Back in the late 1970s, Kin Che as he is universally known, was a doctoral student at the University of New England. This was in the first decade after I arrived here in Armidale, and he graduated in 1981. I knew that he was from Hong Kong and the he had returned there to a position at the Chinese University, but thereafter we had no contact until a month ago when we suddenly got a message to say that he was visiting us on campus. He had retired from his university in 2012, now holds the title of Adjunct Professor, and was visiting family in Australia ... like many Chinese, Australia seems to be high on the radar as a good place to visit, just like Elyar Sadr Mousavi migrated here a year ago from Iran, but via Malaysia.
Anyway, I and some of my colleagues had great chats with him over a couple of days restoring lost memories and sharing reminiscences. We ate out together, selecting of all places, Pablo's Mexican Restaurant. Surprisingly it turned out to be a wonderful choice as Mexican foods are not common in Hong Kong. Here we are at Pablo's taken by our waitress:
And here we are with my good colleague Prof. Neil Argent sitting outside Booloominba, the former farming mansion that was converted into UNE's administrative headquarters.
In fact, Kin Che had previously taken this good picture of me and Neil sitting inside what is effectively the UNE staff club.
Anyway, I and some of my colleagues had great chats with him over a couple of days restoring lost memories and sharing reminiscences. We ate out together, selecting of all places, Pablo's Mexican Restaurant. Surprisingly it turned out to be a wonderful choice as Mexican foods are not common in Hong Kong. Here we are at Pablo's taken by our waitress:
And here we are with my good colleague Prof. Neil Argent sitting outside Booloominba, the former farming mansion that was converted into UNE's administrative headquarters.
In fact, Kin Che had previously taken this good picture of me and Neil sitting inside what is effectively the UNE staff club.
This kind of event makes academic life particularly interesting - meeting people from all over the world and getting to know them. I've many international connections and only today I signed off on the final version of an article I had co-authored with two Romanians and which will be published in a leading American journal. And also today I worked on a presentation I've been invited to give in Tel Aviv on 29th October coming. I would like to think that such internationalism, if practised more widely, would help defuse what I see as rampant nationalism and increasing hatred of globalisation.
Fortunately, Australia and New Zealand are relative havens of peace on this front. And small towns like ours are competing to become home to our large intake of refugees. Most people here seem to be celebrating the arrival of 200 Syrian refugees here in Armidale early next year! And Australia's population is rising fast from immigrants. When I arrived here in 1971 the country's population was 13 million. It's now officially 24.5 million! And most rapidly integrate into Australian society.
AS
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