GALLERY: APIA IRONMAN

OK, so this was not exactly an Ironman. It did involve a swim, a bike, and a run, so it was, technically speaking, a triathlon. The 300m swim, 12.5K bike ride, and 2.5K scamper, were half of the typical sprint distance and was referred to as an "enticer", you know, an event to interest previously lazy people, such as myself, in the sport. The only thing the race enticed me to do is never enter a triathlon again.

I finished in the top ten. Never mind that there were only 12 competitors in my event and the two people who finished behind me were a 50+ Canadian volunteer and pre-teen young man with the athletic looks of a undernourished chess player. Concentrate not on the fact that you could have timed me with an hour glass, but instead that I participated and finished.

Before I came out to Samoa, I did some freelance work for a company up in the Bay Area called Brightroom that sends photographers around the country to shoot triathlons and other endurance events. So I have a healthy respect for these people, leaping into freezing cold water in the early dawn and pushing the envelopes of their fitness on their state of the art bicycles. I also though they were a little nuts. I never thought I'd be one of them.

The Peace Corps, in a rare burst to inform volunteers, actually sent out a few emails about the event. These, of course, were duly deleted by me without being read. So how is it that a little after 8:30am on a lovely South Pacific Saturday morning, I found myself lined for the start of this little race? Dam good question. I don't really know. Sometime between deleting the emails and hearing my friend Rob Sharp, the organizer, talk about the event on the radio, I got it in my head that this was a good idea. When else was I going to have a chance to run in a triathlon so short?

I woke up at 4am to prepare. Even with my crazy cats waking me up at ridiculous hours, I'm never up this early. I wanted to ensure that I was ready and I didn't miss the race.

I had to dig my contacts out of wherever they were hiding. I haven't worn them in 6 months. They settled in my eyes uncomfortably. I made a big pot of porridge to "carbo-load" around 5:45 and then I hit the road .

The distance from my house in Fagali'i to where the race was being held at the Apia Yacht Club on the Mulinu'u peninsula is almost as far as the cycling distance in the triathlon. By the time I arrived I already had a good sweat going.

At 7:00 I was lined up with the competitors to register. Someone marked my arm and my calf with my number (M9) and I was set to go.

I took a swig of water, grabbed my goggles and tested out the water.

The skies were overcast. The weather was mild, not too humid, not too hot. The slate-gray waters of the bay were calm. You couldn't ask for a more ideal day for racing.

I can remember looking at the red buoy, a mere 150m out into the sea, and thinking, this is going to be a piece of cake, not stopping to realize for a second that I haven't swam 300m in one stint in years. Now that I think about it, I can't remember ever having done it.

At 7:30, hydrated, fed, and warmed-up, I was ready to race. But the kiddie race went off first and by the time we hit the start line over an hour later, I was hungry, cold and agitated.

Although there were only 12 competitors in the Men's open race, there were more than 40 people at the narrow neck of the yacht club boat ramp because the Women and Team triathletes started at the same time. Almost all of the racers were ex-pat Palangis. There were a couple of Samoans competing in the Team event, but they were sadly underrepresented. There were a handful of JICA Japanese volunteers. I was the only one from Peace Corps.

When the gun went off, I was in a scrum of wrestling, flailing bodies all fighting for position. I swam like a maniac just to give myself some breathing room. When I looked up I realized that I was heading about 20 degrees off from the course and had expended tons of energy.

I had planned to go out slowly. I expected most of the racers to sprint at the start and run out of gas, exactly want I didn't want to do. I figured I would hang back, avoid the crush of the starting line, go at an even pace and just reel them back in one by one. Typically, it didn't work out that way.

Before I got to the buoy, I was doing breaststroke. Halfway back to dry land, I was standing on the bottom, thinking, shit I'm really not in shape for this. I was almost last out of the water, but there was a middle aged woman with emphysema and an overweight, adolescent boy eating my wake.

I staggered on jelly legs up the slippery ramp to the transition area where I was stood stunned that I actually had to get on my bike and propel myself to the run. My lungs were burning. I couldn't get a full breath without painful constriction in my sternum. I reached for my tank top and socks, but had a rough time putting everything on my wet, weak body. By the time I pushed back out onto the course, I was well behind the rest of the field.

The bike is by far my best event. Despite my rusty, Tawainese-made, Peace Corps clunker of bike, I was going to make up some of the stagger. The course was 4 laps of the Mulinu'u peninsula between the traffic circles at the observatory at the far and the fish market in town. Determined not to embarrass myself further, I put the hammer down.

There were marshals out on the course to keep us headed the right way, to count laps and to prevent human-hungry dogs from straying onto the road. We still had to fight heavy traffic, seas of people picking up trash, and the police marching band out in the front of the parliament building practicing for the Independence Day celebrations.

I powered down on the pedals and moved past slower, weaker competitors, but it mostly women, children, and the infirmed. I was passed by only one rider, but that was Peter Lawther, an Aus-aid consultant on his sleek road bike, so I didn't feel too bad about it, especially since he didn't do the swim. I passed little Japanese women, chunky Samoans, and a chain-smoking English tourist on a borrowed bike who sounded like Brad Pitt in "Snatch." On the last lap, I eased by 3 guys ahead of me in the Men's race. They all re-passed me within a few hundred meters of the run.

As soon as I hit the pavement I knew I was in trouble and I remembered why I haven't run seriously since high school. I hate it.

For starters, I don't have running shoes. Not planning on doing anything more athletic than getting off my ass in the morning and going to work, I left my running shoes in storage in the East Bay.

Instead I have hiking shoes which weigh a ton are not designed for anything faster than a casual amble up along a mountain trail. My knees quickly felt the brunt of their inadequacy. I couldn't run for more than a few hundred meters without having to stop because of the pounding pain in my left knee.

I made my way, turtle-like, stopping and starting, up and down the peninsula. When I reached the Yacht club, I was exhausted, in pain, and finished with a time of With a time of 63:01 only slightly more than fifteen minutes behind the winner, but thrilled to have finished my first and last triathlon.

Posted by andrew at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's amazing. The feds finally caught up with Eric Robert Rudolph, the so-called Olympic bomber. When I was living in Atlanta, just after the Olympics, and Richard Jewel was still the suspect everyone was talking about, Rudolph was bombnig abortion clinics and gay bars.

The guy in affront to every decent person in the world. Hopefully he'll spend the rest of his miserable life in federal ass-pounding prision somewhere where the weather in miserable, maybe upstate New York or North Dakota. Bon Voyage, Eric.

Here's the story from MSNBC:

Olympic Bombing Suspect Captured
Eric Robert Rudolph, on the lam for years after being charged in deadly bombings at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and elsewhere in the South, was arrested at gunpoint early Saturday as he foraged for food in a trash bin in North Carolina. “The most notorious American fugitive on the FBI’s most wanted list has been captured and will face American justice,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said.

RUDOLPH, 36, WAS captured after a young rookie cop in western North Carolina spotted a man digging in trash behind a grocery story in the small town of Murphy about 3:30 a.m., said FBI Special Agent Chris Swecker at an afternoon press conference. After first giving police a false name, he revealed his true identity, which was confirmed through fingerprints, investigators said.

Rudolph had been on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list and had eluded a massive manhunt for five years, much of it in the western North Carolina mountains near where he was arrested Saturday. The FBI had offered a $1 million reward for his capture.

NOT SEEN SINCE 1998
The Army veteran and experienced outdoorsman hadn’t been seen since July 1998 after he took supplies from a health store owner in North Carolina.

Authorities believed he had fled into the mountains, and as more time passed with no reported sightings of him, some believed he must be dead.

“We always thought he was up here in the mountains,” Swecker said. “We had no credible sightings elsewhere in the country.”

Clad in work clothes, a camouflage jacket and jogging shoes at the time of his arrest, Rudolph was in good health when he was taken into custody, police said. “He’s lost quite a bit of weight,” Cherokee Count Sheriff Keith Lovin said.

Rudolph was captured after police in western North Carolina spotted a man digging in a trash bin in the small town of Murphy at about 4:30 a.m.

Agents spent years searching the hills and caves around Murphy for any trace of Rudolph. Early in the search, they ran across some camping sites believed to be his and found cartons of oatmeal and raisins, jars of peanuts and vitamins, and cans of tuna they said were the same brands Rudolph ate.

The 1996 bombing at the crowded Olympic park during the summer Olympics in Atlanta followed closely on the heels of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing and stunned the world.

The bomb was left hidden in a knapsack in the crowded Centennial Olympic Park on July 27, 1996. When it exploded, it killed one woman and injured 111 other people.

Two years later, Rudolph was charged with that attack and in three others — at a gay nightclub in Atlanta and at an office building north of Atlanta in 1997, and at an abortion clinic in Birmingham in 1998. One police officer was killed.

In all, the bombings killed two people and wounded more than 100 people, according to the FBI.

Rudolph is expected to appear in federal court in Asheville, N.C., on Monday, where it will be determined if he is to be taken first to Atlanta or Birmingham to face charges.

Rudolph, a Florida native who moved to western North Carolina in 1981, was believed to adhere to Christian Identity, a white supremacist religion that is anti-gay, anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner. Some of the four bombs he is charged with planting included messages from the shadowy “Army of God.”

The search for Rudolph began a day after the Birmingham blast. He was initially sought as a witness: A gray 1989 Nissan pickup truck registered in his name was seen near the clinic following the explosion.

He was tied to the bombings when authorities who searched a storage locker he had rented in Murphy found nails like those used in the clinic attacks.

At its height, the search for Rudolph in the mountainous region in western North Carolina, just over the Tennessee border, included more than 200 federal agents. In 2000, it was scaled back to less than a handful of agents working out of a National Guard Armory just outside Murphy.

