Agent:Â Yes, thatâs correct, we promise we can find you a job, no matter what.
Applicant:Â Thatâs great! You can help me?
Agent:Â Of course. Now, letâs look at your academic transcript.
The Agent studiously examines the transcript.
Agent:Â Oh, dear, this isnât very good.
Applicant: Um âŠ
Agent:Â It says you have a very poor average, that you scored 16 per cent in your university exams.
Applicant:Â Yes, but when I came in here, you promised you would find me a job!
Agent: But âŠ
Applicant:Â You promised!
The Agent reflects on what he told the Applicant earlier in the session.
Agent: I might just have something. Itâs for one of the specialists on a New Zealand version of a TV show. Itâs called Married at First Sight. Are you interested, sir?
Applicant:Â Call me Tony.
Archive for October 2017
Behind the scenes
16.10.2017Tags: 2017, Aotearoa, humour, New Zealand, remake, TV
Posted in humour, New Zealand, TV | No Comments »
When someone you know got ‘Harveyed’
12.10.2017‘Repugnant’ is a very good word, used by the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences to describe producer Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment and assaults. It’s a small world when someone you know was ‘Harveyed’, and it all follows a very familiar script. My opâed’s in Lucire today.
Tags: 2017, film, Hollywood, Lucire, media, news, power, privilege, publishing, USA
Posted in media, publishing, USA | No Comments »
Secret âAsianâ man (with apologies to Tak Toyoshima)
11.10.2017
Matt Clark
Above: Driving a silver Aston Martin. I’m citing the Official Secrets Act when I say I may or may not be on the tail of Auric Goldfinger.
Oh dear, Iâve been outed. Iâm a spy. Actually, Walter Matthau and I prefer âagentâ.
You can read between the lines in this New York Times piece about Dr Jian Yang, MP.
Iâve already gone into what I think of the Yang situation on Twitter but if you scroll down, youâll see Raymond Huo, MP is tarred with the same brush.
Itâs the sort of reporting that makes me wonder, especially since people like me contribute to Duncan Garnerâs ânightmarish glimpseâ of Aotearoa.
[Prof Anne-Marie Brady of the University of Canterbury] said the Chinese-language media in New Zealand was subject to extreme censorship, and accused both Mr. Yang and Raymond Huo, an ethnic Chinese lawmaker from the center-left Labour Party, of being subject to influence by the Chinese Embassy and community organizations it used as front groups to push the countryâs agenda.
Mr. Huo strongly denied any âinsinuations against his character,â saying his connections with Chinese groups and appearances at their events were just part of being an effective lawmaker.
And:
Despite the criticism, Mr. Yang has continued to appear alongside Wang Lutong, Chinaâs ambassador to New Zealand, at public events, including for Chinaâs National Day celebrations this week, when he posed for photos with the ambassador and a Chinese military attachĂ©.
I wound up at three events where the Chinese ambassador, HE Wang Lutong, was also invited. This makes me a spy, I mean, agent.
I even shook hands with him. This means my loyalty to New Zealand should be questioned.
I ran for mayor twice, which must be a sure sign that Beijing is making a power-play at the local level.
You all should have seen it coming.
My Omega watch, the ease with which I can test-drive Aston Martins, and the fact I know how to tie a bow tie to match my dinner suit.
The faux Edinburgh accent that I can bring out at any time with the words, âThere can be only one,â and âWe shail into hishtory!â
Helming a fashion magazine and printing on Matt paper, thatâs another clue. We had a stylist whose name was Illya K. I donât always work Solo. Sometimes I call on Ms Gale or Ms Purdy.
Jian Yang and I have the same initials, which should really ring alarm bells.
Clearly this all makes me a spy. I mean, agent.
Never mind I grew up in a household where my paternal grandfather served under General Chiang Kai-shek and he and my Dad were Kuomintang members. Dad was ready to ćć·„ and fight back the communists if called up.
Never mind that I was extremely critical when New Zealanders were roughed up by our cops when a Chinese bigwig came out from Beijing in the 1990s.
Never mind that I have been schooled here, contributed to New Zealand society, and flown our flag high in the industries Iâve worked in.
All Chinese New Zealanders, it seems, are still subject to suspicion and fears of the yellow peril in 2017, no matter how much you put in to the country you love.
