Hard News: Modern Endeavour
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I love that line about the future...
Yr welcome - it was the overwhelming impression that arose from a severe case of culture shock after being dumped back into the grey Sydney winter of '75.
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Merc: what did Patti put where the * is?
F[iretr]uck?
There's also the reality of not embarrassing or making things difficult for the people I'm with and, as Graham says in his post, the fact that the Vietnamese people are generally delightful. I had to wriggle out of having a translator (ie: government minder) before I left NZ - that was quite a relief.
I wonder Russell what's your thoughts on the "have to respect the people who got me here" vs "freedom of reporting" in relation to this. I know sometimes that organisations pay for you to travel to conferences and report on them, and whatnot, which I don't have a philosophical problem with.
But the first sentence of that paragraph seems to indicate that you're falling on the "have to respect" side in this instance, and my first reaction was "Well that's not exactly hard news." and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the matter.
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merc,
That's great, in future I can refer to my Ire-truck, that thing what I cart round my ire in; or better yet I can leave my ire-truck at home, or by the wayside, which I think is a good idea, I can say, sorry can't comment, my ire-truck is broken down, meh.
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Simon
I'll concede comparative food nutrition in Indonesia vs. South Auckland/Aranui/Cannon Creek may favour Indonesia but what of the health cover & conditions there?
The reports I had only a few years ago from Christchurch’s Firestone factory (at the time the last manual tire plant in the ‘western world’), I was told kerosene was used to wash the carbon black off the Indonesian workers – from one carcinogenic to another.
I wonder what the comparative life expectancy is of manual labourers? -
Michael..average is put here at 70 for the nation as a whole. I have no idea about workers in tyre companies but I'd take anything you heard in a factory in Christchurch as gospel with a very large grain. The dis/misinformation about Indonesia I hear in NZ never fails to astound me.. Occupational safety is not to western standards, or often close, especially in the construction and engineering industries. That said, free health care for workers, and their families seems to be fairly prevalent for much industry here. Everybody I know who employs provides such, and the law gives a month's paid holiday (usually Ramadan when Java and Sumatra close down), as well as a month's bonus per year after 12 months employ (ie you get paid 13 months per year). Smaller firms often tend to have relationships with whole villages and families that goes far beyond that which you'd see in western countries, and in my experience eight hour days, with overtime rates, and normal breaks etc are the norm.
I've spent a fair amount of time in large furniture factories in Java and, with one major exception (Danish owned..they went bust few months later), the spraying rooms were ventilated and masks worn, pretty much to western standards. How much good they do when everyone is puffing on a Kretek is a question. The bathrooms, however were another matter.
When I was at university I worked in the Westfield Freezing Works in my breaks, in the Fellmongery. God knows how many chemicals I was exposed to there..many very nasty..does it still go on in other places in NZ? I don't know, but OSH standards there were shocking. We are quick to point the finger I think at times.
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I wonder Russell what's your thoughts on the "have to respect the people who got me here" vs "freedom of reporting" in relation to this. I know sometimes that organisations pay for you to travel to conferences and report on them, and whatnot, which I don't have a philosophical problem with.
But the first sentence of that paragraph seems to indicate that you're falling on the "have to respect" side in this instance, and my first reaction was "Well that's not exactly hard news." and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the matter.
Hope you're happier with the post I just made. I didn't say "have to respect the people who got men here", and that wasn't my point. I have no instruction whatsoever from from the Asia: NZ Foundation and I wouldn't contemplate taking on a grant that had such strings attached.
My point was that I wasn't going to list the government's failings in that particular blog post where I had a bunch of names and faces of people who had nothing to do with my thoughts on the matter, and could conceivably have been embarrassed or worse as a result. I don't really know what the chances of that would be, but it just seemed a prudent way of handling it.
As you'll see, I had mixed and conflicting impressions of the place, but I really did like it.
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I was told kerosene was used to wash the carbon black off the Indonesian workers
Probably different now, but back in the oil based paint days, you should've seen what they washed with in a paint factory!
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Um... in a paint factory here in NZ.
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Thanks Simon
Seems to follow a bit of the better american style employment practises. I have a knee jerk reaction against paternalistic employment policy but of course it may be a win win.
As for our standards I posted this one on the injuries post “my good mate in the Terries many years ago was spraying scrub for some criminally negligent farmer and got poisoned.”
Union Carbide's Bopal wasn't in Indiana. The exportation of hazards industry always makes me a little uneasy.
Although there is a growing trend in the dairy indurty moving to central america - yahoo!Although second hand the detail of the description of washing in kero seemed credible.
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Although second hand the detail of the description of washing in kero seemed credible.
If it was from a few years back it was probably true - degreasing your mitts with kero was still common garage practice in NZ 20-odd years ago.
In Australia they use it on their old folks:
http://www.agedcarecrisis.com/acc/show_news.asp?id=newsitem&item=news0156 -
I love that line about the future...I may borrow it if that's ok. This is an incredible country, no?
I have the same feeling from my very brief visit to VN. You read all this stuff about it being the Asian Century and everything, but you don't really grasp what it means until you get close to it. Oddly enough, I don't get that feeling from Singapore, which is just ... Singapore.
In Saigon I had 74 channels on my TV. In Singapore it's illegal to own a satellite dish.
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In Saigon I had 74 channels on my TV. In Singapore it's illegal to own a satellite dish.
Singapore feels to me like a festering crisis waiting to explode. You can't throw that much education into a population without them sooner or later saying no.
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Singapore feels to me like a festering crisis waiting to explode. You can't throw that much education into a population without them sooner or later saying no.
I had a good yarn today with Greg Wood, who is quite positive about the new official emphasis on creativity, which has hitherto not featured highly in Singapore's strategies . Of course, if you're going to let people do art, that's going to get messy too ...
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