How interesting to find a photocopy of a letter my Dad wrote to the Department of Social Welfare in 1986, to apply for National Superannuation on behalf of his parents.
We had been here less than a decade, but, frankly, Dadâs correspondence was always like this. The whole idea of immigrants coming to Aotearoa with limited English always smacked of racism and intolerance to me, and this letter illustrates that it might actually be our linguistic superiority in mastering another tongue that has racists and xenophobes worried.
There are some minor errors here, and he could have used a few commas instead of full stops, but itâs on a par with period correspondence from native Anglophones.
I still have this Underwood typewriter.
For your listening pleasure, here’s tonight’s podcast, with a bit behind the scenes on my first appearance on RNZ’s The Panel as a panellist, and ‘I’ve Been Thinking’ delivered at a more appropriate pace, without me staring at the clock rushing to finish it before the pips for the 4 p.m. news.
At some point as a young man, my Dad worked at a bank. He had a formal understanding of financeâdespite his schooling being interrupted by the SinoâJapanese War and then by the communist revolution, he managed to get himself a qualification in economics, and had some time working for a bank.
I was taught all about promissory notes, bills of exchange, cheques, honourable accounts, balance of payments and foreign exchange as a teenager. He impressed on me why certain things were sacrosanct in banking, the correct way to draw a cheque, and why the Cheques Act 1993 in this country was a blight on how bills of exchange were supposed to work. Essentially, I grew up with what might have been a 1950s or 1960s idea of what banking is, things that were still mostly observed by New Zealand banks into the 1980s and the 1990s.
Today [Wednesday, July 29] I opened a new business account at TSB, with whom I had banked personally since 2007, as had Jack Yan & Associates. I will be closing the account at Westpac, because itâs clear to me that they donât believe in the fair dinkum banking values that my father taught me. By the time you read this, the closure should be a fait accompli, as I donât wish them to put up more obstacles than they have already.
Westpac held my mortgage on the old house, of which I had paid off 88 per cent before I sold it. I began my banking relationship with them in 2006, for reasons I wonât go into here. My parents had banked âon the Walesâ when they were new immigrants in 1976, and stayed with them for some time.
Very early on, I noticed how confusing their statements were. You can contrast theirs to everyone elseâs in Aotearoa, and believe me, I know: Iâve banked with a lot of people. Trust Bank, Countrywide, POSB, National, ANZâall the usual suspects that a Kiwi growing up in the 1970s through to the 1990s will have encountered. No, in itself thatâs not a reason to leave a bank, but they seem to exist in their own bubble.
I got caught out once or twice on not getting a mortgage payment sorted because of the confusing statements. And there was one time that Westpac decided to be relentless about it, by setting a bot on me. The bot would call at various hours hounding me to sort this out, with a pre-recorded message, and if you hung up, it would call again. And again. And again. Never mind that you havenât had a chance to enquire with the bank as to what was going on. This amounted to a breach of the Telecommunications Act, and I put this to them before the activity ceased. And no, in itself thatâs not a reason to leave a bank.
You are stuck with the buggers, and over the years Iâd make the payments. As many of you know, some of our companiesâ income comes from abroad, which I always regarded to be a good thing, since it helps with foreign exchange and this countryâs balance of payments. Twice, I think, I needed a top-up because a client was slow to pay, and I would clear that within 30 days. As interest rates changed (the mortgage was floating), the bank would, from time to time, send a letter saying I could reduce my mortgage payments and still keep to the payment schedule, and in 2010 I took them up on it.
As some of you know, in 2015 Dad was diagnosed formally with Alzheimerâs disease and eventually I became his full-time carer as his condition worsened, with predictable results on my work. But hey, Westpac has all these posters around their branches with Dementia New Zealand logos telling us how great they are, and how they can help. Since Dementia New Zealand wonât acknowledge or respond to my complaint about this (Dementia Wellington, on the other hand, had), let me publicly say that this is bollocks. My experience tells me that it appears to be a feel-good exercise that counts for nowt for a bunch of arrogant twats in Australia.
My branch was great. They were decent, hard-working and friendly people, and many of them stayed for yearsâalways a good sign. But outside of the branch is where youâll find the rot.
