Tea

Why it's better to give than receive

At work today I've been entertaining some Chinese visitors. At the end of the visit they gave myself an a colleague a present. Mine was an official Olympic pencil case wrapped in Hello Kitty paper. My colleague got the same present, although the wrapping was somewhat startling. If you look at the bottom left, I think you'll find that something was lost in translation.

Water Boarding

I've always wondered what water boarding really is. Now I'm wondering no longer.




You can sign up to Amnesty internationals campaign to 'Unsubscribe Me' here.

And here is how the movie was made.

In Focus

The truth about Ritalin
(Click on t' picture to make it readable)

Take me to the April Sun in Cuba

Oh oh oh!

Pukeko courtesy of Phil and Amy

Juxtaposition

On tonight's Channel 4.

Class of December 2007

They say immigrants steal the hubcaps
Of the respected gentlemen
They say it would be wine and roses
If England were for Englishmen again
-Something about England by The Clash

I've been in the UK now for over six years. It's therefore become time to be naturalised. It's either that or return to Aotearoa. As Miss Sarah might not go for that, I've decided to stay. In order to stay I have to sit the 'Life in the UK' test. Essentially, I need to prove that I have both the necessary knowledge of English and that I am familiar with what makes Britain British.

The good folks at the Home Office have written two books to help with this. The first is a book of knowledge, or 150 pages of history, law, advice about how to get advice, and general idealism. The second book is 20 sample tests, with answers.

Your sample questions:
1. What traditionally happens on Mother's Day?
A. Mothers make special meals for their families
B. People celebrate the mother of Jesus Christ
C. People give cards or gifts to their mothers
D. People hold fireworks displays.

2. What percentage of Christians in the UK are Roman Catholic?
A. 10%
B. 20%
C. 30%
D. 40%

3. Select the Correct Statement
A. It is illegal to pay workers below the minimum wage
B. It is legal to pay workers below the minimum wage as long as they agree to the wage rate

4. What is the distance from John O'Groats to Land's End?
A. Approximately 1,100 miles (1,770 kilometres)
B. Approximately 1,310 miles (2,110 kilometres)
C. Approximately 500 miles (800 kilometres)
D. Approximately 870 miles (1,400 kilometres)

5. What percentage of the United Kingdom's population is made up of ethnic minorities?
A. 1.3%
B. 16.8%
C. 29.3%
D. 8.3%

Answers for the non-British:
1. Seeing as 'A' is called 'Dinner' and happens every night, I figured I'd go with 'C'
2. A
3. B. I think this was aimed at those in the pay of 'gang masters'.
4 and 5. D. What I liked about these questions was that the options weren't in numerical order. Clearly while English is required, mathematics isn't.

So, on Friday, I sat the test. There were twelve of us in the room. Beside me was a Russian called Igor (you can't make some stuff up) and a large black Zimbabwean called Wellington. Wellington had been up for days studying and was frantically reading over his notes. Amongst the others were a Filipino girl, an Afghan, two Indians, and a south Asian who had decided that she would bring a Belgian driver's license rather than her passport as ID. We were all summonsed one at a time to sit in front of a computer, where we were presented with four options of how we would like our computer screen to look when we sat the test. While we waited, we were given cards that contained a screen shot of what the screen would look like. Finally, we were all called for one at a time to go to our computer, Wellington clapping everybody on the shoulder and wishing everyone good luck. I was second to last into the room.

We were told that we would we would have four dummy questions first, and then we would do the real thing. We would have 24 multi-choice questions, and we would have to get at least 18 correct to stay in the country.

I answered my dummy questions in less than 30 seconds. Two and a half minutes later, I'd been through the 24 questions twice, and because I was certain I'd got the first 16 correct, the last eight a further time. As I would have to wait for the rest to finish before finding out if I'd passed, I went out to shift my car. By the time I'd come back (less than ten minutes later) the waiting room was three quarters full, including Wellington, who was smiling broadly. Finally, the last person made it out and the supervisors came out with our results. Igor was the first to pass, followed by Wellington. He couldn't believe it. Finally, I got my certificate of passing and Wellington and I walked out. He was straight off to the pub (it was 10.30am). He'd been studying all week and wanted to celebrate. But then, if I was him I would too. If I'd failed, I'd have gone back to NZ. If he'd failed, he'd have gone back to a country where the government violently suppresses opposition, where the inflation rate is between 8,000 and 90,000%, and where it is estimated that only 20% of the population have a job.

It was an interesting insight into the people that make up my community in Oxford. I'm glad I'm staying.

Movie Popcorn

I've just booked a flight for Monday night from Birmingham to Glasgow with BMI Baby. BMI baby are the 'low cost airline with tiny fares'.

(For the record, I've got justification for not taking the train. It's just too tedious for here.)

