Jack Yan on Vox

Flight of the Conchords gets three Emmy nominations

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:56:24 +1200

Great news! Flight of the Conchords has received three Emmy nods for directing, writing, and original music and lyrics. It didn’t get an Emmy nomination for best comedy series, which I think is a sin.
   Not bad for a show conceived by a bunch of Kiwis, even if it did take American money and HBO to get it off the ground.
   And thank goodness it did—how else would it have become so widely received? I can’t see a TV3- or TVNZ-funded Conchords cracking the US market—it would, like Outrageous Fortune, have been remade at best.
   Good luck to Bret, Jemaine and the others associated with the show.

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Irish-owned newspaper tries to drag down Miss New Zealand using racist agenda—and fails

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 23:15:50 +1200

It’s quite easy to work out the agenda of the mainstream media when it comes to an article like this, trying to harm Samantha Powell’s chances at Miss Universe tomorrow night.

Personal aggrandizement of the journalist, or, if not the journalist, then the newspaper editors or management trying to look like they can set agenda. (The part about Val Lott hanging up the phone, I understand, is total fiction—so if something so minor is untrue, can we trust the rest?)
Trying to cause a split between pākehā and Māori when in fact there is none. Fact: the photograph of Samantha Powell doing the pukana was actually published in mid-June—and even ran in a rival newspaper here! There were no complaints from anyone, Māori or any other group, until the Herald made it a race issue yesterday. Or the Herald is trying to play catch-up because it missed the photos a month ago and was desperate for a fresh angle.
Racism: come on, the headline is clearly poking fun at Māori and the pukana. I don’t appreciate the newspaper doing that, and I would say my Māori friends would be more upset at that than the Herald’s false defence of the haka. Like a newspaper owned by Australians and the Irish really understands Māoridom.
Implying that two beauty queens are at odds with one another. False. Samantha Powell is in communicado for the most part in Nha Trong, Vietnam, and I severely doubt Miss World New Zealand, Kahurangi Taylor, would risk criticizing another pageant for fear of damaging her own chances when she goes to Miss World.
Tall-poppy syndrome. (The newspaper failed there: the judges decided their top 15 last week.)
Lack of patriotism: you would never drag the All Blacks down a peg the day before a big international. And places like Venezuela treat Miss Universe with greater fervour than we treat a rugby match. But an absence of supporting New Zealand is understandable, since The New Zealand Herald is owned by a company listed on the Australian exchange and in turn owned in part by a company based in Dublin. Pity: their business pages are good, so it’s a shame some of these others are dragging them down.

   My views about the appropriateness of Samantha Powell’s haka are at the Lucire blog. I agree that Māori culture should be defended. But you couldn’t really call it a haka. She just did a few moves. It would be like a Caucasian donning a lion mask and moving two metres and calling that a Chinese New Year’s lion dance.
   As I said in Lucire: ‘I know of no Māori who, while rightly guarding against improper use of their culture, would deny a chance for it to be promoted or be rendered so “untouchable” to those who came later to Aotearoa. In fact, one kaumatua I spoke to says it is our duty, regardless of our ethnic origins, to be promoting Māori culture when we are abroad.
   ‘Sometimes, because we have not been immersed in the culture, we err. It is to be expected. And, when the one who errs is not of our own race, we forgive and we educate, but we do not criticize.
‘All New Zealanders should be proud to propagate Māori culture as the alternative would be to ignore it and pretend we are mere facsimile of Great Britain, as many Kiwis did 50 years ago.’
I’d hate to see us head back to those monocultural times—though it looks like the Herald wants that to happen by running a story like this.
Since the newspaper has been shifting a lot of its work to Australia, I imagine an Anglicized monoculture makes it easier to take more editing work away from Kiwis.
   Any time you see a story about over-sensitive Māori getting upset about the way the culture has been portrayed, think again about the agenda.
All the Māori I know put mana ﬁrst and actually see this as an opportunity to reach out and educate in order to promote their culture.
   A big fail for the Herald. Sam’s still going to wow the world tomorrow night.

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Ten out of ten

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:12:56 +1200

Spotted in Waikanae (an hour north of our office) last week while we were heading to a beauty spa for a story: a lovely and well maintained Austin Ten.

Austin Ten front

Austin Ten

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One letter off

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:02:34 +1200

From the menu at Arbitrageur, a wine bar in Wellington, New Zealand:

Arbitrageur wine list entry

I would have had a Château Lucire instead …

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Torchwood (we’re only 21 months behind)

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:28:14 +1200

Torchwood finally premières on TV2, 10.30 p.m. tonight. So how many years behind the British are we? And has anyone seen a single promo for this show?

