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

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.

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.

Thanks to the Internet and our American friends in Tonga, now you can also witness the horrors that recently passed in Tonga, on Video.

One of the advantages of this modern day and age, is the empowering of communications through blah blah blah.

As I understand, the video was a 28 minute recording spliced/cut into 5 pieces for your / our consumption on http://video.google.com As I understand, the videos were originally taken by some Europeans on a visit and through other friends I was forwarded the links by Jason Kearns.

Watch for yourself and make up your own mind.

Part #1: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=341182694447105774
Part #2: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=3278578352089958184
Part #3: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=4838872777964209971
Part #4: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-3914434662315308409
Part #5: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-5727634689898396884

As per previous videos alluded to on this site, you can watch the videos directly in your browser, or you can take the above links to http://www.keepvid.com and download a higher quality and/or save the videos to your hard disk. Just so you can visit the disaster and spot your friends.

'Asili ai 'ete no read the book mo e to e fakatotolo pe ki ai.

Ko e invite eni 'e tolu 'oku 'ia au he taimi ni ki he website ko e http://www.ebible.com 'oku ne index 'a e paaki 'e 6 'o e tohitapu, Tikisinali 'e 3, 'Enisaikolopetia 'e 8, Komeniteli 'e 6. Ko hono fakalea 'e tahaa ? ko e tokoni'i atu aipe ho'o ('eta?) fekumi ki he ngaahi fakamatala, potu tohi 'i he folofola.

Ko 'ete fakatokanga'i, 'e hoko 'a e website ni ko ha fu'u tokoni lahi 'aupito ki a nautolu 'oku nau malanga pe fai ako-tohitapu mo e 'alaa me'a pehee. Tuku kehe atu kitaua 'oku masiva he 'ilo folofola ka e fie 'ilo ki ai.

Hange ko e fakamatala 'i 'olunga, ko 'ene tu'u he taimi ni, ko e tohi 'e 12 'oku lolotonga index, pea mahalo 'e 'alu atu pe 'a e taimi mo hano fakalalahi.

Bibles

New Century Version
The Message
King James Version
New American Standard Bible
English Standard Version
New King James Version

Tikisinali 'e tolu (2 FREE, 1 optional)

Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Dictionary
Smith's Bible Dictionary
(optional) Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary

Encyclopedia 'e 8 (3 FREE, 5 Optional)

(Free) Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Commentary
(Free) New Naves Topical Bible
(Free) What does the Bible say about
(Optional) Where to Find in the Bible
(Optional) I Never Knew that Was in the bible
(Optional) MacArthur Topical Bible
(Optional) Nelson's Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations and Quotes
(Optional) Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Manners and Customs

Commentary 'e 6 (1 FREE, 5 Optional)

(Free) Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Commentary
(Optional) Believer's Bible Commentary
(Optional) King James Bible Commentary
(Optional) Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary on the Bible
(Optional) Jon Courson's Application Commentary
(Optional) Thru the Bible

Kia kimoutolu 'oku anga maheni mo e 'u topical search engines hangee ko 'ete 'alu ki he http://www.amazon.com ke te fekumi ki ha 'uu tohi pe ko e www.ebay.com kapau ko ha'ate fekumi ki ha 'uu auction 'e tokoni 'a e website ko ee http://www.ebible.com ki he'ete fakatotolo ki he folofola he 'e tu'u ange 'a e ngaahi tali ki he "search" ki he sio fakatohitapu ki he ngaahi fo'i lea 'oku "search."

Ko e me'a pe 'eni ko e kei 'i he lea fakapapalangi, but it's a start ?

Ka te ke fiema'u ha'o "invite" pea ke email mai pe ki he samt@nomoa.com, pea ka kuo 'osi pea ke kataki 'o fakahuu atu pe ho'o email address 'i he form ko 'ena he http://www.ebible.com na'a vave atu pe ha'o invite hangatonu.

Visit bTonga

‘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.

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.

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

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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.)

There are often disconnects between how you say something, and how those words appear / present on paper.

Everything2.com has a nice write-up on the issue although it seems to be a continuing stream of conversations. It boils down to there being a number of extremely complicated things we do in verbal communications (let alone face-to-face) that in the particular case of sarcasm, does not translate readily to paper.

Most methods of presenting sarcasm in print involves some modfification to the text, either through the use of tags such as

<sarcasm>You are so right</sarcasm> 

or modifications of the actual speech text.

You are sooo righttt

In either case, there doesn't seem to be much consensus at the moment on how to resolve this problem, as both of the above solutions require a certain level of uncommon knowledge. One requires familiarity with technology/text tagging, while another requires ???

And why is this sarcasm issue important ? Because, the Internet has meant an unprecendented amount of junk text is out there waiting for our kids and neighbors to read. A lot of that material is context sensitive (like duhh?) and there's a lot of us who just blithely read through stuff and take it at our interpreted face-value, without realising some irony in the text because we either have not read the full body of conversations on a website or that context no longer exists for some reason (example: someone has copied a portion of the text and emailed it)

The Irony Mark

One solution, concept proposed to the ether by fontblog / Kevin Larson is the use of a new "Irony Mark." Strangely, the Microsoft created optional mark is not in existing (at least according to the blogs)  font families released by Microsoft (not yet?)

And there it is up to the right. The Irony Mark. I wonder whether it'll work ?

There's pro's, con's discussed on Kevin's post on the use of a sentence-end marker, but at least we have a reference for some cleaning up of all that whit I've pushed on the Internet in the odd past years.

'Anapesi does another thought provoking piece @ Ano Masima with her review of "Reel Paradise"

The movie "Reel Paradise" portrays the Pierson family as contentious, arrogant, argumentative, and privileged. However, in the end they are redeemed, their cultural values and attitudes justified, just because they brought "free" movies to the people of Taveuni.
by Anapesi L. Ka'ili 'REEL" Disappointment.  

One interesting issue raised by 'Anapesi's piece is the continuing need for vigilence by those of us who may know better, about frivolous or careless individuals/organisations within our midst.

Our problem is that we generally bestow good will upon people like the Pierson's. Unfortunately they mistake our charity as a license for their contempt and frivolous behaviour. Two different worlds collide and the dominant one behaves and believes the quiet one appreciates their intentions and attitudes. Of course they are only reflecting part of the problems of their own society which is leading us to all these hunts for WOMD in nations that do not toe our beliefs.

Seriously people, you have to get more of our young people (and the rest of the oldies) to start reading some of those articles at Ano Masima, they are presenting relevant contemporary news and issues that needs "tafu" for us to consider and look through.

A continuing high standard has been set, let's get over there and be educated.

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