Posted via email from Euroasia
If you’re keen to experience Asia, but not sure you want to live in a stressful, smoggy megacity, Malaysia offers a refreshing alternative! Euroasia is working with a client looking for teachers of EFL to teach foreign students (mainly adults from China, the Middle East, Russia etc.) who choose Malaysia for their English language studies. Some are required asap, but others may join the team at a later date.
Malaysia offers:
Applicants have to meet minimum criteria as detailed below.
More details and online application available via the following sites:
Do tell your friends about this opportunity (but we can only proceed with applicants who meet the minimum criteria).
Source: Asia Education Foundation (2009) “An Australian curriculum for the 21st century”, winter 2009.
Every teenager should have the chance to learn Mandarin due to the growing importance of China in world events, according to the UK government. One in seven secondary schools, which teach pupils aged 11-16, currently offer Mandarin and Schools Secretary Ed Balls said he wanted to extend this through language partnerships between schools.
From the BBC website this week:
All secondary school pupils in England should have the chance to learn a less familiar language such as Mandarin, says Children’s Secretary Ed Balls.
Mandarin has become increasingly popular in schools – with one in seven now teaching the subject.
Making it more widely available is an “aspiration” rather than a pledge – and could mean schools and colleges sharing specialist language teaching staff.
Mr Balls highlighted the economic importance of learning languages.
As well as Mandarin, he pointed to the growing importance of Portuguese for trading with Brazil, Spanish in Argentina and Bahasa Indonesia in Indonesia.
Emerging economies
“A growing number of schools are now teaching Mandarin and in the coming years I think we will see this subject sitting alongside French, Spanish and German as one of the most popular languages for young people to learn,” said Mr Balls.
“In this new decade our ties with emerging economies like China will become even more important and it’s vital that young people are equipped with the skills which they need, and British businesses need too, in order to succeed in a rapidly-changing world,” he said.
So what is the New Zealand government’s stance?
OK This is going to be a long-ish post, to update you with all the goss over the past month. I have been very busy with various projects, travelling, attending all sorts of forums and events, and trying to keep up with everything else. It’s Christmas eve, and I finally get to do some blogging. I dread to think what it must be like in the shopping malls right now, so this is a welcome reprieve.
We had the annual Euroasia Christmas party late this year (11 Dec 09). We had a decent turnout of around 80 clients and friends of Euroasia, which is OK seeing we clashed with many other corporate parties. File note: next year we definitely have to do this the first week of Dec, perhaps even late-Nov. As you can see, those who managed to make it had a great time.
We didn’t do any Christmas carols in Spanish, French, German, Chinese and Japanese like we did last year… but our team did organise some cool games. It was also a great opportunity for me to thank all our clients for their unwavering support to us over the past year. Dr John Reynolds spoke eloquently in 3 languages about his language learning experience at Euroasia.
Ken with Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and fellow businessmen from Australia..
A few months ago, I accepted an invitation to speak at the World Chinese Economic Forum in November and held in Kuala Lumpur (which happens to be my hometown). I’m really glad I went, as I managed to meet a number of very interesting people. At my session, I talked about how overseas Chinese can assist businesspeople from Western nations, including New Zealand, to access new markets in Asia generally and China specifically. I provided examples of enterprising Chinese businesspeople facilitating trade opportunities. In the past, New Zealand chicken producers had to spend money to dispose of chicken parts like chicken feet (that Westerners don’t eat, but Chinese love). Through the intervention of Chinese traders, NZ chicken producers have not only saved money from having to dispose of these chicken parts, but are now profiting from the sales of these parts. There are plenty of business opportunities in China that New Zealanders are missing out on because of the DIY mindset. A far superior approach is to collaborate with Asians who live in NZ and have an entrenched knowledge of the language and culture in the target market. I’m hoping to devote more time and energy to work on these Asia Bridge initiatives in 2010.
At the Forum, I managed to have a chat with the Penang Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng. When he found out that I lived in NZ, he said “you Kiwis qualified for the world cup”, referring to news that New Zealand qualified for the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa and demonstrating his knowledge of New Zealand. I had to break it to him that NZ also qualified for the Hockey World Cup, beating Malaysia the day before the forum.
Ken with PM John Key
Earlier this month, I attended the annual APEC Advisory Business Council (ABAC) dinner, where the PM briefs members of the business community on what happened at APEC. This year, there’s lots to say about the economy and the PM has just arrived back from the East Asia Summit, Malaysia-NZ FTA, CHOGM, and about to go to Copenhagen.
I have previously blogged about this but one funny anecdote worth sharing is from the Q%A where a guy asked a serious question “If we want to catch Australia why not just merge with them?” The PM’s response: I just got back from CHOGM where Australian PM Kevin Rudd asked me the same question. My response was I’m too busy running New Zealand to run Australia as well. This guy can be very funny. I do think John Key is more in touch with the masses than Helen Clark; and has a way with both CEOs as well as joe public. Perhaps this explains his 80% favourability rating throughout a very difficult year.
Mock up of Euroasia's new website to be launched in 2010
In the new year, you will see the launch of Euroasia’s new website and enrolment system, which we have spent the last 2 months working on. Some people have asked us why we want to spend money on this, especially seeing this is a particularly difficult time. My response is that in order to maintain Euroasia’s position as a leading provider of foreign language courses and cross-cultural services, we have to keep investing in the business, and to keep improving our service offering, especially when times are bad. Recessions don’t last forever, and I’m optimistic that 2010 will be a spectacular year for Euroasia. As it stands, our forward bookings for 2010 are already way ahead of this time last year.
