From: SIONE LAMIPETI TUIHALANGINGIE [mailto:panatonga@hotmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 26, 2009 2:58 PM
To: samt@nomoa.com
Subject: Mr Curtis Tuihalangingie First Tongan to attend Beijing University interview with Global time

Curtis Leonard Tu'ihalangingie wearing the Tongan ta'ovala. Photo: courtesy of Tu'ihalangingie

It's not often that The Kingdom of Tonga has been honored in a ceremony at Peking University. Most of the student body might not even know where this island nation is located, not to mention what a Tongan looks like.

Good luck with the effort CLT and best wishes this Christmas and the following new year.

Sam T

Something seems to have gone without mention on the globe. Windows Mobile 6.5 build 23075, as accounted for in the cooked roms from xda-developers.com … supports flash!!

Woo hoo, now I can just click through on my mobile to flash video content and just watch it there on my phone.

• Windows Mobile 6.5 build 23075
• Internet Explorer
  • ROMs HTC Elfin (Miky, AHEN)

No one seems to have made any noise about this, but the Zune HD browser doesn’t support watching videos (strange for a music/video/entertainment device) so here’s hoping that Microsoft will soon release a firmware update to resolve this abnormality.

Edit, (cue: some hours later) I guess I should get more intimate with mobile tech. It seems that what I am observing is not flash players, but some sort of integration of Youtube Player and IE. I tried one of my other online video haunts (http://www.stupidvideos.com) and things weren’t so moviesh.

We got the CD whilst in Tonga, and have been to non-tech to realise that music videos exist of these things let alone that pirated copies are viewable to anyone on youtube.

some how doesn’t have the same impact as one of my favourite “PI Action Films”

There are apparently more cut scenes of the movie on youtube, and you can probably get the full thing on video.google.com or other enterprising means.

Of course we generally don’t have slick productions coming out of Tonga, and are more into just wacking things together when getting around with friends and family. So, well done to the Mascot youth for their posting.

Well done. Amazing how the kids have grown up.

My Grandma went to this Church and may even be one of those ladies with the white hats. Intresting production, some of the photos are really old but some of them aren’t that old and are probably colour changed to b & w.

‘Ofa introduced Taufa #4 into the world this evening (January 25th circa 11:30 pm)

Mum and Baby are doing very well. Kid looks like he’s going to be a Titan. He’s pretty big (forget the measurement, things kinda went blurry for a while there.) He’ been kicking around in mum’s stomach pretty actively and he got out just as active.

WIthin minutes his mouth was moving seeking out food like a heat seeking missile in the sun, pointing everywhere at once.

Hope to see you two out of hospital real soon.

Thanks for the well wishes and be catching up with you all soon.

Funny I was listening to this old Rock n Roll piece about getting into trouble and not believing what was taught in Sunday School, but that’s another story.

We’re doing the Sunday School thang with the kids, and they absolutely love going to Sunday School. So much so, that they get up in the morning prepped to go, and as soon as Sunday School is over there’s a million reasons why we have to come home.

Funny to see how far we have come, not, when it comes to the Sunday School and the Tongan congregations.

The farthest I recall back with the Tongan community church services, is back to when services were held at the Pitt St. Chapel (hmmm, I’ll have to visit there some lunch time next time I’m in the city.) and at the 5 Rogers Avenue, Haberfield, Mission Centre (long since sold to the heathens with better financial management skills. (smiling)

The thing I recall is that we didn’t really have Sunday School for the Tongan Language at the Pitt St. church, and Sunday School at 5 Rogers Avenue was on a Monday evening.

On Monday evening’s the Sunday School members would gather with our teachers at the 5 Rogers Avenue Chapel (a small room part of the complex.)

Sometime later the Sunday School moved together with the main service to St. David’s Haberfield where they actually had a hall and separate rooms. So Sunday School developed into having separate classes and being in different parts of the hall. There were some material, but I’m not sure they were ours or ‘left-overs’ from the palangi church.

