.

I miss…

Michael Savidge

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:15:03 +1300

After seven years away (the last five in the US) I arrived home on Sept 10, 2001. The next day I lost a good friend.

I came home because I was rootless. I was an illegal alien and the States didn't feel like home at all. By that stage, NZ…

giovanni tiso

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:26:45 +1300

ops – the last bit in the brackets was meant to be a footnote to the word "scenery".

giovanni tiso

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:25:54 +1300

But I am a scenery slut, so I'll forgive a few annoying things just to see that view of Piha as you come around the corner at the top of the cliff...

I might be a lifestyle slut. Where by lifestyle I mean not so much what my money can…

Robert Wilson

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:14:41 +1300

I'll be very interested to read your blog posts. Personally, I moved to LA to go to grad school and my attitude towards moving home gradually shifted from "as soon as I'm done with school" to "after I work here for a couple of years" to "no comment".

I'll admit…

Danielle

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:30:33 +1300

I missed the NZ light – how clear and bright everything looks, for miles and miles. I felt as though I was always looking through soft focus when I was in the northern hemisphere.

holidays to almost limitless European destinations within an hours flight ... a richness of culture and…

Kyle Matthews

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:20:18 +1300

I think part of what brings NZers home is that we have a strong national identity which doesn't get broken overseas very much. I had a partner move to live with me in NZ from California, and the only thing she missed was the weather and her family.

Yet Kiwis…

Brenda Leeuwenberg

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:11:12 +1300

I guess there's a certain amount of spoiled brat attitude in what I say – it's not like it's hell on earth in NZ. It's just not what I'm craving for right now.

From a life of regular work trips to Paris, Stockholm, Berlin – holidays to almost limitless European…

JackElder

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:10:46 +1300

We did 7 years in the UK (Cambridge, not London), and quite frankly the main reason we moved back was having kids. We saw other friends of ours from Wellington move to the UK, hate it, do the obligatory brief tour of duty so they could say they'd done the…

Danielle

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:02:59 +1300

Hey babe, wanna come up and see my surf break?

That beats etchings any day!

those aspects of NZ are never really touted overseas

Heh. 'Come to New Zealand, it's technologically retarded!' I'm not hugely surprised by that.

We're going to have to disagree on this concept of 'bad places',…

Ben Chapman

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:00:24 +1300

how surprised we were about how long it took us to stop feeling homesick for london and wishing we were still there

I have a very interesting experience when I return to New Zealand after a long stay overseas. (I've done two years in Japan and two stays in India…

Russell Brown

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:28:35 +1300

When I came back from five years in London, with the love of my life and a baby, I anticipated that there would be great work to do, and little or no money for doing it — which is exactly how it turned out.

One advantage of coming back from…

linger

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:17:14 +1300

I intend to return permanently to NZ in a few years.

Mind you, I've been saying that for at least the past 4 years. But it's still true. I do not consider my current residence as "home" in any sense. I'm not part of any local social circles unconnected to…

Brenda Leeuwenberg

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:15:32 +1300

You clearly didn't live in the American south when you were overseas. :)

Ah, I never said there weren't other bad places – just that those aspects of NZ are never really touted overseas, or remembered when you're a homesick expat.

I actually find it wierd that it's seen as…

Leopold

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:59:54 +1300

So , "Silence exile cunning" isn't going to be your bag?

Rich of Observationz

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:56:01 +1300

Also interesting to find how his own schooling at Auckland Selwyn College fitted him for those high-qualified jobs overseas.

Well he won't get that for his kids, now that the Nats have taken the place over with the aim of turning it into a pale simalcrum of Hogwarts, after the…

Rich of Observationz

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:53:30 +1300

I actually find it wierd that it's seen as an important goal of public policy to attract "Kiwis" "home".

If people feel that another country offers them what they want in terms of variety of work, cheap drugs, wider range of fellow perverts, warm beer or a range of lethal…

Emma Hart

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:37:58 +1300

But I am a scenery slut, so I'll forgive a few annoying things just to see that view of Piha as you come around the corner at the top of the cliff...

Hey babe, wanna come up and see my surf break?

In moving on, Stephen has only Irish Catholic…

Danielle

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:27:09 +1300

I think NZ's hype is a thin veneer – sure it's beautiful, but it's also violent, racist, technologically retarded, poor and in many aspects bordering on 3rd world.

You clearly didn't live in the American south when you were overseas. :)

I think it does take quite some time to…

Rebecca Williams

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:40:53 +1300

my husband and i have now been home from the UK for three years. my main observations are a) how peculiar it is to feel homesick for somewhere that isn't your home i.e. london (where we lived for four years), b) how surprised we were about how long it took…

Brenda Leeuwenberg

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:38:11 +1300

I returned to NZ from Europe almost exactly 2 years ago. In my case it wasn't really my choice to do so and even 2 years on I'm still homesick and at home.

I think it depends a lot on where you've got to in your travels, where your head…

Gordon Dryden

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:02:37 +1300

In hosting a recent series of radio programs on New Zealand's future, I found one of the most interesting interviews was Gavin Lennox. After several high-paying years in the IT industry (top-level jobs included with IBM and Lotus), he is now back in New Zealand. Apart from the lifestyle, one…

Public Address

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:02:37 +1300

Discussion from blog post.