The Problems of living in a Smallish Island Nation

I love my country - more free than America, more Tolkienesque than England, less deadly than Australia.

But every country has it's issues - like here it always feels like you're 2 degrees of separation from everyone else.

And because we're so far from anywhere else our wildlife has evolved differently. This is a giant cave Weta - they're harmless but resilient

And now I wait for a stream, a leak or Tuesday....

You're waiting for days, weeks, months and in some cases - years for things like tv shows and movies to get released here by traditional means. Not everything - but a lot of stuff.

We're small so we celebrate hard out with our big achievements - like being the first to Everest, the first to split the atom, give women the vote and to create a treaty between colonists and natives.

But we're also so small that sometimes our Government does what the big kids ask without thinking - like spying on our own citizens and arresting this guy because America said he's a bad person for running a website

We used to be proud to stand up to bullies though - like when we declared ourselves Nuclear Free in 1987. America didn't talk to us for ages and the French snuck in and blew up a protesting ship, killing a photographer over it. But we're still all about staying nuclear free

Your big siblings keep trying to steal stuff - Aussie for example have claimed Pavlova as theirs, along with a number of other things. We gave them Russell Crowe and that seems to have abated them for a while

We have a unique cultural heritage we like to showcase, like the Haka that kiwi athletes perform before big sporting events - a battle challenge showing off strength and determination.

But then sometimes our proud cultural heritage is mis-understood by others, like using the Haka to sell Italian Cars. The Spice Girls also stole it but at the time it was funny cause they were drunk.

But the best part is when dumb people get us mixed up for something we're not, like the hoards of Republicans that made #movingtonewzealand a thing after Obama was re-elected because they thought we were some sort of Right Wing state, instead of a socialist, gun controlling, universal healthcare providing bunch of tree hugging liberals. Maybe they thought Sauron was from here and he hates weapon control.