We might think, âThatâs not as bad as the White Australia policy,â and it isnât. We donât risk deportation. But we do read these stories where thereâs plenty of nudge-nudge wink-wink going on and you wonder if thereâs the same underlying motive.
All you need to do is have a particular skin colour and support your community, risking that the host has invited Communist Party bigwigs.
Those of us who are here now donât really bear grudges against what happened in the 1940s. We have our views, but that doesnât stop us from getting on with life. And that means we will be seen with people whose political opinions differ from ours.
Sound familiar? Thatâs no different to anyone else here. Itâs not exactly difficult to be in the same room as a German New Zealander or a Japanese New Zealander in 2017. A leftie won’t find it hard to be in the same room as a rightie.
So Iâll keep turning up to community events, thank you, without that casting any shadow over my character or my loyalty.
A person in this country is innocent till proved guilty. We should hold all New Zealanders to the same standard, regardless of ethnicity. This is part of what being a Kiwi is about, and this is ideal is one of the many reasons I love this country. If the outcry in the wake of Garnerâs Fairfax Press opinion is any indication, most of us adhere to this, and exhibit it.
Therefore, I don’t have a problem with Prof Brady or anyone interviewed for the pieceâit’s the way their quotes were used to make me question where race relations in our neck of the woods is heading.
But until heâs proved guilty, Iâm going to reserve making any judgement of Dr Yang. The New York Times and any foreign media reporting on or operating here should know better, too.
Tags: 2010s, 2017, Aotearoa, Aston Martin, bias, China, Chinese Communist Party, film, humour, James Bond, journalism, Kuomintang, Lucire, media, media bias, New Zealand, NY, politics, racism, The New York Times, USA
Posted in China, culture, humour, media, New Zealand, politics, publishing | 2 Comments »
The hunt for reliable news is harder today
03.10.2017
Above: A reputable Las Vegas newspaper, the Las Vegas ReviewâJournal.
Iâm not going to weigh in on the debate surrounding the US Second Amendment today, but what I will say is whether we like their politicians or not, the victims in Las Vegas didnât deserve their fates. My thoughts and prayers go to them and their families.
One related observation from a very good friend was that one local (albeit foreign-owned) media outlet was running live web coverage of the shooting, and questioned whether this was of any real interest to New Zealanders. It could be, to use her words, âdisaster voyeurism.â
I have to agree. If you were concerned for a loved one who was there, youâre more likely on Las Vegas, Nevada, or US national news media, and not a local one.
There is some public interest in it, of course. This is a country we have a connection with, but arguably not to this extent.
Now, I donât totally begrudge a publisher trying to make money from breaking news, either, since we all have to eat, but in chatting to my friend I had to look at what was enabling this to happen.
Iâm not one to knock having a global market-place, either, as Iâve benefited from it. And there is a global market-place for news. However, it does seem out of kilter that a locally targeted website covers international news to this minute detail. Itâs not like those media outlets that aimed to be global despite having a local or national base (the British tabloids come to mind, such as the Mail and The Guardian), where you could rightly expect that.
Itâs hard to avoid that this is a cynical grab for clicks, and I point my finger at Google News.
I might have de-Googled a lot of my life, but I always maintained that I would keep using Google News, as itâs a service I find some utility from. But a while back, Google News changed its focus. Rather than reward the outlet that broke a news item, it tended to take people to mainstream media outlets. We used to get rewarded for breaking stories. Now the mainstream media do. Thereâs less incentive for independent media to do so because weâre not being rewarded meritoriously. As Spanish publishers discovered, Google News sends you traffic, and it gets to decide whom is to be rewarded. When Google News shut its Spanish service, traffic to small publishers fell: it was independents that suffered the most.
Therefore, if we had the old algorithm, those searching today for news of the Las Vegas shooting would see the outlet(s) that broke the news first leading their searches, and other media would follow. That would be in line with the Google I liked during the first decade of this century. It, too, was once a plucky upstart and for years it rewarded other plucky upstarts.
From my experience having broken stories that other publishers eventually do, searches now take you to mainstream outlets, and, if Googleâs âbubblingâ of its regular search results is any indication, they take you to mainstream outlets in your own country, or those that you (and others like you, because it has the data on this) have traditionally favoured.
