This is a comment (with my reply, in reverse chronology) from a NewTumbl user, Thewonderfulo, who often posts about the siteâs rating system. Iâve no idea if itâs official, but it certainly passes itself off as authoritative.
I usually find myself agreeing with them but hereâs a prime example where I donâtâbecause, first, I canât see anything in the NewTumbl rules that confirms this (excepting one sentence below which Iâll get on to); secondly, NewTumbl has told me of some of their positions personally and I feel theyâve confirmed my position; and thirdly, if bare behinds can be seen in PG-13 films (including in their country), then a single ‘buttcheek’ is even less offensive and couldnât possibly be M, which is where NewTumbl classifies nudity.
There is one sentence under the O category (âOfficeâ, or safe for work): âImages that would be considered sultry or provocative qualify as O provided the people in the photo have both their tops and bottoms covered â not just hidden from view, but actually wearing clothes.â Weâd then have to argue about how much âcoverageâ there is, and here Iâd fall back on being alive for nearly five decades and having kept my eyes open about popular culture. Swimwear, for instance, provides acceptable coverage which wouldnât offend most of us in the occident. From memory thatâs the level of skin the post in question was dealing with.
Itâs exactly as I said in my last post on NewTumbl. I love the concept, and the people who run the site, but the moderators are in some sort of Handmaidâs Tale Gilead. In fact, Iâd venture to say that Tumblr wouldnât consider a buttock to be offensive enough for removal. Given NewTumblâs history, as a Tumblr alternative that would be more tolerant, I believe that the moderators really donât understand the whole picture, and where the lines should be drawn.
To think, after chatting directly to NewTumbl I was feeling a bit more chipper about the site, only to have a one-sentence comment and zero willingness to engage by a user who is, I fear, typical of the âstandardsâ that are actually being applied by the overenthused American puritans.
Incidentally, speaking of Americans, the sort of divisive talk that they are infamous for is all too present. Have a look at the thread from my earlier post. Frankly, if they have a problem with a buttock on a woman who is actually wearing clothes, while this sort of mudslinging is fine on a family-friendly post, then I wonât be in a hurry to return. Sorry.
Time for another podcast, this time with a Scottish theme. I touch upon how fortunate we are here in Aotearoa to be able to go to the ballet or expos, and, of course, on the US elections (thanks to those who checked out my last podcast entry, which had a record 31 playsâsure beats the single digits!). That leads on to a discussion about A. G. Barr, Richard Madden, and Sir Sean Connery, who never said, ‘The name’s Bond, James Bond.’
Now that Aotearoa New Zealand has lifted our COVID-19 restrictions after getting rid of the virus on our shores, other than keeping our border closed, I Tweeted:
Last time I felt this much part of a national team was when celebrities sang ‘Sailing Away’ to the tune of ‘Pokarekare Ana’. #COVID19
and between Cachalot on Twitter and I, we actually wound up with a variation of the song (incidentally, he was first with the chorus, showing that great minds think alike).
Here we come, weâre isolating Here we come, weâre on our way In a team thatâs called New Zealand Weâre together, thatâs our way.
Then back to the refrain.
Out of respect to the language in which the song was composed, te reo MÄori, here are the original, poignant lyrics. It’s a beautiful, heart-wrenching song. There’s a further explanation to it here.
PĆkarekare ana,
ngÄ wai o Waiapu
Whiti atu koe hine,
marino ana e.
Refrain
E hine e,
hoki mai ra.
Ka mate ahau
I te aroha e.
Tuhituhi taku reta,
tuku atu taku rīngi,
Kia kite tĆ iwi
raru raru ana e.
Refrain
Whati whati taku pene
ka pau aku pepa
Ko taku aroha
mau tonu ana e.
Refrain
E kore te aroha
e maroke i te rÄ
MÄkĆ«kĆ« tonu i
aku roimata e.
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.
