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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘life’
03.01.2023
I rewatched Princess of Chaos, the TV drama centred around my friend, Bevan Chuang. Iâm proud to have stood by her at the time, because, well, thatâs what you do for your friends.
Iâm not here to revisit any of the happenings that the TV movie deals withâBevan says it brings her closure so that is thatâbut to examine one scene where her character laments being Asian and being âinvisibleâ. How hard we work yet we arenât seen. The model minority. Expected to be meek and silent and put up with stuff.
Who in our community hasnât felt this?
While the younger generations of the majority are far, far better than their forebears, the expectation of invisibility was something thatâs been a double-edged sword when I look back over my life.
The expectation of invisibility was never going to sit well with me.
I revelled in being different, and I had a family who was supportive and wise enough to guide me through being different in our new home of Aotearoa New Zealand.
My father frequently said, when speaking of the banana Chineseâthose who proclaim themselves yellow on the outside and white on the insideâthat they can behave as white as they want, but thereâll always be people whoâll see the yellow skin and treat them differently. And in some cases, unfairly.
He had reason to believe this. My mother was underpaid by the Wellington Hospital Board for a considerable time despite her England and Wales nursing qualification. A lot of correspondence ensuedâI still remember Dad typing formal letters on his Underwood 18, of which we probably still have carbons. Dad felt pressuredâmaybe even bullied to use todayâs parlanceâby a dickhead manager at his workplace.
Fortunately, even in the 1970s, good, decent, right-thinking Kiwis outnumbered the difficult ones, though the difficult ones could get away with a lot, lot more, from slant-eye gestures to telling us to go back to where we came from openly. I mean, February 6 was called New Zealand Day! Go back another generation to a great-uncle who came in the 1950s, and he recalls white kids literally throwing stones at Chinese immigrants.
So there was no way I would become a banana, and give up my culture in a quest to integrate. The parents of some of my contemporaries reasoned differently, as they had been in the country for longer, and hoped to spare their children the physical harm they endured. They discouraged their children from speaking their own language, in the hope they could achieve more.
As a St Markâs pupil, I was at the perfect school when it came to being around international classmates, and teachers who rewarded academic excellence regardless of oneâs colour. All of this bolstered my belief that being different was a good thing. I wasnât invisible at my school. I did really well. I was dux.
It was a shock when I headed to Rongotai College as most of the white boys were all about conforming. The teachers did their best, but so much of my class, at least, wanted to replicate what they thought was normal society in the classroom, and a guy like meâChinese, individualistic, with a sense of selfâwas never going to fit in. It was a no-brainer to go to Scots College when a half-scholarship was offered, and I was around the sort of supportive school environment that I had known in my primary and intermediate years, with none of the other boys keen to pigeonhole you. Everyone could be themselves. Thank goodness.
But there were always appearances from the conformist attitudes in society. As I headed to university and announced I would do law and commerce, there was an automatic assumption that the latter degree would be in accounting. I would not be visible doing accounting, in a back room doing sums. For years (indeed, until very recently) the local branch of the Fairfax Press had Asian employees but that was where they were, not in the newsroom. We wouldnât want to offend its readers, would we?
My choice of these degrees was probably driven, subconsciously, by the desire to be visible and to give society a middle finger. I wasnât going to be invisible. I was going to pursue the interests that I had, and to heck with societal expectations based along racial lines. I had seen my contemporaries at college do their best to conform: either put your head down or play sport. There was no other role. If you had your head up and didnât play sport at Rongotai, there was something wrong with you. Maybe you were a âfaggotâ or âpoofterâ or some other slur that was bandied about, I dare say by boys who had uncertainties about their own sexuality and believed homophobia helped them.
I loved design. I loved cars. Nothing was going to change that. So I pursued a design career whilst doing my degrees. I could see how law, marketing and management would play a role in what I wanted to do in life. When I launched Lucire, it was âagainst typeâ on so many fronts. I was doing it online, that was new. I was Chinese, and a cis het guy. And it was a very public role: as publisher I would attend fashion shows, doing my job. In the early days, I would be the only Chinese person amongst the press.
