I wonder if there is any intended similarity between the Cityrail Beasts Campaign, you know those hard-to-read cartoon posters plastered on stations around Sydney with catchy (and somewhat creative…) titles like ‘The Hogger’, ‘The Blocker’, and ‘The Yeller’, and this SMH Heckler article earlier this year?
I like to think it’s making a difference, but the evidence on trains says otherwise.
I wonder if there are differing levels of fobbiness. There are those who blatantly refuse to assimilate into Australian society, those who assimilate some aspects, and those who look foreign and may even sound a bit foreign but totally embrace Aussie culture. Surely they can’t all be defined under one umbrella of ‘FOB’. A friend and I were talking about this (of all things…) and we reckon there are FOBs (fresh off the boat) and OFOBs (one foot on boat). FOBs assimilate to varying degrees, but OFOBs refuse to, hanging onto their parent culture for dear life, choosing to talk their native tongue, hang exclusively around fellow OFOBs, and turn people around them into FOBs. While I recognise the importance of parent culture (albeit not as much as some), and that people feel more comfortable around similar kinds (I’m more comfortable around Asians and am given the freak-out by ocker Aussies sporting wife beaters, hairy limbs and beer breath), I think when in Rome, do as the Romans. As much as you can bear. And if you can’t bear it at all, don’t be offended when people label you as a FOB, or indeed an OFOB. Yes, according to Wikipedia, there are non-offensive ways to use this classification.
When is fruit not a fruit? When it’s an apple.
After watching Border Security a few days ago (painful though it is - the pace is slower than Grey’s Anatomy) I thought the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service was actually doing Australia some good.
But after trying to legitimately import some biological material from the US, AQIS is more of a disservice than a service. Protecting what matters my butt. If I had tried to import the material illegally, it would have made it through fine. But no, I had to go the legal path, and declare everything. And just because there isn’t a word perfect match between “Arabidopsis clones” and “Genetic material” (scientists out there would understand that they are the same thing), my import permit was rejected and my parcel is scheduled to be destroyed tomorrow.
Great. Now my research will be further delayed, trying to communicate with the sender in the US to convince them to write the correct thing on the packing slip so that AQIS doesn’t chuck a spaz and reject the import of apples when the import permit allows all fruits. Some knowledge would come in handy, instead of “duhhhh, I tink dis isn’t same same”.
Thinking of a title is such a pain.
My security card stopped working this morning suddenly. The card reader wouldn’t let me into the building so I had to trek to the other end of campus to go to the security office where they destroyed my card and encoded my student card. Problem is there’s no place on the student card to put a hole in so I can attach it to my retractable key holder. I’m so going to lose the card or get locked out. What a dumb design!
In other news (haha as if this is news…), there was a funny guard on the train home. “This train terminates at Gordon, the next train to Hornsby is on platform 3. It goes to Turramurra, and Hornsby… [pause] I think… and then Gosford? Whatever.”
As a Christian, I have certain hope of life after this short tour on earth. Funny that the results for an online survey would tell me that though!
A few of the ‘team leaders’ from the english congregation at church met with one of our pastors this afternoon to have an informal chat. It was a productive time and a lot of things were thrown around for improvement.
One thing that has struck me while serving at a chinese church is the parents of the youth. Apart from being a non-Cantonese-speaking Taiwanese at a Cantonese church, being of the ‘third culture’ generation as one of my friends puts it (i.e. not fully part of the Chinese or Australian culture and so creating our own hybrid one) makes it more difficult to understand the mentality of some parents. Cases in point: (1) pressure your children out of ministry to do well at uni; (2) not fully understanding the idea of an english ‘youth group’; (3) putting excessive pressure on children to perform well at school at all costs.
Now, many parents of youth I know aren’t as bad as I make them out to be. Often they’re appreciative, considerate and genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of their children. Which is hard for their children to understand, but in a few years time they will. Our pastor said something today though about the migrant syndrome which really hit me hard and made me reconsider the flak that I tend to throw the parents’ way.
