Cross-media relationship must be really improving, because C4 (TV channel in New Zealand - Niu Sila) had a re-run of the original Karate Kid movies a few weeks back.  Good ol Mr Miagi and Daniel-san.  I loved those movies!  I’m sure every Samoan kid back in the days begged their parents to buy them karate shoes.  I remember balancing on a tree stump at the school playground trying to perfect the crane kick.  I thought I was the man!

Anyway, back to the re-runs… but is it me, or do we sensationalise and romanticise our childhood memories.  Coz watching the re-run of the original Karate Kid was cool… all until the fighting scenes.  The fighting scenes seemed… well seemed boring!  It looked too rehearsed, too fake, and not enough action.  I think through the years action movies have progressed so far, technologically, visually and choreography-wise, that we have high expectations when we watch the next action movie.  The same for when we watch previous movies, we expect so much but don’t realise how basic the old movies were until we watch them, and then are sorely let down.  Still the original Karate Kid movies were a good trip down memory lane.

As I’m sure a lot of you have already seen the re-make of Karate Kid (starring Jaden Smith - Will Smith’s son - and Jackie Chan) I won’t go too much into it, other than to say I enjoyed it.  I hadn’t heard much about the story line before I watched it, so could only really go by the brief trailers I had seen of it.  I knew Jackie Chan was in it, so thought either the movie is set in China and/or Jackie Chan was acting as a Japanese (ie Mr Miagi).

I was pleasantly surprised that the movie generally followed the story-line of the original movie - although there were big differences.  For example, while the movies were about a boy moving cities with his solo-mum, the original movie had the boy moving from one American city to another American city.  In the new movie, they move from one American city to a Chinese city!  Another example is while the teacher in both movies taught the boys how to fight by getting the boys to unknowingly do repeated actions, in the original movie Mr Miagi got Daniel-san to do chores around his house - in the new movie, a lot of it was around picking up and dropping Jaden’s jacket on the ground.

But in general, the movie was close to the original movie with the feel good victory at the championship at the end while severely disabled by a member of the competing School/Dojo.

However, if there was one thing that annoyed me while watching the new movie, it was the fact that the name had nothing to do with the movie!  As mentioned above I was curious to see if Jackie Chan was going to act as a Japanese martial arts teacher (ie like Mr Miagi) as the name of the movie suggested Karate was going still be part of it.  But as the movie went on, it became apparent there was nothing Japanese about the new movie.  It was set in China, the bullies were Chinese, the girlfriend was Chinese, the competing martial arts school was kung-fu (Chinese) and Jackie Chan played a Chinese who taught Jaden kung-fu not karate!

I guess there would’ve been a lit confusion if they had called it Kung-Fu Kid but the story line was so similar to the original Karate Kid movie.  Either way, the movie was good.

Now only if I could find that shop in Otahuhu that sells those karate shoes… in adult sizes hahaha!

I had the honour of being best man at my friends faaipoipoga / wedding last year.  Of course it was a big Samoan wedding, with over 500 people packing out Malaeola (Auckland Samoan Catholic Community hall in Magele, Aukilani Saute / Mangere, South Auckland).  Although it was a long day I really enjoyed it. Looking back at the photos I was all smiles, you could’ve mistakened it for my wedding day.  Especially when I was in contrast to the expressions on the newly weds faces. 

I asked the married couple why they looked tired borderline angry?  For the bride, being carted around in a big white dress for over 8 hours (and a really long train), meanwhile trying to make sure all the flower girls weren’t grubby, and the grooms-men were interacting with the brides-maids, at the same time keeping from screaming at all the busy-bodies that was never there in the months leading up to the wedding, but thought they had all the authority to order people around on the day, also making sure the make-up and hair dresser ladies were early, the faifeau / priest was ready, the transport wasn’t late, the caterer had enough food, the vows were sorted… and praying she wouldn’t rip her hair out if anything went wrong.  Well either rip her hair out or collapse in tears.

As for the groom, he just needed to worry if his hair was ok, of course.

But faaipoipoga’s are not cheap, especially the Samoan kind.  The inevitable course is to cut things out:  quality of food, invited guests, less decorations etc.  Of course any attempt at limiting guest numbers are usually doomed to fail, coz no matter how many times a Samoan reads on the invitation things like: “Strictly no children” or “Invites only”, to a Samoan it means nothing… not only will we bring our kids, but our cousins cousin and our cousins cousins friends, our buddy from church, our kids friends… everyone!  And knowing the invited list is going to never be constant, you’ve got to factor in catering for all those extra’s (including seconds and thirds). 

