BILTanz is only two weeks away. If you’re planning to attend from North America, it’s very important to take a moment and understand the critical differences between the A and the NZ in the BILTanz. This will help avoid accidentally creating an international incident between Australians and New Zealanders.
Let’s begin by discussing the “where”. If you’ve got a few days to travel around either country, it’s important not to die. Australia is big. Really, really big. Bigger than the US (even though you’ve grown up your whole life in US public schools where the US is right in the middle of the world map). New Zealand is really really small. Sometimes New Zealand is actually missing from hastily drawn world maps and even popular board games.
So how small is New Zealand? Kind of the size of California – except that everything to the east of San Francisco is missing and Fresno is a 3 hour, open ocean ferry ride to Sacremento. But here’s the catch: size doesn’t…