Wellyopolis

March 31, 2006

Mixed flatting

Through the magic of the internets I've been listening to Wellington's finest music radio station, Radio Active. (Twin Cities readers: if you like The Current, you'd like Radio Active).

It's kind of bizarre hearing your own accent again ... a friend recently returned to New Zealand told me she'd never realized how g**damn annoying the New Zealand accent was. And it's true. It's as annoying as hearing an American accent, when you're not used to one. Or an Australian accent, when you're not used to one. Or a British one, when you're not used to one. To say nothing of those nasal South Africans. I will let the Irish and Scots off this general indictment of accents ... digression ...

Anyway, another thing that was semi-bizarre was listening to the "Accommodation Guide" where people advertise for flatmates (roommates wanted). I hadn't really forgotten this, but it was still revealing to note the number of people advertising for flatmates of a specific gender. Here's the kicker, and the cultural exchange part. In New Zealand they're almost always advertising for a woman or a man to keep a flat mixed sex. In America they advertise for roommates to maintain a single sex household.

It was a rare student flat in New Zealand that was not mixed. Moreover, many (most?) of those mixed flatting situations were strangers. The prevailing attitude among the youth in New Zealand is (was, at least, five years ago) that (1) it's better to share a house with people you didn't previously know, and (2) you should have a mixture of men and women. What I've noticed in America is that these attitudes are almost precisely reversed—most people believe it's better to share housing with people of the same sex they already know.

There's two things going on there; gender and trust. Painting with [too?] broad a brush, Americans [Minnesotans] are still more conservative about gender. Notice how many women they elect to public office? Not so many.

There's also an issue of trust. New Zealand is still a small enough country that most of these potential flatmates you didn't know were probably known at two or three removes. But there is also a greater sense of trust in strangers that they won't turn out to be axe murderers or psycho killers. Or gun murderers, as seems to be more common in America. (Axes don't kill people. People kill people).

Interestingly enough, in New Zealand, a quintessential late-90s cult movie about the perils of flatting/house-sharing was Shallow Grave. Where one flatmate just died and left lots of cash behind. What does that say? Another movie about the perils of flatting was Scarfies (great soundtrack, by the way) where the risk in sharing a house was that you'd discover someone was growing dope in your basement, and your big moral dilemma was again, how to liquidate the windfall you'd come into.

Contrast that with the best American movie about room-mates: Single White Female. That would put you off living with other people.

The constant is that wherever you are, there are those awful accents to get used to. Except in Shallow Grave. They had nice Scottish accents.

Posted by robe0419 at March 31, 2006 3:30 PM