east and west

Quite like the sound-bytes from Vincent Wong of CRHK, have listened to him every morning when I am driving to work around 9:10am from the local radio 95.8FM (they broadcast different sound-bytes and programmes from RTHK/CRHK/MetroRadio during the day mixing with their own low-budget ones in between which some of them are pure torture to both the ears and the mind). The sound-byte is like 5 minutes long but he manages to speak about something really interesting every time. In one occasion he even talks about CPPIB, which of course all shareholders of Auckland International Airport would not be unfamiliar with. His international perspectives on things have kept me listening, and today again he has raised an interesting issue.

Some researchers have studied the differences in perspective and priority between eastern and western people with some simple tools in experiments – like a picture of an elephant in a forest or a set of ball pens with 4 of them are red and 1 of them is yellow. Result? Eastern people would tend to focus on the forest and pick a red pen; while western people would be opposite in their choice. Researchers think that this has a huge implication of how eastern and western people are different from their minds to their choices and finally their actions. Eastern people is more comparative in nature, they like to compare and understand the relationship between themselves and others prior to anything else. Western people on the other hand are more self-centered, they like to understand themselves first before the environment they are in. So in an example of a particular outbreak of disease, eastern people would tend to find out how it is being transmitted first while western people would concern more about getting a vaccine. In doing business, eastern people requires trust and personal relationship establishment before they can conduct business with others; and perhaps western people would do the exact opposite. They will only form personal relationship with others once they have worked together.

I am not sure how accurate this research is, especially I have seen the alternatives from both sides, but indeed there are differences among the East and the West. Being in New Zealand for about 13 years now, about half of my whole life is here. Yet no matter how much I like the weather and clean air in this country, I do find myself not fitting in with the culture completely. What would be interesting is that one day if I am back to Hong Kong and find that I cannot cope with their culture neither, then I would be absolutely screwed! What would be the middle point between East and West then? Maybe I should consider move to Indonesia as it is mid-way between Hong Kong and New Zealand.

Actually I am not certain if New Zealand is West… maybe South-west? Wonder if there is any differences between the North and the South?

santana

Even it rained heavily outside the stadium, it was full of heat and energy for the 2.5 hours long performance from Santana! Just one night in Auckland, we managed to buy the tickets at the door (very lucky) and even they were side seats, they were not as bad as we thought. Honestly I had no idea what Santana was about or any of their music, but I always know Emily is crazy about them/him and so once I read from the newspaper about their concert tonight, immediately we tried to buy the tickets in every way we could.

I was in charge of trademe while she was trying her luck with ticketmaster, the official website for selling the tickets. It was a pretty intense process… coz one person was selling 2 tickets at the auction site which at that time we believed they were better seats than the ones available from ticketmaster. We waited till the last 2 minutes to start our bid, and the price went up from $160 to $175, then $176, $178, $180, $182, $185, $190, $194, $196, $197, $198… basically became a bidding war between me and another buyer. Originally I stopped, but in the last 13 seconds I placed $199, and so the auction extended for another 2 minutes…. and that 2 minutes was very long indeed, probably I had refreshed my browser like a hundred times while I was waiting. Finally… we won! Well $199 was the official selling price for those tickets, and so we were happy about it and wrote an email to the seller immediately after my heart calmed down a bit.

Then we waited, and waited. Wrote another 2 emails, no replies. Managed to find their phone number (from one of their earlier post in some other auctions), phoned them, no one answered. Left voice message, emailed them again… nothing! Until 6:40pm (the concert started at 8pm and we won the auction around 4:30pm) finally got hold of him from the phone, and he told me that he sold the tickets to someone else already… did not even apologize and tried to blame everything to his wife… we were so disappointed at that time… felt like being cheated in a way but could not really do anything about it (I mean there is no penalty for people listing item in trademe for sales while they do not really possess with them). At one point we thought we would not go, coz the remaining seats were looking pretty bad from ticketmaster’s website. Luckily I still decided to visit the venue and “see how that goes”.

No doubt this is the first time for me to be in a concert, where the vocals or singers are not in the leading role at all. A 60 years old guy with 2 guitars on his shoulder was the spotlight for 90% of the show, and it was pretty amazing to see him playing like his fingers disjointed from his palm from time to time… also a lot of credits to the drum player, and the base guitarist… overall, I enjoyed the music so much even a lot of them I have never heard before.

Santana said, “if I am not living in the States, this probably would be the place I want to live in.” I bet he said that in every country he visited