There is one thing that you should try your utmost to not cut down in quality.  Food!  The last thing you want is for everyone to remember your wedding as having crap food.  It doesn’t matter how beautiful the bride was, or how good the sermon was, or how happy the newly wedded couple were, if the food ain’t good, then no-one will be happy.

At my wedding, one of the more serious issues to develop between me and my wife was the invites!  (You could imagine what the arguments about other things would’ve been if we couldn’t agree on invites!  Ha!)  I had always been raised to not expect gifts or presents at your own party/event.  The most important thing was to have family around you to celebrate.  Afterall it’s the thought that counts. 

While my wife’s upbringing taught her the other side, you must never turn up empty handed.  Now these two values might seem reconcilable on paper, but in practice it became a sticking point.

So, when it came to writing out the words of the invite, I wanted to put in something like “no gifts required”.  My wife would have nothing of the like.  I tried to argue the whole “wouldn’t it be sad if people didn’t come just coz they didn’t have a present?”  But my wife wouldn’t budge.  I then tried another tact.  I started saying “ok if people do bring presents, what sort of present will they bring?”  We all know from our own family weddings that the couple usually get 5 toasters, 20 duvet blankets, 3 rice cookers, 14 dinner sets etc.  And most of them are identicle because they bought it from the same place (usually on sale!). 

My wife slowly understood what I was hinting at.  She then suggested that we have a gift registry, where we go to a shop and select what items we want, and guests can purchase something off that list.  Although I knew she was coming around, that particular option didn’t appeal to me, because most of those gift registries are at those home-ware type stores.  It seemed heavily slanted towards the woman’s preference.  And again, it didn’t get away from the fact that people feel obligated or expected to bring a gift.

In the end, we said “monetary gifts appreciated” on our invites, at least that way we could spend the money (if any) on things we needed rather than the 5 toasters (for those days I want to toast the loaf extra quick!).  My wife said, we could even save the money towards a deposit for our house.  She sold me!

As you can see, we learnt to compromise early.  Although when I look back it, I compromised more than she did!  Haha… ah well, aint that the truth all you husbands out there?

After our wedding, as we opened the envelopes, we were really appreciative of the money we received.  We were truly blessed. 

But one particular envelope reminded me how much expecation we heap on our guests to Samoan functions.  Amongst all the envelopes with large amounts of money, there was one small envelope with a card holding $30.  The card wished us a happy day but was unsigned. 

Were they so ashamed because they thought $30 was little, to not put their name to it?

That night, my wife and I prayed for all those that came to our wedding, and even those that didn’t.  We thanked God for those that were able to bring us gifts and thanked God for those that didn’t/couldn’t.  But we especially asked God to bless those that have given us so much, despite them thinking it was so little.  It truly is the thought that counts.

I thought about all the people that came to set up the church and hall, that came near and far, and those that sent their well wishes.  I thought of all the cousins running around doing feaus, serving food etc.  I also thought of those same cousins quickly changing clothes for their performances that they probably spent weeks practicing.  I thought of the elderly family members that came to celebrate and bless our union.  I thought of our parents who had raised us as best as they could.

At the end of our prayer we asked God to help us return the blessings (whether big or small) we received from our friends and families.

But today I thought I’d keep it not-so-serious and talk about some of my recent travels, and the contrasts and similarities between the various locations.

The long Easter weekend has just finished, and the four-day break here in New Zealand/Niu Sila provides a much wanted time-out for workers.  My wife and I usually spend our Easter weekends cleaning the house, catching up on laundry, paying bills etc, and if we have time, visit family.  This year we had time to get out of urban Aukilani and headed up north to Wellsford to visit my cousin and her family.  She and her Tongan husband had bought 12 acres of farm land a couple of years ago, along with a beautiful house.  Five car loads of family left Aukilani Saute and headed for the country.

Now, Aukilani’s transport system is pathetic.  Every holiday period there is a backlog of people entering/leaving the urban cities, congesting the nations motorways, meaning people are often stuck in traffic for over twice as long as it would have normally taken to travel the same route.  In Aukilani there is an attempt to build a western ring - highway to avoid having traffic to travel through the centre of the CBD.  Fortunately for us, we took this Western ring (albeit unfinished) route, and avoided the traffic on the Aukilani harbour bridge. 

But of course, as is typical of Niu Sila’s “improvements” to infrastructure, the Western ring got us past one bottle-neck, only to join the rest of the traffic north of the city, to wait in another bottle-neck.

