However, I have to say that, after watching all three games, it is clear that there is still a huge gap between All Whites and other teams. The team almost defended their way out of every march. It is a tactic but victory is not achieved through just defend. This kind of explains All Whites ability to draw with other international teams, but it is extremely rare to see a victory.

There is still a long way to go, but what All Whites achieved is exceptional - it generated a huge national  interest on soccer and encouraged the widest imagination. This is quite similar to the situation after socceroos' performance in 2006' world cup, and we could also see soccer on its way to become one of the national sport in New Zealand.

Making my feeling worse is the price hike on almost everything. I only left the country for 3 month but everything seemed to have its price increased for several rounds, and I'm hearing the GST is also on the price hike list.

It's very difficult to avoid paying GST, it exists everywhere in people's daily economic life, making it one of the most effective revenue gathering machines for the government. There are many ways to avoid paying too much personal income tax, and tax on specific goods is more likely to decrease demand rather than increase the taxation revenue.

But of course this isn't all about revenue gathering. This is because Mr Key wants to give people tax cut, more specifically, the high income earners. In his speech made to parliament,  Key states that low income earners will be compensated through a upfront increase on benefits and working for families programme, but the trouble is, there's still very little details to see whether the compensation is enough to offset the GST increase.

Another feature of GST is that it treats every one equally, people all pay for the same rate. Statistics New Zealand says GST increase to 15% is likely to affect the CPI by a 2%+ one off increase, theoretically at least. What would really happen after the increase is still subject of a debate. Many New Zealand businesses advertise goods price ends with .99 just to make the price more appealing.  Many businesses will be facing a not so tough choice - whether to absorb the 2.5% increase themselves, or add it to the current price.

Well one of the phrses or excuses businesses just love to use is " we have to make profits".  So my guess is that the actual increase is likely to be more than 2%. Low margin and low price goods are more likely to get a $1.99 to $2.99 type of price hike as businesses are already sturggling making profit on those goods. Statistically, the overall increase would not be that huge, but the fact that troubles me is that low priced goods are more likely to be daily necessities.

I can't really quite understand the ideology behind this tax structuring apart from making high income earners happy. Yes this does give people more choice, as they got more money in hand - whether by more it means another 50cents or $50 in hand, is another problem. However, there are some choices people just don't have the choice, we all need food survive regardless whether you are high or low income earners.  The idea of removing GST on foods and petrol has been floating around for quite some time, but the government seems to have very little interest in it.

Capital gain tax is another thing government isn't very keen on. Speculating on real estate did make a lot of people rich, but that's at the expense of putting even more people at miseray. And most importantly, a healthy economy needs real economic activities,  new money has to be made - in the form of goods or services.  Prosperous property market sounds good, and looks good on GDP, but that's not real economy. It's unsustainable and who knows if he or she isn't the unlucky one or the greatest fool?

Government's very little action on these area does suggest me something they didn't tell. In his election promise John Key said he wants oversea kiwis back to their country and keep the young ones here. However, as a young adult myself,  the outlook of  me to stay in this country looks fainter every day, stuffs this government is doing, or not doing is making a graduate student  more difficult to make a decent living out of average wage.

Base my experience I support this measure. As a still relatively  inexperienced and cautious driver I have never attempted to do either. I don't know how others managed to do two things at the same time, but for me, using cellphone removes my eyes from the road, it's no different than driving blindly. No need to prove how dangerous that is.

However, cellphone really is just part of the problem.  People do and can be distracted by all sorts of things while driving. But most importantly, I usually find that it's where your mind is, rather than where your eyes are that makes the difference. I have found  little evidence shows that such law change can reduce the road toll, but plenty on how bad mood can influence driving performance. Talking over the cellphone, although using the hands-free set, can still take people's mind off the road.

The only solution  that can genuinely reduce the road toll is to ban cellphone use altogether, but no government at its right mind would adapt this measure as it would likely to be very unpopular among voters.

