On reverse culture shock: What it's like to call New Zealand home again
Thousands of New Zealand citizens have returned home, some for the first time in a decade. Most work in the tech/science, arts, creatives, academic and healthcare industries and are here to be with their families amid the pandemic. Stuff spoke to three about what it’s like to grapple with returning to a place they haven’t called home in years.
Finding professional and social networks has been a challenge for Anthony McGuire despite his friends being envious of his place in the world
I spent most of my life actually outside of New Zealand and went to high school and university in the US. I moved to London in 2014, and lived there until a couple of months ago.
I was working at Facebook for a few years, managing relationships with large advertisers: Volkswagen, Unilever and their agencies. I was based in London but would travel across Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the US to educate them on Facebook.
Then in 2018 I left and did some different consulting with different start-ups. In 2019, I set up my own company which was basically trying to create a fan loyalty app. Imagine your airline miles but for your favourite sports teams.
But in March this year we had just raised some investment and were in talk with sports teams in the UK, and basically the idea was: Imagine you go to a pub and you’re a fan of the Wellington Hurricanes, you can earn points as a fan to get free tickets to the Wellington Hurricanes game. But, as you might imagine, all stadiums are dead in the short term.
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In the midst of lock down happening, teams we were talking to basically had their whole season cut short, and they weren’t sure if they would even come back to a regular football season.
Basically we figured out whether we should we keep going, change it or shut it down, but in the process we put it on hold and [said] it might work in the future when the world is back to normal.
But it was the end of May, my lease was up and both my flatmates had left the country and my landlord said, ‘do you want to renew for a full year?’ I said, well there’s a lot of uncertainty. And at the same time I thought, ‘I don’t want to look around for a new house in the middle of a pandemic.’
So I thought, well, let me come to New Zealand, a place I haven’t been in a while and where my parents are, and spend a couple of months here, and when the world is fine in August I will go back to London and then life will be normal again.
And then as time’s gone on, naturally, the world hasn’t gone back to normal and also the advantages of a place like New Zealand are increasing. All my friends now are like, ‘dude, can I come to New Zealand? How do I now, like, get in?’
I think there is a huge advantage to being here, even from a life perspective. We can all go to a nightclub here, if you wanted to, and most of my friends can't and would be freaked out even if they had that option.
I have got three or four friends, some I knew pretty well and some I met here, who have come back from London or San Francisco, and they are kind of like me, trying to figure out how to make a new life here.
I am in a position now where, considering the state of the world and how you can also work remotely, any of the advantages of being in London have really gone down and the advantages of being in New Zealand have gone up.
The challenges have been that I don't really know anyone. I still have some friends from when I went to school here, briefly.
Finding, professionally and socially, a network has been a challenge.
My plan is to move to Auckland in January. People tell me there are more opportunities in Auckland. I want to buy a house, I’ve heard that house prices are pretty insane, especially in recent years.
New Zealand is not cheap. I think beer is more expensive. In London, we complain about how expensive pints are but I don’t feel like it’s that much cheaper here.
Wellington seems more lively than I remember it. I last lived here when I was 15. It seems more diverse.
I think it is sad places like Reading Cinema and St James’s Theatre have been closed. I remember those being quite vibrant when I was younger. I think that’s an earthquake thing.
I met someone who invited me to a tech startup thing, and I was struck at how friendly and laid back people were. Maybe that’s just Kiwis, maybe it’s Kāpiti Coast, but people in other cities are pretty intense and not always friendly.
As told to Bridie Witton
Travel manager Neha Paranjape says it’s been really hard being back in New Zealand as she was forced to leave behind her sister and boyfriend during the pandemic
I was in London for two years. I was a travel manager for media and production houses. For example, if people wanted to shoot in Norway for a series on Netflix, I would look after all the travel involved in that and worked out all the logistics for the shoot and making sure that runs smoothly.
It was a great job. I loved it and loved the team and the work I was doing. It was amazing and stressful. It was full on but very rewarding.
I was on a two-year visa, which is a rite of passage for most Kiwis. My visa expired in July. I was getting into a position to get sponsorship from the company for a visa to stay there. But, being in travel, with everything that happened with Covid, there was no possibility of getting sponsorship.
There was no choice but to come back. There are people worse off in the world because of Covid. I can’t complain too much.
Isolation was really hard. It is difficult being stuck in a hotel room for two weeks.
My tip would be to come prepared with books and movies. I took paint by numbers and that worked for me. It took up my afternoons.
London is a busy city and you are there to experience things and you are busy all the time. It was the little things I realised I was missing in isolation. I would be sitting there eating food and watching Netflix and I would want to say something and would realise there was no one there to turn to. My partner was still in London. It was hard to be separated because of this.
It is really hard being back. Everything here feels so different. Life is normal here. It doesn’t feel like it’s going through a pandemic. It is like a huge reverse culture shock.
In London, we were wearing masks and you would hang out with only a few people. That was my world for six months. To come back to people having parties and 50 people getting together for a festival, and crowds in Hagley Park for Diwali celebrations, that took a bit of getting used to.
I went to Westfield Riccarton and I couldn’t believe how packed it was. There were no masks and no one was social distancing. I asked if we could leave because it was making me feel really uncomfortable.