Many of the people at church are migrants or children of migrants. My sister and I are too. As children who have grown up in Australian society, we rarely appreciate or understand how our parents feel and what drove them to immigrate from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, etc to Australia. Our pastor, however, being a migrant himself, gave a bit more insight into this matter, and you can see the painful logic and reality in his point of view.
Migrants are basically like uprooted people. They are removed from their comfort zone, their friends, their family, where they grew up, where they are accustomed to, where they can communicate readily without feeling like a second-class citizen (or worse). They move to a foreign country, learn the language, have very few friends or connections, and bring up a family, all while feeling insignificant and out of place. What for? Perhaps for a better life for their children - a noble goal which most Asian parents strive towards.
So what would they want for their children? A secure future. How do Asians know best to do this? Through education. Aggravating factors include parents pushing their ideals and dreams onto their children. They want their kids to have what they couldn’t have - connections, comfort, security.
So perhaps it’s necessary for the third culture kids to give way a bit, and for the parents to give way a bit too. Third culture kids are struggling under parental pressures to study, and peer pressures to conform. Rebellion is rife. Parents think they don’t understand their own children, and children can’t understand why parents do what they do.
It gets particularly counterproductive when these struggles affect ministry. When parents view a university degree above serving God by spending time ministering to his children. When parents view the HSC above Christian fellowship and encouragement. When parents ram Christianity down their children’s throats and make them (naturally) rebel, and sadly run from the truth.
Let’s pray for an increased understanding between both parents and their third culture kids. Pray that parents wouldn’t put undue pressure on their children and thus frustrate them. Pray that kids would understand their parents’ hopes and respect them, while having the growing wisdom to choose what to do with their own life.
Apparently if you accidentally cut in front of someone who is rounding a bend at 50km/h and they honk you, and then they perform a near-crash manouver to try cut in front of you again and you honk them, it instantly makes you a blint part of the female anatomy and also a procreating homosexual. Not exactly in those terms of course.
In any case, stay away from VHY-785 and it’s red-P Lebanese driver.
Popped down to Canberra for a few days to help train the Aussie biology olympiad team. Feels almost surreal, since I spend quite a bit of time down there with the olympiads. Driving is always fun - I find that I need at least 8 hours sleep to not microsleep on the road. A bottle of V and some Disney songs help.
Lots of dodgy drivers on the interstate roads. Here’s a red P-plater tailgating another car, only 1 car-length behind, at 110km/h.
The weather on the way down wasn’t fantastic, but despite this, skydivers were still in the skies around Picton. This one (on the right) was tumbling pretty fast though and appeared to be spinning out of control. Would have had quite a crash landing I imagine…
And finally what the trip to Canberra was for: the Australian Biology Olympiad Team for 2007, competing in Canada in July against 40-odd teams from countries all around the world. They’re still in Canberra at ANU working hard preparing for the competition. We had a team dinner on Tuesday night with some program staff, a bunch of people from the office, and a good friend and long-time supporter of the biology program, and then drove up Black Mountain after some late-night dessert. Standing next to Telstra Tower in hoodies looking down at a metallic device beeping on the ground probably wasn’t the best thing to do. But how else do you take a nice team photo with auto-timer?
I blogged too early, it seems. My submission was published in today’s SMH Heckler. Cool.
What I find sad, though, is that my first published work isn’t about Christian topics, and not even about biology, but rather a whinge.
This idea was no doubt unbeknownst to those in Chinatown on Saturday night since all lights were blaring from 7:30 to 8:30pm. No change from the usual. At least the Energy Australia building was blacked out though - that would have hit the front pages on a slow news Sunday if it hadn’t.
Not much difference in the city night skyline according to SMH photos, which wasn’t surprising I guess.
What I want to know is if it actually made a difference. Or was the carbon dioxide emitted by combusting all those candles far greater than the total coal energy saved by turning very few of the city lights off for an hour on a Saturday? Perhaps it made a difference in terms of media exposure or raising awareness. But perhaps the thinktanks behind these genius ideas can come up with more useful and practical ways to save energy next time.