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HOME
ARCHIVES
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WEBCAM
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WILLIAM
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SCEMO
TED
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New Feature: Use the search box below to find stuff in this blog!
Friday, December 06, 2002
Since we will be traveling over the weekend, I am not sure how frequent I can update ... we are going to Savusavu, a town on the next big island for some relaxing and diving .. will tell ya kids all about it when we get back ...
Thursday started out being quite nice and sunny, but was getting very humid again around noon. I went downtown to have fun with the telecom people again, since I have not had received any phone-call yet. Turns out that nothing can be done on the weekend, so if we are lucky, the phone will be on on monday.
I ran some other errands and took this lovely picture of the reserve bank building. It happens to be the tallest in all Fiji and also the one where Ritsu is working in .. and how cool is it to have the building you work in on your local currency? It is on the 20F$ bills. (the other building there is the new parliament.) Also notice how blue the sky and how sunny it it (that vista usually does not last for long)
Back to the hotel and some packing ... Ritsu returned from work and we took a cab to bring tons of our stuff over to our new house ... the current tenant was very welcoming and we chatted a bit. Then the landlady came (incidentally) and we had a chance to meet her. There was some confusion over the key transfer, which was planned for sunday, but suddenly the daughter, with whom we had all dealings with so far, said she would not be there .. ooops ... but ah well .. i hope that will be figured out somehow .. we then waited a long time for a cab to come (we called the cab station twice) .. and the one we got .. well .. that guy seemed to be either tired .. or had too much kava ... anyways .. he ran over a pretty large dog. Wow, that was surreal ... even more so that the dog got up right away and just barked and ran around (seems all 4 limbs were still intact) ... the driver got out to merely look at his car ... I wonder if I would get out there where a dog is really pissed of and full of pain ...
Well .. we continued and went to a chinese restaurant we have not checked out yet (mainly because it looks somewhat shabby from outside) .. Foong Lee ... mainly seafood. But to our surprise they where totally crowded ... the host asked us to come back in 15 minutes .. when we came back, turned out they had an empty table .. but one silly waiter there gave it away to the next couple coming ... so, the host was all "i am so sorry" .. we ended up waiting some more .. finally we had a table .. and the food was pretty nice .. The soups come in small and large .... small easily feeds 3 people .. large seems to be good for 6-7 ... same with the main dishes .. they are huge ... i had the stir fried hot chili fish, which was very tasty and had lots of nice veggies with it ... Ritsu had Hong Kong style fish .. which was somewhat yummy, but mainly greasy and full of bones ...
No way that we could finish all that ... we had some tea and then walked home .. last night in this hotel ...
Thursday, December 05, 2002
Yesterday (Wednesday) was so far the most humid day we experienced !!! Really !!! it felt like a complete steam bath outside ... there was some rainy - drizzle stuff mixed in, which just evaporated before it hit the ground ... very very icky !!! I think that is more the climate that is normal for this time of year ... we heard SO many times that the weather the last 6 weeks (can you believe it .. we arrived here exactly 6 weeks ago !!!) was very uncommon for this time of year .. now we are about to experience the "real" Fiji weather .... I already found some mildew on a rarely worn sweater, paper starts feeling very soft and chips are loosing their crunchiness in an instant.
Today's main event was shopping for bedding stuff, so that when we move in on sunday, we have sheets and pillows ... after that we had lunch at "Lantern Palace", a chinese place Ritsu had been to before, but for me it was the first time. The food was nice, albeit late, but it was pretty crowded which is usually a good sign that people like the food.
Afterwards I went back to the hotel to start packing. Ritsu joined me later after work. For Dinner we stayed at the hotel and tried 2 steak dishes we had not tried yet ... I had a NZ beef fillet with a mushroomy sauce, while Ritsu had some steak with a sauce which she claimed was the same as on her favorite "braised chicken".
We felt like watching a movie, but Ritsu fell asleep ... so I played DooM, the classic of the 1st person shooter games ... which I finally found as a really cool version running on a macintosh and under OSX, the latest apple operating system, which seriously kicks ass. I always loved that game, since it is quite simple, but fun to play ... after DooM, many games of a similar style were created and got technically much better ... but the developers also filled it with all kinds of more challenging riddles ... which may be nice ... but I just want to run, explore the environment, and kick some monster's booty on the way.
Wednesday, December 04, 2002
Tuesday i focused all my energy on getting electricity and phone connection figured out. It was no fun at all. It is all very obsolete, lining up at several places, friendly faces saying "sure this can be done till sunday" yeah, right .. we will see, but so far I have heard bad things from people who went through this ...
The guy at Fiji Telecom was especially annoying, he was not happy with only having a photocopy of my passport (and then he kept it, while the electricity people made a copy for their records). And it ended with "now we process that and call you when you can come and pay your 500F$ deposit" .. great ... now I am waiting for that call ... but i think I will just walk by there again later.
Severely annoyed and fatigued by all that I went back to the hotel to eat chinese leftovers and to take a nap (the night before I did not sleep too much) ... but for some reason the phone kept ringing from time to time (with no one actually calling) and housekeeping brought laundry ... so no nap ...
