I tried quite hard in the last few months, taking time off from my usual activities like here just to write up countless number of cover letters. The result is that I have already lost count on rejection letters. Maybe I should publish each one of them here so I can keep my count.

The trouble is, town planning is a relatively small field and the opportunities, especially graduate opportunities are not always easy to come by.  I have even looked beyond my field and willing to settle something relevant such as policy making or fields in human geography, but only to face even stronger competitions. It’s almost certain that I will finish all courses without a job in the field, so I’m now seriously considering advancing on a master degree, but I’m really not the bookworm type.

However, in this sense, it’s sorry to say, but the Earthquake in Christchurch might be just how the country would finally get out of the recession. Media is already reporting that recession for some tradesmen are already “over” – it’s a terrible way to end it. With money compensated, people would be eager to replace items damaged from the earthquake, which would certainly fuel both building and retail industry, gaining long term profits from the short term pain.

Anyway, here’s my plan, I’m keeping this blog open for now – however, without a job prospect, I have little interest of reading and doing stuffs that are not very related to having a future career.

What this reveals is that he must be quite clever to gain that amount of wealth, and succeed in both economic and political arena.  As a banker, you can also safely assume that he is highly financially literate. So lack of knowledge can hardly used to explained Key's comparison of wage gap between Australia and New Zealand:

Loyalty dictated John Key take the support option. To loud guffaws from the Labour benches, Key told Parliament that he had been advised that the gap between gross average weekly earnings in Australia and New Zealand, adjusted for purchasing power parity, was $160.25. "That is certainly a lot less than it was in 2005, when it was $187.60."

Indeed it is. But National did not win the 2005 election. It was elected in 2008 when - according to Key's own figures - the income gap had narrowed to $138.

There are two things that I definitely did not expect - 1. how did he become a millionaire? 2. I am actually very surprised to find out that the wage gap actually decreased - at a quite considerable rate, at the time when Labour was at the helm until the recession. I guess this is just another example of misconception that the right-wing biased media has created.  You thought you know the very essence of politics, but in fact you only know the facts as being digested and manipulated by others.

New Zealand’s has experienced serious changes even before it is implemented. As the centre-right wing national government gets elected in 2009, the scheme has undergone a hasty review, and several changes were resulted.

One of the major issues that will eventually topple this ETS is the removal of caps on total amount of emissions allowed nationally, and by sector. Government is responsible to supply unlimited amount of emission units at a fixed price of $25 per unit until 2012.

Now this is a very weird thing to do by a government which proclaims itself as “pro-market”. The reason for a cap isn’t just limiting the country’s total emission, but providing a market mechanism that provides financial incentive for cleaner sectors to emerge.   By removing such cap the scheme becomes no more than a new type of tax, since there is no limit on the amount of emissions, businesses can go on as usual, and the cost of this new “tax” is conveniently  transferred to end users – i.e. every day consumers.

And this appears just like what has happened.

The effects of ETS are further reduced by not having agriculture sector included in the scheme until 2015. As the country’s largest polluter, agriculture accounts for nearly half of the total greenhouse gas emissions.  This isn’t a sign that such issue is being treated seriously in New Zealand.

No wonder this ETS receives very little support – consumers absolutely hate it, even  politicians don’t agree. From the very right wing Act Party, which highly doubts the existence of global warming, to the very left environmentalist Green Party, all voted down for such scheme.

But such scheme does provide a good example to rest of the world though – how it should not be done. I highly doubt the ETS will last as its current shape for long - a major overhaul might just be an election away.

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.

Dr Norman is outraged that members of a Chinese delegation were able to push him, hit him with an umbrella and rip a Tibetan flag from his grasp.He was protesting as Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping arrived at Parliament greeted by a few dozen pro-China supporters.

Some of the group, believed to be Chinese security, took exception to Dr Norman waving a Tibetan flag and calling for democracy.The MP brushed away attempts to have an umbrella placed in front of him, then clashed with security guards as they pulled the flag from his grasp and threw it on the ground.

He yelled they could suppress freedom of speech in China, but not in New Zealand.