Pockets of western North Carolina have had a reputation as a haven for right-wing extremists. Some there mocked the government’s inability to find Rudolph with bloodhounds, infrared-equipped helicopters and space-age motion detectors — and some said they would hide him if asked.

The FBI had said it believed Rudolph was somewhere in the Nantahala National Forest, living on his own, breaking into vacant vacation cabins, stealing from local gardens. Murphy Police Chief Mark Thigpen would not comment Saturday on whether or not Rudolph had filled police in on his specific hideouts.

Early Saturday, Murphy Police Officer Jeff Postell spotted a man behind the Save-A-Lot grocery who was rooting through trash and looked suspicious, authorities said.

Postell, 21, who has been on the Murphy force about a year, was alone when he approached the man with his gun drawn because Rudolph was holding a flashlight that Postell thought might be a weapon, Thigpen said. Thigpen said Rudolph offered “no resistance whatsoever.” No weapons were found on his person of in the backpack he was carrying.

Police said Rudolph first gave them a false name. When that didn’t check out and they asked him again for his name he admitted he was Rudolph, Lovin said. Lovin said Rudolph appeared to be “somewhat relieved and he has been cooperative at this point.”

Jeff Lyons, whose wife, Emily, was critically injured in the women’s clinic attack in Birmingham, said they had never given up hope that Rudolph would be caught. Saturday morning, a friend called after hearing the news.

‘WORTH BEING WOKEN UP FOR’
“I turned to Emily, and I said, ‘What news would be worth being woken up for?”’ he said. “This is indeed one of the best days we’ve had in quite some time.”

Robert Stadler, whose wife worked at an attorney’s office in the Atlanta building that was bombed in 1997, had been inside the building with the couple’s baby twins when the bomb exploded. They had made it outside when a second bomb exploded that injured several police officers.

“We had moved on from what happened in 1997,” Stadler said Saturday, “but always there was a feeling that Eric Rudolph was somewhere.”

Posted by andrew at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning I got a response from the mysterious Dr. Fibu of the Nigerian money scam. It's really wonderful what you can do when you have full access to your own email account. Here's what Dr. Fibu has to say for himself:

Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 05:17:13 -0700 From: "fibu martin" <> To: Subject: Urgent Dear Amos (this is my pen name),

I really appreciate your responce to my proposal. As you know this business involves so much money so i will need you to provide me with your telephone number in other for us to have a good business relationship.

In doing this, I will be able to give you a call and explian more about the
transaction to you.

Regards
Dr fibu.

It tickles me how such an massive financial transaction is being handled by a guy who can't even capitalize his I's let alone his name. It's incredible to me that anybody could fall for this, but many have.

Posted by andrew at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Every once in a while, I get a reminder about how beautiful Samoa is and how lucky I am to be here. Today was one of those days.

Kris and I spent the day at the Papaseea Sliding Rock. Papaseea is a series of 3 little waterfalls with water skimming over surfaces so smooth that you can slide right down them into relatively deep, cool, fresh pools of crystal clear water.

It's stunning beautiful and it's only just outside of town. To give you an idea, from the center of Apia, it's a 7 tala taxi to the Slide. It's also a 7 tala taxi ride in the opposite direction to my house.

We got there around ten in the morning. The skies were somewhat overcast, but no one was around. We paid our 2 tala entry fee and walked down the long series of concrete stairs built by the Japanese or the Canadians or some other "aid" benefactor.

Down at the river, the falls were raging because we've been having so much rain. Kris pluinged right into the largest fall. It has the longest slide at about 5-6 meters, but the pool at the base was too swallow because of all the build up silt.

No problem. We just went about 10 yards down river to the other two slides. The first is a short steep drop of about 2 meters to a narrow, deep pool. The real fun comes on the third slide. It's not as steep as the second, nor as harrowing as the first long waterfall, but it's so fun.

You slide down at about 45 degree angle, hit a little bump of a rock and pop in the air into the pool below. Great fun and all natural.

I couldn't find my bathing suit this morning and my shorts had a little too much friction so I'm to have to come back, but it's so close, I can easily ride my bike up there.

Kris and I spent an hour or so sitting at the top of the falls, chatting and letting the water run over us until some tourists showed up and we decided it was time to call it a day, but not before snapping a few pics.

Posted by andrew at 09:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This came from Yahoo today:

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for the comprehensive information. We realize how important
the email account is and we do apologize for any inconvenience this has
caused you.

We have prompted our system to generate a new password for your Yahoo!
account. This password will be sent to your alternate (Hotmail) email
address and will help you restore access to your account.

Once you have logged in, please update your Zip Code and verify your
alternate email address so that you may use our automated password
request form if you experience future sign-in problems.

To do this, please click on the "Account Information" link on your My
Yahoo! home page, or "Mail", "Options" then "Account Information"
within Yahoo! Mail. Next, click the "Edit" button on the Member Information
section of your Yahoo! ID Card.

On the following screen, you will view your Member Information screen
that includes your current alternate (non-Yahoo!) email address. If
this address is not currently listed as "Verified," please click on the
"Non-verified" link beneath your email address.

Next, click on the "Send Verification" link to initiate the
verification process. A verification code will be sent via email to your alternate
email address. You may click on the link provided in that email, or
return to your Yahoo! ID Card to enter the code. Once the process has
been completed, the word "Verified" will appear beneath your email
address.

Currently, our system will only send new passwords to verified email
addresses. We apologize for any inconvenience this process has caused.
Please contact us again if you require additional assistance with your
account.

Please Note: if you would like to change your password, please make
sure that your new password is difficult for other people to guess. A good
password will contain a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters,
numbers, and/or special characters such as %, $, and +.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,

Carlo

Posted by andrew at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I stayed up all night last night working on the flash intro to the site and it is working like a charm, finally (sort of - the images sometimes still get stuck loading, but at least they load in the right place and in the right order).

This was not easy to pull off. Flash is a pain in the ass to work with. It's one of the least user friendly programs out there. And the help documentation that Macromedia provides is dogshit. That aside, it's serious fun to play around with and make animation.

In the latest version, Flash MX, Macromedia has included dynamic capabilities, which is how I solved the loading problem that I was having with the first go around. All the images in the movie are loaded dynamically off a server so the .swf file, the actual file that contains the animation, is tiny, only 16K or so. Before it was over 250K, which is large, especailly for the narrowband connections in Samoa.

The really beautiful thing about the dynamic images is that I never have to edit the flash file ever again. If I want to change the images that appear in the movie, all I have to do is upload new movies. I love it!

Posted by andrew at 02:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I still can't get into my Yahoo acount, but I'm hopeful of a quick solution now that I have, finally, after a month of correspondance, recieved an email from someone with a name, Carlo. Carlo, my savior. Or so I hope.

So far, all I have is the letter, which you can read by clicking the MORE link. I don't know if this guy is going to be able to help me. I can only pray that he has a fucking heart.

Meanwhile, on another front, I've got a friend of a friend who knows a guy who works in Yahoo Engineering who says that he can reset my password. He was very confident when I wrote yesterday morning, but I haven't anything from his or my friend or his friend since then.

I'm the meantime, I'm losing my patience and want to go to Santa Clara and knock some sense into those heartless bastards at Yahoo.

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

Account privacy and security is extremely important at Yahoo!. Based
on
the information you have supplied and similar reports, it appears you
may have received a fraudulent email stating that it was from Yahoo!.
Yahoo! is in no way associated with such an email message. No Yahoo!
employee will ask you for your password in an unsolicited phone call or
email message. If you are ever asked for your password in an
unsolicited
manner *do not* share your password.

If you have replied to an email asking for your password and have found
that you cannot log into your Yahoo! account, you will need to verify
your account with us so that your password may be reset. In order to
verify your account, we will need you to provide the following
information that you supplied at registration:

* ZIP/Postal code

(Note: If you have moved since creating this account, please provide
your current as well as old Zip codes.)

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,

Carlo

Yahoo! Customer Care - Mail Investigations
http://abuse.yahoo.com

Posted by andrew at 02:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just added a new translation feature to the site. You can now read these pages in French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and even Norwegian. I found this site Free translation, http://www.freetranslation.com/.

I'd love to know if it's any good. Can someone who reads any of these languages check it out and let me know? It certainly looks good, especially the Norwegian.

American Idle in various languages:

French - L'americain Tourne au ralenti.

Spanish - Marcha Lenta Americana

Dutch - Amerikaans Inactief

Italian - L'americano Ozia

Portuguese - Americano Desocupado

Norwegia - Amerikansk Idle

Posted by andrew at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It could last forever. What a run by the Baggy Green!

Australia's Winning Streak Comes to an End
Andrew Miller - 25 May 2003

Australia's 21-match unbeaten run has come to an end, the very
day after they took an unassailable 4-0 lead in the seven-match
series. West Indies won the toss and made an imposing 290 for 5,
thanks to an enterprising second-wicket partnership of 178
between Brian Lara and Wavell Hinds, and some restrictive spells
of bowling from an assortment of part-time spinners. Australia
lost early wickets in reply and never came close, despite a
classy 77 from Andrew Symonds. As Steve Waugh found out last
month, clean sweeps in the Caribbean are notoriously hard to
achieve.

Lara was in barnstorming form in the Tests, but had managed just
62 runs in the first four ODI matches, and invited criticism for
coming in at No. 5 during yesterday's 67-run defeat. But today,
determined to stave off another whitewash, he led from the front,
coming in at No. 3 as early as the second over after Chris Gayle
had been trapped lbw by Brett Lee.