One bonus of the lockdown was the live Easter Day concert held by Hong Kongâs own Sam Hui (èš±ć ć), perhaps fairly described as the king of Cantopop.
I had no idea this was even on if it werenât for the fire at the Baxterâs Knob transmitter that took out television transmission in our area. Faced with the prospect of no television during lockdown, and as Iâm not a cat in an NZI commercial, I hooked up my laptop to the old LG monitor, relocated to the lounge, and streamed that evening.
We put on TV1 but later that night, I headed to RTHK TV31, a government-funded channel in Hong Kong, and came across the commercial for Samâs live concert at 5 p.m. HKT on Easter Day, which translated comfortably to 9 p.m. NZST.
Hong Kong has some COVID-19 restrictions, with the safe distance a lower 1·5 m, though most people wear masks. Even TV hosts are masked on their programmes. There isnât a big physical audience for the concert: just Sam, his guitar, sitting atop a building on the Kowloon side, with the Hong Kong Island business district skyline as the backdrop. The host is seated a suitable distance away. Some folks are seated in a roped-off area, sitting a bit closer, though masked. There’s a four-camera set-up. For such a massive star, this might have been his smallest physical audience, though on YouTube, the concert netted a six-figure audience (160,000 when I looked) around the world, and no doubt others will have watched on their television sets, while I watched on TV31âs stream. One source suggests a total viewing audience of over 2 million.
Samâs still got the same voice, despite being in his 70sâfor the most part, he sounds like the young guy in his 20s that I watched on TV before I emigrated, and whose cassette tapes I cherished when they arrived from Hong Kong in the first few years we were in Aotearoa.
For someone who missed contact with my birthplace, Samâs music was a connection, something that took me back, a tiny slice of âhomeâ that was both grounding and enjoyable.
In those early days, Samâs music struck a chord with HKers because he often sang about the working class, and in plain language. Few artists had done this at the time; most lyrics tended to be in properly structured Chinese, so Sam broke new ground by singing colloquially. A skilled composer and lyricist, we saw him regularly performing his own songs on programmes such as æĄæšä»ćź” (Enjoy Yourself Tonight), a variety show that was a big hit back in the 1970s.
When he broke into films with his brothers, he was frequently cast as the hero type, and could genuinely claim to âstar in it, write the theme tune, sing the theme tune.â
His solo career as an actor hit a high in the 1980s and as the video cassette boom began, I indulged in the æäœłææȘ (Aces Go Places) series. Most kids in the west watching Hong Kong cinema knew about Bruce Lee or that new guy Jackie Chan, but we locals knew that Sam was who you watched if you wanted decent entertainment with a mix of action and humourâand the obligatory Sam Hui theme tune.
Watching the Easter Day concert brought back a lot of those feelings of connection, and Sam performed plenty of those earlier hits that anyone my age would know. You never lose your connection to the land in which you were born. Hong Kong might look different to how it did in the 1970sâthe tallest building then, Connaught Tower, is dwarfed by the International Commerce Centre a short distance awayâbut the music took you back, and thanks to the cleaner air during the pandemic, the skies even looked as clear as they did back then. The cityâs character remains intact, the concert a reminder of what unites Hong Kong people both there and abroad. We have a distinct culture, one that evolved through the will and the freedom of our people, that I hope will go on regardless of one’s political stripes.
The monitor, incidentally, was much easier to view than the television, with softer colours and less brightness. No matter how I played with the settings on the TV, I couldn’t get them to match. I suspect the TV has a lot of blue light, which makes prolonged viewing difficult. I notice that one can buy blue-light glasses, highlighting once again where we have gone wrong: we humans shouldn’t be adapting to technology, it’s technology that should be adapting to us. The LG (LED) monitor isn’t new, so clearly the technology is available to make TVs calmer on the eyes. Yet no one touts this as a selling proposition. Head into an appliance shop (outside of one’s lockdown) and all the TVs are set on the brightest setting, which would completely turn me off buying one.