The treatment Russel Norman has received today on the parliament ground is absolutely appalling.  It is no more than a shameless attempt of silencing a dissentient on the land where it suppose to have a freedom of speech. I acknowledge that entourage members do have a duty of protecting VIPs, however, after seeing the unedited footage of the incident, it is clear that the response from Chinese entourage is disproportionate.  Norman had neither had any physical contact with anyone nor vocally provoked such response - well unless "free Tibet" counts as a provocation.

However, I'm not really surprised on how Chinese entourage responded.  The novel yet extremely childish way of using umbrella to cover things that Chinese officials do not want to see is not new.  The first time that such practice brought to the attention of international media is on the 20th anniversary of Tian'anmen Massacre, where plain cloth officers used umbrella to block foreign journalists from filming on Tian’anmen Square.  Since then plain cloth with umbrella has become somewhat a standard practice in any occasion where there is a potential of protests.

What shocked me is how Chinese government is exporting such censorship practice to a foreign country with little or no hesitation.  I’m not a fan of green party, but I applaud the fact  that they never abused their parliamentary privileges – they protested peacefully on every occasion where a Chinese official is visiting. I also have to say that a lone protestor, sometimes also need to confront with a large pro-Chinese crowd, is stirring but also looked a bit stupid.  But don’t get me wrong, they have the right to be stupid, New Zealand didn’t take their right to be stupid away from them, so why should Chinese have such right?

Seeing that Chinese entourage used same way of covering up people as they did back in their own country, is a solid reminder that we simply cannot ignore the pain of others in a country on another hemisphere, just like we cannot let a criminal run loose til the date that he is actually hurting YOU.

It appears to be true now, the work load of my last year's bachelor study is immense and has way exceeded my expectation, forcing me to partially give up on some extracurriculum activities like blogging here.

I have always said, no matter how busy I am, blogging would be the last thing to give up because its significance in helping me achieve a number of personal objectives. So I'm definitely not to give this blog up.

However, because of the work load I'm currently experiencing, there is little free time available for me to use in this blog. I'm currently considering several restructuring options that would reduce the amount of time needed to blog here while do not comprimise the quality. One possibility is to make this blog more work related so I can copy my assignment and other works straight to here :) But if there is no other option, I will then have to adapt a twitter-like style for this blog, short, but stll on the point, or face the possibility of concentrating my time on Chinese blog and close down this English blog.

More coming soon.

Google has been under constant cyber attack from China. Operation Aurora was a large scale one and attracted wide media coverage, but hacking of individual accounts has been going on for quite a while. Many Chinese human right activists and foreign journalists stationed in China have the experience that their gmail account is secretly redirected to another account.

Even worse, Google's four year in China has also been subject to varies accusations made by Chinese state media. China's State Broadcaster, CCTV, once accused Google of "spreading unhealthy information to the country's teenagers", but Chinese netizens have soon discovered that the person ("victim") interviewed in the programme is nothing but a CCTV intern.

I'm not against censorship, but the Chinese authority has a long history of abusing this tool for communist party's own good. In an environment where there is no independent media, Internet neutrality is vital for people to access unbiased and factual information. Not in China. The dispute between Google and Chinese authority has been going on for more than two month now, but even the Chinese authority are unable to specify which Law Google has violated - What they want Google and other Chinese websites to do cannot be put under public eyes.

What Google have done today is nothing more than corrects the mistake it has made 4 years ago, but it has created a far greater impact today than if it had never entered the Chinese market. By taking this simple but definitive act of defiance, Google has told the world that money cannot buy everything, and Chinese government cannot hold its own 1.4 billion people to ransom and use it to ask  the western world to obey.

And for that, I applaud Google's courageous decision.  I also want to see other foreign internet companies in China, especially Microsoft and its search engine bing are reacting to this news. Will they also do the right thing, or continuing act like Marx has described – capitalists will do everything to maximise the profit.

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.

In the past three month I have visited a total of 8 Chinese provinces/multiplicities. My original motive for this travel was to see as much as possible of my home country before I suddenly find myself no longer a student. Unlike many kiwis, I don't like to do OEs as travel isn't really on my favourite list.

However, people, have become another important attraction for me. I was warmly welcomed by my friends online, especially those from twitter in every stage of my travel; some even kindly offered me free accommodations. They come from a variety of background: university students, white-collar workers, social activists whom have spent time in Chinese jails and government officers who are living in a very affluent life.

