Posts by Simon Grigg
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
ou could *not* have been intimidated by my posts back in the day, as I was and remain a total dork
heh..maybe intimidated is the wrong word, but daunted by your prowess with the written word is perhaps more accurate.
And after all, LISTSERV forums (if they can be called forums) worked out rather well for you, no?
-
Are many of our regulars also Usenet veterans
Indeed, and listserv vets (Danielle, Danielle...I used to feel intimidated by your prose way back then, just so you know)
-
In my time in India
Yeah, to be fair my observations relate mostly to Indonesia. I do think that the British left their colonies with a stronger understanding of social wrong than, say, the Dutch did, but I'm loathe to blame it all on the colonial power as the Indonesians, after 3/4 century of pretty shitty self rule, still seem to repeatedly do.
Or the CIA (although mostly they get the blame for the nation's natural disasters..to prevent Orang Melayu from taking over the world).
-
And there people get caught all the time, there's just no stygma.
Nope. None. In Indonesia recently the big scandal's been the cops blatantly making up charges against the top guys in the anti-Korupsi body, the KPK. They were getting far too good at their jobs so, in full national public glare, they, and the Attorney General, had them arrested and tossed in jail.
The are only free now because a tape was leaked with a bunch of the most senior cops and politicians openly conspiring to frame them.
Nothing of any substance happened to the inventive cops though, as it played out.
At Denpasar airport a bunch of immigration guys were caught earlier this year having nicked US$300,000 from visa fees. No charges were laid, they lost a years promotion and got to keep their jobs and the cash....
So, yes....
-
I think one reason we tend to not have grand scale corruption is because we root out the small stuff and bitch about that so much - if we just ignored it it would get out of hand
But that's the very fundamental difference. In NZ, and in most developed nations, it's wrong. We know it's wrong, the people doing the bad shit mostly know it's wrong.
For most of the nations sitting in the lower reaches of the Transparency International annual rating, they simply don't have that societal mental barrier. Dragging their national psyche over that barrier is the single most important thing they can do for the nation.
-
Comparing NZ to India in that sense is a joke.
Actually, I lived in NZ exclusively for the first 30 years of my life. It's not perfect, and certainly less perfect with this govt, but you show me a place where there is more probity in public life, except perhaps the Scandinavian countries.
Indeed.
Half a decade in Indonesia re-defined what corruption is to me. I really had no idea until I lived amongst it, how all encompassing and how thoroughly evil it can be. And how that evil multiples when corruption passes from being something done under the table, to a normal part of the day to day discourse of a nation at every level.
I'm sorry, but I find wails of corruption in New Zealand, and our tumbling into the abyss of graft, just utterly ludicrous. They piss me off, and we truly, and there is no other way to put it, don't know how fucking lucky we are. How many folks here, or anywhere else in NZ regard paying a teacher a 'fee' for a child's school report or a class desk, or giving a cop $50 to get off a speeding ticket as a reasonable and reasonably normal thing to do?
Or have vets who tell people their sick pedigree dog is dead, because they've sold the animal.
Or have whole city councils arrested for working together to steal the city's annual budget (happened last week in Bogor, Java).
Really.....
-
So yeah, I have a collection of vintage winter coats.
Same, well not vintage, but winter coats, and I have to admit a snowy day in Central Park is rather hard to beat, but what I like about it is tempered positively by the happy fact that I'm not stuck there for more than a week or so. It wears thin as do the endless rain drifts in Auckland between April and October.
The 25 is rather cooler than it sounds. The Thais all cover up in jackets and jumpers. It's perception.
All topped off by the acres of fake snow up for Xmas across Asia....Orchard Road has machines that pump it out. Bangkok has sleighs, elves and drive-you-crazy Christmas tunes along the length of Sukhumvit and Chit Lom. I think non-Christians tend to do Xmas rather well because they ain't burdened down by the faux significance of the occasion and just indulge in the garish imagery for it's own sake.
-
I lived in a very hot summer climate all my life and couldn't wait to get the hell away from it.
There's always one :-)
I'm always amused by the Scots moving from the bitterly cold north to the UK, to, ahhh, Dunedin
-
Not when I visited the Gold Coast in the autumn of 1995. Talk about thermal shutdown.
heh..it's really a matter of acclimatisation. Welly to the Gold Coast is a shock at the very best of times. Very few of those living there seem keen to move to cooler climes which mostly says it all.
I had to calm an English friend last week who was having to return to Brighton after 4 months in Asia and Queensland. It took some persuasion to get him to the airport..
In Thailand, with a lovely smoggy haze above ... oh, that's right they killed that.
Thai winter at the mo' . As you say, a balmy 25-28 most days.
-
But I do long for the nice balmy temperature of Thailand.
I'm actually back in Indonesia this week, where it's a decidedly less balmy and humid high 30s, but either way, give me the swelter of a stinking hot South East Asian day over a chilly Auckland spring/winter/autumn. It always looks rather pretty in the shots but the day to day reality is rather different.
And then you go south...
That said, nothing beats Tamaki Drive or Piha late Jan / early Feb..nothing.