Posts by linger
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Hard News: Aiming for the feet, in reply to Chris Waugh,
rite of passage
[ sic, for “right of passage"] – Is that typo the Herald ’s, or was it already in the ODT source article?
Answering my own question – the online ODT version has the correct phrasing.
ETA: snap.
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Hard News: Media data, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Dunno what Sky actually deliver. (Yamis?) Yes, “Other Chinese” is not a very helpful category, so I’d expect them to ignore that.
the South Asian languages are so heavily skewed towards Hindi.
That’s been increasing recently. The number of self-reported Hindi speakers in NZ tripled between 1996 & 2006. But speaker numbers for most Asian languages (other than Cantonese and Japanese) more than doubled over the same period; so Hindi has extended rather than suddenly achieved numerical dominance over Gujarati or Panjabi in NZ.
I bet there’s a huge amount of overlap in the Chinese languages, especially Mandarin and ‘Other’.
I agree. The “Cantonese” total increased only 25% from 1996-2006, while “Mandarin” and “Other” responses both more than doubled, so it’s possible that many more recent immigrants tended to report both of the last two language categories. The figures could reflect immigration from (e.g.) Malaysia as much as directly from PRC/RoC.
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Hard News: Media data, in reply to Yamis,
Underneath all Sky’s “quality product” bullshit, it’s just audience demographics.
2006 NZ census figures for Asian languages above 0.25% of population (totals rounded to nearest 100):
Hindi 44,600 = 1.2%; Cantonese 44,200 (1.2%); Mandarin 41,400 (1.1%); other Chinese 38,100 (1.0%); Korean 27,000 (0.7%); Japanese 20,900 (0.6%); Gujarati 15,900 (0.4%); Tagalog 12,500 (0.3%); Panjabi 10,700 (0.3%).On these figures, Sky didn’t have to really care about catering for any Asian languages in NZ over the past decade; but if they were going to make some half-hearted effort, a package favouring Chinese was, & still is, their best bet.
(However, looking back at 1996 and 2001, the numbers for Hindi are increasing faster than for Chinese, so this could change.) -
What makes the Panasonic case surprising is there’s not many “hotels” per se for under USD100 [=currently JPY10,000] in central Tokyo. There are budget chains as cheap as JPY6000/night, but not in central locations, and breakfast would not be included, and the tariff tends to include “per hour” rates, i.e. it’s not somewhere a respectable businessman should be spending the night. Unless you really want practical demonstrations of how well your company’s batteries work.
Any lower than that, and, either it’s a capsule outfit, or you’re in hostel territory.
(Backpackers start from JPY2000/night for a shared room.)But if your brief is to turn the company around to be profitable, by unsympathetically shearing off unprofitable product lines, stores -- and, in consequence, downsizing the staff -- you really can't be seen to be living it up at the company's expense. (ETA for Craig: it's not intended to be a comfort, so much as to avoid bloody revolution if he hadn't done this!)
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Speaker: Levelling the Playing Field, in reply to Bart Janssen,
cinemas as gathering places must become much more, or simply different.
As in The Kentucky Fried Movie ?
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to Andre,
(which would be ... chorus-gating?)
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Half-asset sales.
(e.g. Meridian: if any humour were intended, it'd be a complete farce, but as it is it's just half-farced.) -
Hard News: Housing: the Feudal Model, in reply to Swan,
Ummmm ... your response seems to confuse "capital costs" with "profit margin". The two are in no way the same.
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Hard News: How a thing happens, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
I can’t work out what significance being a ranked blog has
that WO is the biggest ranker? or just the most rancorous?
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I just would not sleep for 2-3 days and then crash for 20 hours straight
Sounds like all of my thesis years.
And also, like my job -- especially, alas, during thesis editing season, which requires many all-nighters -- except that I’m not able to do the “crash” part of the cycle until Thursday night. I’ve settled for “attending Monday meetings in zombie mode” instead.* Not sustainable long-term, but during my infrequent holidays in NZ I do sleep in, or as I call it, “maintain Japan time”.* To judge from the quality of the meeting decisions, I’m not the only one doing this.