Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Samoan Drivers Licence
We have been here a couple of months now and all this time I have been driving illegally! It’s amazing what you get away with as a palagi. Anyway today I was starting work late so I decided it was about time I got a Samoan drivers licence. Adam already has his and so I knew to leave plenty of time and to take my NZ licence and WST$100 with me (in cash as there is no eftPos). As Adam had the car (and as I’m not meant to be driving anyway – yeah right!!) I walked up to the licencing place. The walk started off nicely. Lovely day, sun was shining and the sea sparkling but of course I forgot about the heat of the sun beating down. By the time I got to the top of the hill and to the licencing place I was hot and bothered and trying not to look sweaty!! Anyway I found there were at least 9 other people waiting……. Adam had warned me that things may take time so I joined the mob and waited too. The thing was it seemed to be the norm for people (the workers?) to come in and out of doors past us all without saying a word and to disappear behind a closed door never to be seen again. I had no idea what was going on but figured all I could do was wait. There was another man in the queue getting slowly more and more frustrated. He spoke to me in English so I asked him how long he had been waiting and he said 1 ½ hours!!! Just to get a licence!!! Well I figured it was now or never so I waited some more. While waiting I had to amuse myself somehow so I took to examining the jandalled feet of the others around me. They have all colours of jandalls here, sell them in the supermarket, and quiet a lot of people co-ordinate their jandall colour with what they are wearing. Interesting right? Well it sure is when you have nothing better to do than look at peoples feet! Eventually a guy came and sat himself down at the licencing office desk. The agitated man let himself in first and anyway I thought I would wait for the stampede to die down. It pays to be a white palagi female though as it wasn’t long before I was ushered to the front of the queue and told to take a seat in the air conditioned office. When I finally got served the Samoan behind the desk was talking to me about living in Wellington and the Cake Tin! Oh he also thought the train service was pretty good. Eventually he finished filling out the application forms (they seem to do these things for you here) and he remembered doing Adams licence so he looked him up and copied the address etc. I was then sent through to IT to have my licence created. Only a few minutes longer I’m pleased to say and my photo was taken, I signed an electronic pad and a plastic card was produced from a very high tech space aged looking machine (well anything whizzy like that stands out over here). 1 hour all up. Well this is Samoa!!
Palagi Pants and Palagi Pace
Correct me if I’m wrong but am I the only person who wears knickers in this country?!!!!!!!!!! I ask this question as my washing line seems to be the only one with knickers hanging on it in nice neat rows!! I now have a complex about this so have taken to hiding the hanging up of my knickers in between long towels and sheets so that no one can see them!! Just a thought to ponder, is it only palagi’s who wear pants?
Also, I have discovered there is palagi and then there is samoan pace for doing things. Samoan pace is s..l..o..w (you can’t rush things) and palagi pace (especially mine) goes 1,2,1,2,1,2. I recently had to send one of the library staff downtown to pick up some things which I needed before heading into a meeting. I had to instruct her to go at palagi pace otherwise I would have seen her 2 hours later!! No one walks around in a rush here and all tasks are done slowly and methodically (but done well ;-)) I will now understand the samoan people better when I see them in NZ.
Also, I have discovered there is palagi and then there is samoan pace for doing things. Samoan pace is s..l..o..w (you can’t rush things) and palagi pace (especially mine) goes 1,2,1,2,1,2. I recently had to send one of the library staff downtown to pick up some things which I needed before heading into a meeting. I had to instruct her to go at palagi pace otherwise I would have seen her 2 hours later!! No one walks around in a rush here and all tasks are done slowly and methodically (but done well ;-)) I will now understand the samoan people better when I see them in NZ.