Friends tell me that OLED is the way to go in terms of getting the right setting. One of these days I’m going to look into it, but I will bet you that no one who sells these things in the shops will know what a “calm” screen is. They’ll just get excited about forkay, or maybe even atekay, not someone who wants 32 inches or less who wants to preserve their eyesight. ‘Big! Big! Big!’
At the end of the last century, the National Government announced its Bright Future programme. Their research had identified that one thing holding back our national competitiveness was our devotion to the team rather than the individual, when in fact there have been many times New Zealand individuals have made immeasurable contributions and had not been fĂȘted. It compared us with the US, where someone like Bill GatesâI seem to recall he was held up as an exampleâcould be recognized by many as an innovator, while the equivalent Kiwi wasnât generally known. One of the first moves was to knight Angus Tait, the Christchurch entrepreneur.
These Kiwi pioneers are still aroundâpeople like Dr Sean Simpson of LanzaTech, for instance, using bacteria to consume carbon monoxide and turning it into ethanolâbut other than news programmes, theyâre not part of our mainstream, and part of me wonders if they should be. They are doing work that should be rewarded and recognized.
However, the team spirit that New Zealand exhibits all the time, and admires, such as the All Blacks, the Black Ferns, or yachtingâs Team New Zealand, could help with the COVID-19 pandemic, as itâs invoked in our response. The four-week lockdown ordered by the New Zealand government has, from what I see out there, been generally accepted, even if Iâve publicly Tweeted that Iâd like to see more testing, including of all those arriving back on our shores, including the asymptomatic. (I note today that the testing criteria have been loosened.) The places held up to have done well at âflattening the curveâ, such as Taiwan, have managed it because, it is believed by the Financial Times and others, there is a community response, and, I would add, a largely homogeneous view when it comes to being in it together, helped in part by experience with the SARS outbreak, and possibly by the overall psyche of âWe have an external threat, so we have to stick together.â Each territory has a neighbour that itâs wary of: Taiwan looks across the strait at the mainland, since there hasnât really been an armistice from 1949; Singapore has Malaysia as its rival; and South Korea has North Korea.
Across Taiwan, there have been 13·5 cases per million population, or a total of 322 cases; New Zealand is currently sitting on 134·5 per million, or 647 cases. Singapore is on 158·7 per million, or 926 cases; South Korea, which is now seeing a fairly low daily new case increase, is on 190·9 per million, or 9,786 cases.
I support the Level 4 approach in principle, and having the lockdown, and while we arenât accustomed to the âexternal threatâ as the cited Asian countries, we are blessed with the team spirit that binds Kiwis together. We are united when watching the Rugby World Cup or the Americaâs Cup as we root for our side, and the unity is mostly nationwide. There are some on the fringe, particularly on Facebook, based on what others have said, with ideas mostly imported from foreign countries that are more divisive than ours.
On that note, we might have been very fortunate to have the national culture that we do to face down this threatâand not have any one person standing out as we knuckle down together. Even those who are seen regularly delivering the newsâthe director-general of health, for instanceâdo so in humble fashion, while our own prime minister goes home after we go to Level 4 and answers questions in her Facebook comment stream via live video. Even if economically we arenât egalitarian, culturally we believe we are, and it seems to be keeping us in good stead.
I see Billie Eilish is singing the next James Bond title song, and it sounds pretty good.
The last one, âWritingâs on the Wallâ, wasnât one of my favourites and while I didnât mind Sam Smithâs composition, I felt a female voice might have suited it better. On a Bond music forum on Facebook (when I was still using it), I voiced disappointment, only to get comments in the thread essentially saying, âEveryone who dislikes this song is a homophobe.â
Up until that point I had no clue about Smithâs sexualityâdidnât care then, donât care now. I didnât think much of this until tonight, when it dawned on me that when I say Iâm not a fan of Brexit, on busier social media threads Iâll get, âStop calling British people racists.â
In neither case was homophobia or racism even hinted but it puzzles me that people can somehow go into Mystic Meg clairvoyant mode and see things that arenât thereâand get it completely wrong. And that has to be one of the things wrong with social media these days: people far too much in their own heads to even see what is right in front of them, letting their imaginations run riot. Could they be projecting? In any case, a discussion, or even an argument, is pointless if parties are unwilling to stick to the facts in front of them, preferring to go into snowflake mode and fling out accusations. It does them little credit.