It is so hard for me to get my head around. I wouldn’t think about it this way if I hadn’t experienced what I had.
I am still struggling and I still carry a mask with me everywhere I go. I don’t really feel like hanging out with other people because I am not used to that. It is a lot for the mind to process.
I feel bad for my partner and my sister still in lockdown in London. I know what they are going through. It is weird, because I don’t want to feel boastful about my life here. It has been such a massive transition.
It is such a different world here. People are able to live a normal life. But it has come at a huge cost. It feels like an artificial bubble.
It has been really interesting talking to people here. Everyone seems so happy in the New Zealand bubble. It is almost like New Zealanders don’t want the borders to open because of how normal their life has been able to be.
But I know how brutal the closed border has been for families. People can’t come back to see their families.
I want to be with my partner at some point. There is uncertainty around when I will see him again. He is an Australian citizen and he will have to return to Australia in January. I might go to Australia in January. I will see how things pan out with the trans-Tasman bubble.
The not knowing and the uncertainty has been hard.
I absolutely loved London. It has so much to offer to every single person. There is so much to do there. You can never get tired of the city and you can be yourself.
Everyone said London was expensive, but it’s not. Groceries are exactly the same. Rent in London is expensive, but everything else was very similar.
I am shocked at the price of tomatoes here. They were $16 a kilo. They were 25 pence for six in London. Vegetables are quite expensive here. That has been quite a shock. I had brunch out somewhere and it was $27. I was like wow, what the hell?
New Zealanders are friendly folk. From the moment I landed in Auckland everyone smiles back and says hello. You notice it here straight away.
This is home, but I almost feel like I left a piece of my heart in London. Given the opportunity I would pack my bags and go back in a heartbeat.
I have a place here and this will always be home, but I feel like I don’t fit here because of my perspective and my background travelling.
There is a struggle coming to terms with that.
As told to Charlie Gates. The conversation has been lightly edited.
Seasonal firefighter Tom Hopkins returned home to New Zealand after five years of living in Victoria, Australia, to find a very different country to the one he had left behind
I came home in April after noticing the escalation in travel restrictions in both Australia and New Zealand. I was only over the ditch, but I had planned on returning this year anyway and so figured it would be best to bring forward my departure. I booked my plane ticket and within two weeks I was heading back.
I arrived home on the second day of the first lockdown, the first day of alert level 1, and was put into managed isolation. During the entire experience I felt really privileged. I was put up in a nice hotel suite, with three meals a day. The food was all free, it was all on time and it was constantly being upgraded.
Initially the offerings were basic, which was expected because the whole process was in its beginning stages. Within four or five days, however, the hotel staff were giving us an extra snack in our lunch boxes. A couple of days later there was another extra snack. The meals were being upgraded too, including nicer food and more vegetarian options.
I could tell just how much effort they were making to try to cater to everybody. It’s funny really, because so many people were getting angry about the situation and, for me, I was surprised at how incredibly looked after we were.
I felt so lucky, privileged and welcome.
Coming out of isolation, I was struck by how lonely it was out on the streets. Driving up Ponsonby Rd to find nobody around was such a strange thing to come home to.
What was even stranger was watching it all build back up, seeing it grow again from scratch. It was weird because Auckland was being built to this former self that I didn’t actually know, because I’d been away for so long. It grew to what I knew, and then more.
The reason I had moved to Australia five years ago was for work, I’d applied in New Zealand and then moved over for the firefighting job, and I’ll admit I was pretty unmotivated to find work again when I came home. I think that’s because I would usually be travelling at this point. Often, in between fire seasons I would travel for around three months or so.
Personally, I haven't been too worried about finding work. I’ve got reasonable experience and quite a colourful CV, and I consider myself to be the kind of person who would jump into any old job. That being said, I was aware of that not being the case for a lot of people.
The job security concern that most are struggling with at the minute has made me realise how lucky I am to have chosen a different ‘career’ approach. So many have opted for one specified career path and spent their lives working in that same field. Now that’s fallen through, and they don’t know what to do.
At this point there is no desire to get back into firefighting, I want to carry on that varying path.
In terms of returning home and finding somewhere to stay, luckily I was able to find a room through a friend of a friend and from there I transitioned into staying with family.
Honestly, I am disgusted by how much it costs to rent a room in the city now. It really makes me sad that landlords are getting away with charging this much. I’ve come from rural places in Australia where I’ve been paying around $100 for a room a week, while Auckland is offering the same thing for at least double the price.
It makes me angry, frankly.
That’s one of the big key differences that I’ve noticed over the past five years – Auckland seems to have picked up a money centric culture. It seems to be full of people trying to get rich, or wanting to get rich, or hoping to make the most money they can out of what they’re selling.
Put it this way, if you consider all these big cities around the world as Joneses, then Auckland is just trying to keep up with the Joneses.
Another big culture shock for me was the lack of public transport, and, alongside that, the amount of traffic. It’s almost constant now on the motorways. I was hoping there would be a lot more bicycles around, but I suppose Auckland is a hilly city and people aren’t wanting to get all sweaty. It’s a shame.
And yet, despite coming back and being concerned with the social divide and public transport, I still really love everything that’s at the heart of this country. I love Aotearoa, and being away for so long really reinforced that.
As told to Mina Kerr-Lazenby.
Sunday Star Times
