New Zealand

Lanolin said:
Do you dance around the maypole?
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Too old and unfit for that....

More seriously, I guess that would come into the Morris dancing category and while, not having danced round a maypole, did once upon a time try to play melodeon for a short while with a morris side.

I know nothing about maypoles but as a rough sort of split of what comes under Morris, there is:

Border. These are usually dances with sticks. I'm not sure they are that old but border is the England Wales border and the clashes of sticks can be taken to be fights between the 2 nations.

North Western. This as far as I know is supposed to have derived from people in the industrial north of England wearing clogs on thier way to the mills, etc.

Cotswold, etc. These are hankey dances and perhaps (I don't know) can include a maypole. Some seem to attach pagan fertility things as an origin to some which I think come into this grouping but that is disputed. And I'd just see a dance as people enjoying themselves.

So there is more than one type of dancing. Some sides do may do dances from more than one tradition.

I should know more but that's the best I can give off the top of my head.

I'll leave you with a song. There was supposed to be a shortage of men after the WWI and women are supposed to have kept it up.

 
Yes the mandrought.
Well, i think in .china they dont have that problem since theres still female infanticide unfortunately.

They have spring festival there but in nz we dont really have that kind of official nationwide celebration.

In Japan they have spring blossom festival, you meant to go round admiring the cherry blossom, and they have parties and parades.
 
I suppose we celebrate the new spring lambs which are tastiest this time of year..i mean tradtionaly, easter is meant to be in spring but easter here is during autumn so its a bit confusing.
 
Lanolin said:
In america I think they have 'spring break' when college grads go crazy.
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The main one in the US I wouldn't mind joining in with is their Thanksgiving. Maybe someone else can come in with others.

The UK is quite "Americinised" though and I don't like it. Maybe a fairer word is "commercialised" but I sort of tend to see McDonald's and CocaCola most. For better or worse, each nation in the UK has it's own traditions and there are songs and tunes you can find from all.

Most don't know much outside the great "marketing machine" though.
 
'marketing machine'?
I think the biggest influence of american culture to nz is through tv and movies, hollywood.
and lesser extent pop music.

When TV only had 2 channels - Yes only two! we just had nz programming and stuff from BBC. Then 2 decided it wanted to be more entertainment, and then a third channel came up owned by Canwest and imported more american tv programs.

in the war, american soldiers did come to visit NZ and many kiwi women got charmed by them. I think they seemed so sophisticated and friendly that the blokes at home got bit jealous. lol.
 
Our fizzy drink is called L&P for Lemon and Paeroa.
It is now bottled by the coca-cola company. Pepsi never really took off here.
 
Just about every mall, town centre has a McDs.
As previously mentioned, they took over the Georgie Pie sites. Now they claim they selling Georgie Pies, but they are not the same. :-(
 
boltardy said:
in the war, american soldiers did come to visit NZ and many kiwi women got charmed by them. I think they seemed so sophisticated and friendly that the blokes at home got bit jealous. lol.
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There are UK rumours too and the Americans are supposed to have had more spending power and/or ability to acquire things from their bases. Young men, in strange places, in battles they didn't understand, wanting both to be nice and wanting a gf maybe.
 
Lanolin said:
When TV only had 2 channels - Yes only two!
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Having just 2 channels is vaguely in my UK memory. There was BBC and the commercial ITV and I'd have been about 4 when BBC2 came out - maybe it's more us being able to get it my vague memory is in. Things switched from VHF to UHF somewhere in this. We had 3 until channel 4 came out in 1982. Later again, a channel 5 was added but for us, it was difficult to receive.

That was it in terms of the old analogue.

It terms of terrestrial tv, the next step was digital broadcasting dvb-t and other things started to appear like satellite and cable. All of these offered an increases in the number of channels.

As I think I said before, I remember our first colour tv and guess that was 1970. My mother b. 1935 remembers going to someone elses house to see tv at all! A lot of her day, you just had the radio....
 
i think they used to call TV 'radio with pictures'.
There is a magazine in NZ called 'the listener.' it used to list the radio programs, now it includes tv programs.
Sky tv (pay satellite tv) came in about the late 80s early 90s.
Mostly people pay to watch the sport, and then you get all these other channels, about 100 of them. IMHO, nothing much worth watching lol.
Also they have 'adult' channels, basically porn.

on regular tv, they would have warnings on the programs, like G, or PG or AO for adults only, and only show AO at night, like after 9. Children were meant to be in bed by then.
 
Another magazine is called the TV guide.
But now the listings are in the newspapers and womens weeklies. But since stopped really watching TV, I don't pay any attention to what's on.

the NZ listener seems to be very left wing, but then it kinda turned heel and became mixed up and sort of conservative, like every issue would be banging on about property prices and baby boomer issues. meh. Its sort of like the NZ equivalent of Time magazine, with current affairs.
 
The national radio, I think most people listen to keep informed, but now its crowded out by all the commercial FM stations catering to every group under the sun.
 
Lanolin said:
i think they used to call TV 'radio with pictures'.
There is a magazine in NZ called 'the listener.' it used to list the radio programs, now it includes tv programs.
Sky tv (pay satellite tv) came in about the late 80s early 90s.
Mostly people pay to watch the sport, and then you get all these other channels, about 100 of them. IMHO, nothing much worth watching lol.
Also they have 'adult' channels, basically porn.

on regular tv, they would have warnings on the programs, like G, or PG or AO for adults only, and only show AO at night, like after 9. Children were meant to be in bed by then.
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Sounds pretty similar to over here now.

I'm not sure about the ratings for normal tv watching but there is a concept called the watershed. I think of things like PG more in relation to cinema and perhaps dvd.

Sport, yes a lot is paid for on Sky. We don't use sky at home but there seems to me to be a fair number of people who do, especially for football.
 
One of the big box retailers over here, the Warehouse, recently stopped stocking any R rated movies, games etc. Due to customers saying it was too freely available. Good on them.

I remember working in public library and always checking if a child tried to take out R rated movies. Even R13. I know probably some people were not so conscientous. You can basically buy any R rated game at a gamestore and the sales assistants will not ask for ID.
 
We shouldn't have even stocked them in the first place. But I don't buy the library books and stock. Someone up high made the decision.
 
Most R films come from america anyway. They are into horror and porn.
NZ doesnt have that kind of industry, although they once tried to rename Wellington 'wellywood' because of the weta works studios and peter jackson filming LOTR. But everyone thought that was a daft idea. Some nut wanted to put a sign like the hollywood one on Wellingtons hillside.
 
A friend told me, in india, the movie industry there is all about musicals love stories and happy endings. They call it Bollywood.

Well, when those indians came to nz and watched the kind of movies shown here from hollywood, they were shocked. It was all sex, violence, killing, horror. Americans LIKE that stuff?!
 
I found my old thread!!!

yea! Anyone who wants to know more about New Zealand can post here and I will be happy to answer your questions.

And if you are from NZ yourself, well..you probably know where I live anyway. It's a small world.
 
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