How to Tell if you are a New Zealander

You're not a royalist. You only notice the Royal family when one of their scandals hits the covers of the women's magazines, or when one of them pays a visit.

You're familiar with all the US and British pop culture references relevant to your age group. Most of the TV and movies you watch and the popular music you listen to come from either the US or Britain.

Depending on your age, you'll be familar with the Howard Morrison Quartet, Billy T. James, Tim and Neil Finn, Crowded House, Purest Form, Fur Patrol, Bic Runga, and Johnny Devlin. On TV you'd instantly recognise Paul Holmes, Judy Bailey, Richard Long, John Campbell, Carol Hirshfield, the Topp Twins, Lucy Lawless, and Keith Quinn.

You're not interested in baseball, basketball, or American football. If you're male you know everything there is to know about rugby union, and possibly rugby league as well. You may have played soccer at school but you don't follow it as a spectator.

You go to church for weddings and funerals, and possibly have a vague belief in God, but anyone talking excessively about religion is suspected of being mentally unstable.

You think of McDonald's, Burger King, KFC etc. as cheap food.

You own a telephone, a TV, and probably a car, which you drive on the left side of the road. You're bemused that affluent looking New Yorkers on American TV don't own a car. Your place is heated in winter and has its own bathroom. You do your laundry in a machine and don't kill your own food. You don't have a dirt floor. You eat at a table, sitting on chairs.

You don't consider insects, dogs, cats, monkeys, or guinea pigs to be food. You consider juvenile fish ("whitebait") -fried whole, including the head and eyes- to be a delicacy, though.

You usually refer to the smallest room as the "toilet". You understand a reference to the "bathroom", but would use that for the (possibly separate) room where you take a bath.

You probably learnt a bit of French or German at high school, or Japanese if the principal took Michael Crichton too seriously, but everyone speaks English nowadays, so what's the point of learning foreign languages? You certainly know the Maori greeting "kiaora", and maybe a handful of other words. You can't speak Maori, even if you're of Maori descent yourself.

You think mustard comes in jars. Shaving cream comes in cans. Milk comes in glass bottles delivered to your door, or in cardboard cartons.