And I courted colleagues in the press, because I was offering something new. That was also intentional: to blaze a trail for anyone like me, a Chinese New Zealander in the creative field who dared to do something different. I wasnât the first, of course: Raybon Kan comes to mind (as a fellow St Markâs dux) with his television reviews in 1990 that showed up almost all who had gone before with his undeniable wit; and Lynda Chanwai-Earle whose poetry was getting very noticed around this time. Clearly we needed more of us in these ranks if we were going to make any impact and have people rethink just who we were and just what we were capable of. And it wasnât in the accountsâ department, or being a market gardener, serving you at a grocery store or takeaway, as noble as those professions also are. I have family in all those professions. But I was out on a quest to break the conformity that Aotearoa clung toâand that drove everything from typeface design to taking Lucire into print around the world and running for mayor of Wellington. It might not have been the primary motive, but it was always there, lingering.
This career shaped me, made me less boring as an individual, and probably taught me what to value in a partner, too. And thank goodness I found someone who also isn’t a conformist.
When we first met, Amanda did ask me why I had so many friends from the LGBTQIA+ community. I hadn’t really realized it, but on reflection, the answer was pretty simple: they, too, had to fight conformist attitudes, to find their happy places. No wonder I got along with so many. All my friends had stood out one way or another, whether because of their interests, their sexuality, how they liked to be identified, their race, their way of thinking, or something else. These are the people who shape the world, advance it, and make it interesting. Theyâweâweren’t going to be pigeonholed.

With fellow nonconformist Stefan Engeseth in Stockholm, 2010
Tags: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010, 2016, Amanda Satterthwaite, Aotearoa, Chinese, friends, LGBT community, life, Lucire, New Zealand, prejudice, racism, Rongotai, Scots College, St Markâs Church School, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in cars, culture, design, interests, leadership, marketing, media, New Zealand, politics, publishing, Sweden, TV, Wellington | 2 Comments »
16.11.2021
Taking some of the themes today on RNZâs The Panel with Wallace Chapman (pre-Panel here, part one of the show here, and part two here), I offer a bit more commentary. Todayâs topics: the COVID-19 mandate for schools; quitting drinking; Finland planning to let people see othersâ salaries; the level of spending above New Zealand Superannuation; Countdownâs toy gifts; and the multi-modal commuter.
Big thanks to Amelia, Wallace and Julia today for a very enjoyable hour and 15 minutes!
Please note that this podcast is not affiliated with Radio New Zealandâthis has been done of my own volition and from my own inspiration.
Tags: 2021, Aotearoa, Finland, life, New Zealand, podcast, politics, Radio New Zealand, society, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in business, culture, Hong Kong, New Zealand, politics, technology, UK, Wellington | No Comments »
31.03.2021
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 to dispense mansplaining without conscience, but, on the other channel, the far more pleasant The Bachelor New Zealand, where, finally, for the first time on our airwaves, I see a Kiwi male that I can identify with. Apart from the times when I appeared on telly (I realize that this sentence sounds wanky, but if you canât identify with yourself, then thereâs something wrong).
While Zac the lifeguard from a few years ago seemed like a lovely chap, he was in many ways the usual stereotype: sporty, unfazed, carefree, white, with a great smile. Moses Mackay is cultured, worldly, considered, respectful, humble, well dressed, and, surprisingly for this show, wasnât quick to snog every contestant. It was also nice to see a bachelor whoâs a person of colour on our screens for a change. He grew up poor and thatâs not an unfamiliar story to many of us. Heâs comfortable talking about his relationship with God. Heck, he even croons for a living.
Iâm no Matt Monro but Iâve serenaded my partnerâjust get us at the James Cook when the elderly gent is banging out tunes by Michel Legrand, or, as I call him, Big Mike, on the lobby piano. And yes, for some of us, this is perfectly normal. Just ask Moses.
For all of us fellas who wanted to see an example of a cultured Kiwi gentleman on our screensâand as the fĂŞted star, not the comic reliefâour wishes were finally granted.
Iâve no idea whom he picked, although I knew one of the contestants who didnât make itâNew Zealand is that small. I could say the same about Zacâs season as well. Iâm sure not knowing the outcome also puts me in a minority. But I wish him well.
I’m reminded of my friend Frankie Stevens, since I mentioned Matt Monro above. I once did the same to Frankie and he said something along the lines of, ‘I was touring with Matt. We were in Spain, and he’d come in the morning with a glass of whisky.’ Another time I mentioned John Barry. ‘I worked with Johnny and Don Black. On The Dove. I sang the theme tune but Gregory Peck wanted someone else.’
