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 […]
Read More… from On Cantonese, for Te Papa’s Chinese Languages in Aotearoa project
This is one of those things I have to note down otherwise it’ll get lost to time. And you won’t see this mentioned during ‘Chinese Language Week’ here. In the old country (台山, or Taishan, China), when my father was a boy in the 1930s and 1940s, there were some whānau in the village […]
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 […]
Read More… from Other than the ending, this is my only memory of St Elsewhere
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 […]
This was the back of Mum’s 1985 tax assessment slip from the IRD. Helvetica, in metal. The bold looks a bit narrow: a condensed cut, or just a compromised version because of the machinery used? Not often seen, since by this time phototypesetting was the norm, though one reason Car magazine was a good […]
This final podcast of 2020 is an unusual one. First, it’s really directed a family I’ve never met: the Lais, who are leaving Hong Kong for Glasgow after the passing of the national security law in the Chinese city, as reported by Reuter. They may never even hear it. But it’s a from-the-heart piece recounting […]
Read More… from From one émigré to the Lais, leaving Hong Kong for Scotland
When Dad was made redundant from Cory-Wright & Salmon, which had purchased his workplace, Turnbull & Jones, he bought all the Grundig equipment and accessories, thinking that he would find it useful. And for a while he did. The odd one he cannibalized, while the parts were used and adapted. Cory-Wright wound up contracting him […]
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, Dad’s correspondence was always like this. The whole idea of immigrants coming to Aotearoa […]
Read More… from Forget the stereotypes: how immigrants write with English as their second language
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. You may also […]
Read More… from Podcast for tonight: behind the scenes on The Panel
At some point as a young man, my Dad worked at a bank. He had a formal understanding of finance—despite his schooling being interrupted by the Sino–Japanese 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 […]
Read More… from You can’t bank on the Wales (or, why I closed our Westpac account)