The propaganda was correct, the fares themselves were pretty good - £45.99 to go out, £25.99 to come back. It was what followed that became close to criminal.

The taxes: £18.95 from Birmingham, £20.00 from Glasgow. I can let these slide as BMI doesn't charge these
To choose your seats: To choose your own seat costs £6.50. For the extra legroom seats, well these cost another £12.50
To check luggage in: £9.98 per bag. (Five bags = £50)
To use their insurance (ticked by default): £6.50
To use their lounge in Birmingham: £15.00. I'm drinking this dry.
To use a Visa debit card to pay for the fare: £1.99. If you were foolish enough to use American Express, you'd be paying £4.99.

I'm sure they're right, the fares are tiny. But those extras are the size of Andre the Giant.

That's what it is

It's been over five years since I last lived in Edinburgh. When I left it I used to visit several times a year, but as the seasons have changed, my visits have become further and further apart. However, work required I spend time there this week, so I took the opportunity to take advantage of Ms Ball's company and spend a few extra days.

It's been so long that to a certain degree, it's become new to me, there a places I know, but there are lots of places I've forgotten that I know. Like, for example, walking down North St Andrews Square and seeing the wall of battleship gray buildings that stretch up past the bridges to the top of the castle. Or the sharpness of the sunlight on the follies that adorn Calton Hill. Or the Word Power bookshop on West Nicholson Street, where there are wonderful books but where they can't accept that Che really was a nasty man.

Over the weekend, I managed to hang with Wendy, her pals Simon and Ian, who are becoming my pals too, with Paul and Fi down in the Grassmarket, with Kirstin and Stefan, with sexy Dave and Phil at Baraka, and with lovely Ruth down in Portobello.

YouTube

There's something in this:

If I'm in the mood for the truly vitriolic and idiotic, I always get satisfaction from cricket highlights.

Keeping you and London Dry

I went to the Thames Barrier on Thursday. I was accompanying a bunch of Americans that we were trying to impress. The route to the barrier required that we drove from Maidenhead to Harrods and then to Greenwich for lunch via Bucking-HAM palace, Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square. Randy, the mild mannered Texan drove. Lunch quickly fell by the wayside as we watched members of the blue-rinse brigade storm past us with their zimmer frames. I've got news for you, Ken, the Congestion Zone lives up to its name.

At the Barrier we were met by the softly spoken Roger, a well informed man who had worked on its construction in the 70s. After the video we got the tour that the general public never gets to do, which was to walk through the tunnels and up into the shiny silver islands that adorn the lower Thames.

The wet floor sign worried me, being 15m below the river as I was, but I always knew that no matter where you go, Steve is a Twat.

Cricket

WCC 2nd XI v Chearsley, at Chearsley
1 September 2007

Volunteering

I've tried to resign from certain organisations. Perhaps this article can shed some light on my failure.

God's Politics

It's possible that Kevin Rudd, leader of the Australian Labour Party, will likely be Prime Minister of Australia before the end of the year.

Last year he wrote an essay on Dietrich Bonnhoeffer, the German priest and resistance leader who was murdered on Hitler's orders in the dying days of the Nazi regime.

The essay is here.

In the essay he presents his views on the role of Christianity in politics. I find these views rather reassuring.

"If these are the contours of classical Christian engagement with the state, the modern forms of political engagement are in the main much cruder. Below I list five of them, of which only the fifth bears any real resemblance to Bonhoeffer's position.

1. Vote for me because I'm a Christian. This is the model that is most repugnant. It is the model which says that, simply on the basis of my external profession of the Christian faith, those of similar persuasion should vote for me. This is about as intelligent as saying that because I am a Sydney Swans supporter, all other Swans supporters should vote for me, because we ostensibly adhere to the same belief system. This model is alive and well in the US. Thankfully, it is much less alive and much less well in Australia, although there are some dangerous signs that for certain Christian constituencies here, it represents an increasingly appealing message. It is a model for which there is no underpinning scriptural, doctrinal or theological authority.

2. Vote for me because I'm Christian, and because I have a defined set of views on a narrowly defined set of questions concerning sexual morality. Regrettably, this model has an increasing number of supporters within the broader Christian community. Such supporters tend to read down, rather than read up, the ethical teachings of the New Testament, producing a narrow tick-the-box approach to passing a so-called Christian morals test. These tests tend to emphasise questions of sexuality and sexual behaviour. I see very little evidence that this pre-occupation with sexual morality is consistent with the spirit and content of the Gospels. For example, there is no evidence of Jesus of Nazareth expressly preaching against homosexuality. In contrast, there is considerable evidence of the Nazarene preaching against poverty and the indifference of the rich.

