Saturday, April 05, 2003

 
Last night (Saturday) we had Marly and Edo over for dinner: I made a cream of mushroom/almond soup, salad, salmon in dill sauce with potato gratin (imagine sliced potatoes baked with tons of cheese :) and Ritsu took care of the ocra side dish (when I do that, it turns into a grey mousse, she gets them done green, crunchy and very yummy) ... we all had a fun evening ...

Then today we went diving with Jonathan and his neighbors, and it turned out to be with Beqa Divers again. We enjoyed the size of the boat once more (especially after seeing 2 other "cettle" dive boats) and the duration of the trip was not a problem (you can either choose: small, crowded but fast or big, spacious and slow diveboats)



The 2 dives were very nice, and for the first time i actually managed to suck my tank dry! I noticed I was very low, when the dive guide Billy pointed out another coral to explore .. and it was still in the vacinity of the boat ... then we returned to do our 3 minute stop ... and all was fine .. but I knew i was quite low ... so .. after 3 minutes were over I was about to go up .. but according to Billy's clock, we had to stay another minute ... so .. i waited .. and felt that getting air was trickier .. and i gave him the "air out" signal .. and he gave me his octopus .. well .. if we had come up 30 secs earlier, nobody would have ever noticed :) It was not a dangerous situation at all .. but of course seeing someone sucking on another diver's octo looks always like something big/bad had happened ...

On the second dive we got to see some sharks, big swarm of Trevalies and lots of other stuff ... all in all a great dive day .. and now I am freaky dicky tired !!!

#posted by Peter 8:37 PM

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Friday, April 04, 2003

 
Thursday night we felt like having steak and we satisfied this craving once again at Aberdeen Grill. They are still pretty empty, but the staff remembered us, and they added a salad bar. The menu seems to have changed slightly too, it seems more expensive on first glance, but then again, it is not, they just rolled things like salad and sauces into the whole package ... the steak was awesome again.

Yesterday (Friday) I went downtown with Ritsu. At some point I noticed that one block was shut off, people seemed to have been evacuated from a building and firefighters all around ... sure I needed to take a pic ... (but nothing about it in today's newspaper) ...



The second picture is the winner of the "most inappropriately dressed person on a pacific island" award. This "person" caused some head turning ... I heard whispers "is that a man or a woman?" ... well, don't care .. but i find a short black mini skirt and long sleeve black t-shirt quite daring :)

For lunch we met Jonathan and his friend Kenny at Ashiyana to have once again great indian Thali (they all opted for chicken, I had lamb)

Friday evening we were invited to the official launch of a new (australian) radio station. It was quite interesting ... The event was held in a huge and beautiful open style bure, first speaker was the director of that radio station, who with his flower collar looked like a talking tree. The catering people they hired were great in dropping bottles and glasses at wrong moments.



I especially had a ball with the speech of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hon Mr. Kaliopate Tavola, who pointed out how great and important it is that we have several radio stations, and that having a choice is always a great thing (I was about to shout "hey, what about TV, Phone and Internet then???"). And he even went further pointing out what and impact the interNET (yes, be emphasized the last syllable) is for Fiji and how he enjoys his THREE internet addresses (meaning email addresses) .. not only can he be reached at home, and at the office ... but also all around the world, thanks to hotmail !!! WHaaa ??? How is anyone supposed to know if he is home/office or out travelling? Can someone please help him setting up his machine that he can check each address from every place? What about using websites like mail2web.com??? And doing official government email through hotmail ? Fun fun fun ... next to us were 2 university kids who were equally laughing their asses off ...

The little munchies they served were ok and enough for us to skip dinner, so we went home, watched yet another x-files episode and went to bed pretty early.



#posted by Peter 1:01 PM

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Thursday, April 03, 2003

 

My crazy french friend Fred brought this picture to my attention:

And it is as funny as it is scary. It comes from this BBC article about the current SARS situation. But the above picture is just such a fashion statement, I wonder if those designer covers have existed before SARS? I mean, seeing people in asian countries wearing those masks is not a rare occurance, but It has always been my understanding that people wear them when they have a cold to protect the others around them. Now those masks have turned into a defense mechanism.

What do people here in Fiji think about all that? Well, it is in the newspapers mainly because a fijian rugby team is/was just in Hong Kong, and they will be screened up on return. They also screen other travellers coming from HK, even though they have been already screened in Sydney. There has been only one "suspected" case here, but since it never popped up in the news again, it was probably just a common cold.

For those not being scared enough, I recommend reading (or for you lazy asses watching the made-for TV version) of S.Kings "The Stand" .. which starts with 99% of the world population being wiped out by a viral infection called "Captain Trips".

I wonder if this health threat and the war situation and AA considering going belly-up will affect our plans to go to NYC pretty soon. I already have my ticket .. so, I hope it will be working out.

#posted by Peter 12:51 PM

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Wednesday, April 02, 2003

 
So, what is new in Fiji? I am still a bit down with a tummy bug, the connection sucks a bit more again, it was raining like crazy the last couple of days .. then yesterday was cleaning and grass cutting and such ...

Tuesday night we had a fun/weird stray dog encounter: When I opened the gate for Ritsu's return, a few minutes later a dog was laying right in the driveway, not interested at all in the approaching taxi. I tried top push him away, but besides getting his dog smell all over me, no effect ...

At some point the dog had come here to die, it had a medium size wound on one leg ... we called the animal clinic, knowing that they are interested in picking up stray animals ... so, we sat there with that dog, waiting ...





But of course, the dog suddenly felt all well and got up, just 2 minutes before the animal clinic people came ...



#posted by Peter 4:20 PM

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Monday, March 31, 2003

 
Please use the "comment" link down there to submit your best guesses as to who those people are :)



Well .. i wrote more, but the cat ate the homework, or actually, blogger.com screwed up once again ...

#posted by Peter 5:06 PM

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Sunday, March 30, 2003

 
ok .. the scariest thing I have seen today was that Outpost.com, which has been one of my favorite tech-toys suppliers over the years, is now offering Personal Respiratory Defense Systems ... which is nothing else but a gas mask ... so .. what can one find at walmart or gristedes these days, besides plastic foil and duct tape ? Little Osama and Saddam voodoo dolls? "100 recipes made from canned tuna" magazines? "little survival" toy sets ???

scary !!!

#posted by Peter 6:01 PM

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