I voted today as New Zealand held its national elections.

The voting centre was at a school in the suburb where I live and there was a small queue. People brought their kids in strollers or their dogs on leads or carried them in their arms. It was a nice spring morning. You simply walked up to the election staffer, handed in your Easy Vote Card; your name was verified and checked; you were handed your voting paper and told to mark it in the voting booth. There were only two choices to be made- the national party and the local party MP.

You made your picks with an orange marker.

It was all done in 20 minutes. We didn't hurry back home and took a different route to look at some gardens. We needed a new tree for the front of the house and we were thinking that it might be nice to get something that had pretty flowers like a cherry tree.

After doing some chores I realised that I probably needed some lunch and remembered that I had a can of sardines in the pantry. So I made some eggs and rice, sat down to eat and realised that my plate was resting on my voting reminders, and of course I remembered.

The last time I voted in the Philippines, candidates were distributing food packs; rice, noodles and cans of sardines. It was normal. People expected it. People cast their votes based on what they got. The same families won over and over and over.

I also remembered that I no longer cared about that.