More Ranting About Standards

Guest blogger Mark

Did I ever mention the need for standards in this country? Even the postal addresses are a “quaint” throwback to medieval England...

There are really only three required bits to the mailing address – your name (*or* house number), the street name, and the 4-digit postal code (remember: it’s a small country). After the street name and before the postal code you normally expect to find a city name. But here they put both a “suburb” and a “city” name, suggesting that there is some sub-city level of postal geography that is used for delivering the mail. We were told, for example, that we live in the Cashmere suburb so we should write “The Kumler Family, 1 Great Gables Lane, Cashmere, Christchurch 8022”. But it turns out there are no official boundaries to these suburbs, and different entities recognize different suburbs and boundaries. Our property manager’s database lists us as being in Cashmere, the electric utility considers all of Great Gables Lane to be in Saint Martins, our bank insists we’re in Huntsbury, and the gas utility calls our entire subdivision Broad Oaks.

Throw in the social variable that many residents like to use whichever suburb name sounds most affluent, and you have a real mess. Fortunately, they all seem to work.