island life

New Zealand is a Pacific Island nation. New Zealand is not a tropical island nation, although it sometimes pretends it is.
This might be something visitors fall prey to more than native Kiwis. To an American, New Zealand looks like it belongs with Fiji, Samoa and all the rest sitting all the way across the blue expanse of the Pacific. At the very least, New Zealand is lumped in with Australia in our geographic mind.
It's easy to overlook the fact New Zealand's Southland is nearly as far away from the equator as Canada.
New Zealand is not a tropical island, but there is a small bit of the easy-going island mentality here. Sometimes the mentality is here defying all logic.
This was the case the other day here in Dunedin. Mind you, there was a dustin of snow here yesterday. Temperatures have been around and below the freezing point. But there he was, hanging on to the island ideal, a New Zealander to the core, pulling on a winter coat, bracing against the bitter wind...
And wearing flip-flops.