Euroasia: Language, Culture and Travel

Euroasia Spring Update – 1 Sept 2009

Firstly, thank you all who came out in support of the launch of International Languages Week at Euroasia. Photos are available on our Euroasia Facebook page.

Latin American party- 26 Sept

The 2nd Fiesta de la Chilenidad en Auckland is coming up, in conjunction with the Chilean National Day celebrations. We would like to invite you along to this amazing celebration organised by an established Chilean community group. If you want to see how Latin Americans party, you have to be there. Of course, those who went last year already know what it’s all about.

The details:
Date: Saturday, 26 September 2009
Time: 6.30pm (show starts at 7.30pm)
Venue: Te Atatu South Community Centre, 247 Edmonton Road, Te Atatu South.
Cost: $30

This event is open to all (not just those learning Spanish) so feel free to ask your friends along as well. Renowned Latin American dance group Renacer will be performing.

Euroasia is proud to support the Chilean National Day celebrations. All ticket holders will go into the prize draw to win a free course at Euroasia valued at $359.

As there are limited tickets available we would encourage those interested to purchase tickets from your teacher if you’re currently enrolled in a class with us. Tickets are sold on a cash basis. Sorry folks the organisers don’t take Visa. You can also email our Spanish teacher Jose-Luis at jose.valdivia@euroasia.co.nz if you’re keen. He will send you payment details.

Last year they sold out weeks prior and unfortunately the organisers had to turn away quite a few people on the waiting list. So get in quick!

Aotearoa Jasmine singing project – this Saturday

If you’re around this Saturday we would encourage you to head to Auckland Museum at 11am to join other New Zealanders from all walks of life to sing China’s best-loved folk song “Jasmine Flower” or Mo Li Hua. This session will be recorded for television.

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to sing this song. It’s well worth going along just to see what it’s all about. This NZ China Friendship Society initiative will celebrate the friendship between NZ and China. It is also a special gift for the 60th birthday of the People’s Republic of China. As we are the first country in the world to see the sunrise, its broadcast on television in New Zealand and in China will enable New Zealand to become the first country to wish China “Happy Birthday”. More information at http://aotearoajasmine.org.nz/

Let us know if you have any questions/feedback.  Great that spring is here. Let us know if you want to talk about upcoming courses. Or check out the Euroasia timetable.

I grew up on a staple of Hong Kong films. Hong Kong movie directors are particularly adept at making action movies and thrillers; the stuff I like. I may be biased but I find these Hong Kong movies to be so much better than the standard Hollywood fare.

One of my all-time favourites is the Infernal Affairs series. If you haven’t seen this, you really don’t know what you’re missing. The first one came out in 2002, directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak. It tells the story of a police officer who infiltrates the crime gang, and a police mole secretly working for the same gang. If that sounds like the storyline of The Departed, that’s because The Departed is a 2006 remake of Infernal Affairs. Yes, as in The Departed that won four Academy Awards including Best Picture, and a Best Director win for Martin Scorsese; with a star-studded cast that included Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen etc.

I think it’s amazing that the Hong Kong New Zealand Business Association has taken the initiative to put together the 2009 Hong Kong Kong Film Festival. At Euroasia, we often encourage our clients to see foreign language films to get a better feel of the language and culture they are studying.  Seeing films of people interacting in a foreign language allows us to vicariously experience diverse cultural environments.  I learn a lot from movies. I can genuinely say it’s “professional development” time.

It does look like the five films selected by my friend, filmmaker Alex Lee of Asia NZ Film Foundation, are truly excellent. I recommend that you go check them out at Rialto Newmarket 17-20 September.

Thur 17th Sept

True Women for Sale — 6.30pm

Protégé — 8.30pm

Fri 18th Sept

Three Kingdoms — 6.30pm

Beast Stalker — 8.30pm

Sat 19th Sept

Protégé — 1.45pm

The Way We Are — 4.30pm

Beast Stalker — 6.15pm

The Three Kingdoms — 8.30pm

Sun 20th Sept

The Three Kingdoms — 1.45pm

The Way We Are — 4.30pm

Protégé — 6.15pm

True Women for Sale — 8.30pm

The huge uproar over a Tongan man found barbecuing his pet dog is a demonstration of cultural insensitivity bordering on ignorance and hyprocrisy.  Paea Taufa was found roasting the pitbull terrier-cross in an umu at his Mangere home. “If we eat heaps of… pig you get a (sore) stomach. But when we eat … dog, it doesn’t matter how much you eat, nothing is wrong with the tummy,” Taufa told Sunday News. Major dailies reported this, and today CNN carried the story, citing “the case infuriated and repulsed many New Zealanders.”

