On Cantonese, for Te Papa’s Chinese Languages in Aotearoa project

  What a real honour to promote my reo! Thank you, Dr Grace Gassin and Te Papa for spearheading the Chinese Languages in Aotearoa project and for this incredible third instalment, where I get to speak and promote Cantonese!    Obviously I couldn’t say anything earlier, especially during Chinese Language Week, but I am extremely […]

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Refreshing the less oft-seen pages on Lucire’s website

A decade separates these two incarnations of Lucire’s shopping home page. Some Facebook gadgets were added during the 2010s and the magazine cover was updated, but it was woefully out of date and needed to be refreshed.   It’s very unusual for us to go into the less-frequented pages in Lucire and adapt them to […]

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Switching Lucire’s home page over to the new template

Lucire’s online edition home page: out with the old (top), in with the new (above).   I switched over Lucire’s home page to the new template today. I’m going to miss the old one, since it had the effect of a bled page, something that’s de rigueur for a fashion magazine.    As outlined in […]

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After eight years, a new template for Lucire’s online edition

  Those were two pretty intensive days but Lucire’s web edition now has a new template. Before you head over there excitedly expecting all change, it only exists on two pages so far, and they are of the same article but in different languages.    The look itself is not that different, either: we wanted […]

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On publishing in 2021, as told to Business Desk

Above: Coverage in Business Desk, with me pictured with Lucire fashion and beauty editor Sopheak Seng.   Big thanks to Daniel Dunkley, who wrote this piece about me and my publishing work in Business Desk, well worth subscribing to (coincidentally, I spotted an article about my friend and classmate Hamish Edwards today, too).    I […]

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Why does my landline phone dial by itself?

As sent to Vodafone New Zealand today. Anyone know what might be going on?   Hi there:   Not really a complaint but since you don’t give any options other than compliment and complaint, the latter will have to do!    Since moving to Tawa, my landline phone has been calling numbers that no one […]

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Other than the ending, this is my only memory of St Elsewhere

Conversation with Mum, some time in the 1980s.    The credits for St Elsewhere begin rolling, and they read, ‘and starring William Daniels as Dr. Mark Craig’. Two taller actors flank Daniels as they walk toward the camera.    I say, ‘Mum, that’s the guy who plays KITT on Knight Rider.’    She replies, ‘He’s […]

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What Vodafone’s Super Wifi is really like in practice

While I saw Vodafone’s Super Wifi commercials, I never thought to act on them, since (mistakenly) I thought it was something to do with cellphones. Might have been the gadgets they used in the commercial.    But, after talking to Raghu, their sales’ rep in Pune, a city outside of Mumbai that I know well, […]

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I can finally identify with the main character in a New Zealand TV show

While I care much more about when John Simm will grace our screens again (pun intended), it was hard to avoid the reality TV that gets beamed into our living rooms during prime-time. There is the disgusting Married at First Sight Australia, where I am speechless with shock that fellow Scots alumnus John Aiken appears […]

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There goes the neighbourhood

Demolition has commenced on 1–4 Māmari Street, across the road from where I lived for over three decades.    I’m not against change and my feelings toward the development have already been recorded here.    It was with a tinge of sadness that I saw the demolition crews there and the only wall left standing […]

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