Sigma’s Simulacrum of Reality

One of the first culture shocks that an Asian student studying in a Western country would probably face is that shops close at 5pm on normal trading days here. A natural reaction that then flows from this is a sense of cultural superiority and machoism. “Fcuking ‘ell, why these angmohs so weak one, close so early for what?”, since in their own home countries, shops usually open till 10pm.

After being rostered onto the worst ‘third watch’ (night) shifts for the whole 2 weeks of this extended Christmas shopping hours (I think I might have pissed my supervisor off or something), I am now fully in support of the West’s 8-hour work day labour laws.

One thing that many NIE Asian countries haven’t gotten a hang of yet is the family-work balance. Or for unmarried people, the social life-work balance. Do you realise how bad 5-10pm shifts screws up your social life here? During these two weeks, I might as well just stay in Target. These shifts are like shackles, restricting your movement to either staying at home for the whole day, or going to places close to your workplace so that you’d be able to race to work later. I am also being deprived of my favourite night TV shows now. The negative effects of graveyard shifts to people cannot be underestimated. And regardless of what Del’s gonna point out, the penalty rates of 1.2 x normal pay still doesn’t really make it any better for me. Give me my free time instead any day.

What is so macho about the Asian 13-hour work day? The way I see it, it only restricts all those poor ah pek’s sex lives, or denies young people more time with their friends/significant other/family/pets. It’s just so inhumane. Money isn’t everything. What if you just suddenly die tomorrow?

As you can probably guess, I’m struggling right now with my shifts. I’m sick of staring at the entrance of the store for 5-7 hours, and I have to do that for another 6 days straight before this nightmare called ‘Christmas Shopping’ ends. Pray for me guys.

About to march off towards my 3rd stint in the Target ‘jail’ now.

I hate my job.

Will be back in 5 hours time at 10pm (7pm Malaysian time).

Fuck you Target.

For the people who don’t know, I work casually at Target, a budget retail chain that’s quite popular in Australia. Prior to working there, I have always liked the holiday season.

Now, I just bloody hate it.

Why? Because Target assumes all of its workers have no social life. And that they are happy to be placed in crappy 5-10pm shifts during the extended opening hours Christmas shopping weeks. Which entails this week and the next.

From last Tuesday till this Saturday, I have been placed in the last shifts of the day. Aka the ‘Crappy Shifts’, because it effectively prevents you from doing anything else for the day.

And my Malaysian and Singaporean friends complain that shops here close at 5pm (on a normal day). I’ve now seen the light, and bloody hell, I’m longing for those post-Christmas days again.

In the meantime, I’m gonna try getting all my Fridays and Sundays off from next week onwards. Because really, my work is really beginning to cramp my social life here.

Fcuk you, Target.

Rudd’s Labor has won a net gain of 20 seats from 2004’s results, with a 5.65% swing towards it. It now has 80 seats, enabling it to form government with a majority of 5 seats. The are 150 seats in the House of Reps, which means that parties have to obtain 76 seats to form a majority government.

The Liberals’ seat count has gone down from 74 to 49. It has lost some Cabinet Ministers as well as one of its brightest stars, Mal Brough, who was Aboriginal Minister.

The Nationals’ influence continues to decline, with it losing 2 seats and down to having 10 now.

Senate results still pending.

For the rest of the results as they slowly unfold, check out the Australian EC’s site.

And it just keeps getting better for us social democrats After the disastrous election defeat, the Liberals went from being invincible to pathetic. They have now been reduced to a squabbling rabble. After Howard got kicked out of his own seat mostly due to Asian-Aussies (yay! ), he passed the baton to his long suffering deputy, Peter Costello. Costello has always salivated over the PM-ship, but again and again has been denied that by Howard.

So finally when he got a chance to lead the Liberals, albeit in Opposition, he shocked his party by turning them down. He was pissed by their lack of support when he wanted to knock down Howard when they were in govt, and now he has decided they should pay for their actions by leaving them to their own devices in their time of need. Hahaha, how poetic I must say.

So with Costello quitting politics, the Liberals are headless as well as out of govt. It has three contenders for top job: Malcolm Turnbull, Brendan Nelson and Tony Abbott.

Turnbull is the new kid on the block, elected in the last election in 04 and subsequently reelected in this election. He’s a multimillionaire businessman, who is of the Liberal wets faction (the socially liberal faction). He wants to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, say sorry to the Aboriginals, and wants to discard Howard’s baby: Workchoices. He is not favoured by Howard’s conservative faction.

Nelson is the maverick former Cabinet Minister of the Howard govt. He did well as Education Minister but blundered badly as Defence Minister. He was also a former Labor member. However, he is considered a lightweight and is prone to gaffes. He differs from Turnbull in that he wants to keep Workchoices as a Liberal policy.

Abbott is known as the ‘mad monk’ of Howard. He’s the attack dog for Howard and the poster boy for the Liberal religious conservatives. His conservative views are anything and everything that the Vatican Catholic Church says. Anti-abortion, anti-gays, anti-drugs. He wants to continue with Howard’s policies and describes himself as Howard’s greatest fan.

