New Friend, Chinese on Maori TV...Beauty Pageants Amongst Other Things...

Just a random collection of stuff...

I made a new friend today! Andy, this Chinese guy who can play piano and used to go to Takapuna Grammar School (yeah phewee flash!) who organised the MEDSCI study group came up to me today after our population health lecture and started talking to me. It turns out he can speak Cantonese, and so he's going to try talk to me in Cantonese! While he was sitting with me and my other uni friend Kevin on the bus he actually asked me an interesting question:

"Since you're..a halfcast. are you attracted to Asians or Kiwis?"

I never actually thought about that before! They didn't think I looked like an Asian though!

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I cannot commend Maori TV enough after last night. They screened a Cantonese movie 'Infernal Affairs' (the movie in which The Departed is based on) during prime-time hours, and best of all with no ads! (Maori TV is ad-free). Maori TV now also have the rights to some boxing and the Tall Blacks basketball. They're really becoming a good public broadcaster! So Congratulations Maori TV and keep it up!

Ever since that new Chinese TV CTV8 went on air and replaced Alt TV, my mum has been addicted to that channel! It hasn't been too bad, but it's all in Mandarin, when we would prefer to watch Cantonese shows! My friend Esther told me that it is possible to change the audio to a Cantonese feed for a few shows, but I think our TV is too old to do that!

On Saturday night my mum FORCED us to watch the Miss Asia New Zealand 2006 pageant. Now you would be thinking GREAT! Girls in bikinis woohoo!!! However the standard of the broadcast as well as the format of the show was a bit questionable at times. For a start, it was 3 HOURS!!! The sound levels were all over the place throughout those three hours. Sometimes it was deafening, sometimes it was too quiet, and at one time they left one of the hosts' microphones on while he was backstage or out of the shot!

The girls were made to parade in their bikinis and then had to stand in the middle of the stage and answer a question. The girls actually looked pretty much the same! Yeah I know they're all Asian, but they were all fairly white! I don't think there were any tanned Asians! To add to this, they were judged by an panel which included 'experts' such as John Fellet (Sky TV CEO)!

But then again what do I know about beauty pageants? Luckily I didn't miss too much of SWAT!