The Rugby World Cup is helping New Zealanders get to know the neighbours. People are sharing something of themselves with strangers.
The public declarations of ethnicity, heritage and passions are not through words but with flags. On houses, hedges and cars, people are showing their colours.
The proliferation of flagsturns private loyalties public. Who was to know, without twin flags draped over the deck, that the bloke around the corner is married to a Russian?
Or that the family down the road are immigrants from Ireland, their Kiwi schooling meaning both flags fly from the people-mover's windows? Hairdressers of indeterminate origin turn out to be Georgian, the flag on the barber's mirror revealing all.
Even among the dead, gravesites declare Cup loyalties with Tongan red flying among a pile of plastic and real flowers and a cross of St George stuck on the headstone across the way.
And everywhere the rectangles of black and white car fittings, which are selling out across Auckland. Kiwis may not wear their hearts on their sleeves, but we happily wear our silver ferns on our Holdens, Hyundais and even our fire engines.
There is no self-conscious angst, no abstaining for the game, just a silent demonstration of support.
We've been here before. The last time, for the 2003 America's Cup defence.
That ended disastrously, the black "loyal" flags limp, then discarded. This time the omens are good. There are no Swiss competing. And we have no boat to sink.