It got me thinking how Niu Sila’s obsession with the private vehicle has produced a city imitated on the American cities, along with all the congestion problems etc.  This was in stark contrast to me and my wife’s trip to London a couple of years back.  In London the underground train system was wide-reaching and varied.  From the airport to my mates place in Arsenal, my wife and I used public transport.  Throughout our stay in London, public transport was the best way to get to see the sights, to get from one mate’s house to the next, to get around to do shopping etc. 

I remember my wife and I got off the green line and raced up the stairs to catch a connecting train on the blue line.  Just as we turned the corner and entered the platform, we saw our train whisk away.  Looking pretty gutted (and out of breath) we were pleasantly surprised when another train turned up a couple of minutes later!  If we were back in Aukilani, we would’ve had to wait up to half an hour for the next train.

Here in Niu Sila, however, you need a car.  A friend of mine from Sweden who was working in Aukilani on a temporary visa couldn’t understand how there were only two train lines in a city of a million people.  He was staying in the CBD at the time and I had invited him to a party out in Manukau (southern end Aukilani).  Unbeknown to me, he had caught three buses to get to the party, spread over two hours, after he assumed public transport was adequate.  Of course I offered a ride home after the party, but it illustrated the different understandings of what sort of public transport system should have for large cities.

Even in Bangkok, you could see they knew public transport is the best way to move large amounts of people.  Last year we travelled from the airport into the city of Bangkok, and along the motorway that was built several stories above ground, we saw a parallel road being built.  The taxi driver explained that the road was in fact the new sky trains that will link the city directly to the airport.  Meanwhile in Aukilani we have more congested motorways heading in and out of the Auckland Airport out in Magele/Mangere.

Anyway, my cousin’s little slice of paradise in Wellsford reminded me so much of Samoa, living in Tiavi.  Tiavi is higher up in the mountains of Upolu and much cooler than at sea level.  The dense vegetation and the distance between dwellings was similar to what we encountered in Wellsford.  Water tanks, shops were a good 15 minutes drive away, a pig pen, cows in the next paddock, gravel road etc… made me miss Samoa a lot. 

At Wellsford, for toonai we had the usual suspects, faalifu kalo, pisupo, sapa sui, the one bowl of salad, curry, and lu (Tongan version of lu’au), along with a pig cooked on the spit (Tongan style! - Yum!).  We were also lucky to have some oysters… yum!

We took the kids for a swim at a nearby lake (Lake Tomarapata), which was a refreshing change to going to the beach.  Aukilani is blessed with two major harbours on either side of the volcanic isthmus on which the urban city sits.  So swimming at beaches is as part of growing up in Aukilani as it is skiing in a resort town like Aspen.  One of the things us beach-lovers noticed at the lake was that there were no waves or tides. 

Bahaha… I know, it was something obvious but only hit us when I started building a sand castle with the kids, only to realise the water wasn’t getting any closer.  It had always been a childhood obsession to build complex sandcastles with full blown trenches and steep walls and a draw bridge, with little hamlets on the outside, ready to be swamped by the onslaught of the incoming waves on the beach.  Instead, at the lake, I told the kids just to stand all over it.

As I swam in the lake, I kept on thinking I saw gold-fish.  It must’ve been a trick of the mind as a local said there were no gold-fish in this lake.  I was a bit sceptical because I remember going to Lake Lanoto’o in Upolu.  After the couple of hours of trekking from the road to the lake we were astonished to find the lake full of wild gold-fish.  Apparently, German settlers had released some gold-fish almost a century earlier into the lake.

I wrapped the kids clothes in an old plastic bag I had quickly got out of the bottom drawer in our kitchen (just underneath the cupboard where we store all our hundreds of tea-towels).  I noticed the bag I had got out of the drawer said Tesco on it.  Tesco is Britian’s largest super-market chain.   It was a bit chilly after the swim in the lake, but compared to the British summer we experienced on our trip, we were warm.  In fact when we were in London, it had been one of the coldest summers in recent years, as they had experienced several heat waves.  Of course coming from Niu Sila, the cold summer wasn’t unbearable.  But my cousin who lives in London said the winter is the season to watch out for.  It’s not like here in Niu Sila where you can get away with wearing a t-shirt and a jumper outside on a winter day.  In London you’d have to wear at least three layers or jumpers and then a jacket on top to keep warm outside!  No thanks!

Just this morning I used another plastic bag to hold my lunch, that said WalMart on it.  It’s a bit like those people who collect t-shirts from places they’ve visited, instead we’re collecting plastic bags, only to use it for rubbish/lapisi or holding my lunch bahaha (- although we didn’t have one from Bangkok - I think plastic bags are prohibited there).