But I was more interested in the role of Chinese government in regard to leaders like the Dalai Lama and Mrs Kadeer.  Kadeer was not a well-known figure before the unrest in Xinjiang in July this year, before that if you refer that name to a Chinese, he or she is more likely to have very little or no knowledge on who she is.

People sometimes joke that Chinese government regularly award two awards that are even more important than the Nobel, namely GFW's Web Choice award and Chinese Government Recommended Award - if you know a website is blocked by the Great Firewall of China, you know it's a website worth to visit. Similarily, if Chinese government blames someone, you know he or she is worth to listen to.

A state like China needs enemies - if you go back in history, at any point of time, Chinese government always propoganda at least one enemy of the state to its people - the Dalai Lama, oversea chinese democracy movement, "oversea anti-chinese forces" and so on.  This is a bit like Bush administration, it's the only way to divert people's attention.

However, for the speech itself, I was in fact quite disappointed. It was a good introduction for her positions on some issues, but nothing else was there but more of a blame game.  I still think that her popularity is largely due to the help for the communist government, in real life, she's no way near the Dalai Lama.

The Weatherston case is likely to be one of such cases. There is clearly a logical fallacy here, Weatherston used, or abused the availability of  provocation as a defense, doesn't necessarily mean provocation defence  is flawed - in fact, I could argue this in the exactly opposite way, it has  proved that the defense is very reasonable and not accessible to people who want to get away with what they have done - therefore Weatherston failed.

There is no doubt to me that provocation is a geniune defence, I consider myself a pretty quiet and calm person all the time, but just like everyone else, I sometimes can lose my mind too.  Current law requires jury to assess whether the evidence could prove a "reasonable man" could be provoked, I think that's pretty much about right - no person at his/her right mind yell to others "come and kill me", however, imagine if one constantly abuses both physically and verbally, overpowered you,  and protection order does not work, are you still feeling confident that you won't lose your mind?

The defence in the Weatherston case, did not only argue the provocation, but also by paint Weatherston as a person with mental problems. This could be a even stronger arguement, however, 200+ cuts clearly do not qualify as a man who  temporarily lost self control, and that did not pass the jury.

This has happened to generations of immigrants, even if they are already a proud NZ citizen - this is one of the things that makes you feel not that proud of your choice.

I don't really want to label it racism, but look at what happens when the tide is turned:  The new "Kiwi first" employment policy means a Japanese restaurant owner cannot recruit chefs from Japan because there already are people with "appropriate" skills available in NZ.  According to the report,  people with "appropriate skills" meaning they need to learn the difference between sushi and sashimi on job.

And yet many "Kiwis" are moaning in the discussion forum, saying people deserve a chance to learn, asking why don't they train kiwis on job?

The rumours that Asian people only employ Asian employees are totally untrue, at least in the Chinese community I know of. There is golden rule for any Chinese entrepreneur who wants to start a business here - a Kiwi receptionist is a must.  This is not because Chinese entrepreneurs cannot pass NCEA leavel 1 English, but people out there just don't want to deal with businesses that are not owned by "one of them".

Any employer would prefer people with local experience and knowledge while having suitable skills, however, if they cannot find any here, they ought to be allowed to employ from oversea. If my memory serves me right, it was this government which wants NZ to increase its productivity and become a global economy - not.

In the interview, Mr Xue, now resides in Mt Eden Prison waiting for the sentencing, still insists his innocence and  believes someone else killed his wife, Anan Liu. During the interview he described the NZ police as "stupid" and "inefficient" for the obvious reason, which I kind of agree.

There was a lengthy conversation on His life with Anan Liu.  Xue  insists that he loved Anan Liu, and thinks she is still alive and dreamt her a lot even after he was arrested.

However, one specific part caught my attention - Xue mentioned an incident where he "accidentally"  threw a cellphone at her caused her nose to bleed. Liu immediately fled and reported to the police from her neighbour's house.  Xue "hated" what she did because he thinks that was "nothing big", and she lied to the police saying Xue abused her frequently. Mr Xue says "it happens in Chinese families everyday", and New Zealand "over-protected" women's rights.