In 2019, my partner and I found a home we wanted to purchase. After Dad went into a home in July 2018 I had begun renovating the old place anyway. The new house was a step up, and by the time we factored in all the costs, we would need to borrow under 20 per cent of the total purchase price.
Westpac wanted to see the balance sheets, as was their right to, and Iâll say now that they werenât rosy. Of course not, not when youâve been a caregiver. However, by this point I had got back in the saddle, and I could show them contracts that we had secured.
Apparently this wasnât good enough for that 20 per cent. The fact I had been a caregiver and had an account at a bank which had a Dementia New Zealand endorsement carried absolutely no weight.
The mortgage officer said that according to the balance sheet, I couldnât even afford the mortgage. Turns out he didnât know how to read a balance sheet and the âMortgage repaymentsâ line therein. And no, in itself thatâs not a reason to leave a bank.
Apparently, the fact my income was coming from abroad was a concern. Yet it was never a concern for Westpac in 13 years when I was paying the mortgage with that foreign income. Earning foreign exchange for your country and helping with its balance of payments are, seemingly for Westpac, a bad thing. I suppose it would be to greedy Australian bankers, who love to see a weakened New Zealand subservient to other nations. If you adopt this viewpoint when examining how Australian-owned publications here behaved (Iâm looking at The Dominion Post from that era), then it actually all fits neatly, given their editorial bias. And no, in itself thatâs not a reason to leave a bank.
I know some of you in banking will be going, âBut there are the anti-money-laundering requirements,â which I get, but what about the idea of an honourable account? Other than what I outlined above, I was a good customer, and every other bank will tell you the same: I kept honourable accounts. But maybe honour isnât a thing for Westpac.
Never mind. We approached two mortgage experts who worked tirelessly for us, and whom I heartily endorse here. Lynne Russell, an old friend of mine, was the first I approached. And Stephanie Murray was referred to me by a good friend from school. Both ladies went to second-tier lenders, told us that the foreign income was the problem, and proceeded to get us the best deal possible. Stephanie won out because of the interest rate, and she noted that the lender, Avanti Finance, was quite happy because I had a good credit rating. But while most Kiwis were enjoying home loans at around the 4 per cent mark, ours was nearer 11 per cent (and this was the lower one). Stephanie, and later my own solicitor, noted that my problem was not unique, and they had clients who were also earning money from abroad who the banks shut out. This is a grand mistake in my book, because these are the very people we should be rewarding and encouraging. Youâve heard of export earners, right, banks? We usually talk about them in positive, glowing terms. Turn on the news. Get schooled.
We still had renovations to do. At least Westpac would give me a top-up to get that sorted, surely. After all, we had already engaged a builder and he needed money for materials.
Um, no. Westpac shut off that avenue completely. From memory they could give me a couple of grand, and that was it. This was despite my having a six-figure mortgage that I had whittled down to around a fifth, a relatively small five-figure sum. At all other times, it was fine, even when I enquired about purchasing a car. But not any more. And no, in itself thatâs not a reason to leave a bank.
Harmoney came to the rescue there and we were approved within 24 hours. Interest rate: 14·55 per cent.
I had set up the direct debits with Avanti using my honourable (or so I thought) Westpac account.
Except Westpac had one more trick up its sleeve. They seemed intent on making sure we would never move, so, without notice, they doubled my mortgage payments. They kept going on about how I was falling behind. No one at the branch could explain why, not even one of their most senior staff. If I hadnât caught one of the debits, I would have defaulted on an early payment to Harmoney. Fortunately, I spotted it in time, and pulled some money from a TSB account to plug the gap.
And no, in itself thatâs not a reason to leave a bank.
But all together, they were reasons.
We sold the house, discharged that mortgage, and thanks to my very talented partner and her skills in money management and property investment, we managed to get our finances in order. I won’t elaborate on this since I regard this part as private, but let’s say Westpac should have had faith in us since we carried out what we proposed we do.
It was only when the Westpac mortgage was discharged that the bank apologized for doubling my mortgage payments and gave a reason for doing so.
Remember that letter in 2010 which said I could reduce my payments without affecting things? Turns out that affected things, and they wanted to grab what they could to make up for lost time. Not that they thought it was important to tell me any time between 2010 and 2019. They only played this at a customerâs most stressful point, and buying a house is one of the most stressful things you can do as an adult.