Something or someone did something and the congregation moved again to the Ashfield Uniting Church, and they too had a hall and rooms. Sunday school got bigger as we had more kids and plenty of volunteers to be teachers.

Bill Crews expanded his Exodus Foundation on the premises so Sunday School programs moved to the Minister’s Manse (i.e where the faifekau lived) but again we have plenty of space to spread out the classes.

I went on vacation into la la land and came back 10+ years later to find out that we’re back to using the main chapel for our Sunday School program, with only a single volunteer teacher.

Fiona’s busy being creative with a program that fits everyone, and the youngest children get activities they can do on the seats, or on the floor, while she puts in some more in depth time with the older kids.

Petersham Uniting Church – Tongan Congregation is definitely very fortunate to have Fiona on the team.

Well done Fiona.

http://www.freedomkeys.com/vigil.htm

"As long as human beings are imperfect, there will always be arguments for extending the power of government to deal with these imperfections. The only logical stopping place is totalitarianism -- unless we realize that tolerating imperfections is the price of freedom." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell

"Well, who is more likely to volunteer to take a job in a bureaucracy that has little to recommend it except that it gives you the power to use government force to control the lives of others? A dispassionate scientist or a zealot? In government, the zealots eventually take over." -- John Stossel

The 3^rd Annual “Battle of the Bands” is a music festival of ethnic youth and young people within Victoria. The night will include ethnic action dancing, sway of the pacific, the glitter of Asia, Bands from the church groups will range from heavy rock to gospel country.

Many of the stars of the music festival will be “Second Generation” Australian born children of immigrants and refugees as performers.

Everyone is welcome to come and join in the fun and audience members are encouraged to come in costume of your ethnic heritage which include Anglo, European background.(Dutch, German, Scottish, English, Wales, etc)

It is proudly supported by the Uniting Church in Australia.

Date 22 November 2008.

Location Box Hill Wesley Uniting Church in 2-6 Oxford Street, Box Hill, Melbourne.

Times 3pm to 9.30pm

parking details Street parking

Tickets secretary. Tee Makoni - talaheumakoni@hotmail.com

Adults $5.00

Young people 12 to 25 Goldcoin donation

Children under 12 free.

Food stalls will be available

New Performers wishing to join in should contact:

Don Ikitoelagi (03) 9251- 5287 email Don.Ikitoelagi@victas.uca.org.au

One of the wonderful things about Open Source software is that there is a continuum of upgrades where users and developers find things that are broken and fix them.

Unfortunately, some of the fixes cause more breaks than existed in the system.

Gallery 2.1 upgrade to 2.3svn failings

Posted by: Samiuela LV Taufa on January 11, 2008 2:56:59 PM (821 Reads)

The regular problems taking for ever and a day to resolve happened again when I tried upgrading (due to security warnings) to a more current version of Gallery2.

Unfortunately, the upgrade coincided with Tonfon deciding to give me a hard time with Internet connections.

Clear problems from the upgrade.

it’s a good thing I’ve wandered this space often enough that my own records are augmenting poor memory, such that I can fix the new problem with the old fix.

Upgraded my Gallery to the current release as there were a number of documented security reasons to upgrade. Unfortunately, the update broke my Gallery and I haven’t been able to dedicate the time to fixing it, until I decided to google nomoa.com!!! Way to go nomoa.com.

The Free Press failed democracy in Australia when it kept silent and did not dig into the Howard Government exploitation of asylum seekers for political (let alone all the other nasties of that situation to maintain the facade), and it again looks to be failing Democracy. This time the failing is in the US Presidential elections where for some reason the ‘free press’ is conveniently forgetting the atrocities of this financial melt down brought forth by one candidate’s party politics.

Orson Scott Card, a noted author et. al. pulls the details in his treatise …

I  remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism.  You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere.  It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan?  It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

Seems similar to the existing two party system in Australia. One side has great economic nuance and atrocious concept of humanity, while the other side is all hugs and kisses and kiss economic stability goodbye.

