Saturday, May 31, 2003

 
I haven't ranted about the weather in a long time ... mainly because it has been pretty gorgous the last 3 - 4 days .. no rain, blue skies ... humidity down from 87% to 73% ... but of course NOW that I am writing this (3 AM) it is raining like CRAZY !!!

Anyways, I was able to take some nice shots from the office 'tower' that Ritsu works in




On a fairly unrelated note, we watched The Guru tonight .. and I really liked it quite some (I also hate that indian theme song that is just now totally stuck between my brain and my ears) ... Heather Graham is playing what she plays best .. a porn star :) (as she did in Boogie Nights ... this film tries to be a crossover between Hollywood and Bollywood movies .. and in my book it gets that down pretty well .. I have yet to see more indian / bollywood movies .. all I know about them so far is: there is no song that is not attached to a movie and vice versa: no movie without a song .. (the indian top 10 posted in the sunday paper always states what movie the songs are from ... ) .. the movies seem to follow a very similar pattern: drama, dance, some comedy, maybe some mystery and of course ROMANCE .. and some more song and dance .. usually just big groups of people doing the same arm shake and hand twist to match the rythm ... I wonder .. it seems there is NO special effects industry in India .. there are no Indian sci-fi movies as far as I know ... (hmm .. hey, some song and dance in space? why not?)

Need to go and watch some Indian movies here on big screen (with subtitles) ... and of course .. there are NO movies in fijian language ...

#posted by Peter 2:52 AM

Comments-[ comments.]

Thursday, May 29, 2003

 
Ok .. so .... the ISDN experience has been quite mixed so far .. when it is working, it is nice :) But then again, if you keep idling around, you get easily disconnected .. and last night I tried to reconnect .. and while I did not change anything, I got 4 different error messages (many many times over) ..





I then also found out that there is no such thing like a 24 hour hotline ... I fiddled around and went back to using only one 64 K channel .. and it eventually worked ... It still keeps happening that I can only reconnect after a bunch of trials ...

It also seems that I am their first Mac customer .. so people are all nice, but clueless ..

I am relunctant about reporting any food news on this blog anymore .. As I keep hearing that a) all photos of me involve drink and / or food b) all I am writing about is food c) loose weight !

But I have to mention last night's dinner over at Marly's and Edo's place ... they together with Atsushi, who is staying with them, created a great dinner ... starting out with real Caviar which Atsushi transportet all the way around half the globe, then some nice garlic prawns, bbqed chicken and beef .. and hey, they even made a salad based on green papayas .. and that just reminded me SO much of my favourite dish at Saigon Grill back in NY ... we had a great evening !!!

#posted by Peter 3:59 PM

Comments-[ comments.]

Wednesday, May 28, 2003

 
I finally got ISDN which is considered "High Speed" here .... It only costs me and arm and a leg every month ... and I cannot eat for some time ... which is ok (in total, after 500USD start up cost, ISDN will be around 250 USD per month)... but at least I do not have any time restraints anymore ... only bandwidth ... 500 MB a month a pretty much a joke .. it boils down to 17MB a day .. and that is barely enough for email and basic surfing ... so no downloading software and such .. for that I should still go to an internet cafe ... every extra MB I exceed over 500 MB will be 40cents ... that makes a song around 2USD$ ... makes you really think twice ...

what happens with unused MB ??? Do they roll over ??? of course not ... and I have yet to find a way to actually be able to track my MB usage ...

Here a pic of the 3 telecom guys setting up the physical connection



well .. but all in all .. things are getting better and most people involved were very helpful and trying ...

#posted by Peter 6:13 PM

Comments-[ comments.]

Monday, May 26, 2003

 
I totally forgot it is Memorial Day weekend in the US this weekend ... well .. hope you all have a great long weekend ..

some food ideas collected here over the Weekend:

- I made a small batch of chili .. cooked it a bit more to make it less soupy .. and then spread it on flour tortillas, top it with cheese and bake it like a Pizza .. there is probably even a name out there for it ... bit it was not rolled .. so it is no Burito ..

- Ritsu made a great japanese curry on sunday night, using chicken and a broth pre-mix we brought from NY ... it has a slight apple flavor and it more subtle than indian curry .. very nice ..

- chicken soup with chicken and potatoes were this monday night's dinner ..

Darn, I think I am catching a cold ..

#posted by Peter 8:18 PM

Comments-[ comments.]

Sunday, May 25, 2003

 
Last night we were invited to a little birthday get together at Bill's and Veronica's place up in Tamavua, close to were Jonathan lives (and many other expats). We had met Bill & Veronica before while diving in Bequ, they also are friends with Edo&Marly (yes, Suva is a small place).Also there were Wade&Arali and new friends of Ritsu, the Takasaki's with their 1 year old daughter and Edo picked up a New York colleague (Atsushi) from the airport. Jonathan with his son Ethan, daughter Kaia and wife Kozue joined later .. It was fun. Turned out we had a japanese majority, followed by 3 latin-american ladies. The rest seemed outnumbered ... no speaking nihongo or south american spanish? Sorry, you snooze, you loose :)

... for the second time that day we had Duruka, but this time texan style right from the BBQ .. smoked just like corn cobs .. yeeehaaaw .. very tasty. We also had homestyle hotdogs (not had one in a long time) and of course beers ...


15 years ago a party at a place like this would have involved people getting drunk and falling into the pool (the only person falling in was 4 year old Ethan, trying to rescue his batman doll) listining to loud music (instead here, we had Bill getting his guitar and playing nice folk tunes .. which I knew none of, but enjoyed a lot) and then in a smokey dark room headbanging style dancing (nope, all lights on and everybody, including the kids dancing to latin music). What a great evening ... always fun to see other people's houses around here ...



#posted by Peter 1:28 PM

Comments-[ comments.]