So much for me being such a massive risk to Westpac. We told them our game plan to get to where we are today, and we carried it out to the letter. Two well educated, well qualified and intelligent people. Yet we were viewed with suspicion from the first moment we said we wanted a new home. So how do they treat people with less education or with a shorter history? If they are the Dementia New Zealand-friendly bank how do they treat those who haven’t had to deal with dementia? The branch was awesome and did right by us but as they’re not the ones approving things, then I can only expect that others are treated far, far worse.
I felt they only apologized because they had thrown everything at us and realized we had a greater resolve.
This experience teaches me that if youâve kept up a decent history with Westpac, earned foreign exchange, and helped with your countryâs balance of payments, then they will shit on you. Since sharing parts of this story on Twitter, Iâve heard of similar unreasonable treatment by Westpac toward hard-working New Zealanders. The moment they learn you need them, youâre on their radar, and they will block every avenue you normally would haveâavenues that you exercised literally just months before, like the top-up. Because why have a customer who is freed of their grasp? Thatâs just not good for business. Better to keep them impoverished and not let them move to a nicer home. Better to let them know whoâs really in charge. And, ladies and gentlemen, that explains a great deal about why foreign ownership can be troublesome in so many quartersâand why Iâm happy to take this account to TSB. Thanks to Kerry Gribben and Panith Ear at TSBâs Wellington branch for sorting me out and making it totally painless. And Kerry was a total pro in not slagging off a competitor, especially given where he once worked (he didn’t tell me, but he knew a lot about Westpac’s processes!).
I had to choose a New Zealand bank on principle. The Cooperative Bank was on the radar, and they were really friendly, though I thought their charges were a little high and TSB looked better capitalized on the figures I could find. However, my respect goes to Brian Batchelor at the Wellington branch for being thoroughly professional. It would have been nice to have gone there, since Medinge Group banks with Coop in the UK, and a mate of mine who did some contract work for them says that our Cooperative (a different and unrelated entity) are genuine about their promises to customers.
Kiwibank didnât even reply to emails when we were trying to get a mortgage, and rejected all PDFs and ZIP files I sent their despite them saying their email systems could accept them. They just gave up all contact, so I figured they didnât need the business. And I hear they donât do foreign exchange anyway, which is just bizarre for a state-owned bank that should be encouraging foreign exchange in these economically tricky times. SBS had no nearby branches (technically, Blenheim isnât that far but you canât drive there without an amphibious car). Sometimes, you just go back to what you know.
Today (Friday), the day I am posting this. Westpac accounts shut (despite a massive queue at Lambton Quay). Really nice young chap behind the counter. Except I have 35 cheques on which I want the duty refunded. He didn’t know how to do that and wrote down the helpline number. I called that. Eighteen minutes later, the rep there didn’t know how to do that and referred it to my branch. I really need them to pay me back the NZ$1·75 on principle and then I will consider the matter closed.
That was an interesting day in cellphone land. I collected the Meizu M6 Note from PB last Friday and switched it on for the first time in the small hours of Tuesday.
I originally wasnât pleased. I had paid NZ$80 for a warranty repair (there is provision under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 in some circumstances) and was told at the service counter that all that was performed was a factory reset, followed by a weekâs testing. In other words, what I had originally done, twice, before bringing the phone in. I replied that that was not going to work, and was told by the PB rep that maybe I shouldnât have so many apps open. Conclusion: a newer phone is far less capable than an older one.
But he wasnât the technician, and as I discovered, Joe had done more than a mere factory reset. When I switched the phone on, it was back to square one, like the day I bought it, complete with Google spyware. I wasnât thrilled about this, but it suggested to me that the ROM had been flashed back to the beginning.
Meizuâs factory resets donât take you right back to factory settings, not if you had rooted the phone and removed all the Google junk.
To his credit, this was a logical thing to do. However, within 10 minutes it developed a fault again. The settingsâ menu would not stay open, and crap out immediately, a bit like what the camera, browser, and gallery had done at different times. All I had done up to this point was allow some of the apps to update, and God knows what Google was doing in the background as messages for Play and other programs flashed up in the header. The OS wanted to update as well, so I let it, hoping it would get past the bug. It didnât.