He started slowly, but after taking a good look at the bowling,
Lara launched into Glenn McGrath and Lee with a series of
lacerating back-foot drives and pulls. They were statements of
intent that were seized upon by an increasingly animated Port-of-
Spain crowd, and Hinds caught the mood as well, cracking a Lee
long-hop to the point boundary, before pulling McGrath through
midwicket. They were urgent between the wickets as well, although
a fraction over-eager on one occasion, when Hinds narrowly beat a
Lee direct-hit after being sent back by Lara.

Eventually though, Andy Bichel's golden arm made the
breakthrough. He had been clattered for six fours in his first
three overs, but returned for a second spell to pick up Hinds and
Lara in consecutive overs - Lara for the seventh time in the
tour. But some sensible accumulation from Ramnaresh Sarwan kept
West Indies grinding towards an ominous total. He added 71 for
the fourth wicket with Marlon Samuels, who kept his attacking
instincts in check while at the same time cracking five loose
deliveries for emphatic boundaries. Ricardo Powell completed a
successful team effort with an unbeaten 20 from 13 balls.

Australia had not successfully chased a total of this magnitude
for more than a year, and they were quickly pinned back by Corey
Collymore and Merv Dillon, who grabbed the crucial wickets of
Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting. Gilchrist lasted just 13 balls,
carelessly lofting Collymore straight down the throat of Wavell
Hinds at deep-midwicket for 11 (18 for 1), and though Ponting
started confidently, he soon flicked a good-length ball from
Dillon straight to Hinds at square leg (57 for 3). Collymore also
dealt with Jimmy Maher, standing in for Matthew Hayden, thanks to
a brilliant catch by Ryan Hurley, who dived forward from mid-on
and damaged his shoulder in the process.

Symonds and Michael Clarke did their bit to salvage the situation
with a well-paced 92-run partnership for the fourth wicket.
Clarke had walloped an unbeaten 55 from 40 balls in Saturday's
victory, and picked up where he left off by smashing Gayle for a
first-ball four through long-on. But Lara's response was
unorthodox in the extreme, as he turned to the legspin of Sarwan,
who had previously bowled just three overs in one-day cricket.
Sarwan dropped in the odd loose delivery, but his big-spinning
leg-stump line proved difficult to get away. Clarke, forever
giving himself room, cracked three fours in his 39, but when
Dillon returned to the attack, Lara leapt high at mid-on to cling
onto a well-middled swipe (149 for 4).

Australia's hopes now rested on the magnificent form of Symonds,
and the ultimate finishing skills of Michael Bevan. Symonds
played a delightful innings, mixing his natural power with a
series of deft glides and late cuts as the spinners continued to
bowl a tight line. But he eventually misjudged another dab off
Samuels, and deflected the ball onto his stumps for 77. Ian
Harvey quickly followed, bowled by Gayle for 2, and the contest
had been over for some time when Bevan was given out by the third
umpire, caught at gully off Dillon for 31. With 55 runs needed
from the final over, Lara bowed to popular demand and brought
himself on to bowl, as Australia's winning streak came to an end.

Posted by andrew at 05:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After struggling with Flash MX all weekend, I finally got a finshed product for my new intro page.

It looks great offline, however when I put it online, the movie gets stuck after the second image. At least it does here in Samoa where the connections are very, very slow. I'm still waiting to hear from someone at home if it loads properly.

I'm trying to work out a way where I can load the images dynamically and drastically reduce the size of the .swf file which is something like 226K at the moment. I'm also working on a "preloader" that might solve the problem for us low-bandwidth folks.

Let me know what you think. If you have any questions about any of the pictures, I'd be more than happy to answer them.

Posted by andrew at 07:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Country Fried Chicken, a chain from New Zealand, opened it's doors on Sunday. I went and tried it. It's not all that good. Just basic fried chicken and chips. And they only have drumsticks, which isn't a big surprise since breasts are almost impossible to come by.

The great thing about Country Fried Chicken is that it is open on Sunday at 10am. It's the only place to eat that opens before 5pm on Sunday. That is a blessing, especially for Peace Corps Volunteers in Apia.

Posted by andrew at 06:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning I woke up at dawn, around 6am. I don’t know why. I should be sleeping in. It’s Saturday. But it was six and I was up. I let the kittens out and sat down at my desk to do some writing.

Around 5 minutes later Fil comes running past the door in a howling blur followed very closely by one of my neighbor’s boorish dogs, Opium. I ran outside as fast as I could. I wasn’t that worried because Fil can take care of herself.

If it was Mak, I’d be worried. Mak is more concerned with taking inventory of my fridge than protecting himself against the local ruffian dogs. Fortunately he’s scared of his shadow so he rarely ventures too far outside.

Fil is a different story. She’s a very adventurous cat. I found her high up in a banana tree, with all the dogs milling around below. I had to coax her down gingerly, because she was freaked out, but all her cute parts were in one piece, and she recovered from the fright before the morning was over.

Posted by andrew at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

These are the famous words of Sir Edmund Hillary after he returned from conquering Mt. Everest. It would be great to be that non-chalant after becoming the first person (along with Tenzing Norgay) to climb the highest mountain on earth. I've always appreciated Hillary's understated modesty. For some one in a field for of braggarts along the lines of Rienhold Messner, Hillary is refreshingly different.

Hillary is back in Nepal celebrating 50 years since the great expedition.

Click on the more link for the full story from the Associated Press

Hillary returns to Mount Everest 50 years later
By Steve McMorran, Associated Press Writer

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- A half-century ago, Mount Everest was both known and unknown, an international symbol for the mysterious and insurmountable.

To the native Sherpas, the lower slopes, ridges, ice walls and crevasses of the mountain they call "Sagarmatha" had a familiar geography. But its highest reaches were beyond the scope of legend.

When Englishman George Mallory was drawn to its slopes and was asked to explain the mountain's magnetism, he explained, in an immortal phrase, that he would climb it "because it's there." He died on the mountain's northeast ridge in 1924.

Another 29 years passed before the mountain finally surrendered its summit and gave up its secrets to the most unlikely of invaders.

On May 29, 1953, 33-year-old New Zealand beekeeper Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide and companion, Tenzing Norgay, became the first men to stand atop Everest.

They were the final emissaries of a British mission formed in concert by the joint Himalayan Committee, the Alpine Club of Great Britain and the Royal Geographical Society, led by Sir John Hunt.

The memories of that moment are still vivid for Hillary, now 83 but in good health as he prepares for anniversary celebrations of the climb.

The duo surmounted the final obstacle of a sheer, 40-foot ice wall -- now known as the "Hillary Step" -- and dragged themselves up a narrow snow ridge to the summit.

They were close to exhaustion after their final, laborious ascent. As they climbed over each humped ridge with difficulty, another sloping ridge came into view.

Hillary, who was knighted in the year of his climb, said they began the final climb that morning with "zest." But as the effort of each step increased with the lack of oxygen, they settled into "a grim struggle."

Then, Hillary realized that the ridge they were climbing -- he in front and Tenzing close behind -- no longer sloped upward and now dropped rapidly away. With a few final swings of his ax he stood at the summit and drew Tenzing to his side.

"I remember the relief and I remember the view," he said in a telephone interview. "We did think of Mallory and the others. It was a very quiet moment, and I think more than anything there was relief that we'd succeeded where others had failed."

A quiet man, almost unprepared for the fame that came with the achievement, he said he held out a congratulatory hand to Tenzing. His companion, less reserved, grabbed the tall New Zealander in an ebullient hug.

Hillary could look down on the North Col of Everest, the Rongbuk Glacier and, farther off, Everest's neighbor, Makalu, which was then still unclimbed. He recalls mentally tracing a route to Makalu's summit, one he was to explore successfully years later.

This man who had learned to love the mountains as a young boy on day treks outside his native Auckland had become the world's consummate mountaineer.

He carried a camera, loaded with color film, within the folds of his shirt to keep it from freezing, and brought it out to record the scene. Tenzing had never used a camera, and Hillary didn't have time to teach him.

So there are no photographs of Hillary at the summit. "But you can take my word for it: I was there," he said, his humor still roguish.

The images from the peak are of Tenzing -- high-booted and heavily dressed -- holding aloft his ice ax on which he has unfurled the Union Jack and the flag of Nepal.

Hillary said he had removed his oxygen gear to take the photographs, and after about 10 minutes, he realized his movements were becoming clumsy from a lack of oxygen. He put on his tanks and mask again.

Tenzing, he recalled, made a small hole in the snow and left his offerings to the gods: a bar of chocolate, a few cookies and some candy. Hillary took out a crucifix that Hunt had given him on the South Col a few days earlier and planted it, tenderly, next to Tenzing's Buddhist offering.

The pair spent only 15 minutes on the summit, much of it in quiet reflection. Hillary looked briefly for signs that Mallory's expedition might have succeeded almost 30 years before, but found none.

"It was time to move on," he said.

Tired and with oxygen supplies dwindling, the pair began a rapid descent down the treacherous ridges, sustained by occasional sips of sweetened lemonade. They hastened to reach two reserve cylinders of oxygen cached above the final camp they had left hours before.

Tenzing led the way down toward the larger camp on the South Col, where other expedition members waited. As they approached the huddled tents, a figure came toward them, and Hillary recognized George Lowe, a fellow New Zealander. Lowe, no longer able to keep vigil with the others, carried soup and emergency oxygen. He also was eager for news.

Hillary said he drew himself up as Lowe got close and said: "Well, George, we knocked the bastard off."

He could think of no more to say. Fifty years later, he remembered his regret that his mother might have disapproved of his language.

Tenzing died in 1986. For many of those years, Hillary kept silent on the question of whether he or Tenzing had reached the summit first. Only recently has he said that he took the lead and stepped on the peak moments before his Nepalese guide.