For dinner we were invited at Ritsu's Boss' house, which was quite interesting. The place was big enough to seat 17 people comfortably on the porch for drinks and then later on 2 tables inside for dinner. Everything was planned very well, even the changing seating order, to make sure that people mingle. Food was (after a shrimp cocktail) some pork / apple dish with veggies ... very nice .. dessert was some orange flavored crepes and then coffee / tea / drinks. All in all a very interesting evening. Afterwards Edo and Marlee gaves us a ride back home.
Monday, December 02, 2002
Monday: yeah .. good news .. we signed a contract for a car ... now they take it and polish it and get it all nice shiney and new ... it is a 2000 model Toyota Echo .. and unlike all the models we have seen, it is a "hatchback" style ... meaning it is a bit shorter and has no trunk (but still plenty of space in the back). We liked that compact size a lot and the fact that it is so new is very nice and it will most likely cause no trouble in the next 3 years.
The rest of the day I spent with local burocrazy fun .. like telecom and electricity ... this is going to be a fun one to make sure that when we move in on sunday that phone and lights are on ... the people here have that very nice attitude "oh sure we can have that done by the end of the week" .. which usually means the next week .. or the one after that ... But it took me quite some running around ... finding out the hard way that the electricity place closes already at 4 PM ..
later I took a cab to our new house to meet with the landlords representitive to have a "letter of consent" signed (which i need for both, phone and power applications) ... and then Ritsu and I had dinner at the hotel... I had fish and chips (i brought my own sweet and hot sauce) and Ritsu had Gajun Lemon Chicken, which was ok ... but did not really deserve the name "Cajun"
Sunday was actually pretty sunny (I even got a slight sunburn on my favorite spot again, my nose). I made breakfast using again lots of the salmon we bought the day before .. salmon croissant and salmon toast ... too bad I had no champagne ...
We then went to town to see which few shops are open, and we actually found some ... at the Boulevard "mall" some shops open at 11 (e.g. the VCD rental place is open from 11-2 .. people were actually waiting for it to open) , and the asian food store was open too. As to the home electronic places: Courts and Big Bear were open, while Burns & Phillips and MH Homecentres were closed.
We then spent some time at Suva's downtown beach, walking around and flipping stones. Click here for the first videoclip on this blog, a small camera pan over the Suva Bay.
We then went to JJ's for some refreshment before we would go see the new Harry Potter movie .. I liked it quite some ... first of all I was very happy about the sound in the theater ... either the projectionist finally got it right ... or my ears have made an evolutionary step back and are now happy with plain stereo ...
As to the movie ... better than the first, very nice looking, faster overall pacing (though I think I lost Ritsu somewhere in the middle) .. I was surely entertained through the whole 3 hours. Not so good .. some acting, the "showdown", the "reward" (what kind of school just cancels all exams just before the year is over ??? ). And what actually was the connection between the spiders and the snake? why did the spiders show up at each crime scene? And why did that car come back right on time? And why was the tree attacking that car? Why would Haggrit send the boys to the big spider if he was not sure it was not safe? Questions, tons of questions ...
We had a very annoying teenager chick behind us .. discussing the movie loudly with her friend, pointing out the obvious ("oh, look, he is crying") ... we only had 3 cellphones ringing and overall the audience behaved pretty much ... but I had to shush the chick behind us a couple of times (which made them laugh even more... )
We then walked home and Ritsu took a nap while I was reading. For dinner we went to Great Wok (one of the few places that is open on sunday evening) and it was very nice again. We went back, watched some "Friends" and went to bed.
Sunday, December 01, 2002
Today (Saturday) we got up early to look for a car again .. so after breakfast and shower we head of to our "favorite" car dealer .. and what a surprise, while the Toyota Echo we have seen 2 weeks ago was gone, we saw a more compact model of the same car, which for the first time we had seen the night before ... in silver ... we looked ... and I actually took it out onto the roads of Suva to test drive it (well .. it was more testing my abilities on left sided traffic .. but fun) .. but to talk about the price we had to talk to the boss, who was not in.
We then went to the USP book store again and the to Cost-U-Less .. where we did some first household shopping ... I also got us some nice sliced salmon, which we have not had in quite some time .. back at the hotel I made us some nice salmon bites.
The rest of the day we spend with some pre-packing .. and I realized that I have not put up any pictures of our hotel room on this blog yet .. so here we go .. (click on it to even see it bigger)
So, this hotel room has been our home for 5 weeks now ... 6 more nights to go ... in total we will have spent 10 weeks in hotel beds .. that is somewhat interesting ... my back hurts like hell .. I want my futon !!!!
For dinner we went to JJ's (to finally try their dinner) ... it was nice .. though the waitstuff was a bit mal-coordinated ... I had Swiss Beef, Ritsu had Chicken Pasta ... and then we shared a Ceasar Salad, which needed serious help.
We walked back home .. again without being robbed .. knock on wood ..
