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From pop songs to baby names: How Simeulue Island’s ‘smong’ narrative
evolves post-tsunami
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Technology and globalisation help diversify the channels for the smong
narrative but also risk eroding this local wisdom – if we do not try to
preserve it.
1 hour ago
8 comments:
I bet you have fun at tax time too. A friend of mine is a shearer and each year has to collect about 20 group certificates (or whatever they are called now) before he can do his tax.
Mindy, I don't even get said certificates except for the two biggest institutions involved (state public service and one university), and even the university now makes you look up your own 'statement of earnings' (or whatever it's called) online and print it out. Most of my income isn't taxed at source, which means no such documents are necessary, so as well as keeping track of income and deductions I have to remember to save to pay the quarterly PAYG tax, and I too have 15-20 income sources per year, often just small (tiny, really) one-offs. The only way to survive tax time is to keep meticulous records and keep them up to date. Which I have not done this year.
*Wrings hands*
I used to call myself a "free lance writer" (in a prehistoric life), but it was so complicated I wonder why I bothered.The postage alone was enough to be tax-deductible!
Today? I'm a kept woman, thanks to Qld. regarding me as a "wife" for whom deductions are even less than postage!
I just had a pleasant word with a member of the tax department about a discrepancy in my PAYG payments from 2007. It's okay I'm sure just unaccounted for credits from GST that haven't been recorded, so it looks as though I've underpaid my dues.
Tax is torture, as bad as the dentist, but equally necessary.
Sigh... yes. I used to deal with one of the big media companies (starts with F, ends in X). Two years in a row they refused to pay my invoice until I was registered as a contributor, under the correct category, with a clearance from the editor concerned, and only if the invoice was properly folded and gently perfumed with lilac (well... maybe)
But it took three phone calls and five emails to get my money. And about three months. Two years in a row. I swear they want their "content providers" to just go away so they can get on with selling ads or whatever it is they do.
/end of harrumph.
Whereas when I wrote for the other large media company starting with 'N' and ending in 'imited' they paid regularly and without hassles and only needed chasing up once in about four years. I guess you have to keep the minions happy or your empire crumbles. Of course, then they cancelled my column with absolutely no notice, so there you go.
I must say in fairness that with the exception of some systemic hiccups a couple of years ago when they changed the system, the people who start with an F and end with an x have always been absolutely reliable as long as one conforms to said system, which I think is far more arduous for the employees than it is for the freelance contributors.
So I guess it was just me, then. Still, they were all very nice and apologetic about losing my invoices, or using them to wipe down the kitchen, or line the CEO's cage, or whatever happened to them. I got paid eventually.
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