It was of no significance, he said. Neither one could have done it without the other.

They were an odd pair, the New Zealander and the Sherpa. Hillary was tall, spare, long-faced and taciturn. He climbed with the natural grace of a giraffe and with a "demonic" energy, expedition member James Morris said.

Tenzing was small, compact and catlike. Yet they had been close from their first meeting and they remained so, despite the separation of distance, for more than 30 years.

Hillary had not been surprised to be chosen by Hunt to make the final assault on the summit, nor was he surprised that Tenzing was selected to accompany him. He said he was the fittest of the expedition members and he knew that, if chosen, he would go beyond physical endurance to succeed.

But he hadn't imagined the aftermath.

News of the British expedition's success reached England on the day of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. But jubilation spread far beyond the British empire, making Hillary a citizen of the world in a reaction similar to that which greeted the feats of astronauts.

"We had no supposition that the response would be as great as it was," Hillary said. "We had always had it in our minds that if we succeeded, that success would have some significance in the mountaineering world. But it had never occurred to us, and we must have been very naive in hindsight, that it would be so much more widely significant. It had never crossed my mind."

More than 1,200 people have since followed Hillary to the mountaintop. As Nepal and the world prepare to celebrate his achievement there are 25 expeditions on Everest attempting to repeat his climb. Among them was a 70-year-old Japanese man who became the oldest to conquer Everest.

Hillary views the commercialization of Everest with mild concern and regret.

"We were the lucky ones," he said. "There have been many people who have followed in our footsteps, but we were privileged to have made those footsteps."

Posted by andrew at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning I had a rare pleasure. Filemu, my 7 month old female kitten sidled up to me and fell asleep on my chest. I think this might be the second

time in the 6 or so months that we’ve been together that she has done this. The only other time was just after she was attacked by three or four dogs and she needed some attention. She’s incredibly independent, unlike my other kitten, her brother Makelani who is severely codependent.

I like to think of him as a special needs kitten. She’s affectionate, and she’s always “kneading” with her sharp claws, but she usually prefers to sleep on something more stable than my body.

While Fil was fast asleep, I grabbed my camera a took a few shots. They mostly came out really dark because I didn’t want to use the flash and I couldn’t get up to let some of the nice morning light in through the windows. This was the best of the lot.

Posted by andrew at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ua Pe le Paipa is a rather colorful phrase that Samoans use when the water is out. It literally means, the pipe is dead.

We haven't had water in Fagali'i since Sunday (it's Thursday now). It's a minor pain, but I don't mind much since bringing water in from the tank outside is one of the few things I have to do that makes me actually feel like a Peace Corps Volunteer. The only thing that I have a problem with is doing the laundry. I have a ton of dirty clothes.

Life here is generally easy, especially when compared to the lives of other volunteers around the world. When I read stories of volunteers in Mongolia, living in tents, having to light a fire first thing in the morning so they don't freeze, it makes me think that this experience, depsite it's challenges and problems, is not all the difficult. So it's nice to have to rough it now and again.

It's not really all that rough. We still have electricity. I can watch rented DVDs on my comptuer. I have a fan blowing in my face to keep me cool. I have a SONY CD player and about 100 discs. I have an oven and a stove with three working bruners. Nonstick pans. A more than adequate fridge. Life could be a whole lot worse.

The word is that the water is supposed to be coming back online sometime next week.

Posted by andrew at 05:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today I was riding my bike down the hill from Moto'otua and I could see a masseive tanker pulling into Apia Harbor. We get some tankers in, like the Iver Explorer from the Marshall Islands and the Bro Arthur from France, but they are tiny compared to this bememouth.

You have to remember that Apia Harbor is more like a marina than a bustling port. It can only really take one ship at a time. So when a tanker like this comes in it's a huge deal.

I quickly put my groceries down in the Peace Corps office and rode back along the seawall to watch the ship come in and the sun go down.

I pulled up to the corner of the seawall closest to the port, put my bike down and starting taking pictures. As the tanker was rotating to turn its back towards the land and the pipeline, I could see the name on the back of the ship. The "Mikom Accord" all the way from Singapore. I took a seat and watching the massive ship slow rotate around with the help of both of the Apia Harbor tugs.

As I was relaxing and watching, this little rolly polly kid comes up and starts asking me all these questions:

Are you from New Zealand or America?
Is that a tanker or a freighter?
Why is it turning around like that?
How much oil is it holding?
How much does Samoa pay for its gas?
Can I ride your bike?
So do you, like, live here?
What did you want to be when grew up?

I gave him the answers to the questions that I knew. I couldn't let him ride my bike. That's Peace Corps policy.

He's TJ, a seventh grader from Anchorage, whose Samoan parents have brought him here for the summer. I would have thought, stay in Alaska for the summer, get the hell out of there in winter, but that's not my business.

TJ told me there's a huge Samoan population in Alaska ("Almost everyone in Alaska is Samoan"). I had no idea. And he wanted to be truck driver too. But now he wants to be a football player. He certainly had the bulk, if not quite the physique.

As the sun went down, TJ went off to wherever it is that little kids go off to in Samoa and I went home.

Posted by andrew at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was raining so hard last night I actually got stuck in Moto’otua in the middle of Apia. It was just raining too hard to flag down a taxi, which is the only way for me to get home at night. It wasn’t so bad. There were a bunch of people at Taui’s house and we watched “Office Space” after which the storm abated.

It was close to midnight when a few of us ventured outside to grab a taxi. We tried to call but couldn’t get through to any of the taxi stands. Telephone service here is dicey at best and in the rain, it often fails.

I had to get home so there was nothing to do, but go outside in the drizzle and wait. There were so few taxis because no one wants to drive in Apia in a downpour. Taxis would cruise by every few minutes, but none would stop. They all had passengers. We must have waited half an hour for an empty cab. By that time I was sloppy wet and couldn’t wait to get inside and towel off.

After dropping off a passenger at Vaivase Tai, we headed up to the heights of Fagali’i. It was raining so hard I couldn’t see out the windshield. With all this precipitation, the river on the way to my house was over running it’s banks and the current at the ford was so strong this morning that the bus went around on the longer golf course road.

It had been raining hard all day, so the current was even stronger than before. I thought, certainly, the driver would take the safe route and go the long way around, but he didn’t know or didn’t care because he made the right turn up the normal way to Fagali’i.

When the headlights illuminated the river raging over the ford, I had this vision of the taxi flipping over into the river. I couldn’t believe he was going to risk it. I was sure that we would at least get stuck in the middle of the river and have to wade across with no way to get up to my house.

He drove slowly into the swirling, brown river. Turns out I was worrying for nothing. We got across with no problem. Not even a stutter.

I arrived at my front porch through shin deep puddles and I was just so relieved to be there that I could almost have kissed the ground. I put my key in the lock and turned it, but I the door didn’t open. I try again. Nothing. The key is turning, but the lock isn’t opening. Expect for the periodic flashes of lightening that are bursting in the sky from the east, I can’t see anything because it’s pitch black. I have a flashlight, but it’s in the house. I try again. Same thing. It can’t be the wrong key because I only have one key.

Two weeks ago I tried to get the one key that I have duplicated at one of the locksmith’s in town. I walk in and there’s this woman working there, and I ask if I can have this key made, but she doesn’t know anything. I can hear the locksmith working away somewhere in the back. He shouts out to me, does the key say ‘Janes’ on it? I look at the key and in plain text right, is printed ‘Janes’ in bold, block letters. I tell him yes and he says that he can’t make that key. It’s a Chinese key and they don’t have the blanks. In fact the blanks, to his knowledge don’t exist anywhere in Samoa. I ask him if there’s anywhere I can get the key made. He says, ya, he knows a guy in Hong Kong. Fucking smart ass motherfucker. So basically I can’t get the key remade anywhere.

I don’t know what to do. I want to break in, but I don’t think I can. I try the key on the backdoor. It doesn’t work, of course. There are other Peace Corps Volunteers in my neighborhood and in a pinch I can knock on their door, but it’s past midnight on a Monday. No one wants to have to deal with this. Plus I’m soaking wet, I just want to get inside my place, strip off my saturated clothes and towel off. I can also hear my kittens meowing through the door. They are probably freaking out. I keep trying the lock.

My next door neighbor and her boyfriend are both police officers. I figure if it comes down to it, I can wake them up and they will know what to do. They must be able to break into a house. But I don’t want to have to bother them. I don’t want to deal with this shit. I just want to get my wet ass into my warm house. The rain starts coming down harder. Flashes of lightening, raging in the sky, followed by deep blasts of rolling thunder.

I’m working the lock for about 20 minutes when a car pulls up. It’s the boyfriend. This is great. Now I won’t have to wake them up. He pulls into the carport behind our block of flats and he sits there with the engine running for something like half an hour. All this time I’m thinking, he’s going to come in, right? What the fuck is he waiting for? Maybe for the rain to subside. It doesn’t.

He finally gets out of the car and comes around to the porch where I’m standing. I’m thinking, I probably should have taken the time to ask this guy his name some time before. I know he knows my name. I never asked because I had been told that I was moving from the day I arrived here. That was six months ago.

When he passes me I say hi and let him know about my little predicament. He grunts something unintelligible and tries the key with the predictable result. He goes inside the house and comes out with a huge knife and a lighter. I’m holding the lighter under the lock as he tries to pry loose the bolt with a machete. With the light from the flickering flame of the lighter I can see that turning the key is not moving the bolt at all. I can also see that some paint has been stripped off the door jam and the metal housing for the bolt is slightly bent as though someone tried to break in. He’s getting nowhere with the machete.