What do you think? I know what I think, now I really don't have any sympathy left for him.

The rest of the conversation included details of his life in U.S. and in the cell, check the Chinese script if you are interested. I cannot translate the whole article due to copyright restrictions.

He was a loner in later part of his life, but it's not entirely his fault, a childhood full of unhappiness and sorrow, behind the shine of a star, I don't think he had a fortunate life, and that incomplete life eventually leads all the weird things happened at the later stage.

Death is not an end, as Madonna says, his music will live on forever. It's also kind of relief for him, he is now free from encumbrances in this world.

Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson.

If you enter this world knowing you are  loved & you leave this world knowing the same,then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.

Michael Jackson

Unlike a lot of backseat drivers who have never been to the site, I have no problem with how the police handled the inccident.  It is more than obvious that police wanted the gunman Jan Molenaar alive, otherwise AOS would storm the house before we know it. Unlike the Aramoana massacre, Molenaar snapped, but he poses no immediate threat to the public, therefore it's best to talk it out rather than end it with another life lost and put the Police in further danger.

The real problem of this tragedy, I think is the internal police procedures. I still prefer the polic to not carry any guns in daily patrols, but this incident was to carry out a search warrent, but the police failed to foresee the danger of such activity so failed to carry guns. It's the police authority failed to protect the safety of police force.

This was also the case in the death of Don Wilkinson. His fate was sealed when they decided not to carry guns.

Also although for most of the time I was very critical of the government here, this time I have to say, the health authority has done quite a a good job. The response was fast, open and transparent, it gave people confidence and assurance so they got no reason to panic.

However, I was totally shocked to see the ignorance of some people here in the country (quite a lot of them in the Herald discussion forum). "This is just a media hype", "it's fuelled by pharmaceutical companies", "normal flu kills more than this". They are demonstrating the total lack of knowledge on ..everything. That's fine, no one knows everything but the important thing is, those people got no interest to learn, but choose to remain arrogant - they just don't know how lucky they really are.

Although there is no reason to panic right now, people need to be aware and closely watch the development of the situation. This is a new H1NI strain (same as the Spanish flu) and most of us got no immunity.It may appears to be mild and not that pathogenic right now but if we just sit and let the virus spread, it is almost certain that this strain will mutate and who knows how this virus may evolve.

However, even to adapt the conservative version of death number, the overall mortality rate is about 5%, which is still significantly higher than normal flu mortality rate - I don't have the number here but if my memory serves, that number should be around 0.4%. Now you start to see why this thing needs to be controlled.

• Switch off your lights at 8:30pm on the night of Earth Hour
• Turn off any unnecessary appliances
• Spend your Earth Hour creatively: plan a candlelit dinner with friends, or play cards by candlelight
• Spread the word to neighbours, friends, family and colleagues
• Avoid driving anywhere for the view as this results in unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions - what we are fighting against!
• If you live in a tall apartment building, you are even more visible. Let your neighbours in other apartments know about Earth Hour and see if your building can have the fewest lights on. Perhaps you could talk to the property manager about turning off any ornamental lighting that is not needed for security reasons.

I think I'll enjoy this day if a substantial amount of people turn off their lights. Light pollution is so common in big cities, making astronomic observations more difficult each year. People no longer watch the sky - we don't know what we've missed.