And folks wonder why so many of us have social media fatigue and would be quite content if certain sites vanished overnight.
Every year, I hear or read a news report along these lines here:
Itâs Chinese, or the lunar, New Year today, and Asian communities all over New Zealand are coming together with their families to celebrate. Itâs the Year of the Rat, which means it will be a lucky and prosperous year.
Sometimes theyâll append the last statement with âsays [insert prominent Chinese New Zealander]â or âsays [insert name], president of the New Zealand Chinese Association.â
I know this because one year I was the name inserted, but you need the context, and thereâs never any room for it since itâs usually the last story in the news.
Hereâs how the interview tends to unfold.
âItâs the Year of the Rat next year. Whatâs that going to bring?â
âWell, it really depends. Every year has its own energy, and it applies differently to every person depending on their bazi and the trend of their year. Itâs like western astrology: different strokes for different folks.â
âBut do you reckon for some itâs going to be lucky and prosperous?â
âYes, for some it will be.â
Bingo. Thereâs your closing sentence. âItâs the Year of the Rat, which means it will be a lucky and prosperous year, says local Chinese man Jack Yan.â And that’s why every year, the news report is a cookie-cutter item about an ethnic community really into luck and money.
I mean, if you lived in Wuhan right now, youâll probably be saying itâs going to be a shit year because your New Yearâs practically been cancelled and you canât see your whÄnau while your cityâs in lockdown. I think the closest equivalent would be, for an American, Thanksgiving being cancelled, and for many, Christmas being cancelled.
Incidentally, I’m not sure why the WHO held back on declaring the corona virus outbreak an international matter. Did they not know the New Year is the greatest migration of humans on this planet? Repatriating Brits after Thomas Cook collapsed is child’s play. And now we have the people suspected of having the virus arriving in certain other countries.
Looking back over the years
And whatever else that appears,
I remember I cried when my mother died
Never wishing to hide the tears.
And at fifty-nine years old,
My father, God rest his soul,
Couldnât understand why the only lass
He had ever loved had been taken,
Leaving him to start
With a heart so badly broken
Despite encouragement from me,
No words were ever spoken.
And when he passed away,
I cried and cried all day.
Alone again, naturally.
Considering Gilbert OâSullivan was 21 when he wrote âAlone Againâ, itâs a remarkably mature lyric, particularly as he didnât know his father well, and his mother was alive when the song was penned.
But it is my current earworm and with a slight change in the words, it reflects my mood.
Of course Iâm not âaloneâ: I have a partner and a network of friends, but there is an element of loneliness as part of the immigrant experience that hardly anyone talks about.
When you emigrate to parts unknown with your parents, and you donât have a say in it, you arguably have a different perspective on your new home country than someone who perhaps chose to go there, and you certainly have a different perspective to someone born and bred there.
Iâve never blogged the full story though most of my friends know it.
There is a photo somewhere of my family as I knew it at age two or so: my parents, my maternal grandmother, and me. At that age, I knew there were other family membersâpaternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousinsâbut this was my immediate definition of family, and I held on to that for a long time. Certainly it was my definition during my formative years.
I came with my parents and not my grandmother, landing here three days shy of my fourth birthday.
When my grandmother arrived in March 1978 under the family reunion policy, my mother and I being her only living descendants, I felt âthe familyâ was complete again.
