New Zealand-brand cigarettes

[McJim]

Did you really move to the other side of the world without doing your own research?

Yeah I did - I asked at the NZ Embassy - how was I to know that Auntie Helen and her cronies tell the civil servants to bend the truth?!

[El Dopa]

Back home we are conditioned to believe that large cars are bad. Bad for the environment and bad for your sex life. Girls in the UK actually do assume blokes with performance cars have small penises and are bad in bed hence they need to make up for it with metal.

So I came over here with the expectation that most people would drive 1 litre or 1.1 litre cars and that there would be mainly hydro or wind turbine power stations.

Having said all of that I myself have become a bit more of a petrol head and am enjoying the accessibility to all things internal combustion that were forbidden fruit back home.

And many of you have never experienced fuel costs like the UK - I think I pissed myself a little the first time my mother in law complained about fuel prices!

Now who has a 1980's Vauxhall Nova 1.2 with spoiler and stiffened suspension I can borrow for old time's sake?

Funnily enough, that almost exactly parallels my observations/experience. 'Hey, they're not as green as they said they were! Oh well, when in Rome, indulge in your petrolhead fantasies.'

There's a lot of info that you can't get through research - you have to live and absorb the culture first hand to realise the devil is in the detail.

One thing I still find a bit surprising is the lack of 'hot hatches' on the roads. I suppose Jap rally imports are just that much more available.