Sure nobody expects to "save the earth" by turning off their lights for an hour a year. This is sure not the point, however, this is the least people can do to show that "we care".  Save electricity is just the first step, the most important thing, in my opinion is, save the wasted energy first. I'm doing that everyday, and I hope people can also do the following simple things:

• Turn off or put  your computer into sleep if you need to leave for more than 15 minutes;switch off the monitor if you need to level for 5-15 minutes;
• Switch off all the lights if you are the last to leave the room;
• Adjust the sound of your TV to a moderate level, you can hear from it, but it's not too loud;
• When the price and the quality are the same, use services/goods provided by green businesses - in fact sometimes you can find green businesses are even cheaper;
• Don't leave cellphone battery recharger on for too long;
• Use eco-bulbs if possible;

A common misconception is that people need to change their lifestyle back to stoneage man to be green. I'm not that kind of "greenie" who refuses to use anything powered by electricty, but I believe that  by just doing what you can to reduce unnecessary waste of energy you will also make a huge difference.

If you believe Global Warming is a myth or scam, I respect your opinion :) However, I still recommend you to reduce the wasted energy, even if there's no earth to save, at least to me, I enjoyed a substantial reduction of monthly power costs.

Australia, hurt feelings of

An Australian couple has upset Kiwis with an online expat guide which warns that Auckland is a "horrible soulless city" and its inhabitants are "hobbits" who cannot dress properly. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Well I have spent a bit of time to read that guy's blog. I'm not a serious traveller therefore I can only comment on Auckland. What that blogger blogged is indeed bit over the top,but most of the comments, although somewhat exaggerated, are also facts.

Auckland indeed lacks a bit of culture, that's how I feel at least. By "culture" I mean not just the presence of culture diversity, but ... how do I put this, a community that respect, cherish, and upholds "serious" culture (not just the culture of get drunk in a pub every Friday evening.) as one of the important life aspects.

What I was really surprised about is not the whines from this Aussie expat, but how Kiwis reacted toward those comments. I mean, it's just a blogger, like myself (possibly you as well), everyone is entitled to have, and publicly express he or she's opinion, and it is a fact of life that no matter how beautiful the Big Sister Helen or the land of Aotearoa is, it is not possible to win a 100% approval rate - that only happens in North Korea, even the Chinese parliament got more nay votes nowadays.

It's not even a news, there are more than a million blogs out there and I believe a fair amount of them is about New Zealand. Single this blogger out only means that 1) marks the new low of NZ journalism, 2) maybe the view of that blogger is not uncommon and there's a need to discuss it on a higher public forum.

So I was really surprised that many "serious" organisations, like Destination Rotorua or New Zealand beer brewery , treated the comments that seriously, even " took exception to an open letter on the site" ... oh I just see a short cut for bloggers who want to get famous. I actually quite liked the smell of Rotorua, but if I badmouth them once maybe I can generate a bit of traffic to my site as well, but I'll only do that after I put up Google Adsense:)

BTW, wonder where's the sense of humour, or it's just like the Nationalists can make fun on everyone else, but when others make fun of Nationalists, their feelings are hurt.

• Will be available to businesses with more than 100 employees. There are about 1600 companies which fit this category and they employ 580,000 people.
• Will be available to businesses from March 27, 2009 through until December 31, 2010 - but only for up to a six month period within these dates.
• The government’s contribution will be paid direct to employers to give to the workers it has negotiated a voluntary agreement with to reduce work hours to a nine-day fortnight.
• Will be available to up to 10 employees for each averted redundancy.
• Will apply to employees who have been full-time for the two months preceding going into the scheme.
• Is anticipated to be picked up by between 20,000 and 25,000 workers, making the approximate cost $16 million to $20 million.

Overall I'm pretty happy about it, and I think it will be a way reduce redundancies in big companies. In a recession the most import thing to maintain is not just economic growth, but fundamentally, confidence. If employees are given the promise that they will not be made redundant, it will give them confidence, and they are more likely to spend rather than save for the unforeseeable future.

But I do have a mixed feeling about this. Employees are not responsible for the current economic situation, making them suffer should be the last resort to keep this economic going.  There are long suspicions that some employers are using economic recession as an excuse to carry out restructuring. I think this scheme should only be available for companies who are experiencing losses, not just a reduction of profits.   I can see the same greed which was responsible for the current situation, is still in the market. Companies should just accept a significantly reduced profit for now, rather let the same greed take over, dreaming of the high profits they've experienced in the last few years.