For my overseas readers: you don’t usually have these conversations in Aotearoa with a guy who’s not only met your musical heroes, but worked with them. All I could do was show I had the theme on my phone.
With apologies to Lyn Paul, but Frankie would have been great (and indeed better) singing the theme to The Dove.
Tags: 2020, 2021, Aotearoa, Australia, celebrity, Don Black, Frankie Stevens, friends, John Barry, life, Matt Monro, music, musician, New Zealand, Time Warner, TV, TV3, TVNZ, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in culture, media, New Zealand, TV, Wellington | No Comments »
26.03.2020
During the 2011 ‘snowpocalypse’, my friend, the drag queen Olivia St Redfern, produced a series of streamed video programmes called Leisure Lounge. If I recall correctly, the intent was to give people, who had not experienced snow in our city (it’s a once-in-70-year event), some light entertainment. I called in as ‘Charlie’ (with apologies to John Forsythe) with the catchphrase, ‘Good morning, Angels.’ We didn’t have a ton of viewersâthey were in the double digitsâbut those who did watch were loyal.
Now we’re in a national lockdown for ‘coronapocalypse’, Olivia’s started again with Leisure Lounge, but this time as a podcast, where you can follow her progress each day. It’s quite fun to share the experience, and she welcomes responses. However, I found the Anchor recording method terrible (it messed up a five-minute response I sent to her yesterday), so I redid it for her today. You’ll need to listen to the second episode for context, and, if it’s of any interest, here is my reply.
After all that, I may as well continue doing the odd podcast as wellâsomething I had the opportunity to do 20 years ago. Better late than never.
Tags: 2020, Anchor, Aotearoa, Conrad Johnston, COVID-19, entertainment, humour, life, New Zealand, Olivia St Redfern, podcast, Spotify, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in culture, humour, interests, internet, New Zealand, Wellington | 1 Comment »
15.02.2020
Growing up in a relatively wealthy country in the 1980s, after getting through most of the 1970s, youâd be forgiven for thinking that the world would just keep getting better and things would make more sense as humans evolved.
From a teenagerâs perspective: home computers, with a modulatorâdemodulator (modem), could bring you information instantaneously and from around the world. As an immigrant kid, that excited me: contact with people âback homeâ and from other places, making communication quicker. You could hear from others, and you could help others who needed you. And if you didnât have a computer that could connect to a bulletin board, there was Teletext, which gave you regularly updated information through your TV set.
Cars were getting more aerodynamic, which meant they would use less fuel, and that was understood universally to be a good thing. MPVs were very practical vehicles that had small footprints yet fitted a lot of people, or stuff, inside. Here in New Zealand, natural gas-powered dual-fuel cars were mainstream, and that meant we werenât reliant on overseas oil. They also didnât pollute anywhere near what petrol didâthey burned cleanly.
And since saving energy was understood to be a good thing, who knew? Before long solar power would be the norm for new homes and weâd be putting electricity back into the grid.

Alex Snyder/Wayne National Forest/Creative Commons
I also heard about recycling for the first time as a teen, and that seemed like a good thingâall that old paper and plastic could have a second life.
People were interested in being more efficient because no one wanted a repeat of the oil shocks of the 1970s. Nor did we want the government imposing carless days on us again.
That same teenager would have thought that by the dawn of the 21st centuryâif the US and Soviet Union behavedâweâd have evolved to have recognized that we had the tools to make things better.
When the internet came to our house in the 1990s, I saw it as a direct evolution of the 1980sâ optimism. It made sense.
So through that lens, a lot of what the world looks like today doesnât make sense.
We have connected computers, milliards which are handheld, yet some of us are addicted to them and others use them to express outrage, rather than delight in having any contact at all with people thousands of miles away.
SUVs outsell regular cars in some size segments. They are less aerodynamic, use more fuel, and are less efficient. We have American companiesâFord in the US and Holden hereâsaying that theyâll stop selling cars in most segments in favour of utility trucks, crossovers and SUVs. Petrol is expensive, and I complain about it, but I guess no one else thinks itâs expensive. Dual-fuel cars are a thing of the past here, for the most part, yet lots of people marvel at hybrids, conveniently forgetting we were decades ahead in the 1980s.