Library News July 2008
On a work front the maintenance boys have been back in the library this time to replace all our mosquito screens on the windows. This is something I am very pleased about as I sit here at 6.45pm at night not having to slap myself and flick the bugs off my desk. I have been managing to get some action around here as you can see. I will have to stop spending the non-existent budget soon though although I have had fun ordering book display stands and other necessary library items that I don’t know how they have done without. Adam and I also created several panels for the walls which are plywood covered in samoan fabric. They are going to brighten the place up if and when we manage to find a way to hang them up on the very stubborn concrete walls. We have tried drilling and hammering but nothing will work. Hopefully the maintenance boys will solve this problem tomorrow and find something to hang the panels up with. Maybe this is why the walls have been blank for so many years ………. Note to self, curb weird and wonderful ideas in the future!
We have just started the Second Semester at work. Today has been relatively quiet. The students must be easing themselves into study again. Last Friday we had a staff meeting to talk about what we needed to remember to do when serving people. We also did some training on the library system Athena. Having read the manual (as you do – or as I do) I discovered things that could be done that were not being used. We therefore started with Circulation and went through each part of it to make sure everyone knew what was there. There is a nifty feature that allows us to search for any part of a patron record so you can search for a first name if need be. Quite surprising that the past system I looked after couldn’t do this even though it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars!! I have discovered that no one is using the reserves functionality so am looking to put this into place especially considering we have only 1 copy of most books. It’s contacting the students when the book is in that will be the difficult thing as we can’t phone mobile numbers from our phone lines and they don’t generally have a land line or a postal address. Email it will have to be and I think we might have to introduce the writing of names on a whiteboard like I’ve seen done in Whanganui. Next step – buy a whiteboard!!! There is also a booking feature but I’m saving that one up for later. It might be useful for putting bookings on DVD titles for lecturers. I discovered a barcode scanner in a drawer and plugged it in. Much to my surprise it worked – just like that – so hopefully that will cut down on the number of mistyped barcodes at the desk. We are going to have to enroll our patrons properly and put in more info about them than just their ID and name (which does not help with contacting them!) One of the other things that was news to the library staff was that you could put a message on a patrons name that could pop up at circulation. This is certainly going to help keep track of things if we put it into practice.
We are now closing at 7.00pm at nights. I wowed the campus manager with my spreadsheets and graphs of library usage in the evenings and convinced him that shutting an hour earlier was a good idea. As there are still just 2 of us covering the evenings and weekends this is a good thing. Hopefully this will mean that during study and exam time we only have to open til 8.00pm instead of 9.00pm which I personally found hard going. Soon we will have the place up to a standard I’m happy with (lol) and then we can begin to tackle new projects…….
Oh one thing I have to deal with here that I didn’t have to at home is sudden power outages!! Yes the power can go off without warning fairly regularly which then plunges us into darkness. The computers crash and the fans stop working so it fast gets hot. I have got a UPS plugged into the Library Server machine so at least that doesn’t have a hissy fit and we have time to shut it down normally. I also discovered another UPS in the cupboard (covered in dust and cobwebs I might add!) which I have plugged into my machine as it’s mighty annoying to lose what you are working on when the computer crashes. I’m the boss so no one else gets to be this lucky and have their own UPS!! I should put it out on the library counter really right? I’m just testing it to see if it’s working ;-)
We have just started the Second Semester at work. Today has been relatively quiet. The students must be easing themselves into study again. Last Friday we had a staff meeting to talk about what we needed to remember to do when serving people. We also did some training on the library system Athena. Having read the manual (as you do – or as I do) I discovered things that could be done that were not being used. We therefore started with Circulation and went through each part of it to make sure everyone knew what was there. There is a nifty feature that allows us to search for any part of a patron record so you can search for a first name if need be. Quite surprising that the past system I looked after couldn’t do this even though it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars!! I have discovered that no one is using the reserves functionality so am looking to put this into place especially considering we have only 1 copy of most books. It’s contacting the students when the book is in that will be the difficult thing as we can’t phone mobile numbers from our phone lines and they don’t generally have a land line or a postal address. Email it will have to be and I think we might have to introduce the writing of names on a whiteboard like I’ve seen done in Whanganui. Next step – buy a whiteboard!!! There is also a booking feature but I’m saving that one up for later. It might be useful for putting bookings on DVD titles for lecturers. I discovered a barcode scanner in a drawer and plugged it in. Much to my surprise it worked – just like that – so hopefully that will cut down on the number of mistyped barcodes at the desk. We are going to have to enroll our patrons properly and put in more info about them than just their ID and name (which does not help with contacting them!) One of the other things that was news to the library staff was that you could put a message on a patrons name that could pop up at circulation. This is certainly going to help keep track of things if we put it into practice.
