Top News
EARTH's manager has a new lease on business life. Not only did the Hong Kong Immigration Department renew his work permit, but the Inland Revenue Department agreed to waive EARTH's business registration fee and levy for another year. Thus, the HKLNA-Project will remain where it can best serve the people of Hong Kong --  in Hong Kong.

Government Relations
Why the government acted as it did remains a mystery. Either the Deputy Secretary of the Education and Manpower Bureau no longer views the HKLNA-Project as a threat to his personal job security, or the Hong Kong Immigration Department and EMB truly are different government departments and the former sees value in EARTH and the HKLNA-Project that the latter does not. Surely EARTH's letter to the Privacy Commissioner in which it railed against the Immigration Department for not being forthright about denying EARTH's request for secure use of private government data was not the reason. In the end the Privacy Commissioner sided with the government while clearly demonstrating that EARTH's request was well within the law, and that the Immigration Department could have helped, had it wanted. EARTH will not make a third request.

Community Relations

• Reaching Out Across the World-wideWeb - For the moment EARTH will ride the wave of last month's campaign and make could use of its newly expanded mailing list that was created as a result. If you are wondering why you received a copy of this newsletter, now you know the reason.
• Accommodation - With the understanding that EARTH's true enemy is ignorance and not the ignorant themselves EARTH will push forward with the HKLNA-Project. With proper coaxing even the most stubborn of mules can be made to drink. Simply, intelligent mules plan better and have more excuses and therefore require more time and coaxing.
  

Website additions and maintenance

New additions

• Quality - The introduction has been revised and several new pages were added to the HKLNA-Project's Quality section:
• Revised introduction.
• Section one: Beneath the Surface - A structural approach to Hong Kong's educational priorities.
• Section two: Hong Kong English - An over touted subject area.
• Viewpoint -  Two new additions this month
• Aspiring to be global, or perspiring to be healthy: An essay on form and function in East Asia. Are there no better ways to spend local taxpayers money? Governmental departments and privately incorporated institutions that deceive foreigners and themselves, also cheat local taxpayers - 8 November 2003 (pdf document - 52 KB)
• The Swimmer: A failed communication. Racism is a world-wide phenomenon that expresses itself differently according to the society,  country, and even region in which it is present - 28 November 2003 (pdf document - 56 KB)
• Tsong Kit - Chapter 10 has been added.

Maintenance

• With no editing staff only time, distance, and helpful hints from the ProZ.com bulletin board are reliable editors. Several Tsong Kit pages were edited.

Software update

• Mozilla 1.4 has been added to EARTH's Apple operating environment. EARTH can now encode HKLNA-Project webpages with Unicode UTF-8. This means that Japanese and Chinese script can appear on the same page. See the grammar section (Part B) of the newly added Tsong Kit chapter above for the first application of this encoding method. (Requires East Asian Fonts)
• Keynote -- Apple's answer to Microsoft's PowerPoint -- has been added. It is a modest investment with great potential for opening the eyes of weary mules and HKLNA-Project newcomers.
• EARTH now runs with Panther.

Strategy Update
Since the HKLNA-Project's first research proposal was rejected by Hong Kong's Education and Manpower Bureau, EARTH has had more time to develop the Project's section on the quality of Hong Kong's educational system as it applies to Hong Kong's universal English language (UEL) requirement (see Quality under Website additions and maintenance above). What before was just a long array of unexplained graphs and tables will now be explained. After the entire section has been explained in detail, a slide-show will be produced that can be delivered across the internet using Keynote and QuickTime and be presented before large audiences using a digital slide-projector. This will take many months to prepare, but it appears to be the only reliable way left to get the message out and finally obtain funding. Myths are not easy creatures to destroy -- even with practical alternatives and real solutions of benefit to most everyone.

Further down the line the entire project will have to be translated. For the moment EARTH must find a way to survive and take advantage of its new official lease on life.

Acknowledgments
EARTH thanks its friends and supporters wherever you are.

Closing Remarks
If you would like to provide support to the HKLNA-Project but are unable to donate to the HKLNA-Project Fund, then at least hire EARTH to provide you with the best in telecommuted translation. Surely many ProZ.com translators would also be greatful. See EARTH's translation services' promotion material or better yet visit EARTH's homepage.

Sincerely,

R. A. Stegemann
hsmr@pacific.net.hk

East Asian Research and Translation in Hong Kong
H2-30 Sunshine City, No. 18 On Luk Street
Ma On Shan, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China 04
Tel/Fax: 852 2630 0349
http://homepage.mac.com/moogoonghwa/earth/