And solar power isnât the norm.
We still, happily, recycleâbut not everything we collect winds up being recycled. We have an awareness, but if we kept on progressing as I expected us to when I was Greta Thunbergâs age, then we wouldnât have Greta Thunberg reminding us that we havenât.
I wonder if others in middle age realize that humans have the potential to go forward, and in many respects we doâbut collectively there are enough of us who go backward and prevent any real advance in society.
I like to have the same optimism as teenage me about the future. In terms of myself, many things bring me happiness, particularly in my personal and work lives. Yet in terms of society, I wonder if I can be as optimistic. I know deep down that we are interested in efficiency and treating our planet better (or we say we are), so then who are the ones holding us back, and what are we doing that stops us moving forward? Is it personal greed, hoping others will pick up the slack? Many of us choose products and services from companies that align with our views about what we wantâyet are we doing the same when it comes to politicians?
Tags: 1980s, 1990s, cars, cellphones, computing, conservation, environment, Ford, GM, Greta Thunberg, internet, life, politics, recycling, society, SUV, technology, telecommunications Posted in leadership, New Zealand, politics, social responsibility, Sweden, technology, TV, Wellington | No Comments »
12.01.2020
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.
Tags: 1976, 1978, 2019, 2020, Aotearoa, Chinese, culture, customs, Dailymotion, Fairfax Press, family, hospital, identity, immigration, language, life, music, musician, New Zealand, personal identity, racism, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in culture, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Wellington | No Comments »
16.09.2019
Forty-three years ago (September 16, 1976), we arrived in this country.
As we flew from Sydney and into Wellington, my Dad pointed out the houses below to me. âSee, those are the sorts of houses New Zealanders live in,â he said. I thought it was odd they lived in two-storey homes and not apartment blocks. I was three at the time, so I had no clue about the population density of Aotearoa.
I frequently point out just how cloudy and grey that day was. I donât remember a summer of â76ââ77, just as no one here remembers a summer of â16ââ17. Only one other car, a Holden station wagon, went along Calabar Road in the opposite direction as we left Wellington Airport.
Before we departed Hong Kong days earlier, my maternal grandmotherâthe person closest to me at that point and whom I would desperately miss for the next 18 monthsâgave me two very special Corgi models at the airport, large 1:36 scale Mercedes-Benz 240Ds. I said goodbye to her expecting to see her in weeks.
As I was put to bed that night by my fatherâit wasnât usually his roleâhe asked if I wanted to see the cars, since I had been so good on the flights. He got them out and showed me, and I was allowed to have a quick look before they were put back into his carry-on bag.
None of us knew this was the trip where weâd wind up in Aotearoa. Mum had appliedâI went with her to the New Zealand High Commission in Connaught Tower in Hong Kong to get the formsâbut we had green cards to head to Tennessee. But, my mother, ever careful, didnât want to put all her eggs into one basket. And like a lot of Hong Kongers at the time, they had no desire to hang around till 1997 and find themselves under communist rule.
It was a decision that would change our lives.
Whilst here, word got back homeâand then out to usâthat New Zealand immigration had approved our application. In the days when air travel cost a fortune, my parents considered our presence here serendipitous and decided to stay. What point was there to fly back if oneâs only task was to pack?
Itâs hard not to reminisce on this anniversary, and consider this family with their lives ahead of them.
Iâve had it good. Mum never wanted me to suffer as she had during the famine behind the Bamboo Curtain, and to many in the mid-1970s, getting to the Anglosphere was a dead cert to having a better life.
I had a great education, built a career and a reputation, and met my partner here, so I canât complain. And I couldnât have asked for more love and support than I had from my immediate family.
My grandmother eventually joined us under the family reunion policy in 1978. My mother and I were her only living descendants.
Despite the happiness, you donât think, on that night in 1976, that in 18 years my mother would die from cancer and that my widowed father, at 80, would develop Alzheimerâs disease, something of which there is no record in the family.
Despite both parents having to make the decision to send a parent to a rest home, when it came time for me to do the same thingâand it was the right decision given the care Dad neededâit was very tough.