There’s little worst in life than to live a lie and to be ignorant of it. It seems the ‘Free Press’ really isn’t that ‘free.’

From: Orson Scott Card, I love you.

If you want to really screw up things … you really have to be part of the largest institutes, and in most cases they happen to be national or multinational, including straight national states.

From the UK Telegraph.

The Department for Work and Pensions last year admitted that seven in 10 government IT projects fail.

So it is hardly surprising that progress on the NHS’s “Connecting for Health” computerisation scheme, already running at least four years late, has almost ground to a halt.

What is particularly concerning about this case, however, is its sheer cost - £12 billion.

All well to glorify the doom scenarios, but what can we do to find a solution? There’s a short ‘prescription’ in the above article. But, as it also ascribes things on paper don’t always become effective implementations.

As the most dangerous part of a car is the nut loose behind the wheel so is IT deployment. Fix the ‘nut’ and you’re more than half-way to your solution.

We all ‘know’ that a lot of what is purported out there as ‘for your safety’ but it is ugly when government spends billions of dollars on securing airports to be circumvented by just using your printer at home.

I just love this story!
Not at all certain I would dare to try it myself. Reading how Schneier uses fake boarding passes, and brings 24oz of not identified liquid through the airport security is like reading a Ken Follet novel!
And you all know what I think of airport security!

Schneier demonstrates poor airport security to The Atlantic
Kai
Sat, 18 Oct 2008 05:35:54 GMT

Apparently the smoke and mirrors have been determined to fool most of the people, most of the time. And the rest of you just keep quiet, shhhhhh

I was given this new book to read “Human Rights Overboard” it is a strange book to go through as it is part depressing, part encouraging, but wholly puts you into a zone of disbelief.

Unfortunately, for a title that could be ground-breaking expose (researched none-the-less) I walked into Dymocks (one of the major booksellers here) and the only way the Australian public are going to know about this work is if they already knew. (i.e. you have to special order.)

Human Rights Overboard BRISKMAN & GODDARD
Draws together, for the first time, the oral testimony and written submissions from the inquiry in a powerful and vital book that stands as an indelible record of one of Australia's bleakest legacies.

• ISBN

  9781921372407

• Format

  Paperback

• Category

• Publisher

• Imprint

• Pages

Online Price: $32.95

Add To Basket

Usually Ships in:
24 Hours

Fortunately, it seems that if you really do know about the book, then you can order it online (and get it faster than the guy walking into the shop.)

Should be required reading for all Tongans (in Tonga) dealing directly with Australian Government representatives. Should be required reading for senior church staff in Australia (of all denominations.)

We all knew nz’s?

THE Federal Opposition's new immigration spokeswoman has raised strong concerns about the Government's new seasonal worker program.

Sharman Stone, from regional Victoria, where many of the new visa-holders would work, said the program was confusing and lacked detail.

Regulations to allow 2500 Pacific Islanders into Australia as guest workers were introduced into Parliament on Tuesday.

Unease over seasonal jobs - National News - National - General - Central Western Daily

Talanoa Oceania is getting closer and here’s an early reminder from organisers, to get ready and book the days away so you can be there to listen and contribute.

If you haven’t been there before, click on the map below and see if you can’t get seriously lost trying to get there.

More information over at: Talanoa Online Home where you can also get your pretty print registration form.

Key Dates: Monday September 29th ~ Wednesday October 1st

There should be some interesting characters, so maybe you should do a theme thing where you come in as eskimoes or something interesting.

Minister of Finance asked to walk, and you have to wonder how long the Minister had been waiting for the 'cut-off' date to be rung?

Unfortunately for the former Minister of Finance, who seems to have been within the few generally respected both in and out of government, he was just too willing to let the opposition thinking be aired, and especially on the ever popular Tonga-Now (morphed) Tonga Review.

Good luck to Mssrs 'Utoikamanu and his family.