The Tongan guy had decided to cook the dog because it was too skinny and had become unmanageable. He rendered the dog unconscious with a blow to the head before slitting its throat. Under the Animal Welfare Act it is legal to kill a dog in New Zealand if the animal is slaughtered swiftly and painlessly.

The SPCA is very upset with Taufa, with the CEO saying “Even though the law says you can humanely kill an animal, you should not be treating any animal like this.” Many people are now calling for a law change, led by the SPCA, petitioning for the eating of dog meat to be banned. Various editorials swiftly condemned the practice of eating dog meat. The Tongan guy was demonised and probably traumatised, and he has since told media that he wouldn’t bbq another dog.

I am opposed to any attempt to ban the eating of dog meat and backyard dog barbecues.

New Zealanders love their meat and is only behind Demark globally (and ahead of the Americans) in terms of per capita consumption, 3.5 times the world average. The average Kiwi eats over 90 kg of meat per year, 65% red meat vs 35% white meat.

What is the difference between sheep and dogs? Some argue that dogs are pets. But some sheep are pets too. So are some chickens. Why ban the consumption of one type of meat but not another?

It is more inhumane for most of the pigs in New Zealand to be locked up in cages for all their lives and then slaughtered for their meat, than for Mr Taufa to kill a free-range dog swiftly. Why did people not revolt against pig farmers, especially after Mike King’s expose on TVNZ’s Sunday?  When told that the cost of pork in supermarkets will rise significantly if farmers moved to free-range farming, people stopped complaining.

Some argue that cattle and sheep are raised specifically for their meat, and dogs are not.  By that token would the protesters be placated if enterprising individuals started dog farms in New Zealand? We export tonnes of horse meat offshore. This means we are killing farm horses in huge numbers. Would horse-killers be regarded as barbaric too?

The argument that we cannot kill dogs for food because they are cute/friendly/small/intelligent doesn’t wash. We don’t see our vegetarian friends getting all judgemental when we meat-eaters confess our love for meat (as long as it’s not from an endangered species). Why can’t meat-eaters afford the same courtesy to dog-eaters? No one is asking you to join them.

SPCA CEO says: “The slaughtering, roasting and eating of a dog or other companion animal is simply abhorrent to our culture as New Zealanders”.  Dogs were eaten in New Zealand long before the Europeans arrived. Taufa himself is probably a NZ citizen. The SPCA is venturing into dangerous territory by becoming an arbitrator of what is culturally right or wrong.

The main thing that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should be worried about is exactly that, prevention of animal cruelty. As long as animals are slaughtered in a humane manner, then what people eat should be left up to them.

The law doesn’t need to be changed. It’s the hypocritical mindset of protesters coming from the second biggest meat-eating country in the world that does.

I asked my friend Verpal Singh to pen a few thoughts on what he thinks are the latent resources in New Zealand. My views on the economic and social benefits of cultural diversity is well-known as I regularly talk about harnessing New Zealand’s cultural diversity.  As such, it is good that Verpal can add some of his thoughts here:

1. Cultural diversity is not unique to New Zealand as the whole world is becoming culturally diverse and those countries which are resisting this movement are gradually acquiring an image of being out-of-sync. Sure this diversity should be harnessed to benefit NZ. However, when other diverse societies also seek to use their diversity for their own benefit, we reach a situation where NZ is competing with others for a piece of the diversity cake.