A friend asked me how I felt, and I said I felt like âthe meanest c*** on earth,â even though I knew I would have made the same decision regardless of other factors as his disease progressed.
Immigrant families stick together because we often have the sense of âus versus the worldâ. When Racist â80s Man tells you to go back to where you came from, itâs not an experience you can easily share with others who arenât immigrants and people of colour. So as our numbers diminishedâmy grandmother in 1990 and my mother in 1994âit was Dad and me versus the world, and that was how we saw things for the decades that followed.
That first night he went to live in a home was the same night I flashed back to the evening of September 16, 1976âand how impossibly hard it would have been to foresee how things would turn out.
Heâs since changed homes twice and found himself in excellent care at Te Hopai, though he now needs to be fed and doesnât detect as much to his right. The lights are going out.
Itâs a far cry from being the strong one looking after your three-year-old son and making sure he could fall asleep in this new country, where things were in such a state of flux.
Tags: 1970s, 1976, 2019, Aotearoa, China, family, history, Hong Kong, immigration, life, New Zealand, racism Posted in China, culture, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Wellington | 1 Comment »
20.05.2019
For reasons unknown to me, May seems to be a quiet month for my blogging. I looked back to 2010 and usually, this is the month I blog less. Maybe itâs the change in seasons, or I find other things to occupy my time.
This year, itâs been far more eventful, as on the 10th inst., we moved. Thirty-six years at the same address, and Iâm now in the northern suburbs of Wellington. The postal code has changed from a 6 to a 5 at the beginning, which gives you an idea of just how far north we went.
As a middle-aged man I donât need to be that close to town any more, and since Iâve always worked from home, all I really need is a stable and reliable internet connection. We need space for team members who work for me on-site, which we now have far more of. The internet connection is the one thing that really needs work in terms of my daily routine, since we are on multiple levels, and D-Linkâs Powerline âmains modemsâ have not been that good here, while Vodafoneâs Ultrahub also loses too much in terms of bandwidth in different parts of the property.


Above: There’s too great a loss of bandwidth through the D-link Powerline units. The top screen shot is a device plugged into the Vodafone Ultrahub near the Chorus ONT.
Itâs goodbye Evans Bay views (which have never been the same since the Indoor Sport Stadium was erected at great additional unnecessary expense to ratepayers; a clear reminder not to trust certain establishment politicians) and hello to rolling hills and native bush.
It hasnât all sunk in yet, as Iâve been working while the move has taken place, and havenât had the time to enjoy the process. Rationally, I know we made the right decision, otherwise weâd never have done it, but other than the last half-hour at the old place, letting the memories of each room flood in as I walked through for the last time, I havenât been particularly emotional. In fact, when the buyers of my old home signed, I was actually happier for them than I was for myself, since they had been searching for a while, and I felt they got a good deal. Here they were, third time lucky in this street, and getting the largest house on the largest section, and, with the greatest respect to my former neighbours, a more solid one, too. (Yes, Iâve knocked on your timber inside over the years.) They have a view which they never would have had in the other places.
They additionally have a connection to a former resident on the street, which I wonât go into publicly; and one partyâs father actually came from the street we moved into. Also in one of those âvery New Zealandâ coincidences, one dear friend who helped me move headed to Ĺtaki that evening, and told a woman there that he had been helping us. It turns out that she was the sister of one half of the couple that previously owned our new home. These seem to be very âharmoniousâ events that appeal to my heritage, the sort of signs that to others might signal that âitâs all meant to beâ if you were seeking something beyond the rational.
In one year, in a street of 14 homes, four properties have changed hands; if you count the place on the corner of the street (which technically isnât part of it), itâs five properties. If anyone were to write its history (not that anyone would), 2018â19 was the period of a sea change in terms of the people there.
Weâre still living among boxes, and there are still two storage unitsâ worth of stuff that we need to empty out, but weâll just have to take things one step at a time. We filled a skip full of old stuff, and probably could have filled a second, once you added the miscellaneous trips our friends and I made to the tip. But on this end there are still a few things that need to go.
For the last two years, the Mary Potter Hospice has been the principal beneficiary of the nicer items, which included new things that my parents and grandmother acquired but never used.