He goes back in the house and comes out with Eunice and a butter knife. He jams the knife in the lock, but the bolt still won’t move. I can hear my cats going crazy inside the house. When I put my finger through the slats in the door, I get pricked by the nail of one of them. That’s right. My attack cats keeping the home safe. I whistle to them so they know it’s me.

Eunice gives the lock a few turns and goes to work with the butter knife, but the lock isn’t budging.

They give up with the butter knife and he announces that he’s going to the car to get a screw driver. He comes back with this massive flat head which he works backs and forth in the door jam for about five minutes until the door pops open. Finally.

I thank them both profusely, say goodnight, gather the cats and move my wet self inside. My place is a dump, but it’s warm and dry and it’s all mine.

In the morning, I got the Peace Corps on the phone and they sent up a locksmith to replace the lock. This new lock comes with 2 keys.

Posted by andrew at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Remember "Ginger"? Do ya? Let me refresh your memory.

"Ginger" was the over-hyped invetion by the wacky genius Dean Kamen. Ginger has been marketed as "the Segway", the evolution in mobility.

Why am I bringing this up to you now, you might be asking. I was talking to another Peace Corps Volunteer about our transportation woes. The rule about not being able to drive a car or a motorcycle makes getting around something of challenge. Then I remembered "Ginger."

How perfect would this be? Legions of Peace Corps Volunteer lending a helping hand to developing nations and getting around by means of the snappy looking "Segway." It's the transportation solution for the new generation.

Aren't convinced? Here's a testamonial from Jill McAlester, a 58 year old administrator from San Juan Capistrano, CA.

And the Segway could change the lives of Peace Corps Volunteers. Well, maybe at a top speed of 12.5 mph, the Segway can't out run vicous Samoan dogs, but that's a small price to pay for environmentally friendly, cost-efficient and facile transportation.

Think about it.

www.segway.com

Posted by andrew at 07:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have gotten nowhere dealing with Yahoo about my inability to get into my email. They have the worst customer service I have dealt with. Even credit report companies like Equifax are more responsive. So if you're curious why I haven't responded to your email, that's why.

If you want or need to email me in the near future use "". Hopefully this nightmare will be over soon and I can on with my normal life.

Posted by andrew at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If want to see a slice of Samoan life, look no further than MTV.
Surf Girls, now showing on MTV every Monday 10:30pm eastern features hot surf babes (wouldn't want to see that?) traveling the South Pacific (that's where I am) in search of the perfect wave.

I saw some of the these wandering around the streets in Apia when they made their forays in town to decompress. I have to tell, it's quite shocking to see Americans models running amok in Samoa after you've been here for half a year.

Sadly, MTV has yet to arrive on the shores of this Pacific paradise. Check out the show and let me know how it is.

Here's the blurb from the website:

"Who needs the boys of summer when you’ve got the Surf Girls of MTV? Fourteen babes with boards trek across the globe to compete for a highly-coveted wildcard into the World Championship Tour of surfing and a spot in a pro contest. Find out who will catch a wave to surfing glory in Surf Girls, where the sun is almost as hot as the ladies."

Posted by andrew at 07:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today, I was on my way to work, taking a different route that usual near the house of Malietoa, the Head of State, when I felt a searing pain in my right foot. I looked and there was some mutt clamped onto my foot. I shook him off and managed to get in a solid kick to the snout before I sped off in agony.

Fortunately, the bite, albeit painful, wasn't as nasty as the first time. Only one canine broke the skin, but it still hurt like a mutherfucker. It's never fun to get bitten by a dog.

I went into the Peace Corps office to tell the Medical Officer and get it cleaned up. Now I'm just another Peace Corps statistic: Unintential Injury. The government cerainly has a way with words, don't it?

Posted by andrew at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today, I was on my way to work, taking a different route that usual near the house of Malietoa, the Head of State, when I felt a searing pain in my right foot.

I looked and there was some mutt clamped onto my foot. I shook him off and managed to get in a solid kick to the snout before I sped off in agony.

Fortunately, the bite, albeit painful, wasn't as nasty as the first time. Only one canine broke the skin, but it still hurt like a mutherfucker. It's never fun to get bitten by a dog.

I went into the Peace Corps office to tell the Medical Officer and get it cleaned up. Now I'm just another Peace Corps statistic: Unintentional Injury. The government certainly has a way with words, don't it?

Posted by andrew at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes I forget that I'm living in the middle of the South Pacific. It's easy to do. You get caught up in daily life and days slip by and you just forget. Many of the worries that I thought I left behind have followed me here: Office politics, traffic, laundry, relationships, etc.

Then something happens, like seeing canoe sillouetted in the sunset and I'm reminded about how beautiful it is here in Samoa.

Fortunately, I'm reminded often enough so I know how lucky I am to have been placed here.

Posted by andrew at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I finally met with the principal (pule), Nome, of Lefaga Junior Secondary School to talk about the SPA (Small Project Assistance) Grant that I had taken over from a departed Peace Corps Volunteer.

The purpose of the meeting was to determine their commitment level and thereby acertain the sustainability of the project, which is in question.

The project involves support of 4 computers that were donated to the school by the Vitaly Juice company in Florida.

After talking to Nome, I have many doubts about the long term sustainability of these computers. The school is right near the ocean and the salt air is very damging, in fact it has already KO'd three monitors, so only one of the four computers is operational. There haven't been covers on the computers any of the three times that I have visited. This is the minimum that you would expect for protection.

It's troubling because the school needs computers. The teachers don't have anything to prepare exams, keep track of grades or anything. They don't even have a copy machine. A working computer with a printer would bring the level or education up dramatically by simply reducing the amount of hand copying that the students have to endure, but I digress.

In talking to Nome about what was needed to properly prepare the computer room and keep the machines functioning, he mentioned that the school has been waiting for JICA, the Japanese International Cooperation Association, to build them a new school. Ok, but there's no sign that this is going to happen any time soon, so it's not worth waiting for that.

They've also sent one of their teachers, Pulu, to the national university to get computer training, which is great. However when I asked if Pulu could start to train the other teachers, Nome said, no, they want to learn from a Palagi teacher.

I'm concerned about the pervasive climate in Samoa that pecipitates these attitudes. This country has become so dependant on foreign aid and assistance from overseas volunteers that even when they have a perfect opportunity for self-sustainable development, such as Pulu training the other teachers, they shine it on because of what I look at as a co-dependency.

So while I want to help out the teachers of Lefaga Junior Secondary, I'm very hesitant to spend US Taxpayer money on this project. I'll have to talk it over with some staff members of Peace Corps Samoa and see what they, but I have a feeling that they will agree.

Posted by andrew at 09:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I love getting these requests for money to be sent to Nigeria. The latest one is from some guy named Dr. Fibu representing something called the "Nigerian Federal Government Contract Review Panel."

Dr. Fibu is trying to "raise" money for investments requesting money to buy fishing trawlers and/or to do crude oil exploration in Nigeria. But you don't have to take my word for it, you can read the whole email down below.

This is so transparently a scam, it's hard to believe that people fall for it, but people are still giving money to televangelists, psychic hotlines and all sorts of other scams, so why not this?

You can find information about this scam all over the internet. Here are few links followed by the email itself.

I'm going to write back to Dr. Fibu to see what he has to say.

The East African
Computer Cops
Nigerian Money Scam
The Nigerian "4-1-9" Money Scam
Nigerian Money Scam: what happens when you reply

Here's the email:

Dr Martin Fibu Lagos, Nigeria. Email:

Dear Sir;

REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP.

I solicit your utmost confidence in this transaction. It is confidential and "Top Secret". I represent officials of the Nigerian Federal Government Contract Review Panel (FGCRP) who are interested in investments, to buy and manage fish trawlers or go into crude oil exploration/marketing with funds, which are presently trapped in Nigeria. In order to commence this business we solicit your assistance to enable us transfer into your account the said trapped funds.

The source of this funds is as follows: During past military regimes in Nigeria, government officials set up companies and awarded themselves contracts which were grossly over-invoiced. The present Government set up a Contract Review Panel of which we are members. We have identified a lot of inflated contract funds, which are presently floating in the Apex Bank of Nigeria ready for payment. Unfortunately, as civil servants and members of this panel, we cannot acquire this money in our names. I have been mandated by my colleagues of the panel to look for a foreign partner into whose account we would transfer the sum of the USD$30M (Thirty Million United States Dollars). Hence, I write requesting your unreserved assistance.

We plan to share the money with 30% going to the Account Owner, 60% for my partners and myself and the remaining 10% used in settling all expenses.

If you accept this proposal, be kind enough to send to me by fax
1. Your company's name, address, telephone and fax numbers
2. Your bank name, address, as well as your Bank account number.

With this information, we are going to put in applications for the release of these funds into your account for us all. So far, much has been said, and due to our sensitive position we can not afford a slip in this transaction so contact me immediately through the above email address for further information on the requirements and procedures for this transaction. Please treat with the strictest confidentiality and utmost urgency.

Best regards

Dr Martin Fibu

Posted by andrew at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the current exchange for the US Dollar against the Samoan Tala. The rate has been on a downward spiral since we arrived in the country in October of last year, as you can see by the table below.

This sucks because as Peace Corps Volunteers, we get paid in the local currency, Samoan Tala. For day to day to purposes, the exchange rate doesn't matter, but if we ever travel or when we convert our cash back to US Dollars at the end of service, it's really lousy to have such a weak Dollar.

You can see an historical table of exhange rates for the last 7 months and read a story from Reuters about how thrilled U.S. officials are with the weak dollar because it helps imports by clicking through the MORE link.

