Forget the Haka, check the Hyundai
January 2012
Having travelled to quite a few countries around the world, I have experienced many different cultures and ways of life. It’s fascinating to see how different the people from around the world are compared to us Brits who are basically all overly polite individuals who like queuing and complaining about the weather. For example, I can tell you that Americans are nothing like us. They are not polite at all. They are very loud and like to sue each other. The French are all obnoxious, the Finns are all mental, the Japanese are all very short, the Spanish are all lazy, Germans – despite common opinion – do actually have a sense of humour and the Italians are not to be trusted.You only have to look at the (alleged) antics of Silvio Berlusconi to see what I mean. If stories of mafia ties, corruption, theft, fraud and sex with underage prostitutes surrounded our Prime Minister he would be booted out of office. Similarly, if scandals like that surrounded the president of the United States, he would be impeached in less time than it takes to say Bill Clinton.
The recent incident involving the Costa Concordia cruise ship is a fine example of what happens when you put your trust in an Italian. The captain was allegedly showing off to impress some whore whilst drunk. After accidentally driving the large vessel into some equally large rocks, he then accidentally fell off the boat and into a lifeboat. How lucky was that? A lot luckier than the 20 or so passengers who lost their lives because of his incompetence.
As it’s apparently frowned upon to publicly suggest people should be shot now, I would like to suggest that he should at least be locked up for cowardice, drink driving, manslaughter and being Italian.
However, I don’t think he’s the only one who should take the blame. What about the rest of the crew? It is my understanding that ships have co-ordinates pre-programmed in and they follow a pre-set path to their destination, so to have deviated off course would surely have resulted in alerts and sirens going off in the cabin. If they didn’t go off, this suggests that they had been over-ridden which is most likely the job of the navigator who surely would have had direct orders from the captain. This would make him just as guilty. There are a number of other crew members who would surely have been around but none of them thought to do anything. I’d say they are all guilty.
Anyway, needless to say, I won’t be going on an Italian cruise liner any time soon. I did, however, recently go to New Zealand with my lovely new wife. It takes a lot to impress me but impressed I was with the country. Apart from the stunning scenery, the first thing that struck me was how laid back everyone is. Like the Australians they seem a lot more relaxed and not as stressed out or rushed as the average Brit. This surprises me given that they are all basically living on an island that could crack in half at any moment.
Of course there is the accent. It’s similar to the Australian accent apart from the fact that they pronounce all their vowels upside-down. They pronounce “A” as “E”, “E” as “I” and I as “U”. So thus sintince would ectually sound a but like thus uf rid out by a Kiwi.
The only downside to the country and its inhabitants is none of them can drive. Oh sure they all stick to the ridiculously slow speed limits and they are generally very courteous but they all seem incapable of staying within the white lines, they take all corners at 20 kph (or 12.43 mph to in English) and they have the most bizarre rules when giving way that no one seems to understand or even acknowledge.
My wife and I spent the first week in the North Island so we hired a car. I was expecting a beaten up pile of rusty metal but instead we got a relatively new Hyundai i30. Now, I’m not really a fan of Hyundai and I generally don’t trust anything that comes from Korea but I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised with this car. Apart from the indicators being on the wrong side of the steering wheel, meaning I spent the first couple of days turning the windscreen wipers on every time I turned a corner, it was actually a pretty good little machine. The ride was smooth, the steering was sharp, the brakes nearly gave me whiplash and the air conditioning unit was taken out of a cryogenic laboratory. The other thing I really liked was it didn’t beep at me all the time. Unlike all other cars, when you accidentally leave the lights on and turn the ignition off, rather than beeping at you it turns the lights off. It’s so obvious. Why don’t all cars do that? I can’t think of any logical reason why the lights would need to stay on if you aren’t driving it. Of course it does mean that when you get in the car the next day, the lights will come back on and you might spend the rest of your life driving with the lights on and looking like a moron.
On the downside, there wasn’t much travel in the throttle pedal. It went from zero throttle to full throttle in less than 2 millimetres which produced virtually no power from the tiny 1.3 litre engine. It also didn’t have much of a clutch bite, which I guess is to be expected from a hire car.
It was back to slightly more familiar territory for the next two weeks in the shape of a Ford Focus. One that had already done over 100,000 miles and was about to be driven by a frustrated racing driver along what have to be some of the best roads in the world. They are fantastic; endless mountain roads with plenty of hard braking into hairpin bends, followed by long uphill swoops and into downhill sweeping bends. Corners that will punish the tyres and make them squeal like one of Berlusconi’s (alleged) prostitutes. And all on roads with little to no barriers separating driver from sheer cliff and certain death. Unfortunately, I had my new bride in the car so wasn’t allowed to have any fun. Even sadder was when we flew back to the North Island and I had to make do with being a passenger in a hired Toyota Yaris. Oh the shame.
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