Saturday, June 07, 2003

 
On this beautiful sunday morning 3 AM the fijian soundscape is especially unbearable: Besides the 2 roosters having their little contest, this morning they are joined by a dog who seems to have a long distance call with a pal about 10 km further away (there is actually some back and forth between one very far sounding dog) ...

#posted by Peter 8:27 AM

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Friday, June 06, 2003

 
Fiji is being visited right now by a small fleet of Japanese 'warships' (don't like that term, but that is pretty much what they are and what the newspaper calls them) .. the whole thing is part as a cultural exchange and goodwill tour, which began in Pearl Harbor ... from what I read it is mainly a training ride for new officers on board ...

But anyways ... as for culture, they had a brass band and a drum group and the display at the park was quite nice .. I actually liked their brass band stuff (well, the first song was "Obla Di Obla Da" .. that was a bit far fetched). We ran into Jon and Kozue and Kids and many other people as we continued our Saturday morning in Suva. We actually went to check out those ships. Quite interesting. Here is a link from a guy who caught those ships in Halifax.



Oh .. since it is repetitive now .. Misha brought us yet another mouse ... 3rd day in a row .. this time she beheaded it and left the head outside ... I heard that mice actually come out this time of year .. so .. we are very lucky to have that mouse catcher !!!

#posted by Peter 10:30 PM

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Just a short one ... last night's dinner was homemade Pizza : Salmon and spring-onion-sourcream on one half, Tuna and Onions on the other .. very nice ..

Weather is real nice these days .. not too hot and not too humid ..

Seems I have narrowed down my ISDN problem ... those install guys did not rewire the alarm system correctly .. so now everytime I arm the house the ISDN goes out ... and I told them specifically that they need to think about that ... bastards !

#posted by Peter 11:42 AM

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Thursday, June 05, 2003

 
Misha, the mouse killer!

She brought us yet another mouse last night. Wow, do we feel loved :) This time I was fast enough to get the camera first ... don't be fooled by her blue eyes or the cute looks. She is a cold blooded killing machine. If only now she would bring us this damn rooster!!!



Dinner last night was at Daikoku (again): Fillet Steak, Chili Fish and 2 pieces of shrimp. Afterwards we started watching "Phone Booth", but got tired and went to bed halfway through the movie.

#posted by Peter 10:54 AM

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Wednesday, June 04, 2003

 
Nothing really spectacular going on these days ... so here some brief highlights:

• Cat brought us a mouse last night. Great. Not sure if she actually caught that one or found it dead, there was no sign of bites .. anyways, I rewarded her and told her what a good cat she is and then held a ceremony for the mouse.
  
• Yesterday was cleaning day and Marama and I got the place all nice and clean again
  
• Last night's dinner was rosemary marinated lamb with a veggie medley of potato, onion and fresh french beans ... came out pretty nice
  
• Dinner on Tuesday where chicken satey skewers with rice ... very peanutty and yummy.
  
• Monday night we were at Aberdeen Grill again for steak .. this time it was unfortunately not that great ... the salad bar was not set up until our steaks came, while we ordered the same (aged sirloin) our pieces looked quite different ... but who am I to judge if that is really aged sirloin? The usual garlic butter was simple butter this time and and also only simple butter on the usually nicely decorated (sourcream, chives) baked potato. I also wanted to their Bernaise Sauce .. but they gave me peppersauce instead ... Ritsu tried the creamy mushroom sauce, which was excellent .... The carlic bread too looked very 'half baked' ... Well, we still enjoyed the dinner and found that they charged us 8F$ less :)
  
• enough about food ... the ISDN connection is still disconnecting every day around 8:20 AM .. but other than that it works pretty well ...
  
• this morning it was 'only' 21C .... freeezing !!!!
  

#posted by Peter 2:59 PM

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Monday, June 02, 2003

 
... the experiences with the new ISDN connection have been very very mixed so far ...

When it is working, it is working ok connection wise (though I already refrain from using both channels which will give me 128, since I can't really use the extra speed) .. but for unknown reasons I need to click on links at least 4 times (each time triggering a "site cannot be found" window which i need to click, how annoying) before it loads ... as I said, when connected, I can stay on for a loooong time .. sometimes over 10 hours .. but when it disconnects, for unknown reasons, it also disconnects all phones in the house ... I need to reboot the ISDN modem several times to come back up and give me a signal ...


BUT

what is even worse: on both sides: Telecom (the phone company) and Connect (the ISP .. both in a nice monopoly position) .. nobody seems to have ANY idea what I am even talking about ... when I say "i cannot even get to pages like yahoo.com or google.com I get back a very friendly, albeit mindless "we checked sir, yahoo and google are working" .. whaaaa

on the telecom side it is even funnier .. well .. funny for those people who laugh along when their dentist performs a root canal extraction ...

So .. since the installation last week I had several times that there was no phone connection at all ... I called on Saturday, and whil they claim to have a 24 hour service, I must have caught some mom (children crying in the back) who had the call rerouted to her home and all she did was taking my number and promised that a technician would get in touch with me ... something that never happens ..

When I called today again .. i heard that I am disconnected because of a late payment (a story Ritsu had to listen to last week on friday already. Truth is that we made the payment a while ago, using ANZ's great phone banking, but it seems it never worked out .. so she did the payment again on friday) ..

So .. if I am disconnected, how come I still can make calls (when I get a dial tone) ... how come that telecom would actually send a team to install ISDN, if they know the line is disconnected ??? Replies varried from "You are not really disconnected, you can receive calls, but not make calls" (hellooo!!!! .. I just called YOU ... and when I have no dial tone I cannot receive either!) .. or "We do not disconnect that fast" (so ? what am I now ?) I tried to reason with this lady ... but there is not much one can do .. you can hardly tell them you will head over to their competitor (as there is none) .... well .. so in the end she promised me to get a call from an ISDN specialist "right now" .. that was 10 AM ... till now, 7PM, that call never happened ...

One fun thing .. they claim they support Mac ... how about sticking the actual Mac drivers on that install CD ??? (as indicated in the manual ?? )

I am sure this will give me plenty of fun and headaches for the months / years to come !!!

#posted by Peter 10:29 PM

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Happy Ratu Sukuna Birthday Holiday everone ... Fiji is full of interesting public holidays it seems .. and since we have not spent a full year here yet, we are always up for new surprises ... Ritsu had to go to the office though ...

Last night we had a small japanese get-toghether: the Takasakis with 1 year old Haru, the Segals with kids ... so we were 6 grown ups and 3 kiddies .... and those ones always run on high power ...

Ritsu and I prepared some japanese food, like (one of my favorite) Buta No Kakuni (Pork cubes in a great sake/soysauce broth. I just realize that we forgot to serve it with mustard) and for the first time I tried to do some Nigiri Sushi(that is the one where fish is placed on top of rice, instead of being rolled into it), for which we bought super fresh Tuna at Cakaudrove .. from what I hear, the only fish place in Suva one can trust.




Fun was had by all, especially the kids judging by their volume. Seems everybody digested the tuna just fine ... we totally forgot about the Miso Soup that Ritsu had prepared .. but we were stuffed (and tired anyway)

#posted by Peter 2:35 AM

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