The first thing I noticed in New Zeland was it is the first country that I have visited so far where the Europeans have tried to maintain original names for many towns. Most of the important buildings in New Zeland have english names as well translation in Maouri.

I spent couple of days in Wellington visited the spectacular Te Papa museum in Wellington. It is certainly worth spending about a day in this museum. What is most interesting is, there is huge amount of space allocated to Maori displays, also you get chance to hear story of NewZeland, land occupation etc from the Maori perspective. It seems New Zeland is the first country that is doing something about acknolwding ownership of original people of the land, accepting that things might have been done wrongly in the past. If I was Kiwi I would be really proud of it. Certainly everything is not rosy as many Maori tribes it seems have not utilized the money and resources provided properly. But I wonder if United States will ever have musem that will acknowledge existance of American Indians and create a good museum where they can tell their story?

Other than the museum, I found newspapers in NZ very refreshing. They had one page where they summarized major stories from AP, BBC, San Francisco Chronicle, NY Times. The editorials seemed very balanced. While I was in NZ, the prime minister of NZ made a bold move and started discussion on 'Should NZ become republic instead of having Queen as its figurehead'. The radical discussion of this type will never happen in closed minded US politics.

Also it seems some of the politicians are trying to bring things like family values, abortion into the politics. I wonder why is it that some guy always trying to make things like abortion illegal and never a woman ;)
There was actually excellent editorial one day that talked about Americanization of NZ politics. On flight from Auckland to Melbourne I had very interesting discussion about that topic with about 60 year old Kiwi, who was (rightly) worried about this. Only time will tell how things progress in NZ politics.

Before heading out to Melbourne spent three days in Auckland. One night went to see local comedy show. It was interesting to hear few stereotype jokes about Chinese shop owners and Indian cab drivers and Indian support engineers. Indeed it seems like all the 24 hour convenience stores are run by Oriental people and most Cab drivers are Indian.
It seems like lot of support calls in NZ are routed to India and business section everyday had stories about companies moving call center to India. I almost want to start call center mutual fund ;)
In Auckland it seems like there are areas that are mainly Chinese, Indian, Maori, south Auckland is supposed to be Asian only part where as North Auckland is for rich folks where all Asians want to move eventually. Not unlike San Francisco where everyone from Freemont wants to move to Palo Alto or Los Altos or Cupertino? Hmm....

Overall I really like Sweet Assssss NewZeland, wouldn't mind living there. Hiking is simply spectacular on South Island.