We are now closing at 7.00pm at nights. I wowed the campus manager with my spreadsheets and graphs of library usage in the evenings and convinced him that shutting an hour earlier was a good idea. As there are still just 2 of us covering the evenings and weekends this is a good thing. Hopefully this will mean that during study and exam time we only have to open til 8.00pm instead of 9.00pm which I personally found hard going. Soon we will have the place up to a standard I’m happy with (lol) and then we can begin to tackle new projects…….
Oh one thing I have to deal with here that I didn’t have to at home is sudden power outages!! Yes the power can go off without warning fairly regularly which then plunges us into darkness. The computers crash and the fans stop working so it fast gets hot. I have got a UPS plugged into the Library Server machine so at least that doesn’t have a hissy fit and we have time to shut it down normally. I also discovered another UPS in the cupboard (covered in dust and cobwebs I might add!) which I have plugged into my machine as it’s mighty annoying to lose what you are working on when the computer crashes. I’m the boss so no one else gets to be this lucky and have their own UPS!! I should put it out on the library counter really right? I’m just testing it to see if it’s working ;-)
Netball, Netball, a bit of Mountain Biking a Party and all the rest ….
Just adding a post script to the post script below …. So did you see the bit about getting up to 40kms an hour!!!!!!!!!! Only the hard core break spokes by the way and what Adam doesn’t know is that I was hoping and preying (must have been in Samoa too long!) and muttering “Oh My God” under my breath as it was a pretty fast descent but I figured jamming on my breaks on a gravel road at this speed would probably not be a good thing. Thankfully I made it to the bottom with only broken spokes and no grazes to the knees!! Next time Mum I’ll go a little slower I promise.
Anyway Netball, Netball, Netball seems to be about all we are doing these days so apologies for the lack of white sand beach and blue sparkling water stories to tell. The netball season has now started and so we are at training twice a week and play on a Saturday. By the time we work around Adam’s game, my game and when I have to umpire there is not a lot of Saturday left. Speaking of umpiring, little white palagi legs starred on Samoan TV3 this week during the Shield match!! Think I did an OK job (still trying to upload a video to YouTube so watch this space. Most worrying of all is that this weekend we will be playing and I suspect we are going to get beaten. How embarrassing. Of course Sunday is spent catching up on the “house work” and preparing for the next week of work so we do little more than eat, sleep, work and play netball at the moment! Situation normal right?
Mind you this said we did manage a Pina Colada on our deck in the 29 degree heat as the sun set on Sunday afternoon this week. Even managed 40 winks in the lounger chair …………………. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Us old farts get worn out by the lifestyle mentioned above!! Now the highlight of the past weekend for Samoa was that Condoleezza Rice, the American Secretary of State, was visiting. She was here for…… wait for it ……. All of 3 hours! We know someone who works at Aggies at the airport who had been told to cut his hair as it didn’t look very traditional Samoan. This was just for Condoleezza’s visit. I hope she noticed. I saw on the news though that she did a bit of shopping while in NZ so good on her.
Adam has reminded me to mention that we have averted the Jack Daniels crisis!! Yes the 2 bottles we brought in duty free ran out and the bottle store (THE bottle store as in the only one in town) had run out too so it has been a dry week or so. Never fear though as we now have a 1.75lt bottle to keep us going until Latika and Hedley arrive in September (I’ve put in an order for some more!)