The scheme will only work if employers are welling to join it, but I don't think they are. As a employer,  how much can you save from this? Let's assume a company maximises its opportunity, put 10 employee who receives an average $20 wage and work 8 hours a day in this. So the calculation goes like:

13 x 10 x 20 x 8 = $20,800

For a 100 employees company, that's kind of nothing -  make one employee redundant saves more than this, and that size of businesses don't fail for short of 20,000 dollars.

Or maybe the whole thing is just another publicity stunt from John Key?

It is how the witness described the event really amused me:

"Two of them [Asians] were in school uniform and an adult was with them. One had two baseball bats, [and was] flinging them around like bloody chopsticks," a witness said. He said as soon as the youth with the baseball bats appeared everything escalated. “It was just like a rat’s nest being disturbed by a fox terrier, they were going everywhere.

bezdomny ex patria's comment focused on the racial motivation of this witness recall:

...  why? I mean, why use this word “chopsticks” in your seriously warped simile? Could it be the Asian-ness of those doing the flinging around? Some bizarre stereotype of kung fu movies?
And to then follow that up with rats? Wow, you really are trying to reinforce the image of Timaru as a racist, redneck hole, aren’t you?

Well, it sure did a good job on reinforcing the image that I always had in my mind: rural parts of the South Island is the most racist part of NZ. If you are from there, no offence, the bad guys are always the minority.

However, as  a Chinese who get so used to racial remarks, I was really wondering, how did this comment made itself onto the paper, black and white? Regardless of racism part, this chopsticks comment is also factually flawed. It is a common sense that when you are in middle of a fight, you hold on with your baseball bats and smash you enemies as hard as you like, you don't fling them around like "blood chopsticks". I suspect that this witness either exaggerated the situation, or made the whole thing up.

For Timaru Herald, allowing such comments to be published on its paper, really shows how it lacks professionalism.

Parents should be prosecuted for allowing their children to play age-restricted video games, the chief censor says.

Current laws allow punishments of up to three months jail or a $10,000 fine for those caught supplying R-18 games to children. While there have been no prosecutions so far, chief censor Bill Hastings told the Dominion Post the laws should be enforced to help prevent the effects of repeat exposure to violence and sexual violence on young people. (via New Zealand Herald)

Well the first thing I started to wonder is how they are going to enforce that law. Sure that lousy TV3 programme called Target can hire under aged actors to buy restricted games, but unlike illegal selling of tobacco, distribution of games, especially compute games, does not work that way. Today's kids are pretty clever, much cleverer than what we use to. 10 years ago no parental control software can lock me away from computer, today, I recently heard a story from China,  a 14 year old kid is now spying on their parents' activities on computer.

That's a very unique case but most young people do know how to download pirated stuffs online - parents will also be responsible for this if S92A came to force last month (luckily it hasn't) as the Internet access is under the name of a parent. If this happens, I mean, is this really a fault of parents? They tried their best, education, use parental control software, lock out the computer ... but parents aren't nannies, even a nanny cannot watch with children 24/7.

There's a difference of wording, "allowing" or "supplying". Supply is a process that you handed out something that you know it is illegal, allowing can mean you simply don't know. Sure if a parent buys a clearly labelled r-18 games for their children then it is a offence, but if you simply don't know, and don't have access to information on what your children is playing?

But that's only half of the sentence, what Chinese government really meant is "so stop accusing us". I'm not judging which side has the moral high ground, but I want to point it out that, as that famous "hurt our feelings" remark, I suspect this Chinese version of human rights report is also intended for domestic consumption, rather than a serious attempt to "help" U.S. on human rights record. If that is true, then I have serious doubts on the intelligence of whoever is behind this - making the accuser look bad doesn't mean the accusations made are invalid and the  accused can walk free.

