[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] Tongan Issues

I'd like to thank Antipodean correspondent Errol Cavit for pointing me towards this interesting article concerning the relationship between the New Zealand and Tonga, as bedevilled by the richer and larger country's concerns about Tongan immigration.

The dispute began when Meleseni Lomu, Tonga's acting secretary for finance, was going to travel to New Zealand for a four-day meeting of Pacific Forum economic ministers chaired by Finance Minister Michael Cullen. Lomu pulled out from the trip, though, after she was told by officials from New Zealand's Immigration Service that she would have to take a pregnancy test to get a visa. The Immigration Service has since denied making the request, but a second Tongan official--Siosi Cocker Mafi, the governor of Tonga's Reserve Bank--has reported being asked for a pregnancy test.

( Just what is going on with Tonga and New Zealanders' pregnancy tests? )

( What's going on at the Tongan end? )

( The problem with Tonga. )

In the final analysis, Tongans--like the other peoples of the independent South Pacific island-states--are faced with the difficult question of how they can integrate their country with the wider world while retaining as much of their traditional culture as possible, all on very disadvantageous terms. It has always been difficult to build prosperous nation-states, but Tonga's task is more difficult than most.

( Counter )

[NON BLOG] What's going on?

Tuesday, I had drinks with a friend from dorm on West Campus. He's doing well, with multiple interviews for positions, a cute teacher that he's dating, and a generally buoyant outlook.

Of late, I've been feeling perhaps a bit depressed. I've got two term papers that I have to finish up, and sundry other things to do, but I feel almost as if I'm paralyzed, or at least as if I'm incapable of undertaking any long-term planning, or medium-term planning, or short-term planning. I tend to catastrophize, I admit; I initially did it as a defensive mechanism in the relatively protected environment of home, but when you're in the wider world it stops being an asset. Paralysis is something I certainly can't afford at this stage.

My parents will be coming into Kingston Monday, incidentally. It will be good to see them after six months with only some E-mail exchanges and telephone conversations since.