Proponents might argue that that is a good thing: the local outlet might express things in more familiar language or the layout might be more comforting, but I question whether that helps people discover fresh perspectives. It certainly doesnât get you the best news if itâs not the best source, the ones that were responsible for the first reports.
It encourages a blatant grab for clicks for international outlets, knowing Google News will send enough people their way to make this worthwhile. If a New Zealand website reporting either second-hand or having less informed sources still benefits from the traffic from locals and some foreigners, then why not, and to heck with journalists who can do it better? Are we really getting our fair share of the traffic when it might not actually be fair for us to do so?
It doesnât make for a richer news environment if itâs just about the clicks. Yet this is the world we live inâand for some reason we still love Google.
I might add this change in policy long predates the US presidentâs first utterance of the term âfake newsâ.
Merit is out, big firms are in, as far as the Googlebot is concerned. And thatâs yet another reason we should be very wary of the big G.
Tags: 2017, ethics, globalization, Google, internet, journalism, Las Vegas, media, Nevada, USA
Posted in culture, globalization, internet, media, New Zealand, USA | 5 Comments »
Consumerâs choice: how I bought a car from the UK over the ânet and shipped it home
01.10.2017Originally published at Drivetribe, but as I own the copyright it only made sense to share it here for readers, too, especially those who might wish to buy a car from abroad and want to do the job themselves. It was originally written for a British audience.
Above: The lengths I went to, to make sure I didn’t wind up buying a car with an automatic transmission: source it from the UK and spend ten months on the process.
One consequence of Brexit was the pound falling, which makes buying out of Blighty very tempting for foreigners. When it comes to buying a car, the savings can be substantial enough for a buyer in the antipodes.
My situation in New Zealand was neither driven by politics nor currency: it was the lack of manual-transmission cars. When I last bought a car for myself in 2004, the market was roughly 50â50 between manuals and automatics. Today that figure is 90 per cent in favour of automatics, meaning those of us who prefer shifting gears ourselves face a major difficulty. We either limit ourselves to the few cars that come on to the market that are manuals, or we switch. Considering it was my own money, and a five-figure sum at that, I wasnât about to contemplate getting something that I didnât like. Britain, it seemed, would have to be the source of my next car.
There were certain circumstances that made this a lot easier.
First, you need friends in the UK.
Secondly, you should browse Auto Trader, Parkers and other sites regularly for months on end to get a feel of the market.
Third, you should be looking for something thatâs relatively new, to ensure compliance with the laws of both the UK and your own.
When my old Renault MĂ©gane I CoupĂ© was written off in an accident, the logical thing would be to buy the MĂ©gane III CoupĂ©. However, if you live in a right-hand-drive country and youâre not in the UK, Ireland or South Africa, youâre out of luck, unless you fancy going to an RS. And I simply didnât need 250-plus horsepower to go to the post office or up the coast.
There were two powerplants common to Renaults in New Zealand: the 110 bhp 1·6, and the 2·0 automatic. That left me with one choice, and 110 bhp was sufficient for what I needed. I also looked forward to the better fuel economy, even if New Zealanders pay less at the pump than Brits.
I was fortunate that I didnât need a replacement car in a hurry. For years I had a âspare carâ, one that my father had bought and I could use now that he had developed Alzheimerâs. The other stroke of luck was that I had contemplated getting a newer MĂ©gane III CoupĂ© anyway, and had been browsing UK sites for about six months at that point. I knew roughly what a good deal looked like. Finally, the esteemed motoring editor, Mr Keith Adams, and one other school friend, Philip, had offered to check out cars should I spot anything in their area.
While my circumstances were unique, there are plenty of other reasons to look to the UK for cars.
A friend looking for a Volkswagen Eos reckoned he would save NZ$10,000 (ÂŁ5,850) by sourcing one from the UK. This is largely fuelled by the greater depreciation on UK second-hand cars, and the savings potentially mount on flasher motors, such as Audi Q7s or Bentleys.
While Japan is closer, and the source of many used cars in New Zealand, some buyers have had to buy new radios to match New Zealand frequencies. Thereâs also the disadvantage of dealing in a foreign language with a very different legal system should you choose to do it yourself.
