Saturday, July 05, 2003

 
Friday we ended up throwing our own ID4 BBQ party and it was fun .. we had a healthy mix of japanese, german, peruvian, columbian, japanese-american and american ... food was burgers, corn on the cob, cole slaw, fries and potato salad ... and we had a jolly good time ..





Saturday we visited Jonathan and we drove around. He showed us a "furniture shop" ... well .. though I had been in that industrial area just recently .. I would have never suspected that warehouse to be a shop ... but they have some really cool stuff, and we hear they will have even more when the next container arrives ... not that we really need anything .. but we walked out with a really nice table cloth for our new outside table ..

Later we went to the Raintree Lodge for lunch .. I had never been there but Ritsu had .. and I liked it a lot .. I thought of it initially more to be some cheapo coffee and sandwich place .. but it is actually a very nice restaurant with lake view. Me and Jon had the grill platter while Ritsu had the fish special .. food was good, places was nice, and we all got into nap-mode.






For dinner we had leftover chickenwings and we watched "Sleepy Hollow" ... a movie that is pretty well done, but keeping track of all the names and family ties is really tricky at times ...

Sunday so far very lazy .. made Ritsu a nice salmon sandwich for breakfast and now I am smoldering chicken pieces to become a nice Chicken Korma for later ...









#posted by Peter 10:05 PM

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Thursday, July 03, 2003

 
Happy Independence Day friends in the US ... while it is still lunch time on 7/3 I already have 7/4 here ...

Great .. there are 2 ID4 parties I have heard about ... one is today at the US embassy, held by the ambassador ... for invited people .. so .. other diplomats, important americans .. stuff like that ... (not kitchen bitches with greencard)

then on Saturday the AWA (American Woman Association?) is hosting the next shindig ... and there they clearly say "Only US citizens with passport and RSVP" .. so ... again, not for kitchen bitches with greencards ....

Having had great ID4 parties in NY in the past, this is pretty much a bummer .. so all I can do is burn my own meat, which we will do .. but I find that policy really, well .. dissapointing ...

So .. I actually ended up calling the german honorary consul, to find out if the german community is doing anything on any special dates ... but no .. he had no real idea how many germans live on the island (loosely saying 20-30) and there are no events, registry or anything ... as far as I know, the guy is not even german himself :)

#posted by Peter 9:20 AM

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Wednesday, July 02, 2003

 
early morning blog update ... yes, the rooster again ... i really should do the earplug thing more often ...

anyways .. catnews .. she now sleeps with us in our bed .. that is a fairly new development .. but very cute ...

Oh, and I know I will have fun today as I have to go to Fiji Telecom and discuss our most recent phone bill, the first to include the ISDN charges ... There are many questions, like how the heck 39 x 12.27 cents yields 92.1050 $ ??? (shoudl be 4.79$). Something like that is seriously fucked up and I need to go over old invoices to see what else those maths geniuses came up with. Will keep you posted

#posted by Peter 9:38 AM

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Tuesday, July 01, 2003

 
So, how is winter in Fiji?

It is actually pretty nice ... and no, there is no snow! Many people here have never even seen snow (besides on TV or in movies). The temperature drops to 20C/70F and at 80% humidity it feels cold in the mornings. We do not use our ceiling fans anymore but use PJs and our blankets again. Quite nice to wake up in the morning not being covered in sweat.

Other days are even a bit dryer, it rains less, is usually very sunny, but sometimes also very gloomy looking and windy. We have less mosquitos and ants stopped trying colonizing the interior of the house ... but it seems that mice are winter active. Misha (our cat) caught 2 more the last 2 days (now 5 in total) and I saw one mouse hiding in the kitchen when I switched the light on.

Now I understand why this is the tourist high season, and also why they planned the SPG's for this timeframe.

Ritsu is busy with her job and I am busy creating 2 more websites, so we are not getting bored ... for tonight we are planning to go watch "Finding Nemo", hopefully not too crowded this time around.

And below some random pictures: me in my new sulu, then I found a really big hardware store here, the main store of Vinod Patel in centrepoint ... the closest you can get to a Home Depot ... pretty big, but still not the kind of variety I was hoping for ... then a small picture of "fiji style driving with 8 people in one car" and then a glimpse of my current computer setup .. yes, 3 macs on 4 screens, both my PCs are retired in the closet right now and I see no reason to get them out again ...







#posted by Peter 2:43 PM

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Sunday, June 29, 2003

 
Dinner tonight was Pork in plum sauce .. and the movie de jour (after we tried to go to the cinema, but it was overcrowded) was Dancer in the dark .. and I am still digesting ... and still .. I am not a big fan of Björk's music ..

Ok .. i digested some more ... and I know many people will hate me for that, but I did not like the movie. That simple. It failed to engage me on an emotional level, though it was very clear that it was aiming for that. The editing was very wannabe artsy, worst I found was that it seemed the movie was shot in 16:9 (=1.85:1) and later reframed for 2.35:1 to make it look more like a "real" movie (and not mainly shot with a DV cam). I did not care much about any of the characters, most of the time I was wondering why they did what they did ... and then again I noticed that I did not care at all ... the musical numbers were .. hmm .. cute? naive? ...

So, I may be too shallow for that movie, I am not getting all the hype that people have with it or Björk herself (she may be cute, but not really pretty)... ah well .. can't argue about taste actually .... oh, I really liked that opening sequence with the very very slowly crossfading paintings ... that was beautiful ...

Now I am getting ready for flame mails. Go ahead!

- no space ships, no nudity ... what should I think about that movie :)

#posted by Peter 4:34 AM

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