U.S. officials happy with dollar fall, report says

Reuters, 05.13.03, 7:29 PM ET

NEW YORK, May 13 (Reuters) - Officials at the U.S. Treasury Department are happy to see the dollar's gradual decline, but hope to keep markets guessing about its policy so as to prevent a disruptive plunge, macro-political advisory group Medley Global Advisors said.

The Medley report, seen by market sources on Tuesday, said U.S. officials plan to counter any complaints at a G7 meeting this weekend with calls for Europe to cut interest rates and for Japan to undertake structural reform.

"This is the U.S. retort at the G7 meeting. If the Europeans complain about the weak dollar, all the Treasury has to do is tell them to cut interest rates," said a trader at a large European bank in New York who had seen the report.

The Treasury believes that if Europe wants to stop the euro's export-choking appreciation against the dollar, a deep cut in euro zone interest rates will go a long way toward accomplishing that goal, the report said.

The dollar sank to four-year lows against the euro on Monday after Treasury Secretary John Snow said a falling dollar helps exports, comments widely viewed as acceptance of a weaker currency.

European and Japanese officials are not worried about current exchange rate levels but fear the U.S. administration's new tone has made it difficult to convince markets the U.S. favors anything but a gradually weakening currency, the report said.

The dollar recovered a little on Tuesday after Snow said a sound currency is key to a sound economy. But Snow also said this week that currencies should reflect economic forces and not be held artificially high or low by intervention.

Market players say Japan has secretly intervened in markets lately in an effort to counter the dollar's fall, which hurts its exports, a key source of economic growth for an economy struggling with deflation and a decade-long slump.

On Tuesday, traders said monetary authorities bought dollars for yen during the Asian and London trading sessions. But the Bank of Japan and the Ministry of Finance refused to confirm such transactions.

In data released last week, Japan said it spent 2.38 trillion yen ($20.44 billion) on currency intervention during the first quarter.

Even European officials are starting to worry about the dollar's impact on the competitiveness of European exports as its economy also suffers. The dollar is down 9 percent against the euro this year and it has shed about 20 percent in the past 12 months.

Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service

Posted by andrew at 02:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning I was walking back from MD's Big Fresh, one of the better supermarkets in Samoa and I met one of the Yachties, a woman named Beverly from Vancouver.

Anyway, she was walking along the seawall whistling to get her husband's attention out on the sailboat so that he would bring the dinghy and pick her up.

I want to start meeting these folks because I'm planning on leaving Samoa by boat when I finish my Peace Corps assignment, so I chatted her up.

Their deal is this:

They are not retired. She’s a hairdresser and he’s a marine engineer. They go around from place to place and offer their services. They have two daughters, 7 and 9, whom they home school. I thought the girls would think travel was great, but they are sick of the boat and want to live in a house.

They left Vancouver last year. They spent some time in Hawaii. Spent the winter at Fanning Island in Kiribati. Now they are in Samoa.

They have little in the way of expense and Beverly expects to continue to travel this way indefinitely. They plan to spend the winter in New Zealand.

How great is that?

Posted by andrew at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ambassador Swears-In 25 New Peace Corps Volunteers

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 12, 2003 - Last Thursday, US Ambassador to Haiti, B. Dean Curran, swore-in 25 new Peace Corps volunteers during a ceremony at the Ambassador’s Residence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

The ceremony marked the official completion of the volunteers’ three-month training program, where they have been immersed in Créole language training and cross-cultural study. Sixteen of the 25 new volunteers will be serving in small business development, and nine will be working in rural health education.

The 16 business volunteers will spend their next two years of service working with micro-credit institutions and community organizations to strengthen their financial management systems. They will also help women’s groups develop income generating projects, and create market linkages for agricultural cooperatives and artisan groups. The business volunteers will also incorporate information technology training into their work.

The rural health volunteers will work in health education in an effort to raise health standards. These volunteers will stress the importance of sanitation, immunization and maternal health. They will teach communities how to fight chronic malnutrition and provide options for preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Among these new volunteers, various ages and ethnicities are represented, providing a wealth of diversity and experience to the Peace Corps program in Haiti. Jae Hwang is a Korean-American from Long Island, New York, and a 1998 chemistry major from Yale University. For the past four years, Jae has worked as an investment banker in Manhattan.

In a northeast Haitian village, Jae will test his New York City banking skills in a rural agricultural environment. He will be working with local peanut farmers providing training in elementary principles of bookkeeping, election of bank officers, and secure record-keeping. Later, Jae plans to help these farmers establish micro-lending procedures to earn additional interest on their deposits. “Haitians think about money a lot, perhaps because they do not have much of it,” Jae says. He plans to build on this basic financial interest to make the community bank profitable during his tour of service.

Cristina Bailey is a 52-year old volunteer who was born in Argentina and immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s. She is a 1996 anthropology graduate from the University of Utah. Cristina, a rural health educator in a village in western Haiti, has already begun her assignment as part of her pre-service training practicum. Working in a rural dispensary four days a week, she provides nutritional information to pregnant women and new mothers. In her spare time, Cristina will organize English language classes and clubs in six surrounding schools. Her goal is to build an HIV/AIDS education and training curriculum into the language classes, leveraging her role as a rural health educator.

Currently, there are a total of 60 volunteers serving in Haiti. They work in small business development, agriculture, rural health education, and HIV/AIDS education and awareness. Since 1982, over 340 Peace Corps volunteers have served in Haitian communities.

Since 1961, more than 168,000 volunteers have served in the Peace Corps, working in such diverse fields as education, health, HIV/AIDS education and awareness, information technology, business development, the environment, and agriculture. Peace Corps volunteers must be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years of age. Peace Corps service is a two-year commitment.

Posted by andrew at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night Norbert made his return in spectacular fashion. For those of you who might not remember or didn't read my email about the critters in my house, Norbert is the foot-long green gecko that lives in my fale.

So last night, while I was struggling to get to sleep in the middle of the night about 3am or so, I heard this huge crashing sound in the kitchen. I get up, walk over 10 feet to the kitchen and turn on the lights.

What do I see?

The first thing is the glass top of my stock pot, which is on the floor. Fortunately it's in one piece. Then I see my kittens. Mak is on the screen door and Filemu is on top of the fridge. They're looking up in the corner. Up in the corner is, of course, Norbert.

I want to end this so I need to get Norbert out of the house or the cats will keep me up all night knocking all the shit off my counters and stove to get to this lizard. But I can't just pick Norbert up because he's slippery quick. So I bust out my water gun and start squirting away.

I'm doing this for about ten minutes with Norbert slithering around the circumference of the kitchen when I realize that he has no place to go. So I open the screen door to give him an exit.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to keep the cats out of the kitchen with the squirt gun. It's effective until Norbert makes his move diagonally down the wall above the counter to get to the door.

Fil pounces but Norbert eludes her grasp and skitters outside.

Disaster averted.

Too bad I couldn't get back to sleep.

Posted by andrew at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Well, so Matrix Reloaded isn't going to win Best Picture, but the special effects were incredble. There were a couple of fight scenes that took fight scenes to a whole new level.

I'm not going to give anything away for those people out there who plan on seeing this movie. All I have to say is plan on enjoying it even if you don't buy into the story line, which I don't.

Keanu Reeves gives his standard stiff-as-cardboard performance, but he's brilliant in the fight scenes. Carrie Anne Moss is excellent as Trinity. Laurence Fishburne's Morpheus is one cool cat. Hugo Weaving's Agent Smith is subtle perfection.

Then there are some notable performances by new faces.

Lambert Wilson is a genius as the french speaking, wise cracking, programmer/bad guy. His wife Persephone, played by Monica Bellucci from the sexy Italian flick Malena, downright burns up the screen in her few scenes.

Go see it. It's Fun.

Posted by andrew at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HEY HEY HEY! Look what we have here.

Matrix Reloaded is playing in our theaters here in SAMOA, a full five days before the release date in States. Take that!

Yes, that's right. Our little speck of an island country has the Matrix Reloaded in Dolby surround sound, I might add, at the Magik Cinema downtown right now, today.

How did that happen?

I haven't got the slightest clue and I don't care. I'm going to the 3:30 screening. I'll let y'all know how it is. Stay tuned!

Posted by andrew at 03:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I stayed up late last night to finish reading Fight Club. This was after staying at the Peace Corps office until 1:23 AM to work on my blog, a never ending work in progress. I was really hoping to sleep in, but I didn't even get my normal sporadic hours.

Around 5 in the morning, I'm woken by a huge crashing sound in the kitchen. I get up and find that the top of the pot on the floor and cats looking at me with guilty expressions. I'm pissed to be up so fucking early, but happy that the glass top didn't shatter.

I try to get back to sleep, but I can't. Light is starting to leak in from behind the curtains and the cats are trying to get on top of the bookcase, which is always dangerous, both for them and for everything below. I grab the cats and put them outside.

I try to get back to sleep, but I only toss and turn, thinking about stories I want to write and entries for the blog. It's driving me nuts, so I get up and write.

On the radio, Nina Netzler is being interviewed about bodybuilding and fitness for women. This is great for Samoa. The women of this country need a positive, healthy role model and Nina fits the bill.

She runs a supplement shop behind her mother's grocery store in Moto'otua. I haven't bought anything from her yet, but I usually stop by because it's air-conditioned and I want to see if she was able to stock Promax bars.

Next on the radio I hear the "Matrix Reloaded" is out in theaters here. Now I have a reason to leave the house and go into town.

Posted by andrew at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've added three new galleries to American Idle. They are not completely done. The pictures are all up, but the pages have not been built, so there are no captions, but you can see all the images.