So far, everything was playing out exactly as I had predicted, and I thought I would have to head to PB and point out that I was taking them up on the three months they guarantee their service. And the phone was warranted till December 2020 anyway. Give me my money back, and you can deal with Meizu for selling a lemon.
However, I decided I would at least try for the umpteenth time to download the Chinese OS, and install it. Why not? Joe had given me a perfect opportunity to give this another shot, and the phone appeared unrooted. The download was painfully slow (I did the same operation on my older Meizu M2 Note out of curiosity, and it downloaded its OS update at three to four times the speedâcan we blame Google for slowing the newer phone down?) but eventually it got there. The first attempt failed, as it had done countless times before. This was something that had never worked in the multiple times I had tried it over the last 18 months, and I had drawn the conclusion that Meizu had somehow locked this foreign-market phone from accepting Chinese OSs.
I tried again.
And it worked. A fluke? A one-off? Who knows? I always thought that in theory, it could be done, but the practice was entirely different.
It took a while, but I was astonished as the phone went through its motions and installed Flyme 8.0.0.0A, killing all the Google spyware, and giving me the modern equivalent of the Meizu M2 Note from 2016 that I had sourced on Ebay from a Chinese vendor.
I may be speaking too soon, but the settingsâ bug disappeared, the apps run more smoothly, and as far as I can tell, there is no record of the phone having been rooted. I had a bunch of the APKs from the last reset on the SD card, so on they went.
Meizu synced all contacts and SMSs once I had logged in, but there was one really annoying thing here: nothing from the period I was running the western version of the phone appeared. The messages prior to December 2018 synced, plus those from the M2 Note during June while the M6 was being serviced.
It appears that the western versions of these apps are half-baked, and offer nothing like the Chinese versions.
With any luck, the bugs will not resurfaceâif they donât, then it means that the readâwrite issues are also unique to the western version of the M6 Note.
Iâve spent parts of today familiarizing myself with the new software. There are some improvements in presentation and functionality, while a few things appear to have retrograded; but overall, this is what I expect with a phone thatâs two years newer. There should be some kind of advance (even little things like animated wallpapers), and with the western version, other than processor speed and battery life, there had not been. It was 2016 tech. Even the OS that the phone came back with was mid-decade. This is what the western editions are: out of date.
The only oddity with the new Chinese Flyme was the inability to find the Chinese version of Weibo through Meizuâs own Chinese app storeâonly the foreign ones showed up on my search, even though the descriptions were all in simplified Chinese.
These mightnât have been the developments that Joe at PB expected but if things remain trouble-free, that NZ$80 was well worth spending to get a phone which, for the first time in its life, feels new. The other lesson here is to avoid western-market phones if you donât find the Chinese language odd. I had already made enquiries to two Aliexpress sellers to make sure that they could sell me a non-western phone, ready to upgrade. Hopefully that wonât need to happen.
Next week: letâs see if I can shoot some video and have that save without killing the gallery, the bug that kicked all of this off.
Usually I find it easier to express myself in written form. For once, Black Lives Matter and the protests in the US prompted me to record another podcast entry. Iâm not sure where the flat as and the mid-Atlantic vowels come from when I listened to this againâmaybe I was channelling some of the passion I was seeing in the US, and I had watched the news prior to recording this.
My Anchor summary is: ‘Personal thoughts in solidarity with my black friends in the US. Yes, I posted a blackout image on my Instagram but it didnât seem to be enough. This is my small contribution, inspired by a Facebook post written by my white American friend Eddie Uken where he reflects on his perspective and privilege.’ Eddie’s Facebook post, which is public, is here.
Off to PB. The M6 Note was under warranty after all, so itâs now with PB Technologiesâ service department in Wellington, after I explained it could have trouble doing readâwrite operations and the tech saw the camera and gallery hang (usually they just shut themselves down). I paid over NZ$400 for the phone including GST, and fortunately for me, Iâm only 17 months in to my ownership. (You may think NZ$400 is cheap, but I don’t.)
