We're going to be Kiwis

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!",


The Ministry of Internal Affairs has just written to us informing all in the family that the Minister has signed and approved our application for NZ citizenship, and that once we have completed the attestation ceremony in the near future, we will be given our Certificates of Citizenship.

We do have to attend the public ceremony however, or the grant of citizenship will lapse, so I've been making enquiries as to what it entails.

We have to turn up on time, unless you have Maori ancestors when being 15 - 20 minutes late is de rigeur.  If you have Pacific Island heritage 30 minutes to 90 minutes late is deemed acceptable.

We have to prove our fluency in English by making a brief statement why we think New Zealand is infinitely superior to Australia.

We have to promise on threat of loss of citizenship never to :

• Put down the All Blacks
• Make any stupid sheep jokes
• Forget the 2011 victory over France.

We have to demonstrate our acceptance of Kiwi customs and culture by doing the following:

Cheerios; Guaranteed at least 20% meat (products)

1. Eat 5 cheerios with Watties Tomato Sauce
2. Make a bowl of onion dip with reduced cream, lemon juice and a packet of onion soup mix.
3. Making a strong argument that the English referee in the 2007 Cardiff RWC match was blind, biased, mad or all three.
4. Explain without diagrams (or foul language) the intricacies of the allowable handling methods in a ruck, and how they differ from the same rules in a rolling maul or whenever Ritchie McCaw is involved.
5. Make either a pan holder, foot-rest, truss (rupture support) or a wireless radio from a roll of Number 8 wire, an old car battery, 3 Feijoas and a Lammington.
6. Eat 3 Feijoas without being sick.
7. Shave a kiwifruit and sculpt into a bust of Dame Kiri Te Kawana.

Lastly we have to be able to sing the New Zealand National Anthem, not necessarily in key (to my tone-deaf Beloved's eternal delight) but in Maori and English.

We are then presented with our Certificates of Citizenship and the bill for $1400.

We then circulate with the other recently made citizens, local dignitaries, komatua, Head of the Lower Hutt Chapter of the Mongrel mob and have a pleasant time discussing the local weather (bloody wet and windy), politics (John Key seems a lovely guy, but he's a con man), how crap the beer is nowadays and the bid price for 5g of Meth or 250 g of weed.
Cheerios, Asparagus rolls, Sausage rolls, potato topped savouries and small steak and cheese pies are consumed, all slathered with Watties Tomato Sauce.

Then we will be offical Kiwis.

Makes you proud, don't it.