Posts by Simon Grigg
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Busytown: Sons for the Return Home, in reply to BenWilson,
For Chinese, around 400 million.
And yet they tend to dominate the economies of large parts of the non-Chinese world. There are more Chinese as a pure number living elsewhere in the world by a huge margin.
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Busytown: Sons for the Return Home, in reply to BenWilson,
Where do you draw the line of foreign? I draw it at the actual border.
I draw it at experience. Auckland is far closer to Sydney day to day than it is to - say - Gore. Which I think was part of the point of this thread.
Gore shares a passport with Auckland.
Furthermore, what are you comparing it to? How many Thais have extensive travel experience, as a proportion of their population?
Actually, I think you'd be very surprised how many have travelled and how many have been to New Zealand. "I loved Auckland" is not an uncommon response to a where are you from question. Travel in Asia is very cheap too and more like taking a bus than a flight often. The Chinese now dominate global tourism and the other Asian nations likewise are very outward bound these days. Many of these countries all have very, very large middle classes with money and desire to travel.
Travel in Europe is both cheap and common. And - more - offers a far broader trans-cultural experience than a trip to the Gold Coast or an upping of domicile there or to Sydney.
You could say most of the same things about traveling to the UK or the USA, too.
I disagree. We [almost] share a spoken language but the day to day in both nations is not ours. There is a reasonable period of adjustment needed in each.
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Busytown: Sons for the Return Home, in reply to BenWilson,
The entire population of NZ could fit into either Sydney or Melbourne. That makes it qualitatively different, IMHO.
The entire population of the South Island could fit into Auckland - it's still the same country. I'm not sure how that makes it an argument??
Australia shares an almost identical language - including colloquialisms and slang, it's increasingly hard to tell young Australians and New Zealanders apart beyond Australasia even when they open their mouths, we share a media, common values, an economic zone (NZers are the only people who can register a company in Australia offshore as domestic), a military history, matching legal systems and more. There is no other place in the world we can say that about.
It takes most New Zealanders about 20 mins to adjust to an arrival in Oz - to be able to function on a fairly normal level - which is about the same as arriving in Dunedin for me. It's a variation on the world we know.
Travel a few kilometres beyond - in any northern or eastern direction and you'll find other worlds which are not.
Lots of New Zealanders of certain demographics have travelled. There are very many who have not.
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Busytown: Sons for the Return Home, in reply to BenWilson,
NZers are prolific travelers
See, I don't think that is completely true.
Most New Zealanders didn't carry passports until they were required for travel to Australia, and whilst this forum - by nature of its demographic - is widely travelled I'm always astounded by the number of people I assume would have been further, have never gone beyond the South Pacific.
Hell, I'm always amazed and appalled by the number of adult North Islanders who have never gone south of Cook Strait.
Americans get a rough time for being globally ill-informed but - increasingly - I don't think we are a hell of a lot better especially when you look at our MSM.
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Mostly I find - as still an expat and happily so but one who spends one or two months annually in the homeland and retains a fairly close personal and business connection - that there are two sorts: those who have travelled reasonably and likely lived elsewhere for a reasonable period (beyond Australia which I don't really regard as elsewhere) tend to be open to stories from offshore; those who haven't are not.
That's a wild generalisation but I tailor conversion with that rule in mind.
I was lucky as a kid to have a father who flew the world as a job - to all sorts of exotic places - and came back with stories and incredible 35mm slides to show us. I also found myself living in late 50s Singapore as a kid and had amazing, vivid, memories of it. I think all of that opened me to wanting to see and know more and I was lucky.
I read Matthew's post above and it's like an intriguing teaser. I can listen to that stuff for hours and am both jealous and keen to hear more detail of the subways and his life in an alien world.
I don't get 'Don't tell me about your fabulous life over there' or the like and I love the way Asian folk - or at least South East Asians - want to know more about my country and how we live. It can be twenty plus questions fired at you without warning.
Americans too, often seem genuinely curious beyond mere conversation.
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Hard News: Just don't call it "Party Central", in reply to recordari,
Recently I experienced what this looks like, sort of, in Singapore with 200,000 attending a waterfront event
To be fair, Singapore may be a lot of things, some pretty restrictive and depressing, but it's not really a totalitarian state or close.
I'd reckon too, that given how well behaved and compliant the populace there is as a rule, the chances are they would've behaved the same way, army or not. They do, after all, put hundreds of thousands through some of the big MRT stations daily in a pretty orderly way without much in the coercion or enforcement.
Some of the big malls - Suntec for example - must have numbers way in excess of that every weekend day too. They are just clogged - uncomfortably so - but surprisingly patient as they somehow continuously shuffle the mass from confined space to confined space without incident, week in / week out. If those sorts of numbers were placed similarly in NZ it would be mayhem.
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Hard News: Towards the Truth, in reply to izogi,
Is this intended or has TVNZ mixed something up?
I use iTunes podcasts - the direct TVNZ feed is very hit and miss overseas. I know Russell has tried to sort this several times but the gremlins seem to crawl back in every now and then. Podcasts seem to sidestep this
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Field Theory: Four Years Ago, in reply to Carol Stewart,
I'm sure you're right, George, but, sadly, this video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Rugby World Cup Ltd
Hayley Westenra – World In Union:
This content cannot be played in your Country.
Tried using a proxy based in the US too - same result.
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Hard News: Towards the Truth, in reply to Just thinking,
Duncan Garner just raised the Yellow Peril flag on the Nation, talking of Chinas investment in PNG as Chinas Tentacles.
That overblown flag has been raised continuously by those that would have us re-arm with whatever overpriced gadgetry and toys the US & Australian military and the right wing doofheads like the odious Murdoch hack Greg Sheridan in The Australian tell us we need to prevent the swarming hordes that keep them awake at night arriving and removing our organs as we sleep.
As is the oft-stated claim that that China's neighbours are terrified of their rise. I'd argue that quite the opposite is the case - rather they're mostly basking in the economic boom and good times China has played a big part in bringing to the region, especially when placed next to the less than benign role Western tentacles have played in the region at times over the last century and more.
I've been a bit hard on the RNZAF. I share in the Pacific War amnesia, totally forgot their role in it.
We also forget that when there was a real regional threat (although not as direct a threat to our nation as we were and are led to believe) in 1942, we were able to raise a very credible armed airforce within 12 months and had them playing a major role in the South West Pacific with 18 months of Pearl Harbour.
Small problem though - there's no adrenalin rush from sitting in a missile control base.
Just make the controller look like a Wii handset and that becomes less of an issue.
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Hard News: Towards the Truth, in reply to Just thinking,
Even in Vietnam they weren't used.
We didn't get them until 1970, and they weren't really operational until 1971, however NZ pilots did fly combat missions in US Navy A-4s AFAIK - albeit just a handful.
NZ pilots were active in country as I said earlier, and there were more - my father was one - supply dropping and flying support. I found Dad's letters to me from Saigon in 1971 the other day. They were written on the back of the Embassy Hotel laundry lists and talk of barbed wire and machine gun nests in front of the hotel.
We dumped the Skyhawks - correctly I think - because they were antiquated and getting more so, and the then outgoing government had arranged to replace them with aircraft that really were no use to us - and at some cost.