Talanoa Oceania - Be There or be rocked!

Talanoa Oceania are gatherings for people from the South Seas (or Pacific Islanders, abbreviated as PIs), who currently live in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Several reasons make these gatherings necessary, including the following:

1. PIs are torn between where we live and our home islands, partly because we have not been welcomed (to our new locations) and released (from our island homes)

2. PIs continue to look for direction from our home islands partly because a sea of talanoa[1] has not been gathered to root us in our current locations

3. PIs are searching for creative and meaningful ways of continuing to be connected to our island cultures, churches and homes

4. PIs often misunderstand other cultures partly because we are confused about who we are, in our current locations, and we are consequently easily misunderstood

5. PIs are not homogenous, and we need to name and come to terms with our differences

Talanoa Oceania 2008: Mana, Vanua, Talanoa

Under the shadows of those needs, the Talanoa Oceania 2008 gathering will provide opportunities for presentations on three significant PI concepts: Mana, Vanua, Talanoa. These concepts have multiple meanings in the various language and island groups:

· Mana can mean sacred, magic, courage, power, transformation, creativity, healing, imagination, and so forth

· Vanua (fonua, fenua, whenua, etc) can mean land, womb, home, identity, roots, tradition, and so forth

· Talanoa can mean story, storytelling, conversation, orality, empty-talk, and so forth

Call for presentations:

Persons who are related (by birth and/or migration) to the South Seas are invited to propose presentations for the 2008 gathering. The presentations should address at least one of the five needs and at least one of the three concepts outlined above, and they may be offered from and/or address any of the areas of interest to PIs, such as:

§ art, handicraft & body-art

§ poetry, lyrics & rhythms

§ performance, dance & storytelling

§ Pacific, oceanic & indigenous studies

§ academic, theological & island disciplines

§ ministerial, cultural & ethnic praxis

§ and so forth

Presentations by Women and Second Gens are especially encouraged; all presenters are also urged to help PI communities respond to:

§ the challenges of global warming and our drifting generations

§ the realities of dispersion, diaspora and cultural confusions

To propose a presentation for the Talanoa Oceania 2008: Mana, Vanua, Talanoa gathering, please send the following information to Jione Havea {email: jhavea@csu.edu.au; Postal address: United Theological College, 16 Masons Drive, North Parramatta, NSW 2151, Australia; Fax: (+612) 9683-6617}:

1. Your full name, and the island group(s) to which you relate

2. Current email and mailing addresses (tin-can-mail is possible!)

3. Descriptive title of presentation (no more than 20 words)

4. Short description of presentation (no more than 300 words)

Deadline for proposals:

Jan 31, 2008 (pālangi time!)

Unsure of what to do:

If you are interested in participating in the 2008 gathering but are unsure with how you might make a contribution, please contact one of the persons listed below and we will talk with you about how you might present and participate at this event.

Date & venue:

September 29 – October 01, 2008

Centre for Ministry, 16 Masons Drive, North Parramatta, NSW 2151, Australia

Next Talanoa Oceania: Aotearoa/New Zealand (date to be determined)

Contacts in the Southern Sea of Islands:

Fe‘iloakitau Tevi (fkt@wcc-coe.org)

Koila Olsson (arietakoilaolsson@yahoo.com)

Tevita K. Havea (tkhavea@ptc.ac.fj)

Samiuela L.V. Taufa (samtaufa@gmail.com)

Contacts in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Tevita Finau (tfinau@gmail.com)

Aso Saleupolu (asos@methodist.org.nz)

Fei Taule‘ale‘ausumai (fei_taulealea@xtra.co.nz)

Nasili Vaka‘uta (nvakauta@gmail.com)

Contacts in Australia

Seforosa Carroll (sefc@bigpond.com)

Vinnie Ravetali (vravetali62@yahoo.com)

Salesi Faupula (salesif@nsw.uca.org.au)

Filimone Oliveti (filimone7@optisnet.com.au)