Immigrants will probably tell you, more so if they are not of the majority race, that they have a sense that they need to face life in this new country together. That most of the people around you wonât be able to share the experience youâre having, because youâre making sense of it through a different lens. We spoke Cantonese at home, and we will have talked about the odd customs of the people here, from the stupidity of the colloquialism bring a plate to my parents needing to fight for the Wellington Hospital Board to give my mother her correct pay (something which ultimately required the intervention of former mayor Frank Kitts). Most of your peers wouldnât know what it was like for a white person to tell your Mum and yourself to go back to where you came from. Or to be denied service at what is now Countdown on account of your race.
Repeated experiences like that give you a sense of âthe family versus the worldâ. Happy ones naturally outnumber negative onesâby and large, New Zealanders are a tolerant, embracing peopleâbut itâs probably natural for humans to build up some sort of defence, a thicker skin to cope with a few of the added complications that the majority donât have to think twice about. Itâs why some of us will jump to âracismâ as an explanation for an injustice even when the motives may not be that at all. Itâs only come from experience and reinforcement, certainly at a time when overt racism was more commonplace in Aotearoa, and more subtle forms were at play (as they still are with decreasing frequency; hello, Dominion Post).
As the familyâs numbers dwindled, it impacts you. It certainly impacted my father in 1994, in the way OâSullivanâs song says, and as âthe last man standingâ there is a sense of being alone. Never mind that my father had aphasia in his last years and couldnât respond intelligibly when I spoke to him: the fact he could hear me and acknowledge me was of great comfort. He understood the context. And frankly, precious few others do.
Other than aunts, uncles and cousins, the only time I really get to use Cantonese now is at shops where Cantonese speakers serve me. The notion of an âAsianâ invasion where youâre walking the streets not knowing whatâs being spoken (Iâm looking at you, Winston) is rot. You feel the loss of identity as well as your family because identity is relative: while you have a soul, a deeper purpose, that is arguably more absolute, you answer who you are in relation to those around you. I am proud of my heritage, my culture, my whakapapa. They identify me to the rest of you. Each of you holds a different impression, part of the full picture, just as in branding. The last person who understood part of my identity, the one relative to my immediate family who came with me to this new land, is now gone, and that cannot be reclaimed.
Therefore, this isnât solely about the passing of an elderly man and the natural cycle of life. This is about how a little bit of you goes as well. Wisdom tells you that you form another part of your identityâsay how I relate to my partner, for instanceâand in time you rebuild who you are and how you face the world. However, that takes time, and OâSullivan might be an earworm for a little while longer.
My thanks to Sydney-based photographer Robert Catto for linking me to this one, especially near the festive season.
It is funnier than the one I took in Sweden many years ago, which in pun-land could be racist:
The sad thing is, at some point, the majority will not get the top joke.
I have a ringtone on my phone for SMSs, namely Derek Flint’s ringtone from In Like Flint.
If I mention In Like Flint, in my circles there’d be about one person every two years who’ll get what I mean.
Twenty years ago, everyone would have said, ‘Who’s Derek Flint? That’s Austin Powers’ ringtone!’
Today, some of my younger readers will ask, ‘Who’s Austin Powers?’
So far, only a tiny handful of people get my reference when I say, ‘Dear guards, Jeffrey can be taken off suicide watch. Signed, Epstein’s mother.’
No, what Epstein did to his victimsâchildrenâis no laughing matter.
However, I don’t think I’m alone in needing humour as an anchor for my sanity when the news is abhorrent.
At the end of the last century, the National Government announced its Bright Future programme. Their research had identified that one thing holding back our national competitiveness was our devotion to the team rather than the individual, when in fact there have been many times New Zealand individuals have made immeasurable contributions and had not been fĂȘted. It compared us with the US, where someone like Bill GatesâI seem to recall he was held up as an exampleâcould be recognized by many as an innovator, while the equivalent Kiwi wasnât generally known. One of the first moves was to knight Angus Tait, the Christchurch entrepreneur.