TAUI PERLA AND KARMIE

The new galleries are:

Taui's Birthday Bash
Tour de Savai'i
Churches of Savai'i

There are also three new images in the tattoo gallery that are very cool including Taui, pictured right, Shawn Wilson and Blair Paul. Have a look.

Posted by andrew at 04:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm joking, of course. This story is absolutely incredible. I can't imagine what I would have done in a similar circumstance. Most likely I would have starved to death. Here's the full story from MSNBC:

Climber recounts canyon ordeal
(MSNBC AND NBC NEWS)

DENVER, May 8 — Aron Ralston should be able to go home from the hospital this weekend, doctors said Thursday. He wants to have a margarita, if the doctors say it’s OK. Odds are, if he could muster the courage to hack off his own arm with a souped-up pocketknife after being pinned by an 800-pound boulder in the remote Utah desert, he can probably have a margarita.

THURSDAY — only a week after he crawled through a narrow, winding canyon, rappelled down a 60-foot cliff and walked six miles in search of rescuers with the stump of his right arm wrapped in a makeshift tourniquet — Ralston sat down at a hospital near Denver to tell the world how he did it.

But not before he balanced a camera in his one remaining hand and snapped a picture of the hordes of reporters and cameras that showed up to hear him.

Yes, of course, the pain of sawing off his arm was terrible, said Ralston, 27, a mechanical engineer-turned-adventurer. “I’m not sure how I handled it. I felt pain. I coped with it. I moved on. ...

“I did what I had to do.”

‘GOING THROUGH EACH OPTION’

Trapped April 26 in Blue John Canyon in Canyonlands National Park when the boulder shifted as he was lowering himself off it, Ralston tried everything he could think of to save himself.

“I began laying plans ... and the next five days until I was rescued … I spent going through each option,” he told reporters Thursday at St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction.

He threw himself against the boulder, over and over, to shift it.

He used the rope and pulleys in his climbing gear to rig a hoist to lift it.

He used a “multiuse tool” — similar to a pocketknife, but with multiple blades for different tasks — to try to carve the rock away where it was pinning his arm, just below the wrist.

No dice.

He felt depressed and remorseful at times, but he was largely able to stave off desperation by focusing on finding a way to free himself.

He said he had mystical experiences — sensing “presences” in the canyon that he believed were his family and friends giving him strength.

Finally, by April 29, his third day in the canyon, his food and water — a liter of water, two burritos and crumbs on a couple of candy wrappers — were running low. Ralston concluded that he would have to cut off his arm if he were to survive. By then, he said, “the courage became more about pragmatics.”

‘THE LAST OPPORTUNITY’

Before beginning, Ralston prepared a tourniquet, pulled some bicycling shorts out of his backpack to put on the wound and packed his other belongings so he could quickly leave after he was done.

“Essentially, I got my surgical table ready,” he said.

But his initial attempt to sever the limb was sobering. He was using the same knife with which he’d tried to carve away the boulder, a folding device that typically has knife blades, pliers, screwdrivers and other gadgets.

It was “what you’d get if you bought a $15 flashlight and got a free multiuse tool,” he said. It was so dull by then that “I couldn’t even cut the hair off my arm.”

The next day, after finishing the last sips of his water, he tried again. This time, he was able to puncture the skin, but he found he couldn’t cut the bone beneath.

By Thursday morning, he concluded that he had only one more chance.

“I realized that it was the last opportunity that I could have and still have the physical strength to get out where help would find me,” he said.

This time, he twisted his arm, torqueing the bones until they broke.

“I was able to first snap the radius and then, within another few minutes, snap the ulna at the wrist, and from there, I had the knife out and applied the tourniquet and went to the task,” he said.

“It was a process that took about an hour.”

But Ralston’s ordeal was by no means over. Blue John Canyon is as remote as it gets in Canyonlands National Park, and he had many miles to navigate, bleeding and dehydrated, before he could hope to find help.

With the stump of his arm wrapped in the makeshift tourniquet, Ralston still faced a 150-foot crawl through a rock-clogged fissure. Then, one-handed, he had to rappel down a sheer face of rock. Then came a hike of about six miles. Only then did he run into the Dutch tourist family who went for help.

“It was quite shocking when he started talking to us,” Monique Meijer, one of the tourists, said this week on NBC’s “Today” show. “He said: ‘I’m Aron. I’m in this canyon since Saturday, and three hours ago, I had to cut off my hand to release myself.’ ”

‘HE CHARTS HIS OWN COURSE’

Incredibly, Ralston’s harrowing escape won’t turn him into an couch potato.
His parents, Larry and Donna, also speaking Tuesday on “Today,” said their son planned to resume his outdoors lifestyle as soon as he recovered and was fitted with a prosthesis.

Losing part of his arm is “obviously a change and a huge challenge for him to make an adjustment in his life,” Larry Ralston said. “The thing that won’t change about Aron is that he charts his own course, he sets his goals, and he lives every day fully. ...

“Right now, he’s convinced he’s going to get back in the outdoors.”

Experts always advise hikers not to go alone into remote areas, to always leave a copy of an itinerary and to let people know when they expect to return.

Ralston did none of those things, he admitted. And while he said he was still eager to get back outdoors, he said he would do it right from now on, and he fervently urged other adventurers to do so, too.

Because, he said, he got lucky this time.

“I may never fully understand the spiritual aspects of what I experienced, but I will try,” he said. “The source of the power I felt was the thoughts and prayers of many people, most of whom I will never know.”

NBC’s Roger O’Neil in Denver and MSNBC.com’s Mike Brunker and Alex Johnson contributed this report.

Posted by andrew at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I got a frantic call from Father McGuire, the principal of Chanel College. He's got the computer room ready, all wired for 20 PCs, but half of them aren't working. I said, tell me what the problem is. He said, when the computers start up, there is an error message. I said, don't worry, just follow the instructions, hit F1 and everything should be fine. He said, OK, but can you come up here anyway and have a look. I said, no problem, I'll be there in 45 minutes. I'm thinking, how did I get myself into this. Good question. How did I get myself into this?

Ok, back when I was working for the Department of Education, I had to rebuild 150 or PCs that were donated by the ANZ bank for use in secondary schools around Samoa. Somehow, Chanel College, a Catholic school was in on the deal and took possession of the first 20 PCs that we built. I don't know why. I don't really care.

Father McGuire, a sinewy, gray-haired bespectacled Kiwi, came down from the canyon where sits the Chanel campus and hauled 20 boxes back up to his school. I thought that was the last I would hear from him.

A few weeks later, Father McGuire calls me at work and wants to come up to the school to talk about what they need to get the computers up and running. Corbin, a fellow PCV, teaches up there, but she's an older volunteer and doesn't know much about computers. I said, no problem. I was happy to take any excuse to get out of the office.

I sit down with Father McGuire and explain to him some of the major issues involved. Heat and dust will kill computers. On top of that, the irregular electricity, namely a power surge will fry the PCs. You’re going to want a cool environment, I tell him. Air-conditioning is ideal, but if you can’t afford, fans are a reasonable substitute. UPS devices, uninterrupted power supplies, aren’t necessary because you’re not working on critical applications. But you’re going to want surge protectors as a buffer between the electricity and the computer. Otherwise, the first time the power surges, you can kiss your computer program, tofa soifua. Also, you’re going to want to keep the windows in the room closed and the computers covered when not in use to keep out the dust and the pollen.

Then I tell him how much this stuff is going to cost.

Now Father McGuire is pulling his hair out and seems like he’s about to have a nervous breakdown. He’s a frenetic man under normal circumstances, but on this day, he is positively freaking out. And this man is a Catholic priest. He’s explaining to me that Chanel is almost insolvent. He said, he didn’t want to let the dog loose in the manger. I had no idea what he was talking about. He said, If the US goes to war with Iraq, the resulting cost increase from petroleum base products could put the school under. He’s banking on the computers to bring in new students that will bring in more school fees. I’m thinking, what petroleum based products does this school consume?

I start to feel sorry for Father McGuire. I’m trying to console him. I’m trying to stay calm. I can’t believe that I am sitting here trying to counsel a Catholic priest. I tell him that there are so many avenues to raise money. There’s the High Commssions of both Australia and New Zealand. There’s JICA, the Japanese International Cooperation Association. There’s countless churches and rotary societies in the States that would be willing to help out. And Corbin cans always write for a Small Project Assistance grant from the Peace Corps. In a worst case scenario, he could sell half the computers to another school and still be able to teach classes with 20 kids. Don’t worry it will all work out.

Meanwhile the computers are collecting dust in one of the rooms upstairs. Naturally the room is not air-conditioned.

That was about 3 months ago.

Cut to yesterday. I’m back at Chanel. I taxi it up to the school. The Father has hired a Samoan teacher, Suani, to teach the classes. He brings me to the computer room. There are no fans. The windows are open. There are no dust covers. The computers, sitting on newly painted red desks, are plugged into cords that hang down vertically from the ceiling so the room has the feel of a of bad sci-fi movie from the 50s. There is no sign of any surge protection. This is fucking hopeless, I think to myself.

I start looking at the malfunctioning PCs. They are all having the same problem. They can’t see the hard drive. Now, when the PCs left the warehouse where I was putting them together with my counterpart, Nehru, they were working fine. However, these computers are really old pieces of shit donated by a bank that no longer needed them so that they could feel good about themselves.

I would open the cases of the computers to remove the hard drive and the box would be full of dust. I’m not just talking about a little dust. It looked like someone was using these computers to store dust. I’m not joking. We were lucky to get any of them running. In the end, we had about 110 or the 150 in working conditioning. The rest of the hard drives were just hosed, completely unsalvageable.