Jione Havea (jhavea@csu.edu.au)

Katalina Tahaafe-Williams (katalinatw@nsw.uca.org.au)

Liva Tukutama (livasoffice@netspeed.com.au)

[1] When someone from the South Seas shares a talanoa (story), it is not just about sharing information and entertaining listeners. A talanoa also has to do with locating identity (in space and in relationships), with offering instructions (to listeners), with explaining struggles and journeys, with customs and rituals, with hope and more. Sharing of talanoa can also make storytellers and their people vulnerable, as if they have become telenoa (Samoan: naked), so it is a sharing that needs to be offered and received responsibly.

With downtown still empty, the rubble cleared out, but the emptiness still leary we have been getting a regular dose of patriotic fervor from government publications, but especially television broadcasts sponsored through the Prime Minister's Office. At first, the patriotic (were they patriotic or self-serving) broadcasts were interesting if not repetitive, but now they just aren't even interesting at all (even if you really wanted to learn about whatever it was they were reviewing.)

The Public Servants Association (PSA) were allowed to air a program last night, and things were quite refreshing.

1st, let's just be plain clear that I have serious differences with Mele 'Amanaki. We grew up together some time in the past but we have definitely divergent paths.

The Government broadcasts are articulate, but difficult to follow. Hey, I'll admit that probably the poetry and visualisms in the language are beyond my uneducated years.  Mele 'Amanaki and Vili Vete were not only articulate but made a whole lot of simple sense (leaving your biases away for a minute or two.) Listening to Mele and Vili present their arguments you really have to worry if you were in government. If these two can make an impact with listeners (although as unlikely their petition will get another airing as opposed to government spots going on ad-nauseam) then we have another ball-game starting soon.

There were admitable blots in the presentation, like a lack of repetition of who was being boycotted. But I presume those who follow the PSA know who they are going to boycott.

The PSA brought up some serious accusations or questions that need answering from Government. The following points are what I could pick up from Mele and Vili's presentation

1. Common Courtesy, Contracts do not apply to the Governance of Tonga.
2. The efficacy of the selection process for the Public Service Commissioners.
3. Petitions don't mean much

Common Courtesy, Contracts do not apply to the Governance of Tonga.

A review of the signed Memorandum of Understanding between the PSA and Government/Cabinet indicates that Government have selectively ignored important sections of this document, and worse will not respond to enquiries by the PSA to why Government has chosen to ignore their agreement. (Of course, we are not hearing which parts of the agreement the PSA and Government workers have broken or not kept in good faith.)

Key positions? The redundancies were supposed to be a review of unnecessary posts, but they seem to have specifically targeted PSA members in that a good majority of the offers of redundancy can be attributed to PSA members, and more importantly there are supposedly unnecessary posts still in place because they include supporters of Government.

Key political aspects of the MOU were ignored and only afterwards were PSA executives informed on a this is what we have done, take it.

The efficacy of the selection process for the Public Service Commissioners.

Government quickly came out with a statement last week that the Public Service Commissioners are legal positions and accusations (listed with the above statement) are groundless and will be ignored (my wording)

Mele refers the points mentioned in the Government Press Release as disagreements PSA have running with Cabinet, with whom they made the Memorandum of Understanding, whilst the key problem PSA (and a number of people I have met) is that no-one believes that a sound methodology was used to select these commissioners.

Colloquially:

How in the hell do people who have always lived in the Private Sector, have no human resource management background, get pre-selected to positions of reviewing Public Servants ? Otherwise known as, are these people in place because they are good friends of the Prime Minister ? 

Petitions don't mean much

800+ signatures (presumably of Public Servants, but not specifically stated) were supposedly collected in their petition to Government. In response, Government makes a press-release that is not in the true spirit of the petition.

The Minister for Public Enterprises will be ready to meet with the Executive Committee of the PSA and discuss their concerns if this can bridge the relationship between the PSA and Government.

