Stateside With Rosalea: A traveller’s thoughts

So, possums, I’ve been back in California for three weeks now and have finally returned to my normal US state of curmudgeonliness. (Yes, spellcheck, I know it’s not a word, but neither are you by your very own lights!) Of course, it’s debatable whether I ever left that state, but my memory of my One Sweet Week is of being in a state of equanimity and downright laziness. Plans to research healthcare in The Olde Sodde quickly evaporated, leaving behind just pictures of a series of plaques on the wall of the tiny community healthcare facility built where once stood a local hospital.

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These days, a free bus takes those with an appointment to be examined by specialists/specialty equipment to a nearby (as in 20-or-so miles away) provincial base hospital if they have no means of getting there by car. Or an ambulance will take you if need to be hospitalized. The maternity hospital where I was born is now private medical rooms, and one local townsperson told me that most women nowadays opt for midwife-supervised home births. Had I returned not just to where I lived last century but to the century before that one?

Nonetheless, I got the impression that NZ is significantly more prosperous than the US, and that its residents enjoy far better access to healthcare, education, and income security. I shudder to think that the current drive Down Under for a constitution and a republic might lead to its becoming the 52nd state—East Australia—just minutes after its larger neighbor to the west is admitted to the Union. Don’t even think about it! Or, if you do, just think how happy it would make the US to have a couple of resource- and land-rich states in the SW Pacific acting as a counterbalance to the nation with the largest Muslim population in the world.

Another difference that really brought itself to my attention was border security. In both San Francisco and Los Angeles, I was taken aside for a full body pat-down. At the SFO domestic terminal, I thought it was because a half-dozen women wearing headscarves were already corralled in the Perspex cage to the right of the metal detector, and the TSA were just trying to look like they weren’t really doing any racial profiling. But when it happened again at LAX, I had to wonder!

At SFO, I distinctly heard the TSA officer say “the alarm didn’t sound” before he asked another officer to take me aside, further adding to my puzzlement at the whole procedure. At least at SFO we were offered a private room for the pat-down; no such civility for lone me at LAX. Perhaps the long skirt and baggy shirt I’d worn to be comfortable on my flights were the problem.

Departure delays and my IBM souvenir of a handwritten boarding pass, aside, exiting NZ wasn’t at all as unpleasant—no pat-down, though I was wearing the same comfortable clothing—and I didn’t even have to take off my shoes. Border security entering NZ was far more complex than it was coming back into the US, but that is to keep out agricultural pests. I’m surprised that the US isn’t as thorough on this score with arriving travellers. Devastation of food crops or herds and timber supplies by regular folks not understanding the dangers of bringing in pests on their shoes or in their exotic souvenirs is a far more likely scenario than terrorists hijacking a plane.

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The view outside Auckland’s international terminal at sunset

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