One remarkable thing is how well the old furniture fits with the new place, and, interestingly, how comparatively poorly it fitted with the old. Itâs as though my family bought for this house. When you look back over four decades, you get a sense of how things do intersect and come together, if youâre lucky, and we certainly regard ourselves as very lucky indeed. It makes me happy that things have worked out on many fronts, save for my Dadâs Alzheimerâs disease. Perhaps for him, too, there is a silver lining: we have wound up closer to him, so a drive north only takes 16 minutes (on a good day) rather than close to an hour.
Yesterday, we visited the old street to collect the last bits and pieces out of the garage, and said hi to one of our former neighbours. Weâll visit others we didnât have a chance to farewell, since the move out took longer than planned, and we had to dash off to get to the new place that day. That neighbour had been there for 60 years, and had seen everything from one couple having an argument where the woman chased the man with a shotgun round the grounds of Rongotai College, to the residents that had come and gone over the years. Interestingly, she didnât remember a case of arson (to an old Humber car) in the 1980s, to which the fire brigade was called; but other tales remained as clear as day.
I wonât go into the nitty-gritty as there are many tales to tell, and Kiwi motorway behaviour is pitiful in so many cases as we drive up north. And for privacy reasons, I wonât blog too much just yet about how weâre finding the new place, as weâre still adjusting to it ourselves. I will say the former owners were meticulous, filling up and painting over walls where things were once mounted (unless they used those 3M strips), and we are ever so grateful to them.
Tags: 2018, 2019, Alzheimerâs disease, Aotearoa, charity, D-link, family, history, internet, life, New Zealand, technology, Vodafone, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in internet, New Zealand, technology, Wellington | 3 Comments »
15.08.2018

Above: Dementia Wellington’s support has been invaluable.
Today my father turned 83.
Itâs a tough life that began during the SinoâJapanese War, with his father being away in the army, and his mother and grandmother were left to raise the family on their land in Taishan, China.
In 1949, the Communists seized the property and the family had to start again, as refugees, in Hong Kong.
Ever the entrepreneur, during the Vietnam War, Dad and his business partner, an US Army doctor by the name of Capt Dr Lawson McClung, set up a mail-order business for deployed troops. As I recall it, Lawson said that he would be able to secure jobs for my parentsâmy late mother was a nurseâat his stepfatherâs hospitals in Tennessee. We either had a US green card, or one was merely procedural.
My mother realized we had family in Aotearoa and I remember going with her to Connaught Tower, to the New Zealand High Commission. I didnât know what it was for, but filling in the gaps it must have been to secure forms for immigration. As Plan Bs go, it was a pretty good one.
In 1976 came another move as we headed to New Zealand, originally on holiday, given that my grandfather had taken ill whilst here. As we flew in to Wellington, Dad pointed at the houses below. âThose are the sorts of houses New Zealanders live in.â I thought it was fascinating, that they didnât live in apartment blocks.
That first night here, on September 16, 1976, it was Dad who tucked me in, which at this point wasnât typical: it was usually my grandmother who did this. He asked if I wanted to see the two Corgi toy cars that my grandmother had bought me prior to the trip, which I could have if I behaved myself on the flights. I did. He took them out of the luggage and I had a brief look at them. This was an unfamiliar place but it was just a holiday and things would be back to normal soon.
It was during this holiday that word came that our immigration application had come through. My parents regarded our presence here as serendipitous. They neglected to tell their four-year-old son that plans had changed.
For the first 18 years of my life, I regarded âthe familyâ as being my parents and my widowed maternal grandmother, who lived with us ever since I could rememberâand I remember an awfully long time. We even had a photo taken around 1975â6 of the four of us, that I just remember represented everyone dearest to me.
As âthe familyâ lost one member to a stroke brought on by Parkinsonâs disease and complications from diabetes, and another to cancer, by 1994 it was just Dad and me.
At the beginning of the 2010s, Dad had a bout of shingles. By 2014 he was forgetting individual words, and I insisted he get checked out for dementia. Around the time of his 80th birthday, in 2015, the diagnosis from the psychogeriatrician was formal, although he could still speak with some stuttering and one or two words unreachable by his brain. The CT scans showed a deterioration of the left side of his brain, his speech centre. Within half a year there would only be one or two words per sentence that were intelligible.
The forms for an enduring power of attorney were drawn up as 2016 commenced. He was still managing, and he had his routines, but in mid-2018 we decided he should get some respite care.
