Friendship is rare (do you know what I'm saying to you)

As a man dedicated to efficiency, I endorse the practice and practice the endorsement of making use of major event days as a place to park other important life events. Get engaged on Christmas Eve. Get married on Labour Day weekend. This not only gives you a second reason to do something on said event day, it reduces by 50% the chance you will forget an anniversary of importance to someone. Efficiency.

Not heat compliant

I once moved countries on Valentines Day. This wasn't necessarily so I could save time and memory space, more that it was when the flights and job contracts lined up. That country was Aotearoa New Zealand, that Valentines Day was 14/2/2005. Twenty years here. It was going to be three, and then it wasn't. But we have lives here that we couldn't have had in Australia - or rather there isn't a place in Australia we could have had these jobs, this house, this lifestyle. So there will be more years here. Besides, the black lab would melt to an oily puddle if she ever crossed the 42nd parallel.

Compare the pair

Could I move back to Australia? For a variety of reasons, no. Do I miss it? Good lord yes. Home is home, and that never leaves you. I have a strong affinity for this place, but it is not my place. Aotearoa New Zealand teaches you a lot about place. A major feature of any traditional Maori meeting or greeting is pepeha, where you talk about your whakapapa - the lands, waters and mountains you affiliate with, and the people you descend from. 

Obviously First Nations people have an affinity for country which any mongrel child of immigrants can't pretend to have but I still know what my mountain is, even if it's basically a small hill in firebreak country out the back of a coastal National Park. I also know I need to live within earshot of surf to feel normal (blame the infrasound maybe; there's probably another entire blog in that) even if over here it's surf you can maybe dip three toes into on the hottest day of the year.

But it's not the mountains (lol), or the beaches, or the heat, or the insects, or the gambling ads, or Murdoch papers, or the fuckwit tradie utes on the M1 that I miss. To mangle another bit of te reo which corporate types love to begin meetings with just before they announce more rounds of redundancies:

He aha te mea nui o te ao? 

He tangata, he tangata, he tangata!

What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.

I miss my people. Almost all my old friends are OLD friends, people I've known since before the Late Show was on TV. The corollary is that I don't make new friends; or rather, setting aside work acquaintainces, all the capital-F Friends I've made since moving to NZ have been internet friends who don't live in NZ (including that fella I've podcasted with for ten years; no, we didn't know each other back in Brisbane). This could lead you to conclude either (a) I am increasingly repellent and/or neurospicy in my old age; (b) New Zealanders are difficult and unpleasant, or (c) dudes just don't make new friends over the age of 30. 

Spoilers, the data suggests it's (c). (To be fair it's also definitely (a) and partially (b) too but that's just because they find Australians too fucking loud and haven't forgiven us for Trevor Chappell underarming a grenade onto the Rainbow Warrior and killing Phar Lap, or some shit I dunno.)

Men just suck at making friends and keeping friendships going. Whether it's because of family commitments, work stress, lack of connections, loss of societal third spaces or a general inability to externalise emotions, there are a hundred thousand thinkpieces on that there internet cataloguing and deconstructing the male friendship crisis, or variants thereof. 

This is not thinkpiece number 100,001 in that series; I don't have a explanation for any of that, except to say yes, it appears to be a thing, and any or many of those reasons could be why. And I don't have a solution, either. Except to get on more planes and have more beers with my people. 

The Doctor is OUT.