The disadvantage of a UK import is that speedometers will be in mph, whereas New Zealand adopted the newfangled metric system decades ago. However, on a more modern car with a digital dashboard, the switch shouldnât be an issue, and that was the case with the MĂ©gane.
For a Kiwi buyer, the first step is to check the New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA) website, which has useful worksheets on private car importation.
In summary, the car must comply with New Zealand standards, and it helpsâfor nowâthat cars that have EU type approval will. The car must have a vehicle approval plate or sticker, or a statement of compliance. The NZTA worksheets and website are detailed and go through further specifics.
You should, for peace of mind, order an AA or Dekra inspection. AA members in New Zealand can expect a discount from AA in the UK, and this shouldnât exceed ÂŁ200. Any faults need to be remedied before you purchase the car, or you should walk away.
Of course, you need to be able to prove the ownership of the vehicle: that means an invoice showing that youâve purchased it (this should have the VIN on it), plus the V5 registration document. Since itâs being exported outside the UK, the relevant part of the V5 noting the car will be leaving the country will have been sent to the Department for Transport by the seller. The seller needs to put this in the courier to you.
I advise strongly that you use a company specializing in the importation. You can do a lot yourself, but it pays to have an extra pair of eyes to ensure youâve dotted the is and crossed the ts, and in New Zealand, thatâs where Jake Williams and Dan Hepburn at Online Logistics of Auckland came in.
Online Logistics isnât interested in profiting based on the price of your car, unlike some services. They set standard fees for shipping, and arrange insurance, which itâll need on the way to New Zealand. They do ask that the car departs from Felixstowe, and they will ship it to Auckland.
They will require the VIN, so they can double-check that the car meets the required standards, the invoice, and the original copy of the V5.
Once itâs on New Zealand shores, it has to go through several inspections.
The first is an inspection by the Ministry of Primary Industries, which makes sure that there arenât any bugs. It could order that the car be fumigated, and this can set you back around NZ$400. Once done, youâll get an MPI sticker saying the carâs passed the biosecurity inspection.
Customs will then sting you GST (the equivalent of VAT) on cost, insurance and freight.
An NZTA-approved organization will then inspect the car to check for structural faults. Online Logistics took care of this part, so you donât need to hunt for an approved one yourself. Once thatâs done, youâll get a pink sticker from NZTA.
The fourth step is getting the car certified. Again, Online Logistics has a company it contracts to do this, and this is where youâre likely to see your car for the first time. Certification will confirm that the car meets safety and emission standards, gets the VIN recorded into the database, gives you a registration form so you can get the car registered in New Zealand, and issues a warrant of fitness (MOT). Certification can be strict: cars that have had a poor repair job done in the UK will not pass until it is redone in line with New Zealand standards, and this is where the importation process can fall to pieces. Thatâs why itâs important to have that check done in the UK before purchase. Stay well away from category D cars, and aim for low miles.
Having identified the model I wanted, I had to trawl through the websites. The UK is well served, and some sites allow you to feed in a postcode and the distance youâre willing (or your friendâs willing) to travel.
However, if you rely on friends, youâll need to catch them at the right time, and both gentlemen had busy weekends that meant waiting.
VAT was the other issue thatâs unfamiliar to New Zealanders. GST is applied on all domestic transactions in New Zealand, but not on export ones. This isnât always the case in the UK, and some sellers wonât know how any of this works.
One of the first cars I spotted was from a seller who had VAT on the purchase price, which logically I should get refunded when the car left the country. I would have to pay the full amount but once I could prove that the car had left the UK, the transaction would be zero-rated and I would get the VAT back. I was told by the manager that in 11 years of business, he had never come across it, and over the weeks of chatting, the vehicle was sold.
Car Giant, in London, was one company that was very clued up and told me that it had sold to New Zealanders before. Theyâre willing to refund VAT on cars that were VAT-qualifying, but charged a small service fee to do so. The accountsâ department was particularly well set up, and its staff very easy to deal with long-distance.
Evans Halshaw, however, proved to be farcical. After having a vehicle moved to the Kettering branch close to Keithâs then-residence after paying the deposit, and having then paid for an AA inspection, the company then refused to sell it to me, and would only deal with Keith.