The Chinese report is quite fun to read, and the best thing is, there's an english version, unlike those lazy bums in the States who didn't bother to translate their report.   Highly recommended if you got an hour to kill.

Yes, they are copyright terrorists,  I have no doubt about that, let's  just see what they want:

RIANZ instead wants users to be required to provide sufficient evidence as to why they believe the alleged infringement didn’t occur via the internet account in question and/or why there is no copyright infringement of the file being downloaded.

Who's accusing who? Why should users prove they are innocent when they are accused by others?

RIANZ opposes having to pay for processing copyright infringement notices and indemnifying ISPs for any costs and liabilities.

So it's not all right when others download musics for free, but it's all right to have others to work for you for free?

Third, RIANZ does not want the notices sent out to users accused of infringement to include evidence that would be admissible in court.

You know this is simply amazing. This is not just guilt upon accusation, it's guilt upon accusation with absolutely with no evidence to back it up. Even the murders have a chance to see the evidence used to against them, but Internet users don't get this right.

Furthermore, RIANZ says its evidence is “highly reliable, well-tested and accepted worldwide”.

This is not the point. The point is, download activities don't mean that download is an infringement of copyright, in many cases, it's legal to download materials, like using downloaded materials as a backup of a disc I already own.

Yes they are right holders, and I do respect their copyright, but if they just want to keep abusing people like this, I'll have no sympathy for them at all.

protest against s92a, how sites looked like this morning(click for full image, coypright:cc-by Creative Freedom Foundation).

UPDATE: It worked. About 4pm today the government has announced that it will delay the implementation of s92a til end of march. If there's still no agreement at that time then the act will be suspended.

Today many New Zealand sites, mostly blogs, but also some well known NZ sites like throng and scoop, have voluntarily blacked out their sites, cut access to all content on their sites to protest the to be effective Section 92A of the copyright act.

This kind of Internet protest is quite rare in NZ, especially when you consider the fact that political blogs from across the political specturm, from Act supporter to Green supporter have all joined this protest. Those people usually disagree with each other on everything, but in this instance, they had come together. It just shows you how deeply unpopular this S92A thing is among the people who really understand the Internet.

And no, those people are not youngsters who are just protesting because they will soon unable to illegally download pirated materials.  I think it's bit sad that in some people's mind Internet is merely a place for email and news. Internet in my opinion, it is fast becoming another life necessity, part of people's basic right. It's like road, we, including criminals, all have the right to use public road, but you don't expect Ministry of Transport to police road users to see who's using the road network for illegal activities?

And National cannot get away with this. Yes it was passed under the previous government back in 2008, however, both Labour and National supported this law, and I quote from parliamentary record, Christopher Finlayson(National):

The Minister [Judith Tizard] knows, and I certainly know, that we have all had approaches from various commercial entities ...

I didn't  fake anything nor took it out of context, this is not kidding. See what our politicians have become.

Well, one week to go, try to enjoy the freedom while it lasts.

I don't have time to read it yet, I'll try to do that this weekend to see if there's anything interesting. So far it looks like they didn't change the definition of environment, that's a good sign.

The bill is currently before the Local Government and Environment select committee, and the submission is open until 3 April.

The South African Rugby Union has said a rule that forbids South African rugby players to play against teams that have been "selected along racial lines" could stop the Maori side from touring. ( via New Zealand Herald)

This is bit funny because just little less than 30 years ago it was NZers who  bravely raised against racism, or apartheid  in South Africa,   now the tide is turning?

I'm not a big rugby fan but it is my understanding that NZ Maori is a long kept tradition, existed for more than a century, prior to the Aparthid era. I even remember I have once read a news archive from a South Africa newspaper, dated somewhere around 1920s, disgusted of New Zealanders‘ behaviour because Kiwis cheered NZ Maoris' victory against their own "white brothers and sisters".

But I think NZ made a good argument in this case, Maori team is acting as an "ambassador" for Maori culture, not an discriminate act designed to divide cultures and races.