New Feature: Use the search box below to find stuff in this blog!
Saturday, January 10, 2004
We just took a nice drive / walk along Victoria Parade, the part that is out of town and goes along the waterfront. As part of last years beautification program, there is now a long paved walkway with many shaded table / benches combos and at the point where we parked is even a tiny japanese Garden (of which I can not find any mentioning online, but the name I guess was Takashi Suzuki Garden) ... we walked along the water until we came to a small restaurant. This was supposed to have been a lighthouse many many years ago, when we saw it last year it was pretty much in ruins, but they rebuild it, painted it blue, now it just needs a name.
It was very empty, the menu is not that inviting ... but I think this place just needs some time and could become a really nice sunset watching spot. It's just a bit of off everything so it will be tricky to attract guests.
Our next stop was by car a bit further, close to the stadium. We saw kids enjoying the water (the this tide they can walk way and way into the water and still are just knee deep. Temperature wise I was tempted to jump in, but the "beach" is anything but inviting.
For those who still think we live surrounded by paradise beaches, here a picture of a typical Suva beach:
As said in the FAQ, the white powdery beaches and blue skies are on the westside of the island.
Today we were invited to a Shinnenkai at the japanese ambassador's residence. This has now been our 3rd invitation. This time it was different: a) it was during lunch and b) it was less official, meaning no big local politician's were invited, in fact c) it seems this event (to celebrate the new year) was for the japanese people of Fiji only (as speeches were held in Japanese).
So, out of the 100 or so people 96% were japanese, 1% european (me), 1% south american (Araly), 1% australian and 1% from PNG :) The 4 of us all share that we have a japanese spouse, but I was the only guy.
Food was very nice, all japanese new years dishes, some of which were way to sweet for me. Als, around new years in japan it is friggin cold. So, some where calssic winter dishes.
But it was very interesting again, the ambassador's wife later started to play on a string instrument (Koto) and one lady was in full kimono garb.
A mix of summer heat, leftover jetlag, nothing really to report ... creates a bit of a blog vacuum these days ... I keep being very tired ... today was cleaning day ... I started the day very early, hoping that the apple keynote in San Fran would reveal any interesting news ... but besides a music app called GarageBand and smaller but overprized mini iPods it was pretty much a waste of time ...
Last night we went with Edo to Fong Lee and had some great food again.
Today was a really long day ... people were supposed to come at 9:30 AM to finally install an AC unit in my office ... we got the landlord a while ago to agree on that. Fine .. so I was waiting and after some phone calls they arrived at 10:30 and sure enough, first thing they did was having their morning tea break.
To ease the situation and make the day pass more smoothly, I offered we could have a tanoa (a bowl full of kava), but they have to make it, as I only have the ingredients, but no idea how to make it ...
Kava is made from a pepper-like root. The root is ground into a fine powder, the powder is soaked in water using something that looks like a sock. What you get looks like muddy water and tastes funny ... first effects are numbness in the mouth .. and as I found out, it makes you sleepy for the days to come .. that explains the long nap I need to take tomorrow:)
Anyways .. kava is deeply routed in fijian culture and the tech guys were very happy ... they were about to have a pretty good day anyway.
What those mechanics had missed to tell the landlord when doing a quotation was that a 15 amp powerpoint is needed .. and there is none in the house ... since the idea of a non working AC unit hanging on the wall was not that funny, I made a couple of calls and had the promise that some electrician is being dispatched .. that was around 1 PM ... the mech's were done at 1:30 with the AC and had it run off a test wire and so we all sat in the office enjoying the cold air ... the guys were done, but had to wait for the electrician .... so what was I supposed to do with them? Well, I planted them in front of the TV and we watched Terminator 3 together .. heck, I even made popcorn ...
No sign of the electrician yet. So I had to make some more calls ... around 3:30 PM I got a "oh, so late already, can't we do it tomorrow?" and i gave them a very harsh "No fuckin' way" ... and they indeed came over at 4:30 PM ... they evaluated the situation, hiked the price up another 50$ (though not my problem, I made them explain that in detail) and then the electrician left, only to return an hour later with some boy helping ...
To make it short, until 10 PM we had all kinds of hammering and drilling going on and when they finally left and the AC was working, but I was very tired ... (thanks to the kava too)
We went to see the new live action movie version of Peter Pan and besides some very non behaving kids in attendence (I was wondering if their parents have any sense of teaching these kids any kind of social behaviour) we enjoyed the movie a lot. I do not understand all those bad reviews that mainly get high on "sexual subtext" ... the Peter Pan story has always been about growing up .. and frankly, I did not notice anything inapropriate ... I was rather surprised about the level of violance (which I think was used in a good way to tell the story, like the beheading of the teddy bear and Hook randomly shooting pirates to have them shut up) .. all in all ... on my very easy rating scale of "will I buy the DVD and spend 2 more hours watching it, yes or no" it gets a YES.