Tesco’s is like Starmarts here in Niu Sila - a smaller version of a supermarket, but very expensive.  Walmart in Amelika, is more like K-mart meets the Warehouse here in Niu Sila.  But what I get annoyed about the most in the US is that their advertised prices don’t include taxes.  So while I’m getting the exact change out for my shopping, once I get to the checkout I have to trawl again through my bags and pockets looking for the coins to pay the tax… grrr.

On our drive back from the lake to my cousin’s house, we would get fleeting reception when on top of a hill, for our cellphones.  A barrage of text message alerts would go off and the teenagers in the car would start twiddling their fingers to respond while the reception lasted.  The same was for the car radio.  On that day, however, I made the comment how I noticed that a lot of Kiwi adverts on TV and radio had voices with British accents.  I don’t have statistical evidence to back up my assertions, but I’m sure TVNZ has a male British accent voice over for one of its adverts.

Not that it mattered much, as there has been a constant flow of British migrants to Niu Sila ever since Palagi’s came to these shores.  But again, it reminded me of our trip to England/Egelani.  My wife and I giggled a little bit when we went to a kebab shop in Arsenal, and the shop keeper looked like every other Arab-Kebab-shop-owner in Aukilani - except he spoke to us with a thick British accent!  I guess many of the Kebab shop-owners in Niu Sila are recent migrants, so still have a thick Arabic accent.  But nearly everyone - black, white, yellow and pink - we spoke to in London had thick British accents. 

In fact the two people that we spoke to that didn’t have British accents were two Palagi men working on a construction site.  They had what appeared to be, Ukrainian/Russian accents.  I guess that’s the same as us Samoans here in Niu Sila.  Many of us have perfected the Kiwi accent to the point where sometimes I ring up Telecom over the phone, regarding my account and I don’t realise I’m talking to my cousin until they say “Ehh sole!  It’s me cuz.”

In another occasion, one of our cousins from Ausetalia/Australia was trying to describe her brother’s (who lives in London) new-wife’s accent, an English girl from Norwich.  My girl-cousin said it sounded like an English “bumpkin” accent.  Now, I’m no expert on accents or English geography, but in my mind an English “bumpkin” accent was something like the cockney accent.  But since my cousin’s wife was not an East Londener (nor was she ‘working class’ - apparently her father is a millionaire and she’s been a model for most of her adult life), I ruled out the cockney accent.

I then thought about the two woman who I worked with at the time who had both migrated to Aukilani from Wales.  Perhaps it was a Welsh accent my cousin was referring to.  But Norwich was on the other side of England than Wales.  What stuffed up my linguistic investigation skills even more was the fact that I had been saying Norwich wrong.  Apparently it’s pronounced “Norr-ridge” and not “Nore-witch”.  In the end, my cousin’s wife spoke proper Queen’s English!  My girl-cousin said: “yeah, like a bumpkin!” bahaha…  Bloody Samoans!  So for all I know, the “British” accent I apparently can hear in Kiwi adverts could just be my bloody Samoan hearing thinking I can hear an accent when I can’t.

Of course I took a plate of oysters home from Wellsford.  So as I was licking my fingers, I thought, one thing I did miss whether it was on the lake just outside of Wellsford, in the middle of shopping in Bangkok, or travelling on the trains in London, was the fact that I missed seeing brown faces.  The world certainly is your oyster, and it was great seeing different parts of the world/city, but I love being around Samoans, around people who look, dress, and talk just like me.

Ok that’s all for now… back to some serious topics next up!

The bill would have granted homosexual partners all the legal benefits of marriage, except the name itself, and would have made Hawaii the sixth state with a similar law.  As many of you would know, Civil Unions were successfully made into law in 2004 here in Niu Sila/New Zealand - something I supported back then, and still support now.  Six years on, the world hasn’t ended, the sky hasn’t fallen through, and any moral decay already existing in society hasn’t increased since many New Zealanders have taken on Civil Unions.  In fact, life has gone on as normal.

I think the Hawaiian legislature, and the conservative Christians who opposed the bill, are wrong. 

Firstly, Civil Unions are not marriages, although I wouldn’t have a problem with marriage for same-sex couples either.  So on one hand, the ‘institution’ of marriage is protected if same-sex couples can only have Civil Unions.  However, on the other hand, why should the State deny same-sex couples the right to be married?  Anything less, even by name, seems discriminatory.  I know many of our people are quite conservative when it comes to this topic, and would retort that marriage is between a man and a woman, made before God - “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

But such an argument leads me to my second point.  The separation of Church and State.  The State should not have a preference of religion.  Secular States cannot be biased to one religion especially in an increasingly diverse population.  Therefore we can’t or shouldn’t use our own personal morals and impose it on everyone else.