After the leadership ballot, Abbott was the first to lose. He then transferred his supporters to support Nelson against Turnbull, which resulted in Nelson winning by 45-42 votes.

Brendan Nelson is now the new Opposition Leader, but is viewed by many as only being a ’stop-gap’ leader while the Liberals regroup. Turbull and Abbott is expected to mount a challenged on his leadership as soon as he stumbles on something. Oh, glorious internal Liberal strife! I see Labor is guaranteed another 3 years after 2010

Keep up the good work Liberals!

Also, I’m happy that the Liberals are about to turn towards true liberalism again and away from xenophobic neo-conservatism as espoused by Howard.

P.S: It has been confirmed that Howard has lost his Asian-heavy seat of Bennelong to Labor’s giant slayer Maxine McKew. Yay!!! Lol, Howard went from being a Liberal invincible legend to being remembered as a selfish pariah leader now.

Labor under Kevin Rudd has been rejuvenated and is itching to implement their pet policies and toss out Howard’s programs after an agonising 11 1/2 year wait for a victory. Kevin Rudd might not please all Labor supporters, especially the ones on the Left, but he’ll do for me. Rudd is a right-wing Labor politician of the Tony Blair and Paul Keating mold. He’s big on Christianity, free market, Asia, the environment, republicanism and Aboriginal reconciliation.

Rajan said that Rudd looks more like a conservative than a traditional Labor man, and he’s right. But in the present political climate in Australia, I guess that was what it took for Labor to win power. And I’ve no problem with that, since I’ve always viewed my politics from a pragmatic view.

On the issue of being an Asian-Australian in Australia, Rudd should be one of the best things to happen to us for a long time now. After 11 1/2 years under Howard with his barely disguised disdain for Asian-Aussies and other minorities, Rudd is like a bright ray of sunshine for us. In addition to being a Sinophile with a love for Chinese history, he also speaks Mandarin and has a Chinese son-in-law. He has also appointed Penny Wong, a Malaysian-born Labor MP to his Cabinet. He has plenty of good contacts with the Chinese government as well, due to his past service as Australia’s diplomat in Beijing.

On the issue of the economy, I don’t think he would fuck things up since he’s from the Labor Right. He has no interest in a socialist economy. And everyone knows Howard’s no magician in running the economy. The good economy right now is due to the resources boom in WA due to demand from China and India.

On the social side of things, I expect many interesting things to happen soon. On top of my list is another referendum to make Australia into a republic. After the last botched attempt, I hope this time Rudd will get it right and finally free Australia from the irrelevant British Crown. I’m not as excited towards Aboriginal reconciliation, since that’s all fine and dandy, but I feel it’s much more important for Labor to lift that community’s standard of living in addition to giving it an apology. I hope Labor can do that.

Rudd will not play the race card unlike Howard now, so that’s good. Howard’s government is disgusting in how he has subsequently made the Asian, and then the Middle-Eastern, and now the African community the scapegoats for all the ills of the Australian society. He has made Australia into a move divisive and racist community. I hope that Rudd will strive to improve and embrace Australia’s multiracialism.

Things are looking very good on the education front, with the left-wing Julia Gillard taking up the Education portfolio. I have always advocated a socialisation of the education and healthcare services. Full fee-paying uni places will soon be eliminated, and I am hoping that uni funding will be substantially increased, along with academics’ and teacher’s pays. I voted for the Greens for the Senate, due to their call for free uni places and subsidised healthcare plan in hope that they will be able to influence Labor to go more towards that direction than the opposite.

I’m ambivalent toward Gillard holding the Workplace Relations portfolio as well. I support an adequate minimum wage provision, but I am well aware of the adverse effects of too high a wage on employment levels. I have always been in the Third Way camp on this. I hope Gillard doesn’t get carried away on this and maintains a balance between the minimum wage and employment levels. On her being close to the unions, I don’t really mind that. I’ve seen plenty of the good work done by the unions, from Bernie Banton’s fight against James Hardie, to the Greg Combet’s leadership of the MUA against Patrick Stevedores. And the good economy experienced by Australia happened before Howard’s Americanised neo-liberal industrial relation prescriptions of Work Choices. So it shows that the old IR system was working perfectly fine for Australia’s economy and there was no need for Howard’s Work Choice was merely due to his own ideological preference, not the economy’s needs.

I hope Medicare will be expanded to cover more services. And I hope the new Health Minister Roxon will kick the NSW Health Minister’s ass to improve the atrocious hospital system. If not, I will vote for the Liberals again in the next state elections.

The cost of the increased subsidisation of education and health should be paid for from increasing the taxation levels on the highest income earners bracket. So call me a socialist, I don’t give a damn

On foreign relations, Rudd has ‘de-gayified’ Australia’s relation with Bush’s USA. He has promised to preserve good relations with America, but also to intensify its relations with Asia. Howard has only seen engagement with Asia as an irritating necessity, but Rudd will probably broaden this relationship to go beyond narrow trade.

These are probably the things I’m interested in atm then. So hopefully most of what I hope for will be carried out by Labor.