China is a land full of opportunities. The country is like a giant construction site and everything is played in fast-forward motion - I experienced this in Shanghai, literally. I was circling around Shanghai for about 2 weeks, visiting surrounding cities. Two weeks later, when I get back to Shanghai, I nearly got lost as I was troubling to find the very same accommodation I lived two weeks ago - everything around has changed, business were closed for some kind of redevelopment.

However, this incredible speed comes at a hefty price. Every person I have met, regardless of whether they are pro communist party or not, admit that this country cannot continue on this road forever, both socially and economically. Chinese society has become a kind of jungle, where the strongest survive and become affluent in every way, leaving very little physical and social resources for the poor and less fortunate ones.

This itself isn't wrong, however, relative strength of a person isn't decided he or her ability and skills, but money, power, and guanxi. This left the socially and economically disadvantage group very little opportunity to succeed, making the gaps bigger and bigger as time goes by.

Anyway, enough for the political side.  If you have a few thousand NZ$ floating around, China is a good place to go. It offers you pretty much everything you can imagine at a very modest price. My budget was about #3,000. The only problem is time, China is huge - I was only able to experience a slice of China - Panda, Great Wall, Terracotta Army and Shanghai in three month's time, there are a lot of place I want to go but couldn't find enough time and money.

I'm planning to stay in the country for about 3 month.For most of the time I'll be staying in my hometown , however, I'm also planning to visit number of Chinese cities including Shanghai and Beijing.

I'll be arriving in Shanghai sometime tomorrow morning (2oth) and visiting  cities like Nanjing and Hangzhou in the surrouding area for two weeks before I get to my hometown, Chengdu. So, anyone who would like to buy me a meal, the time to contact me is now :)

I don't think I'll be able to access the Internet for quite a while, I don't have a laptop, and I heard that the Great Firewall of China is now more capable than any other internet censorship system existed in this world. However, I can assure you that this is not the last post of 2009, if I have time and access  then I may update while on the go.

If anyone wants to find me, just leave a message to my email or here, I'll get back to you as soon as possible, but do expect delays.

See you in China:)

"How many times in my lifetime am I going to get to Europe? So I thought, 'F*** it, I'm off. I'm off to Paris"

There's a few issues that Harawira needs to know.

First, on his salary, I would imagine that he could afford a trip to European once a year ... or maybe every three years. Maximum. As long as he knows how to save money, he's pretty much fine.

Secondly, the trip was a taxpayer-funded travel for specific purposes ONLY. As a taxpayer, I asked him to go Brussles to represent the country, not to fund to his private travel. Although he paid for his own trip, however, it was at expense of not doing what he was suppose to do.

Thirdly, this MP really needs to learn how to express his feeling in a polite manner that represents the culture of this country.

You know,  I'm really shocked this time. Are those principles that hard to learn and grasp? I mean, even an elementary school student knows these:  don't steal parents' money, complete the school work before having candies, and don't swear.

What is even shocker, is that after reading the Herald's online forum, I realise there is no shortage of people who are actually arguing for these MPs' inappropriate actions.

This country got some serious thinking to do.

But before I go, there are still exams I have to do.

So, the plan is I'll be leaving on 20th November. Before I get home I'll be having a stopover in Shanghai for about 2 weeks. During the period I'll be visiting cities around the area, most likely Hangzhou and Nanjing. Schedule for Beijing is still not yet decided, I'm trying to arrange a trip to North Korea, if it is possible to get into Kim's Realm , Beijing would be part of that trip.

There are several other places like Xinjiang and Taiwan on my list but not planned yet. I highly doubt I'll be able to go as my wallet would unlikely to allow me to do so.

I'll be on my own for most of the time in China, so anyone who would like to buy me a lunch or dinner  will be  much appreciated :)

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.

On a completely irrelevant sidenote, Mr English's domestic credit rating has sunk into a new low after the his housing allowance saga.

And here's the list.