He wasnât happy about this, and it took four hours of persuading, as well as a useful and staunch aunt, who got Dad to put on his shoes and head up with us to Ultimate Care Maupuia.
We had thought the second visit in late July would be easier but it took 19 hours over two days, an experience which we do not want to repeat.
Dad had lost the ability to empathize with us and was anxious and agitiated. While he insisted he could look after himself while home alone, there were signs over the last year that indicated he could not. He fell while having the âflu in mid-2017 and Amanda and I came to a house with all its lights off. We had no idea how long he had been down. By 2018 he would cry if left home alone. Even at his most insistent that he could look after himself, we returned after the first day of trying to coax him to Maupuia to find that he had not eaten.
The second day was when I called everyone I could think of to find a way to get to respite, since we werenât going to be around to look after him.
You name it, I called it, Age Concern aside.
Dementia Wellington, the police, the rest home, Wellington Free Ambulance, Driving Miss Daisy, Care Coordination, Te Haika, and so on. I spoke to 11 people that day.
Te Haika said that the issue wasnât mental, but legal, which was about as useful as telling an American Democrat that Donald Trump was the Messiah.
Driving Miss Daisy said that I wasnât in their area but a colleague was, not that I ever heard back from that colleague.
Dementia Wellington, the police, and Free Ambulance were brilliant, as was my lawyer, Richard Brandon of Brandons. Our GPs at Kilbirnie Medical Centre were also excellent.
The up shot was that Free Ambulance could take Dad if the enduring power of attorney was enacted, and that would take a declaration of mental incapacity by the GP, which was duly written. He was also good enough to prescribe some medication to calm Dad down.
However, because it wasnât an emergency situation, there was no telling when Free Ambulance could come by.
It did make me glad that they were one of the charities I gave to this year.
However, you donât ever imagine a situation where you effectively drug your Dad to be able to put his jacket on and take him to a rest home for respite care. I felt like part of the Mission: Impossible team, except the person being drugged wasnât a Ruritanian dictator, but someone on the same side. When I say Mission: Impossible, I donât mean that series of films with Tom Cruise, either.
On September 16, 1976, you didnât think that in 42 yearsâ time your Dad would have dementia and youâd need to break a promise you made years ago that you would never put him in a home.
You also feel that that photo of âthe familyâ has been decimated, that youâre all alone because the last adult in there isnât around any more for you to bounce ideas off and to have a decent conversation with.
I realize I hadnât been able to do any of that with Dad for years but it feels that much more painful knowing he canât live in a place he calls home presently.
And you also realize that as a virtually full-time caregiver who has cooked for him for yearsâand now you know why I didnât reenter politics in 2016âthat his condition really just crept up on you to a point where what you thought was normal was, in fact, not normal at all.
You also realize that the only other time he was compelled to leave his home without his full volition was 1949, by a régime he had very little time for through most of his lifetime. You donât expect to be the next person to have to do that to him, and thereâs a tremendous amount of guilt that comes with that.
Earlier this week, our GP reissued his letter in âForm 5â (prescribed under the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988), which I drafted, since these procedures arenât altogether clear. It makes you wonder how people without law degrees might cope. Tomorrow I will meet with Care Coordination and see if Dad can be reassessed based on his current condition. He was only very recently assessed as not needing long-term care so it will be interesting to see if they accept that he has deteriorated to this extent. Iâm not a Mystic Meg who can make a prediction on this.
The rapidity of Dadâs changeâone which he himself noticed, as years ago he would complain that his âbrain felt different today compared to yesterdayââhas been a surprise to us, although mostly he is happy at Maupuia and interacts positively with the staff. Itâs not all smooth sailing and there are days he wonders when he can come home.
And I find some solace in that his father, and his mother-in-law, wound up in care for less. My grandfather had PTSD from the war and was unable to cook for himself, though even at the end he was bilingual (being educated in the US) and had successfully quit smoking after 70 years. My grandmother needed care because of her insulin injections but was also mentally fit.
But part of me expected that Iâd see it through with Dad to the end, that these rest homes were some western thing that separated families, and here is part of that immigrant experience.
