Welcome
Welcome to Prickly Fern. This is a fresh web site aiming to have unique information for people who wish to immigrate or travel to, or study in New Zealand.
New Zealand is known around the world to be a paradise-like country, a mystery location. Well, don't let that lush green scenery fool you. New Zealand is as real a country with its problems and ugliness as anywhere else.
Here you won't find statistics, or other official or scientific articles. Read on for snippets of kiwi life from the eyes of foreigners and kiwis alike.
New Zealand service and hospitality industry.
One of the areas New Zealand could improve upon is the service industry. I am frustrated on a regular basis with people I deal with in shops, restaurants, on the phone, basically everywhere you expect to get a good service for your money.
Crime in New Zealand
New Zealand crime rates may not look too bad on paper looking from outside, but in New Zealand crime is very much a reality of daily life. The most annoying thing is you can face it in the most unexpected places, especially theft.
Food in New Zealand
Unless you come from England, you will have an adjustment period to the food here in New Zealand.
If you're happy with greasy fish'n chips, and Asian take-out you'll be -as we say in kiwi land- "sweet as".
But if you're looking forward to the fresh foods and nice restaurants that are supposed to be abundant here, you need to learn hard and fast.
Getting Around
You need a car in New Zealand to get around unless you live and work within walking distance.
Relying on buses and trains on a daily basis will disappoint you. Public transportation is simply a joke at best. However, driving around New Zealand isn't the best either.
Land of the long white cloud...umm...and rain.
It's actually more like a lot of gray clouds. Yep, New Zealand weather is not what it's all hyped up to be. It's actually quite bizarre.
With this one I am going to generalize it taking Auckland as base, but it would apply to most of the country with a few exceptions.
The suck factor number 1: Distance
Most people in the world can't point to New Zealand on a map. Why? Because it's so out of the way.
Hell, most non-critical maps don't even include New Zealand to save space. The thing is, you need to have the whole pacific ocean on the map just to be able to include New Zealand. Not very efficient. But hey, we can't help that can we?