So now, after sitting a hot, dusty room on at Chanel College for about 2 months, half of these beater computers had come up lame. I managed to fix one of them there on the spot, but the rest of the hard drives were going to have to be re-imaged or replaced.

Again, I felt bad for the Father, but what could I do. I told him exactly the kind of environment he would need to keep these computers up and running, and wasn’t even able to manage that. The tragedy is that even if all 20 were up and running, it’s going to take one power surge, and believe, the power here in Samoa is about as regular a septuagenarian.

Before I left, Father McGuire invited me upstairs for tea. He said, if electricity wasn’t so god damn expensive, he would put one of the air conditioning units that they’re not using in the computer room, but they can’t afford it. I’m looking at him, smiling. This priest just said “god damn.”

I explain that there’s little I can do. I suggest he call down to the DOE and see if either can replace the computers that are not working or re-image the hard drives. That’s the best I can do. I wish him good luck and head back down to town, feeling somewhat helpless. On the way home I decide that I’m going to write to Seagate, Maxtor, and some of the larger hard drive makers to see if they might be interested in donating some of their old stock to some worthy causes in Samoa.

Posted by andrew at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went back to Lefaga today to work on the SPA grant that former volunteer Kelliann had setup to bring computers to the school.

In case you don't recall, there is no phone at the school, so there is no way to get in touch with the principal (pule) to set up a meeting. You just have to go and hope for the best. I went the first time right before Easter and found the school completely deserted.

THE COMPUTER ROOM AT LEFAGA

Today there were people at the school, a definite improvement, but the pule was unavailable. He was in a meeting with the pules of Samoa College, Lefifi College & Vaipouli College, three of the best secondary schools in the country. There was no chance to even drag him out of the meeting for 5 minutes.

Instead I talked to Pulu, a teacher at the school. Fortunately, he's the teacher that knows the most about the computers. He's even taken a few classes at NUS, National University of Samoa.

Here's what he told me. There were 4 computers at the school originally, but one of them was fried when Kelliann tried to plug the CPU straight into the wall without a transformer. Of the three remaining, only one is really usable because the monitors are on the blink.

I don't know what state the PCs were in when they arrived, donated by some juice company in Florida, but they looked in bad shape now. I couldn't even turn them on to check because the transformer that the school uses belongs to one of the teachers and she likes to take it home from time, rendering the computers useless. Also, the computers are in an un-airconditioned room, with the windows always open, right near the sea. A recipe for disaster.

A SPA grant (Small Project Assistance) calls for the receiving party to put up 10% of the amount of the grant. This can be cash or in-kind, like providing services. According to the grant documentation left to me by Kelliann before she left Samoa, Lefaga Junior Secondary school was supposed to put chicken wire on the windows and provide a new hinge lock for security. They were supposed to have the room cleaned by the students. And they were supposed to make covers for the computers. As far as I can tell, only the room cleaning had taken place. There was something around that looked like it might be a cover, but the computers were not covered.

I made an arrangement with the pule, the messenger services of Pulu, to return next Tuesday at the same time. This will give me some time to pick up the equipment outlined in the SPA grant, a printer, fans, floppy disks, bookshelves, extension cords, etc. It should also give the pule some time to figure out how is going to use my services, if at all.

Posted by andrew at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Pacific Princess pulled into Apia Harbor yesterday. Because the boats arrive in the middle of the night or really early in the morning. I've never actually seen a cruise ship arrive. There are just there. One day, I look down from the heights of Fagali'i, and the harbor is empty. The next day, there's a massive white ship the size of building sitting at the dock, and scores of poor-dressed octogenarians shuffling through downtown Apia.

Here is the blurb from their website:
R3, a former Renaissance vessel was introduced to Princess' fleet on August 9, 2002 as Pacific Princess. Her sleek, modern design will provides a 'boutique version' of our Personal Choice Cruising program, with over two thirds of the ship's cabins having balconies and with a variety of dining and entertainment options to deliver on our trademark "big ship choice" in a smaller, more intimate cruise environment.

You can get more details about the boat at the official site:

http://www.princess.com/onboard/fleet/pacificNew/index.html

Posted by andrew at 09:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey, it's Cinco de Mayo, even here in Samoa. So in honor of the Mexican defeat of the French at Puebla, I ate lunch at the Mexican Restaurant in town, Ricordo's (chilli con carne).

Tonight I'm going to make "California" hamburgers with a little guacamole. I should have cooked the meal I made last night tonight. I had pepper-lime steak fajitas with tortillas that I made myself. It was messy, but then again, all things fun are messy.

Posted by andrew at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Update from the Peace Corps Office of Medical Services, Washington D.C.

SARS is caused by a mutated virus related to the corona virus (the corona viruses cause the common cold).
The virus originated from animals.

Statistics
From May 1, 2003, 5865 probable cases of SARS reported worldwide since November 2002. (Cases need confirmation by laboratory detection of the virus)
391 infected people have died. Fatality rate of 6.6%.

WHO Travel recommendations
Avoid non-essential travel to Hong Kong, China and Singapore.

Transmission mode
Transmission is primarily by the respiratory route via droplet infections ie. sneezing and coughing. Also evidence of transmission through close contact (<3ft)- embracing, kissing, sharing of eating/drinking utensils. May be evidence of transmission via faecal/oral route. Contagious stage is yet to be determined. In the majority of cases, transmission has been through close contacts ie household and health care workers.

Symptoms
(Syndrome is a collection of symptoms).
*temperature of over 100.4 C.
*one or more of the following symptoms-cough, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing/hypoxia.

Epidemiological factors
*Recent travel in area known to have a SARS outbreak.
*Close contact with a person suspected to have SARS.

Clinical confirmation
*X-ray confirming pneumonia.
*Respiratory distress syndrome.

Laboratory confirmation
*Detection of the SARS virus antibody in the blood >21 days after onset of symptoms.

Posted by andrew at 05:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Winter is around the corner, the weather is starting to improve and the yachties are coming into town. The first yacht of the season pulled into Apia Harbor today. The return of the yachts is like the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano. It signals the change in the seasons. The cyclone season is over. The seas again are safe for small craft. Mostly importanly, the weather is starting to improve dramatically.

We caught the tail end of the yacht season last year and there some seriously impressive boats in Apia. I'm mostly interested because I'm hoping to leave Samoa by boat when I finish my service here.

I was out in the harbor taking pictures at sunset. It was a really beautiful day and the sunset almost looked like the ones I used to see in Los Angeles with orange and brown bands in the sky made by the smog, except there is no smog here.

Posted by andrew at 07:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After 5 days of trying, I still am unable to get into my Yahoo! Mail account. I've been writing them every day, multiple times. I have appealed to their heart by mentioning, multiple times, that I am a Peace Corps Volunteer and email is my main source of communication with friends and family back home. I wrote letters to Terry Semel, the CEO and Jerry Yang, Chief Yahoo! and founder. Still, I have yet to get a response back from an actuall human being. It makes me think there are no human beings at Yahoo!

Posted by andrew at 05:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My body is betraying me at the moment. Here's a rundown:

--The last two fingers on my right hand are still numb. Dr. Atherton says it's nerve damage and nothing to worry about. I should get feeling back soon.

--I stubbed my toe about an hour ago worse than I ever have in my life. This guy started talking to me as I walking down the street. I wasn't paying attention to where I was going, and, BAM!, I hit my big toe on the "sidewalk" and a streak of pain shot up my right leg. I was wearing these crappy Samoan flip-flops that people around here call jandles, so I had no protection whatsoever. The front of the toe spilt open like a ripe melon, blood started ooozing out onto the sandals and by the time I made it back to the Peace Corps office, the flap of skin hanging in front of the wound turned a solid shade of purple.

--A splinter that lodged itself in the index finger of my left hand as I sat down on the ferry back from Savai'i last sunday finally fell out when I did my laundry yesterday, leaving behind a an inch long gash in the pad of my finger.

--Makelani, my male kitten, in his eagerness to escape from me when the vet showed up to snip his balls off, scratched the shit out of my palm just below the pinky of my left hand. It's in such an awkward place that's it going to take some time to heal.

--I'm still suffering from a nasty case of jock itch. Details best left unsaid.

Posted by andrew at 05:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was walking down to Ah Liki Wholesale on Vaea Street. It was a hot day, but I was enjoying the walk through town. I thought this would be good time to go down to Pasi's Three Corner and take a picture of the "Don't Speed, You Idiot" sign, which I've seen a few times, but never had my camera with me to shoot it.

On the way down there, just past the Mid-City Cinema, this guy starts falling in step with me and he wants to chat. All the usual questions. Where are you going? Where are from? How long you been here? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you like Samoan girls? While I'm trying to answer this guy's questions, I'm not paying much attention to where I'm stepping and I stub my toe worse than I ever have in my life. It doesn't help that I'm wearing crappy, worn-down jandals. The front of my right toe takes the brunt of the impact. I look down and see the blood spreading before I feel the pain. The pain is intense, but for some reason, comes slowly. I start limping towards the sign. I feel like an idiot and I'm not even speeding.

It's at times like these that I wonder about the decisions I make and the consequences that follow. I'm not talking about important things here. I'm talking about normal, everyday decisions that bring about horrible consequences, followed by the inevitable second guessing. Why did I decide to walk down to the corner? Why today? Why did I talk to that guy? Why didn't concentrate on where I was walking? Why didn't I cross the street? If only I had stopped to look at the screening times at Mid-City, this might not have happened, and on, and on, ad infinitem.

Posted by andrew at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today was a rough day at the fale in Fagali'i. Both of my kittens went under the knife and were de-sexed this morning. It was a horrible ordeal for them and pretty terrible for me as well.

Posted by andrew at 07:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)