Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Islander,
It was good. Murray Cammick used to take us there on Rip It Up deadlines.
Snap - it was with Mo (and Bryan Staff) that I used to go there. I think my expectations of Asian food were somewhat lower in those days though.
Murray always knew all the best Chinese places and loved his takeaways - later in the 80s we used to have to pick the rice out of the faders at times when we were scheduled after Land Of The Good Groove on B :)
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OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to Ross Mason,
Um. Only if all Indonesians were male. Also, 2006 figures put adult male smoking prevalence in Indonesia at 61.7% and female at 5%.
Seems like plenty of scope to pick up more smokers to me.Good luck trying to survey such things in Indonesia. The 60% figure often quoted comes from Ministry of Health data but has been disputed as far too low many times - given the amount of money fired into the pro-smoking campaign by the likes of Sampoerna any data that comes from the government on this should be treated as suspect. In 2009 either the Jakarta Globe or the Jakarta Post - I'm sorry I forget which and I can't find it in a search - quoted a figure of around 76% of adult males.
The female level, whilst it may be higher than that 5%, is still far less but that's also kept down by both strong cultural and religious factors. It has long been socially unacceptable for women to smoke for those reasons. I don't think the companies have found it easy to change that. Mostly, just from my own observation rather than any figures, the only women who seem to smoke in any numbers are upper middle class urban dwellers.
Anecdotally, after 5 years living in Indonesia and travelling fairly widely - with many Indonesian friends - I almost never encountered Indonesian males who didn't smoke. I think I have one.
That said, one of the most glorious smells anywhere is the drive into Kudus in Jawa Tengah, which I've done few times, where most of the kretek are hand rolled in vast factories. The clove aroma is inescapable for miles and it's a very beautiful, prosperous town.
Sadly the town has awful, awful, health stats.
ETA: Here is a report that puts the growth of tobacco in Indonesia at between 2-4% per annum. At the high end that puts the 2009 figure reasonably close to the 2006 figure regardless of whether the MOH manipulated the figures or not.
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OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to bmk,
by that time Marijuana should be legal and they will be ready and in place to produce, market and distribute that product.
It's semi legal in big parts of the world now, and this hasn't happened and seems unlikely to. Mostly, given their cloudy duplicitous histories, they would likely have trouble getting a green light I'd argue.
I quite like the way ganga has been been slowly de-criminalised via the back doors - it's largely prevented players like this getting a foot in.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Russell Brown,
Flourishing Cafe in Avondale.
Did that one once - yes indeed!
It's a long way from the days when your reasonable Chinese food options (i.e. not just variations on Chop Suey, Egg Fu Yung, Sweet & Sour or Chow Mein) could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
What was that place next to Strangely Normal in Hobson St? That - and it may be a false memory given the bar was so low - was pretty ok in the 80s, but that was about it in the central city at the time.
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OnPoint: Sock-Puppeting Big Tobacco to…, in reply to Stephen Judd,
The tobacco companies have simply moved their focus to picking up new smokers in jurisdictions with looser regulatory regimes and where they can influence politicians more overtly – Indonesia comes to mind.
It would be hard to pick up more smokers in Indonesia - close to 80% of all males smoke and the environment is so lax that companies advertise in schools. One of the big tobacco companies sponsored the last World Cup's TV broadcasts - their ads claimed that smoking makes you healthy.
Loose is hardly the word. These companies put millions of dollars (= billions of rupiahs) into legislator's pockets every year.
Which is increasingly unlike the rest of Asia. Here in Thailand the smoking laws make New Zealand's seem disinterested by comparison. Puffing in parks, on walkways, any bar or restaurant and in markets is forbidden with wardens prowling.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Russell Brown,
Yep.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Sacha,
Ta. I think we discussed that crossover into NE Malaysian cuisine, didn't we?
Yes indeed. Hungry now.
I'll go all nepotistic here and plug Brigid's food blog - the second half of this post is an incredible family owned Southern Thai eatery near us. The images say more than I could.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to Sacha,
http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/none/indian-chinese-food-598134 is a pretty good backgrounder
Chinese merchants from India come here in pretty large numbers so I guess it didn't take long to cross over.
And of course, Southern Thai (as compared to the more northern and north eastern flavours we think as Thai food in NZ) has strong Indian influences.
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to George Darroch,
Nu Zihlindlish, lah? Except it will have a slight Indian lilt, I’m sure.
So, like Malaysia? I have a friend - Chinese Malaysian - who almost sounds Indian at times.
Indian infused Chinese is a hot cuisine here right now, so why not the language :)
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Hard News: Those were different times ..., in reply to George Darroch,
There's actually quite a high level of immigration.
It was late at night and I didn't think those figures through, so cheers George.
I'd be interested to know what the flow through figures are - how many last a year or two then head over to the Western Island? A few I'd think.
That said, it's clear we are replacing a portion of people born in New Zealand with immigrants. The language will mutate further. I have a soft spot for the English spoken by ethnic Chinese in places like Singapore and Hong Kong where it is a first language (along with whichever version of the myriad of languages we like to call Chinese their family speak) and I'm hearing that more and more in New Zealand.
I'm not talking the mid-Pacific twang the Asian media use, but the defined, precise, almost staccato phrasing you hear on the subway and in the streets. It's little wonder we Australasians, with our lazy flow, can be very hard to understand.
These immigrants also bring with them dual - or more - first language abilities, one of which may or may not be English. They are comfortable existing in several tongues simultaneously, which has to influence the language being spoken in New Zealand.