2. As I did during the World Cafe discussion, I would list the following three aspects of NZ as our latent resource:
a) As members of the developed world, we are the insiders. However, due to our geographical location, smaller population and relatively small-sized economy, we are also the outsiders. This puts us in a unique position of an outsider while being on the inside. We, thus, provide an outsider’s perpsective to problems facing the developed world, while experiencing these same problems first-hand. The tradition of providing leadership to the world, set by people like Sir Ernest in Physics and Sir Ed in pushing the limits of human endurance is being eminently followed by New Zealanders like Dr John Hood (Vice Chancellor of Oxford University), Chris Liddell (CFO, Microsoft) and Helen Clark (head of UNDP) amongst many many others, and bears testimony to the fact that New Zealanders’ unique perspective is being appreciated by the world. The only possible equivalent in these aspects (that I could find) is Iceland.

b) The ease of contact between the rulers and the ruled in the New Zealand system of governance. This empowers the people and provides them the opportunity to show their leadership in areas that they hold dear, whether it is environment protection, opposition to Nuclear arms, or a more equal world.

c) A long history of technological innovation — which is the most important part of Ray Avery’s work. Combined with a) and b), an innovative idea has greater potential to be turned into a great enterprise in New Zealand than even in USA (where the power enjoyed by established commercial entities to influence government decision-making in their favour seems to have killed off Americans’ innovative streak — their car industry being a prime example of this).

This is an awesome video…viral ad from a Russian language school. Hit me baby one more time!

I had a quick look at the itunes panel as I synced my phone to the laptop. Scrolling through the list of the Top 15 albums, songs, videos etc, everywhere I looked it was Michael Jackson.

MJ songs on itunes

In this screen shot of the top 15 music videos sold on itunes, all bar one were Michael Jackson songs.

In the early 1980s, he became a dominant figure in popular music and the first African American entertainer to amass a strong crossover following on MTV. The popularity of his music videos airing on MTV, such as “Beat It“, “Billie Jean” and “Thriller“ — widely credited with transforming the music video from a promotional tool into an art form — helped bring the relatively new channel to fame. (Source: Wikipedia)

One of the music icons of our time has now passed on. I remember vividly those MJ music videos. The controversy aside, Michael Jackson made HIStory.  He captivated an entire generation, across cultural and national boundaries.

He showed us that it don’t matter if you’re black or white.

Economist: China vs US capital spend

The Economist this week reported China’s fixed-asset investment leapt by an astonishing 39% in the year to May, or by a record 49% in real terms.

This year China’s domestic investment in dollar terms is likely to exceed that in America (see chart).

There are concerns that a lot of the investment is directed by the Chinese government, and hence a lot of it would be wasted in pushing out overcapacity.

Investment amounted to 44% of GDP last year (compared with 18% in America), which many economists reckon was already too much. Worse still, as well as forcing state firms to invest, the government is directing state-owned banks to lend more, despite falling corporate profits.

The fastest expansion in spending has been in railways (up by 111% this year). As a developing country, China still lacks decent infrastructure; railways, in particular, have long been an economic bottleneck. Investment in roads, the power grid and water should also yield high long-term returns by allowing China to sustain rapid growth.

Further evidence that increasingly New Zealand will be engaging more with China as reliance on our traditional Western markets wane. The Americans will struggle with maintaining market dominance, and the developing economies will no doubt emerge stronger as a result of this recession.

If you’re like me, you would be thinking why the heck would people stand in line to pay $500 to some scammers in return for automatic approval of New Zealand residency.

Apparently, the story is that some guy has been going around the country selling visa stamps like how people peddle club memberships.

You stand in line with $500 cash in hand. You pay $500 and they stamp your passport, and voila, you’re now Maori, and hence granted automatic permanent residency.  It’s open to all applicants, as long as you have 500 bucks cash to fork out.

Hundreds of people turned up at a marae in Mangere last night. And a thousand the night prior at Manurewa. The people scammed are mostly desperate Islanders eager to get residency.

It’s shameful that often the most vulnerable members of society get scammed. Usually the most vulnerable ones are also the most guillible. You might be thinking this only happens to dumb people.  But just because you went to university and hold a respectable job doesn’t mean you’re immune to scams.  I came across another story recently, where a Kiwi businesswoman gave away $680,000 in 10 weeks  to some fraudster who claimed to be an American-born geologist who lived in New Zealand but was overseas on business. They met on some internet dating site, and he professed his love. He managed to get her to send progressively larger amounts before the scam unravelled. Obviously she’s not dumb if she has $680K cash to send overseas.

The point is we need to have some level of empathy with what people are going through.  In the meantime, I’ll be warning desperate immigrants that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.