The reason you didnât see as many Chinese New Zealanders on welfare wasnât down to some massive savingsâ account, but a certain pride and stoïcism in being to keep it to yourself. Youâre in a strange land where thereâs prejudice, and thatâs often enough for families to say, âF*** everyone else, weâre getting on with it and doing it ourselves.â
And thatâs what we did as âthe familyâ. We fought our own battles. Dad was once a helluva correspondent whose letters used words like proffer and the trinity of ult., prox. and inst., and plenty of officials got the sharp end of his writing. When Mum got cancer we brought in our own natural medication because westerners couldnât fathom that the same stuff cleared my grandfatherâs liver cancer in 1976 and healed several other members in the whānau. Dad sacrificed everything to try to save Mum and that was the closest example I had of what youâd do for someone you love.
When youâre deep in the situation, rationality goes out the window and youâre on autopilotâand often it takes serious situations, like two daysâ angst and stress of trying to get someone into respite care, to make you think that staying at home isnât the best for someone who did, even though he wonât admit it, thrive under rest home care.
We know that if we left it even later, it would be even tougher to get Dad into care and he would resist his new surroundings more.
Todayâs lunch at Maupuia was curried beef on rice in recognition of Indian Independence Day, a much nicer meal than what I might have made for Dad.
He has staff to hug and laugh with even if I have no idea where heâs putting his dirty undies.
And while aphasia means he hasnât made any new friends yet, I have faith that heâll do well given the circumstances.
Itâs those circumstances that mean the situation we find ourselves in, with Dad at the home, is one which weâll roll with, because, like 1949 and 1976, forces outside our control are at play.
Iâd love to make his Alzheimerâs go away given that I already lost one parent prematurely.
My mind goes to a close friend who recently lost her mother, and her father was killed in a car crash around the time my Mum died. Basically: not all of us are lucky enough to have both our parents peacefully go in their sleep. Many of us are put through a trial. And thereâs a real reason some of us have been hashtagging #FuckAlzheimers on Twitter, if out of sheer frustration.
For those who have made it this far, here are the points I want you to take away.
⢠Immediately upon finding out your parent has dementia, get your enduring power of attorney sorted out, for both property and personal care.
⢠Dementia Wellington is an excellent organization so get yourself along to the carer support groups, second Monday of every month. Dementia New Zealand canât help at this level.
⢠Care Coordination has been very helpful and their referral to Dementia Wellington proved more effective than phoningâhowever, I should note that the organization changed for the better between Dadâs original diagnosis in 2015 and how they are today.
⢠You do need âForm 5â from your GP or someone in a position to assess your parentâs mental capacity to kick off the enduring power of attorney.
⢠Itâs OK to cry, feel emotionally drained and ask your friends for support. Itâs your parent. You expected to look after them and sometimes you need to let others do this for everyoneâs good. It doesnât mean you love your parent any less. It also doesnât mean you are placing yourself or your partner above him. It just means you are finding the best solution all round.
Dad is still “there”, and he recognizes us, even if he doesnât really know what day it is, canât really cook for himself, and doesnât fully understand consequences any more. Iâm glad I spend parts of every day with him while Iâm in Wellington. And while this wasnât the 83rd birthday I foresaw at the beginning of the year, he is in a safe, caring environment. I hope the best decision is made for him and for all of us.
Tags: 1949, 1976, 2018, ageing, Aotearoa, China, dementia, elderly care, family, health, health care, Hong Kong, immigration, John Yan, law, Lawson McClung, life, military, New Zealand, Red China, Taishan, travel, US Army, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in China, culture, general, Hong Kong, New Zealand | No Comments »
11.12.2017

Above: Simon Anholt, giving a talk at TEDSalon Berlin.
Out today: my friend Simon Anholtâs Good Country Index, with the Netherlands taking the top spot from Sweden, which drops to sixth. New Zealand is in 17th, failing in prosperity and equality, and in cultural contribution (previously we had been 5th and 12th). On the plus side, we are doing reasonably well in health and well-being, and in science and technology. Itâs a challenge for us as we arenât keeping up with certain aspects of the game by international standards. Have a readâit’s all properly referenced and sourced.
Tags: 2017, branding, destination branding, humanity, life, Medinge Group, nation branding, New Zealand, politics, security, Simon Anholt, Sweden, the Netherlands Posted in branding, culture, general, leadership, New Zealand, politics, Sweden | No Comments »
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