Although the company was happy to take my deposit, Keith was soon told, âwe will need payment to come from yourself either by debit card or bank transfer as the deal is with yourself not Mr Yan,â by one of its salesâ staff.
I wasnât about to ask Keith to part with any money, If I were to transfer funds to his account, but not have the car belong to me, and if Keith were to then transfer ownership to me without money changing hands, then the New Zealand Customs would smell a rat. It would look like money laundering: NZTA requires there to be a clear chain of ownership, and this wasnât clear. Evans Halshaw were unwilling to put the invoice in my name.
Iâm a British national with a UK addressâagain something a lot of buyers Down Under wonât haveâbut Evans Halshaw began claiming that it was âpolicyâ not to sell to me.
The company was never able to provide a copy of such a policy despite numerous phone calls and emails.
Essentially, for this to work and satisfy Customs on my end, Keith would have to fork out money, and I would have to pay him: a situation that didnât work for either of us.
Phil, a qualified lawyer, offered to head into another branch of Evans Halshaw and do the transaction exactly as they wanted: head there with âchip and PINâ, only for the company to change its tune again: it would not sell to me, or any representative of mine.
This farce went on for a month and involved a great deal of calls from me into the small hours of the morning.
The matter eventually went to the groupâs lawyer, David Bell, and between him and me, it was sorted in 10 minutes.
Evans Halshaw did indeed have a policy not to sell to a foreigner, never mind that he was also a Briton. What their first staffer should never have done was take my deposit in the first place.
Despite knowing it was me who paid the deposit, the Kettering dealer began believing it was Keith who was the buyer.
When Mr Bell knew all the facts, there was a moment when the penny dropped for us both: he had been told that Keith was the buyer all along, and advised accordingly. Once I knew where the mix-up was, everything made sense.
It wasnât helped by belligerent staff who refused to answer questions directly.
However, on knowing of their error, Evans Halshaw refunded my deposit (albeit minus the credit card fees I had paid) and offered to refund the AA check, in exchange for the report. I willingly gave them the report, but the second refund never materialized. Neither the dealer principal at Kettering nor Mr Bell responded, despite reminders, and I found myself ÂŁ182 out of pocket, along with goodness knows how much in long-distance phone charges. I still wonder how this is one of the countryâs largest dealer groups, with this blatant disregard for the customer.
Two weeks later, the perfect Mégane popped up. It was all a blessing in disguise. It was the colour (Cayenne orange) of the car I had on my computer wallpaper years before. The mileage was very low. And another friend, Andrew, was willing to pop by and look at it, sold by a very easy-going seller, Andy Mudge of Thames Fleet Purchasing. In fact, he proved so amenable I referred others to him, and he was more than happy, as with many other dealers I had spoke to in the UK since the Evans Halshaw affair, to sell to a British national based abroad.
The car passed the Dekra check with next to no issues, and Andy was willing to cap the freight charges of the car from his Maidenhead property to the port for ÂŁ100. (Itâs advisable to have the car transported, rather than driven, to the port, as I wonât have paid for the tax as the new keeper.)
The car was non-VAT qualifying, making life easier for both parties. I paid Andy the amount by wire transfer, added a pony on top to cover the courier of documents (V5 and handbooks) and the spare key.
The one feeling I hadnât expected was to see thousands of pounds leave my account and have nothing to show for it. The car took just under two months before I witnessed it for the first time, having flown up to Auckland to collect it (another NZ$100), with a 600 km journey south back to its new home in Wellington.
Many months later, Iâm thrilled with my purchase. There are, to my knowledge, only two non-RS MĂ©gane III CoupĂ©s in New Zealand, both in the same colour. It has an engine for which I can get parts, and there are sufficient commonalities with the MĂ©ganes sold here when it comes to brake pads and other items. It had taken a considerable amount of time but it was eventually worth it. After all, if itâs your money, you should get what you want. If you donât want to drive the standard New Zealand carâand looking around that appears to be a Toyota Auris Automaticâthen the UK is a very ready source of cars.
Tags: 2015, 2016, Andrew J. Cross, Aotearoa, Auckland, car, customer service, Drivetribe, England, internet, Keith Adams, New Zealand, Renault, TÄmaki Makaurau, UK, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara
Posted in business, cars, globalization, internet, New Zealand, UK | 3 Comments »