And thirdly, as I mentioned above, same-sex couples being married doesn’t hurt anyone, unless you have your own prejudices or bigoted views.  If Aunties Tom and Dom from down the road decided to get married/have a Civil Union, how does that change anything for you?  Do they suddenly smell really bad?  Do they impinge on your right to walk down the road?  Do they hurt your eyesight now they are in union of some kind?

At my old job there were a couple of openly gay men.  To be honest, I initially was disgusted.  They were loud and flamboyant, always wanting to know everybody’s news.  But during my time there, they were the most understanding of people, and very loyal friends to not only myself, but everyone else too.  I’m not saying every gay person is flamboyant or loyal, but my initial feeling of unease was unfounded and to this day we have good friendships, just like the many other friendships I have made over the years.  I realised they are normal people. 

Soon after the passing of the law in 2004, the couple had a Civil Union.  And guess what?  We are still friends.  Nothing changed in our friendship, in our interaction, in their attitudes to others.

At the societal level, why must we deny normal the right to be in union of some sort afforded to other normal people?  On the theological level, let God be the sole judge on ALL of us for ALL our actions, including how we treat same-sex couples.

(Reality TV is a fascinating area to blog about, but I’ll leave my critique of it for another time - in terms of subjecting indigenous cultures into the ‘exotic’ for economic gain.)

Survivor Samoa was no different.  And man was it intense.  Not sure how it was aired elsewhere, but in Niu Sila/New Zealand, TV3 screened the last three days of the Survivor Samoa competition.

I had only been watching the show sporadically, but last night’s finale was exhilarating!  For those not familiar with the contestants, the most controversial and polarising finalist was Russell Hantz - an oil company owner and self-confessed millionaire.  He is the man!  He masterminded his way to the finals, whether by making various alliances, making promises, breaking promises, lying, manipulating his team, tough playing in challenges, and finding immunity idols with no clues!  He is probably the best Survivor contestant in the history of the show.

Unfortunately, getting to the finals is just not enough in Survivor, something Russell failed to appreciate.  While he was successful in getting to the finals, there is the social element that he either was too cocky about and took for granted, or misread the impact of his actions on the contestants that eventually became his jurors. 

So who did the greatest Survivor contestant lose to?  Natalie White, a 25-year-old pharmaceutical sales rep from Arkansas.  Her strategy, many would say, was to ride on the coat tails of Russell’s master plan.  Natalie said aligning with stronger players was a necessity to make it to the end. “There were a lot of things to my game that I did right, starting off by assessing the cast right,” she said.

“I built really strong personal relationships, and they were genuine. I will be friends with these people for the rest of my life.”  Staying “humble” was also the key to winning, Natalie said. “In this game if you get overconfident it’s a huge mistake, especially this season. Any time anyone was overly cocky and arrogant it seems like it didn’t work out for them.”

If being the passive member gets you to the final and the jury is more sympathetic to you, then yes, Natalie did outwit, outplay and outlast Russell.

And it wasn’t all a one way road in this allegiance of Russell and Natalie.  He needed her, because as he calculated, Russell needed a “weaker” player as oppose to Brett who was voted off Survivor just before the finals.  Russell believed people would respect him for his ruthless tactics.  Unfortunately either hated those tactics, or they did respect Russell, but respected Natalie even more.

When the winner was announced, Russell was visibly upset.  Russell even tried to buy Natalie’s title of Sole Survivor from her during the reunion show for $10,000, but she refused.  It was clear how much the title of “Sole Survivor” meant to him.  It appeared as though the motive was not about money.  At that point I thought to myself, hmmm perhaps he did deserve to win.  He’s a millionaire, so perhaps he wasn’t doing it for the money.  Russell was adamant his personality on the show was not the same as that in the real world.

However there is a consolation prize for the person who receives the most votes from the American public.  The three finalists were Brett Clouser, t-shirt designer (who almost toppled Russell’s master plan by winning the immunity challenge), Russell, and Shannon Waters aka ‘Shambo’.  Shambo served her country for five years, and went onto become a chef before changing gears to be a sales representative for a food service company.  Russell won the consolation prize of $100,000.

What would’ve confirmed to me that Russell was only in it for the title, and money was not a goal, would’ve been if he had offered that $100,000 to either the popular young Brett to help him with his t-shirt business, or the equally popular Shambo, a sales representative, both a long way from being an oil millionaire.  Then I would agree with the millions of Russell fans, that he truly did deserve to win the competition.

Yip, this is human drama in the 21st century, broadcast to millions who only want more.