3. Vote for me because I am a Christian, vote for me because I have a defined set of views on questions of private sexual morality, and vote for me also because I chant the political mantra of "family values". That is, take models number one and two and add to them the tag of "family values". Regrettably, that term has become one of the most used and abused terms in the Australian political lexicon. The concept of "family values" it involves is invariably a narrow one, and invariably leaves to one side the ability of working families to survive financially.

4. Apply models one, two and three above, and then add the following offensive play. Unleash a political fusillade against anyone who dares suggest that Christianity might have something concrete to say about the broader political, economic and social questions, and justify this fusillade with that hardy perennial, "Religion should be kept out of politics." This is a view which says that should anyone seek to articulate from a Christian perspective a view on the Iraq war, on poverty in the world, on asylum seekers, on indigenous Australians, or on workplace relations, then judgement may be rained down upon them from the heavens above, as in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. Bonhoeffer's critique of the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms was, of course, a response to this.

5. In the fifth approach, the Gospel is both a spiritual Gospel and a social Gospel, and if it is a social Gospel then it is in part a political Gospel, because politics is the means by which society chooses to exercise its collective power. In other words, the Gospel is as much concerned with the decisions I make about my own life as it is with the way I act in society. It is therefore also concerned with how in turn I should act, and react, in relation to the state's power. This view derives from the simple principle that the Gospel which tells humankind that they must be born again is the same Gospel which says that at the time of the Great Judgement, Christians will be asked not how pious they have been but instead whether they helped to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the lonely. In this respect, the Gospel is an exhortation to social action. Does this mean that the fundamental ethical principles provide us with an automatic mathematical formula for determining every item of social, economic, environmental, national-security and international-relations policy before government? Of course not. What it means is that these matters should be debated by Christians within an informed Christian ethical framework. It also means that we should repudiate the proposition that such policy debates are somehow simply "the practical matters of the state" which should be left to "practical" politicians rather than to "impractical" pastors, preachers and theologians. This approach is very much in Bonhoeffer's tradition.

A Christian perspective on contemporary policy debates may not prevail. It must nonetheless be argued. And once heard, it must be weighed, together with other arguments from different philosophical traditions, in a fully contestable secular polity. A Christian perspective, informed by a social gospel or Christian socialist tradition, should not be rejected contemptuously by secular politicians as if these views are an unwelcome intrusion into the political sphere. If the churches are barred from participating in the great debates about the values that ultimately underpin our society, our economy and our polity, then we have reached a very strange place indeed."

That other Blog...

I've started taking pictures of Oxfordshire again. The pictures are here: There's a good one of Ron at Chris and Katharine's wedding.

We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto

This is my new favourite website.

I love how in the videos the washlet is located on a waterfall.

Seriously, Sarah, we need one of these bad boys.

I don't need a straw to drink my water

I'm in KL. It's the second time in less than a month that I've found myself here... I'm here to teach. After four days I'm completely shattered. I've a day to go before I fly to Japan. More on the flight to Japan later.

From my hotel (the Seri Pacific if anybody cares, or if the bad people can't find me in Oxford), it's a ten minute sweat up to the office I'm working in. I pass by a huge mall, then the Ecuador and Arabic Republic of Egypt embassies. I'm in the countries beginning with 'E' consulate block, it would seem. One of the things I like about Malaysia is that is constantly being cleaned. Rubbish is not allowed to settle. Yesterday I passed a woman meticulously flattening out the sand in one of those ashtrays that adorn rubbish bins in countries where people are allowed to smoke indoors.

The office I'm working in is the Malaysian Remote Sensing Office. It's surrounded by a forest, yet it's in the middle of the city.

It's still incredibly surreal to me that in less than six months I'll be married. Great, but fookin' weird.

On Saturday I'm flying to Japan for a week or so. I have a day in Tokyo, a day in Kyoto, and five days in the child's dream city name of Fukui. It would appear that I will be spending most of time indoors. The day after I land in Tokyo, this arrives:


I believe it is called Typhoon(MAN-YI).

Beautiful Haze

SJD, one of NZ's finest...

Singapore Swing

Changi Airport in Singapore is outside of time. It's the sort of place that people seem to pass through on their way to somewhere else. In the past I've been on my way to or from KL, Kuching, Jakarta, London and Auckland. The longest I've spent there is about eight hours, the shortest, about an hour. There's something about the tinted windows that limits the amount of natural light. Whenever I'm in the airport it seems like it is either 7am/pm (it's impossible to tell the difference - and most of the time my body clock is so confused it wouldn't matter even if I knew), or it's just dark. 7am/pm will drag on for hours. Besides, time is dictated entirely by Boarding 2220, Gate F31. Essentially, time spent in Changi Airport is a hiatus, a stasis.