Over the next two weeks, I will spend some time hopefully relaxing and reflecting on the past year. If you’re like me, and need some help with the reflection process, I’ve found this guide pretty helpful. Ask yourself 20 questions that cover all facets of life, not just material prosperity.
Last Christmas, we produced a video compilation of Euroasia staff bringing Christmas and New Year greetings in their native languages. I hope you don’t mind me recycling (seeing it’s in vogue now) this message. Once again we wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Earlier this month, I had the privelege of attending the annual APEC Advisory Business Council (ABAC) dinner hosted by the NZ International Business Forum, where the PM briefs members of the business community on what happened at APEC. This year, there’s lots to say about the economy and the PM has just arrived back from the East Asia Summit, Malaysia-NZ FTA, CHOGM, and about to go to Copenhagen.
Ken with PM John Key
The PM talked about 3 key issues:
1) Global interconnectedness. Synchronised recession is illustrative of this. Deep recessions will become more common as economies become more interdependent.
2) Global imbalances. PM cited a savings imbalance, with the West being funded by the East. He thinks the yuan will have to appreciate (given his background as Head of FX for Merrill Lynch, I was thinking whether to start hoarding some yuan) . The major issue is US consumers won’t spend. The Americans are looking for 20m jobs (7m unemployed plus 13m coming into workforce).
3) Climate change. Unless the big boys (US, China etc) are involved, we can’t change things. It is more of a problem than people think, and will hit faster and with more severity.As the bulk of energy (70%) in NZ already come from renewable sources, and 50% of emissions is from agriculture, addressing this will be a big challenge.
The Q&A was pretty fascinating. One guy asked a serious question “If we want to catch Australia why not just merge with them?” The PM’s response: I just got back from CHOGM where Australian PM Kevin Rudd asked me the same question. My response was I’m too busy running New Zealand to run Australia as well. This guy can be very funny. I do think John Key is more in touch with the masses than Helen Clark; and has a way with both CEOs as well as joe public. Perhaps this explains his 80% favourability rating throughout a very difficult year.
In recent months, visits to our blog has increased measurably, with lots of people looking for reviews of Xero and comparisons between Xero and MYOB. My initial post on MYOB vs Xero – A comparison, explaining the reasons why Euroasia swapped from MYOB to Xero is now our most popular blog entry for 2009. My follow-up post in July 2009 on our experience with implementing Xero is number 10 on the list.
Regular readers will be somewhat surprised that a blog on culture and language would have a post on accounting as the most popular entry. I’m interested in this topic not just because I think Xero has a great product, but I’m also happy to see a New Zealand company doing so well. I’ve enjoyed playing around with Xero, looking at reports and checking out their website. Xero has given me some design ideas for the soon-to-be-launched new Euroasia website.
When I first wrote about Xero in March 2009, Xero had 6000 users, having doubled in the preceding 6 months. At last count, they had over 12000 users, doubling again in the last 6 months. How could this be? For starters Xero is very attentive to client needs. For example, just look at their Twitter posts from today.
Xero is not insecure about their product. Check out the re-tweet here from a fan who is offering to help with both MYOB and Xero. I was quite surprised to see that Xero twittered this on to their fanbase.
In my last post, I complained about some of the drawbacks of Xero and some suggestions for improvement. I was surprised to see in their September update the specific feature requests I suggested. This includes customisation of user roles and a name field for contacts. The customisation of user roles is a step in the right direction, but administrators are still not allowed to customise access rights for individual users (MYOB does this). I hope this is addressed soon. The budgeting function can also be improved to make it a more useful tool for businesses that do more planning/forecasting.
I’m still waiting for my bank to link up my credit card accounts to the live feed. The daily live feed of bank entries is one of the top reasons why Xero is such a great proposition. But Xero is sometimes held back by banks who do not have the same sense of urgency in implementing changes that save customers’ time/money. So users still have to import credit card statements into Xero ala MYOB. So don’t think by implementing Xero you get away from 100% of the dirty work.
I have previously blogged on the drawbacks of MYOB. There are also drawbacks to Xero. For example, anyone that handles a lot of stock will find MYOB a better proposition. So in summary do your research before jumping in.
Xero went live today with their new pricing plans. Euroasia is on the “medium” plan at NZ$49/month, which works well for us. And because we’re an existing customer, we can always activate multi-currency when we need it without having to pay for the “large” plan at NZ$64/month.
For freelancers / property investors who process less than 5 AR and 5 AP invoices per month, the “small” plan would be ideal for you at NZ$29/month.
The other day I went along to the preview of this brilliant movie “A Pain in the Ass” (L’Emmerdeur) by French writer-director FRANCIS VEBER, the guy behind The Valet, The Dinner Game and The Closet. This summary from Flicks: Francois Pignon (Patrick Timsit), whose wife (Virginie Ledoyen) has just left him for a shrink, checks into the same Nice hotel as hitman Ralf (Richard Berry). Ralf is there to stake out a key witness in a major corruption trial, while Pignon plans to hang himself in the bathroom. Their adjoining rooms bring them together; the perfect killer and the perfect pest. Complications cement their relationship as Pignon’s fondness for the cold-as-ice assassin grows stronger.
If you think you’ve met people who are a pain in the ass, wait till you meet Pignon!
This movie is coming out 15 October at your local cinema. Go check it out.
Should you wish to be able to watch French movies one day without looking at the English subtitles, you know who to call for French lessons.
p/s: Thanks Christine and Frederic from Evian for asking me along. Also met this guy who runs a water concept store. Yes they only sell water. Aquadeli on Mt Eden Road. They’ve been around for a while, but I’ve yet to go check them out. Have to visit sometime soon.
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