Friday, February 28, 2003

 
Yesterday's (Thursday) lunch was indian at Ashiyana with Ritsu and Jonathan (a fellow ex-manhattanite and mac user, who just relocated to Fiji and is also married to a japanese lady, so much for coincidences) and it was yummy and fun.

Dinner was Fish and salad ... other than that a very regular thursday and we spent the evening playing with the cat and continuing our x-files marathon :)

#posted by Peter 10:35 AM

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Thursday, February 27, 2003

 
Well ... not much cleaning happened yesterday since Marama did not show up ... but I heard then that she was sick, so, more cleaning next week.

I had to go to the LTA to pick up my drivers licence. Now I have three from 3 different countries.



I spent most of the rest of the day in the office and then had dinner with Ritsu at Daikoku.

#posted by Peter 3:03 PM

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Wednesday, February 26, 2003

 
Wednesday morning .. cleaning day .... and there is nothing better than being woken up by a passing marching band of policemen (and 2 policewomen) ... wow, they are loud ... since we do have a police academy, I suspect our neighbourhood is their training ground for learning how to march straight forward, not run into trees, not lose your trombone and make lots of noise to cheer up the people at 6 PM .... don't believe me ??



#posted by Peter 10:26 AM

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Tuesday, February 25, 2003

 
I am trying to keep this blog as non-political as possible, but this is tricky these days.

I just read a pretty scary blog post over on Ted Mill's blog: up among the golden spires. It talks about ridicolous security checks at LAX (being asked to leave your suitcases unlocked, later finding a leaflet in it saying "if anything is broken, it is neither the airport's, nor the airline's responsibility"), it also talks about people being called in for military duty. Scary scary scary ... being in Fiji does not even feel far away enough these days.

Along those lines: Fiji has deported one muslim teacher for "security reasons" .. it was later explained that he was seen photographing US embassies around the south pacific region, and lots of US$ in cash were found in his house ...


Oh .. and this is us at our Tuesday lunch at "The Edge" ... me having the faux turkish "Donna Kebab Sandwich" (rolled in afghan bread) and Ritsu has "Mezze of 8" ... a variety of little neat things .. very nice


#posted by Peter 4:33 PM

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Yesterday's (Monday) highlight was bringing Misha to the vet, to check if our stitch removal was ok and to have her vaccinated. As usual she was not very happy getting into the hamper and driving in the car ... since I was alone, I had to drive and keep checking that she would not find a way out, but it was ok .. and she now even has her own vaccination record.

For Dinner I made salmon steaks with potato and carrots and a white dill sauce.

On the lighter side: it is always fun to discover what people sell on ebay!

#posted by Peter 11:08 AM

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Monday, February 24, 2003

 
Weekend Summary:

Saturday Morning we decided to catch the first screening of the day of "Chicago" ... and we both loved the movie a lot. I usually do not like Richard Gere, but he surprised me here positively. Everybody was great and the biggest achievement was the editing ... to have real events overlayed with the musical numbers (rather than having "normal people" in "normal everyday situations" burst out in song and dance for no good reason).

I understand that people just have to draw the comparison with "Moulin Rouge", but I think they cannot be compared. While Moulin Rouge was all about great costumes and set design, Chicago is actually quite minimalistic in its musical numbers (often just an empty stage, just dressed with light). Highly entertaining, and I even got goosebumbs when the last musical number began.

After the movie we went to do some supermarket shopping and lunch was then at McDonalds :) Every once in a while we just have to.

For dinner we were invited by Edo and Marly and they had cooked peruvian: A cold marinated fish appetizer and a spicy mussles main dish. Very yummy, I also loved the Pisco Sour they made as a welcome cocktail :) We spent a nice evening with lots of laughs. We also were amazed how HUGE their cat Selino is .. 3 times the size and weight of Misha easily!

The rest of the weekend was quite mellow, mainly playing with the cat, Ritsu washed the car, I had some graphic work to do, we watched some X-Files episodes together.

Sunday we drove to Samabula, where a new bakery has opened and advertised with "international bread specialties" .. but so far we are not convinced, we bought one turkish bread and a "basket" bread ... and it turns out that they probably just use the same dough and shape it differently (also a bit too much salt), and all of the bread is american style soft and fluffy ... I so could go for some nice crusty french country bread :)

Dinner was mexican: I found flour tortillas in one supermarket and so we made soft tacos. I also experimented with stuffed potato skins, and flavor was right, only that the potatos would have needed 5 more minutes cooking time.

As for the cat: fine and peachy, We noticed that she managed to pull one of the thread on her scar ... so, we took care of the remaining ones, and while we were doing that she was holding still and behaved very well. She now has discovered one of our couches as her favorite sleeping place and even naps there together with Ritsu.




#posted by Peter 10:01 PM

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Sunday, February 23, 2003

 
Internet censorship in Fiji !!!
Boy, this is a big one ... and has to be stopped before it get's worse ... Some may recall my ongoing article about the pretty bad online connection here in Fiji, based on the fact that it is a monopoly situation. Fintel sits on the only one cable connecting the island to the world, and they give the right to sell to retail customers to the only ISP of the island: Connect.

Now Fintel has decided to cut off access to a certain service of the internet. No longer are people on the islands able to use net2phone or related voice-chat features!!! I personally do not use it at all (mainly no good software exists for the mac), but I find that very alarming when a monopoly player exercises this kind of power ... if not stopped, what happens next ? Next they cut out text chat like AIM, ICQ and IRC ? and then ? email ???? and then ... certain websites ??? THIS is the beginning of censorship .. and I find it unthinkable that this happens in a democratic and wannabe civilized country !!!

Of course, Fintel does that to keep their revenue stream from international calls ... they charge something like 1 US$ per minute if you try to call europe, while europe can call here for 35cents a minute. I noticed that even the mobile phone agreement I got here states that I must not engage in so called "call-back-schemes" (remember those ? you tell a website to call you from the US and then they relay the call to a number in the US or wherever .. thus you play the US fees, not the fiji fees)

well .. let's see how that develops ... so far I see the internet connection here is getting worse .. not better



#posted by Peter 2:37 AM

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