However, before I committed it to service, I had to find a way to get the old M2 Note going. I explained to one of the phone salesâ crew at PB my predicament: despite buying new chargers and cables, the only way to charge the phone was to drive to Johnsonville where it was last âservicedâ. And, as usual, hereâs the kicker: he plugged it in to his nearest micro USB charger and it fed it with juice, instantly. He said it was the cheapest charger they had in store. It also turned on immediately for him, whereas Iâve never been able to get it goingâremember, there are only three buttons here, and I have tried them all. âYou have 86 per cent charge,â he saidâback home it showed nil, refusing to turn on because the charge was non-existent. Your guess is as good as mine over this.
The really great thing here is that everyone believed me. I guess these techs have been around enough to know that devices are illogical things, and that the customer isnât bullshitting you, but more at a witâs end when they come in with a fault. He sold me a new charger (NZ$18), which worked. Of course, charging it on the cable that fed the M6 Note doesnât work: it says itâs charging, and the percentage keeps dropping. Again, your guess is as good as mine over this.
Tonight itâs getting fed the new Adata cable, which took it to 100 per cent earlier tonight.
Up side: how nice to have my old phone back, with Chinese apps that work and look good. Down side: my goodness, a four-year-old phone is slow. I didnât think the M6 Note was that flash when I got it at the end of 2018, but after 17 months, I got used to it and find the M2âs processing lagging. The battery isnât lasting anywhere near what it used to, either.
I originally needed the M6 in a pinch, as at the time Dad was heading into hospital and I couldnât risk being out of contact. The M2âs screen had vertical lines going through after a drop, rendering things difficult to readâand what if I couldnât swipe to answer? The M6 wouldnât have been my immediate choice: I would have preferred to have researched and found a Chinese-spec phone, even if every vendor online, even Chinese ones, touted their western-spec ones.
If PB fixes the issue, great. But if not, then I may defect to Xiaomi at this rate. Meizu cares less and less about export sales these days, and there appear to be some vendors who can sell a Chinese-spec phone out there. The newer phone was also buggier: whether that was down to it being a western version, I don’t know. The M6 Note didnât represent the rosiest of moments, certainly not for Dad, so Iâm not wedded to it getting back to full health. Letâs see how they go next week, but at least I now have a cellphone that rings againâoneâs only concern is how much charge it holds.
How I had such high hopes that the Microsoft Intellimouse Pro Special Edition bought at NoĂ«l Leeming would be a successor to my Intellimouse 1.1. The short version: it isnât.
It might be a successor to the Intellimouse Explorer 3 on which the shape is modelled, but for those of us who prefer symmetrical mice, because the higher right-hand side supports your hand better, it literally was a pain.
There are only some counterfeit ones going for a decent price on Ebay, and I really should have snapped up more of the second-hand ones when I had a chance. The mice now at Recycling for Charity are, like all those reasonably priced ones in shops today, tiny. I imagine mice from the early 2000s aren’t even getting recycled any more, since it’s 2020 and the “old” stuff is from last decadeâafter the manufacturers began to shrink them.
Asus did a good job with its ROG Strix Evolve which I bought three months ago, but I find that the absence of tapering at the front and the overall tightness of the buttons didnât serve me that well.
The Intellimouse 1.1 is back here as my reserve, and the Asus is on the mouse pad. It took all of a few seconds at my desk to know that Microsoftâs revived Intellimouse wasnât rightâand one wonders why they couldnât just keep making something that worked so well for so many of us.
I was lucky to get the similarly shaped Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 five years ago, a dead-stock mouse made in 2005 that had been sitting at Corporate Consumables. In between the properly sized Microsoft miceâthree in total, including my first in 2002âI had all manner of other types but nothing was as comfortable.
When you go to some websites selling mice, they tell you that you can hold their product like a âclawâ, as if that is a positive attribute. Once again we see the need for humans to adapt to technology, rather than the other way round. I can see why one might need to do this given how mice have shrunk. If your handâs like a claw, then you may be the modern equivalent of the Chinese women who had their feet bound in the 20th century. You may feel that is the fashion, but you need not live with it.
I did it. On Saturday night I reset my Meizu M6 Note again, the second time in eight days, taking it back to factory settings. Except this time I didnât load Whatsapp or Signal. Two days later, my phone remains OK.