On Saturday, transit and stasis was from Kuching, Sarawak to London Heathrow. From Kuching the hiatus was half filled by Knut, a German based in Edmonton who works for the Asian Development Bank and spends half the year in Assam and Dhaka. Knut was on his way to Dhaka. At Changi he was focussed on spending the contents of his wallet on chocolate. He had to exactly spend the contents, $Sing47.20 on chocolate. How very German. I was happy to indulge him. After much consideration and mental gymnastics, he arrived at his selection. Much to his frustration he could only come to a combination that amounted to $Sing47.40.

After we explored the free automatic foot masseuses in Concourse F, he efficiently and precisely marched off with his chocolate to Concourse E and Dhaka. I promptly headed for the bar to fill some more lost time.

So, on Saturday night, I'm heading home to ask my girlfriend to marry me and I am sitting on a plastic deflated basketball of a seat the 'Sports Bar'. On the bar in front of me is a half finished pint of Carlsberg and the godlike AA Gill's new book, Previous Convictions. Behind me is a grand piano, which I suspect is there for decor purposes. The pint glass is slowly being drained when the piano starts up. At first, I'm thinking, 'you intrusive bastards', especially as the first track appears to be 'A Groovy Kind of Love' by Phil Collins. However, in contrary to every expectation, Phil's tune becomes passable and then quite enjoyable. I rotate my deflated plastic basketball round to face the band. The bassist is standing right behind me and is a Mexican looking guy in fifties. His little inverted v-shaped mo' decorates a face that is a study in concentration, but his eyes are twinkling. To his right is the pianist. This guy is a stocky Asian guy. He's a lot younger. He's got spiked hair and his pointed buckled shoes are mashing then tap-dancing the pedals. Beyond him, the lid of the grand piano hides the singer. Around the bar, fingers are tapping on bar tables, an Art Garfunkel double changes seat to get a better view, and conversation stops. Beside the bassist an Indian guy is having a great time. His hands are slapping the table and his grin is getting broader.

From Phil Collins, they move onto an outstanding version of 'Georgia on my Mind'. At this point the bar is filling up, passengers are standing in the terminal around it, there's some Antipodeans leaning against pillars, and there's a sense that there aint no better place to be right now. By the time 'From Russia with Love' has finished, the bar tables are starting to buckle as we tap and pound away in time. Most eyes are closed and smiles on faces are universal. Well, nearly universal. The Indian has been joined by two pretty Indian girls, and they want to go. Something about a 'flight leaving now'. Madness. The Indian really doesn't want to go. The two pretty girls persuade him. Right now, I'm feeling for his dilemma. Eventually the music loses out.

A dozen or more years ago Grant, Ben and I travelled down the West coast of New Zealand's South Island to Wanaka, and then on to Te Anau and Milford. In a youth hostel in Te Anau,
Grant brought out his guitar and was playing away quietly. A Japanese guy asked Grant if he could have a go. On handing over the guitar, the guitarist proceeded to play Eric Clapton's Unplugged. Exactly as it was recorded. There was no doubt that there was talent on display, but it was nothing original. I think if Grant had let him, he would have played the whole album from start to finish, and without interpreting a single bar. It was soulless and it was sad. The difference between the guitarist and the band couldn't have been more striking. Every note, every rest, every key change was played with passion and with a love. There's a lot to like about a band that enjoys what they do. I've seen it most prominently in Prague at U Maleho Glenha, where half a dozen jazz musicians crowded onto three square metres of stage and played their hearts out for three hours. It was no band, it was jam night. These guys made it all up, they shared it all around, and the sparkle in their half-closed eyes accompanied smiles to light the smokiest jazz club. I've seen it when the Go! Team played Oxford, and I've seen it when Ben Harper played the Apollo, albeit with ardent fervour, rather than warm feeling. I've seen some of the 'greats' - Elton, McCartney, U2, and it's felt mechanical. Good, but not memorable. Stale, not fresh. Flat.

By the time they finished up with 'Here comes the sun', it'd got dark outside. 7am/pm had clearly been 7pm. The singer finally emerged from behind the piano. He turned out be a short man in his forties/youthful fifties. He looked quite the cat - stylishly dressed, with flat cap and thick framed glasses. There was a quick debrief and acknowledgment of the applause and handshakes before they wandered out into the terminal, their fame and adulation dissolving as they got beyond the row of pillars and the antipodeans holding them up. It'd been a mere 45 minute of hiatus, but it was the best 45 minutes I've ever spent in an airport.

(For the record, she said yes. I'll be married in January.)

What would Jesus do?

While unpacking my suitcase in my hotel room I came across this:

I'd just got to my red Che-Guevara look alike T-Shirt of Jesus with 'Be the Revolution!' emblazoned on the front. Probably not the wisest or most sensitive T-Shirt to pack when travelling to Malaysia.