10 The Auckland Airport now has a cinnabon
9 We have the loosest slot machines in the Pacific Rim
8 Only a convenient 20-hour flight away
7 It’s like England without the attitude
6 Down there Leno’s on at 9 o’clock
5 Get the whanau together, stay in a bach, crack open the chilly bin and slap on your jandals
4 Visit in the next 30 days, I’ll pick you up at the Airport
3 70% of our energy is generated through renewable hydropower – look they don’t all have to be jokes
2 We drive on the left side of the road, like the British and Lindsay Lohan
1 Unlike most of the world, we still like Americans

Number one is clearly my favourite:)

I have to say that Bradford has been a highly successful parliamentarian. During her service she has managed get three of her private member's bill passed, including raise youth minimum wage in line with adult wage and the highly controversial Anti-smacking bill.

She has been a champion of representing people who usually don't have their voice in the parliament - the young and the unemployed.

And no, I don't regard her as an "extremist" in anyway. She is just simply a woman who has the principle and the guts to stand firm of what she believes. However, her fate was sealed since the anti-smacking bill, only 7 MPs voted against the bill, however, when the tide is turned, it suddenly becomes "Sue's own idea".  In my opinion this is directly responsible for her failed bid of the party leadership - the society is turning right, and her very extreme left image would damage the Green Party.

Of course the name of Wanganui is originated from a Maori word, however, since it has entered general usage in English,  it should not be treated as a  term for an exclusive group.

The name of Wanganui has its value too. It is the reflection of the history of interactions between Europeans and Maori, and the evolution of local iwis. I remember my teacher once said that the pronunciation came from a tribe from South Island, but it's no longer there anymore. This is history too, and the name of Wanganui reflects this fact.

Name change requires a lot of money too, and this country has too many important things to spend money on rather than this. I think a good solution is to make Whanganui a offical Maori name but continue to use Wanganui in general usage. If people starting to like the way it is spelt with h, then change the name. At end of the day, language is the movement of people, not bureaucracies.

So what kind of financial potential a university graduate may possess? In a recently published OECD report (PDF) on education, it is suggested in New Zealand, on average, a male university graduate would earn about NZ$ 170,000 more in his lifetime than those with only high school qualifications.

It may sounds like a lot but it's the earning increased in lifetime. Put that in context of a typical working life of a Kiwi (age 22 - 65), the average increase in wage works out like $80 a week, about 10% - 15% percent increase from the average wage in New Zealand.

Furthermore unless you are lucky enough to have rich parents,  you'll have to pay for your tertiary education nowadays. In my situation, I estimated that I need at least 12 years (4 years university and 8 years full time working) before I can reclaim the amount I invested in education. This estimation is actually too optimistic, as you are less experienced and earn less in first few years.

Inflation would make the repayment a bit faster, thanks to the interest-free student loan.  However, that does not help in the long run as your other costs would also increase.

The return rate for your investment in tertiary education varies, largely depends on how much financial support you get from your parents and the government, but 10% - 20% in the long run should be a pretty accurate estimate. It does not sounds too bad, but there are also risks. It depends the wider economic environment is tied up to your employment status, if you don't work, you no longer receive the return on your investment.

From a pure monetary sense, I would rather invest my money in real estate market than education. However according to MasterCard, there are things in life you just cannot put them in  monetary value. The report suggested three: people with tertiary qualification are generally more healthy, has more interpersonal trust, and are fairly interested in politics.

The bill is not finalised so I'm not going to put it here. You can view the most updated version here. In a nutshell, the bill prohibits a district plan that prohibits tree removing, unless the tree is expressively protected in the district plan.

There are at least several concerns for this.

Firstly central government should not intervene local government businesses at such level of detail. District Plans have to give effects or at least have regard to several national documents, is not that enough? Every part of the country has its unique environment and situation, why the central government thinks it knows better than locals?

Secondly, this bill removes an important mechanism to protect urban enviroment. Environment minister Nick Smith argued that 98% of tree related concents are granted, therefore it is just a waste of time. Now here is an example of incompetency, he seems to forgot that consents can be granted with conditions and modifications.

Thirdly, it is likely to add unnessary workload for local authorities. I do expect an increased number of surveying in order to put more trees in the schedule after the law is passed, but happens for an area of unprotected bush? Waitakere is a good example - scheduling each single tree would be a process that you would never want to do it again.