The following filed by Howard Fineman on a recent trip to New Zealand:
“AUCKLAND, New Zealand — New Zealand is about as far from the Washington Beltway, physically and socially, as you can get and still be on planet Earth.
They don’t care a whit for status here, and not that much for money or power. They love the outdoors and with good reason, for this is arguably the most beautiful place in the world. Kiwis say “no worries” instead of “you’re welcome,” and they would rather charge you less for something if they deem that fair.
Maybe I had to get this far away to see Washington for what it is these days: the world capital of small-minded, cowardly, selfish thinking”.
New Zealand is indeed at the furthermost end of the earth and isolated from all other hubs of modern trade and the advanced trappings of civilisation.
 I didn’t realise this until we emigrated from NZ to California one year ago. It is so interesting reading this article by Fineman. I made the trip the other way.
 Culture shock is very real phenomenon. America is as different from New Zealand as Korea is from India. And everything in our being strives to view the foreign country in the same light that we have become accustomed to seeing the old country in. We are completely unaware that this is happening but experience feelings of dissonance, elation, excitement and at the opposite end of the spectrum, loss and yearning.
 We don a set of glasses engineered from our inbuilt fears, assumptions and and previous joys and comforts. These give us a perspective on the new country that subsides after a time. It’s almost as though familiarity brings down a curtain that is raised when when we travel. I imagine that this is why people become habitual travelers. That awakening feeling probably releases a good deal of serotonin and no doubt can be addictive.
There is a lot on this article; I’ll do a series of posts.
