Cultivating longevity The federal government's White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century received a good deal of media coverage, perhaps even longer than the average white paper. Reactions fell broadly into two categories: those of the Asian Studies professionals who might appear a little jaded by the recycling of some longstanding ideas but nonetheless welcomed the paper's promise, as they always do; and the others who saw the White Paper as a mechanism to impose unwanted strictures on their hitherto satisfactory approach to Asian markets. Among the latter were those who sought to quantify the inevitable hurdles-quoting US CIA tables, for example, of the many more hours it takes to 'learn' ideograph-based Asian languages over 'easier' European languages. One read of 2200 hours versus 700 hours as if that were to be the primary determinant of successful language learning. It's not of course. Passion, desire and interest in the language, people and culture make the 'hours' almost negligible. When asked to estimate the hours I've spent learning, or the number of Chinese characters I know, I have to answer 'I don't know'. It is there, I wanted to know, I just did it. How many hours does it take to learn a musical instrument? Learn to drive a car? You can line up two people who have expended the same number of hours learning a skill and still have different capabilities. I've probably spent more hours swimming in my lifetime than our youngest Olympic swimmers, but I'll never be