I suggested to PB that it may have developed a readâwrite fault, as deleting photos from the internal memory takes minutes (if it ever completes), which the warranty should cover. It also would explain why the gallery, camera and the downloadsâ folder wouldnât load properly, since they each tried to access the internal storage. I also had difficulty restoring my SMSs with SMS Backup, with the operation crapping out before completingâthough strangely, today, the SMSs are back without any intervention from me.
But it also wouldnât surprise me one bit if Whatsapp wasnât compatible with Android 7 nowâInstagram never was, not fully. To save a load of time I wonât be putting messaging apps back on there. I lost a second evening to this and Iâm not keen on losing more.
There are two up sides: I donât need to get a new phone, and if I did, I finally found a vendor on Aliexpress whoâll sell a Chinese-spec Meizu. No more of these western editions: they are less reliable, with a less well stocked app store, and you canât update the OS. You have to root them to get rid of the Google spyware. I may stick with Meizu but I really wonât be buying domestically again.
Finally, a podcast (or is it a blogcast, since it’s on my blog?) where I’m not “reacting” to something that Olivia St Redfern has put on her Leisure Lounge series. Here are some musings about where we’re at, now we are at Level 3.
Some of my friends, especially my Natcoll students from 1999â2000, will tell you that I love doing impressions. They say Rory Bremner’s are shit hot and that mine are halfway there. It’s a regret that I haven’t been able to spring any of these on you. Don’t worry, I haven’t done any here. But one of these days âŠ
I know what youâre thinking. âDid he have six kids or only fiveâ. Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself.
A lot of the world’s population has come together in the fight against COVID-19. Except Facebook, of course, who is exploiting the virus for profit. Facebook has done well in the first quarter of 2020 with positive earnings. Freedom From Facebook & Google co-chairs Sarah Miller and David Segal note (the links are theirs): ‘Facebook has exploited a global pandemic to grow their monopoly and bottom line. Theyâve profited from ads boasting fake cures and harmful information, allowed ad targeting to âpseudoscienceâ audiences, permitted anti-stay-at-home protests to organize on the platform, and are now launching a COVID âData for Goodâ endeavour to harvest even more of our personal information.
âMake no mistake, Facebook having more of your data is never âgood”, nor will they just relinquish the collected data when the pandemicâs curve has been flattened. Rather, theyâll bank it and continue to profit from hyper-targeted ads for years to come.’
It’s been a few weeks (April 19 was my last post on this subject) since I last crunched these numbers but it does appear that overall, COVID-19 infections as a percentage of tests done are dropping, several countries excepting. Here is the source.
France 167,178 of 724,574 = 23·07%
UK 171,253 of 901,905 = 18·99%
Sweden 21,092 of 119,500 = 17·65%
USA 1,095,304 of 6,391,887 = 17·14%
Spain 239,639 of 1,455,306 = 16·47%
Singapore 17,101 of 143,919 = 11·88%
KSA 22,753 of 200,000 = 11·38%
Switzerland 29,586 of 266,200 = 11·11%
Italy 205,463 of 1,979,217 = 10·38%
Germany 163,009 of 2,547,052 = 6·40%
South Korea 10,774 of 623,069 = 1·73%
Australia 6,766 of 581,941 = 1·16%
New Zealand 1,479 of 139,898 = 1·06%
Taiwan 429 of 63,340 = 0·68%
Hong Kong 1,038 of 154,989 = 0·67%
Emmerdale fans will never forgive me. I’ve not been one to watch British soaps, finding them uninteresting. However, in this household, we have had Emmerdale on since it’s scheduled between TV1âs midday bulletin and the 1 p.m. government press conference on COVID-19, or, as some of us call it, The Ashley Bloomfield Show, named for our director-general of health who not only has to put up with all of this, but took a hit to one-fifth of his pay cheque. Naturally, one sings along to the Emmerdale theme, except I have no clue about its lyrics. Are there lyrics?
Never used to leave the TV on for #Emmerdale, but with #COVID19 I doâand like many, I sing along:
Who the hell cares what goes on at that farm? Donât really know who has come to some harm. Whatever you see, thereâs no cause for alarm, When we peer in the lives of Emmerdale.
Not a single like on Twitter or Mastodon. I’ve offended a heck of a lot of people.
We are supposedly at Level 3, which someone said was Level 4 (the full lockdown) with takeaways. However, we’ve gone from the 1960s-style near-empty motorways to this almost immediately.