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ANZ Bank: revelations from the executive level

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:17:56 +1200

[Cross-posted] If you follow my ramblings, even when they don’t make sense, you know I had my knives out for the ANZ National Bank here in New Zealand for what I think is questionable practice. So it was interesting to meet a few people tonight who are employees of the bank, one of whom was very staunch about defending her workplace against my charges about, well, bank charges.
Humble pie time ﬁrst: Sir John Anderson left the bank as a director 18 months ago, so the criticisms I put at him were unfair. I apologize to Sir John.
Tonight, I don’t know whether I should be applauding the ANZ for brainwashing its younger staff so effectively or whether I should be congratulating myself for closing the overwhelming majority of accounts held there, given that there are people who do not give a damn about the customer.
While people should defend their positions, they should also be open to hearing others’ viewpoints. Respectfully. The customer is right. Not so, it seems, at the ANZ.
‘The bank must make a proﬁt, so it should make it from the mass customer base,’ I was told. ‘How would you do it?’
I answered, ‘Through investing, as you did years ago before charging us.’
She argued the usual points of the bank providing a service, before I confronted her with some basic logic that I have stated here before.
A deposit to the bank is, after all, my loan to the bank. When the bank loans to me, can I charge it a “Jack privilege fee”?
Around this point I was asked if we could change the subject.
There are several conclusions we can draw. First, an executive at the ANZ bank, a fairly high-up one, is not open to hearing from her customers. She has her own world, where she has been conveniently conned into thinking the monetarist solution is the only one, when history tell us it isn’t—and that the bank’s cutting of costs over the last 20 years should actually make it more efﬁcient.
Another member of the staff, a little older but I understand a little more junior, put forward her theory which made a bit more sense, about how mortgages no longer funded the bank’s costs as effectively. She did not know for sure.
But this shows just how bad the ANZ brand is. Different answers from different people—but the higher up you go, the less they care.
Front-line staff, as I discussed earlier, cannot offer a credible explanation about bank fees that any customer who has been there for 20 or more years can fathom. Fact: people do have memories.
And it seems that it is accepted as gospel that customers are to be taken from even at a higher level, no questions asked.
How well ANZ has managed to blind its staff.
A good brand is one that listens to consumers about their concerns—and actually levels with internal and external audiences about its policies.
This experience conﬁrms that the ANZ cannot level to either executives or front-line branch personnel, which means consumers are too far down the food chain for it to reach.
This Australian-owned bank has been proﬁting very well from everyday New Zealanders over the last few years, too.
But I cannot see that continue.
Any brand expert will tell you that for all the ﬁnancial analyses that a client shrouds itself in, the minute the brand falters, the effects on the bottom line will be felt.
One of the symptoms is what I describe above: one based around the hope that people simply do not remember how they behaved before they began cutting their services and putting up charges.
It is a failure to be transparent and to tell the truth to those consumers—and it only takes one who is aged over 30 to be able to remember the good ol’ days versus what I consider to be the unethical treatment that is metered out today.
Just as I said a few months ago, the TSB Bank seems to be the only choice New Zealanders have, and at least the proﬁts don’t make their way over to Sydney.
It was my ‘prerogative’, said the executive, for me to do as I wished with my money, if I had gone to the TSB.
No attempt to get it back—no promises to look into things. Even others have offered that to keep me on as a customer. Higher up, I guess, no one really cares. A lost customer isn’t important.
Even if the lost customer is a stubborn bastard with a big mouth.
If the ANZ wishes, I am happy to run a seminar for them to inform them of the niceties of listening to their customers. Unsurprisingly, I understand tonight that its proﬁts are heading south this year.
This problem won’t be ﬁxed with advertising, rebranding or PR.
It might be ﬁxed by giving customers what they want and pursuing something other than short-term proﬁt, which is exactly the message the ANZ has been sending me year after year.
Because if banks aren’t looking at the long term, then what heck are we entrusting a penny to them?

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’77 Granada for sale

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:12:50 +1200

I was out at Nicole and Paul McKinnon’s today with my friend Cas, and I can now, with their permission, mention that the 1977 Ford Granada (left-hand drive) that was featured on this blog a few weeks ago is for sale, so that they can get a car for the family. Please contact me if you are in New Zealand (or even if you are nearby and you want a Granada) and I will hook you up with Paul. The car is in quite good condition and the interior is original. It has a 302 in³ V8.

Paul’s ’77 Granada

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Memorable ’70s New Zealand TVCs

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:06:11 +1200

The youngsters at work hadn’t seen this 1979 TVC for Kentucky Fried Chicken before.

Kentucky Fried Chicken

However, the following TVC for Cadbury’s Crunchie is even older (1975) and they remembered it, due to its long run, even after the packaging changed. (There was a CGI version that updated the packaging—which is not worth talking about.)

Crunchie Train Robbery

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It’s just a promo for a TV show

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:34:52 +1200

For a moment I thought this was a real billboard saying someone was missing (see the bad typography), since it was the only one I saw. Turns out now it’s for a TV show.

Missing

OK, this was clever (and we do have a lot of clever ads) and I am very glad TVNZ is at least promoting one of its own shows strongly—but is it also irresponsible? By the way, I do not recall what the show is named.

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My ass is cold but at least I have sat-nav

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:57:52 +1200

Audi A4 1·8T

Got this baby till Monday. First time I played with sat-nav in New Zealand and it is surprisingly accurate. Without the ass-warmers, I mean, seat warmers, and heavier steering you kind of feel you are taking a step down from the A5 with the S-Line pack, but the sat-nav partly makes up for it. Quite sprightly for a 1·8 and better than the previous BMW 320i, though to be fair I need to compare it with the latest model. Easily better than the Mercedes-Benz C200K in terms of the gearbox (eight speeds in this sucker) but that heavy steering is a surprise. Full review in Lucire later.

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