Hi Just a few (probably ironic) points - Christchurch is probably a lot more "old boy" than other places I've been in New Zealand, though the fact that I don't have any family members here - there are other Parishes about, but they are First Fleet Canterbury settler descendants, whereas my father's family are Aucklanders.
The point about this "post-colonial" thingee - some branches of both my fathers' family and my mothers' family were in the North Island around the time of the signing of the Treaty. But that's the North Island, and their surnames - Bruce, Vickery, Bowen - aren't my surname. No, as far as that goes, I'd say the school network in Christchurch trumps that. Even the fact that one of my father's uncles - Sir E. Bruce Levy - was the long-standing director of the Grasslands Research Division of the DSIRO, doesn't mean a thing, as far as I'm concerned - because I have never moved in those sorts of circles, and I've got my own row to plow. My father never made much of that relationship, indeed I only found out about it in 1989 when he took us to meet his widow, whereas if he had mentioned it when I was at High School, I probably would've worked much, much harder at science and maths. New Zealand is parochialism writ large. The only really satisfactory time I have ever spent working on anything in New Zealand was a year I spent computer-cataloging the Brian Douglas music score collection donation in the U of Cant., Library - and that was because the supervisor, having decided that I knew what I was doing, left me to it. And lo and behold, i did know what I was doing, and it got done, much to their - and my - satisfaction. Don't ask me about the New Zealand "employment" market. When you read - as I did during the nineties - that employers looked primarily for "attitude" and then consistently failed to define that rather slippery word ... it's all too easy to conclude they're interested only in experts in applied rectal hygiene. Just my 0.02c Wesley Parish On 21/09/2011, at 12:25 PM, Carl Turney wrote: > Hi, [snip] > >> What's interesting is that >> usually this generates a lot of corruption in other places, >> amazing that >> there isn't much of it at all here. > > Probably has to do with the inherited British traditions. They had a > well monitored and enforced class system, instead of the more South > Asian style of laissez faire corruption per se. > > NZ appears to have perpetuated an adapted form of this: Class not by > long blood lines, but by post-colonial blood lines (e.g. a jump > start by > descending from an early settler, then by "personal networks" and by > "attending the right schools"). > > It seems the "corruption" is not that money changes hands, but that > managers (no matter how incompetent) enjoy more support and > opportunities -- while people who would be promoted on merit in North > America, Australia, and Western Europe are persecuted as "tall > poppies". > > But it's not as bad in IT, and for me it all in the past -- a painful > and costly lesson that took 5 years out of my life, which I will > gladly > share with anyone here in Oz who raises the topic of NZ. > > Cheers, > > Carl > > _______________________________________________ > Linux-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