[ref: link]

 You gotta love the big state mentality in our small country. Like, it's three appointments, two nations away to grab these people and just talk it out ? Geezzzz, you don't even have to like them, or agree with them, but you can sure as hell get them if you want.

You'd think with the way we're running our hands-off between Government and detractors that it is really hard to get time for these people to get together. Really people, if you wanted to talk to the PSA executives, they are frikkin' government employees, you can force them to sit at the table with you because you run their daily agendas (or am I mistaken and Government employees in Tonga don't have executives above them, and therefore just sit under the coconut tree all day?)

Let's see:

Mele 'Amanaki works for government, Vili Vete works for government, other PSA executives work for Government.

Minister in charge of negotiations calls Minister in charge of Mele 'Amanaki:

"Set Mele's appointment so she can be in this office this afternoon, 4:00 pm"

Minister for Mele: "I think she's not going to be in the office"

"Did you hear me say please?"

Minister in charge of negotiations calls Minister in charge of Vili Vete:

"Set Vili's appointment so he can be in this office this afternoon, 4:00 pm" 

Minister for Vili Vete: "Sorry dude, we suspended him for some reason"

"Fishcakes Foobar, well send one of those drivers you have to his house and tell him I'll talk with him this afternoon 4:00 pm"

Minister in charge of negotiations secretary says: "But Minister, you're scheduled at the buffet with the Minister of Foreign Affairs from Australia."

"Girl/Dude the frikkin reason everyone's visiting us all the time is because I haven't met with these ornery folks! Go get me some coffee and get someone in here who can tell me what's been happening the past six months."

Probably took me longer to dream up the above scenario than for the action to have taken place.

Go read Government's take on the whole story.

Go Tonga!!!

Government has announced, and published through their website http://www.tonga-now.to the following:

Lao fakaangaanga - Procurement Bill 
 
Policy Decision for the Draft Public Procurement Bill
Purpose: The purpose of this Bill: - legislation and regulation governing the Government Procurement process 

A BILL FOR AN ACT TO PROVIDE A LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR PUBLIC PROCUREMENT IN TONGA AND TO PROVIDE FOR OTHER RELATED MATTERS

Interestingly enough, this has a partial IT solution (or at least the mechanisms of IT assist in providing efficient solutions.) Obviously. Which brings me to some other IT news I'd read through the ether.

There's a new company in town (or at least I hadn't really noticed them until they started putting out this advertising about some real cheap pricing.)

A friend of mine, mostly living in New Zealand, asked me about this company a couple of weeks ago and I said I thought they were running some sort of scam. And here's why.

Note that their advertising is really unbeatable pricing, how many places can you go to get a NEW Computer for $989.00 ? Even DELL and WalMart can't beat what these guys are saying their going to provide with their new PC (let's just say for example that the TOP$989.00 is going to be something like USD$500.00)

A few things that they don't mention or clarify in this scam advertising.

* new PCs on the right column, doesn't really apply to the advertised PC on the left column. This deal isn't for a new PC, it's for a REFURBISHED PC.

* Pentium III - 800Mhz, 256MB Ram, 10GB HDD, CD-ROM is what you're going to get at this great price. This may have been a premium machine 7 or 8 years ago (circa 1999/2000) but it is not available brand-new anywhere in the world today.

* Preloaded Software: Win XP SP2, Office 2003 is probably illegally installed pirated software. This means that you will be like most everyone else in town, but it shouldn't really be a feature if it's illegal?.

* The above preloaded software is probably going to run like a dogggg. Last time I had a Pentium III 800Mhz, I was using better specs with 512MB Ram, 20GB HDD and I thought the performance on that machine was horrible using XP.

* FREE 512MB Flash Drive value TOP$100. I don't know where they're buying their flash drives, because the 2GB I'm using (i.e. 4 times the capacity they're promoting) only cost me AUD$69.00 12 months ago.

Just another reminder that (a) we need some consumer protection in Tonga, and (b) let the buyer beware.