Well it was a bit of a weekend of losses wasn’t it? First the AB’s on our Friday night. Many jokes were made at the party we had at work on Friday night as to whether I’d still be talking to my Australian friend on Monday morning – she is actually not that interested in the rugby so I got off lightly there. Speaking of the party – it was a leaving do for 2 of the senior lecturers. The culture around contributing to these sorts of things has blown me away. A list came around where we could all “pledge” how much money we were going to give to the party fund. Not wanting to look miserable I dutifully followed the lead of the other senior staff who had gone before me on the list. This meant contributing WST$50.00. The party was held outside where tables and chairs were set up. A massive cake was delivered (chocolate mud cake – very delicious). There was Vailima beer provided and red wine neither of which I drink so I stuck to the soft drink. Lots of lovely food, chicken, pork, palusami, taro, breadfruit, salad etc all cooked in the umu. Anyway not wishing to outstay my welcome we left at about 7.00pm. Low and behold I get to work today and an email is sent out to all staff with a spreadsheet outlining what everyone contributed (yes we were named) and a breakdown of the budget that was spent. Of course this then erupted into an argument over who’s contributions were left off and how the totals were added up wrong and how the balance was “demanded” to be deposited into the Senior Staff Social Group fund immediately!!! Well firstly I was astounded that everyone now knows how much I contributed and secondly that there would be an argument over the totals!! I then actually found out that some of the “boys” were still there drinking at midnight (long after the guests of honor left) and that the extra money not accounted for had been spent on more beer and CIGARETTES for them!!! Well oh well next time we will have to get our money’s worth right?
Anyway back to the losses, so first the AB’s, then Adam and I both lost our netball games (very depressing), the NZ Women’s 7’s team lost to the Aussies in the qualifying tournament for next year’s world cup and the Magic lost to the Swifts so not a good weekend all round for sport. Actually we weren’t even sure if the rugby was going to be shown on the TV as they started a movie 45 minutes before the game was due to kick off but in true Samoan style, the movie was cut off in it’s prime just in time for the game! (It resumed after the rugby of course).
We have been up to the new and improved supermarket on the corner of our street to look for Tim Tams! 1 packet polished off now. Sad to say though they are not like at home. These ones were made in Indonesia. They are thin and small in comparison and of course the chocolate does not taste the same but hey some chocolate is better than none right? I miss the double chocolate coated ones in the blue packet. This supermarket will be very handy when I’m having a Tim Tam crisis in the future.
I’m trying to grow some Frangipani. According to my trusty friend Mr Google you cut a piece off an existing tree (the ones by work sufficed here) and then starve it for a week. When I broke bits off it leaked a sticky milky stuff which I wasn’t expecting. I had to swiftly find something in my bag to wrap them in, all the while trying not to look dodgy hanging around on the street corner and breaking bits off people’s trees! I put these bits of stick on the table on the deck for a week until they looked suitably shriveled up. They are now planted in yogurt pots with Samoan dirt and a bit of water. Well this is supposed to be the recipe so I’ll let you know how they get on. Hopefully lovely fragrant and beautifully coloured Frangipani next time you visit ;-)
Anyway Netball, Netball, Netball seems to be about all we are doing these days so apologies for the lack of white sand beach and blue sparkling water stories to tell. The netball season has now started and so we are at training twice a week and play on a Saturday. By the time we work around Adam’s game, my game and when I have to umpire there is not a lot of Saturday left. Speaking of umpiring, little white palagi legs starred on Samoan TV3 this week during the Shield match!! Think I did an OK job (still trying to upload a video to YouTube so watch this space. Most worrying of all is that this weekend we will be playing and I suspect we are going to get beaten. How embarrassing. Of course Sunday is spent catching up on the “house work” and preparing for the next week of work so we do little more than eat, sleep, work and play netball at the moment! Situation normal right?
Mind you this said we did manage a Pina Colada on our deck in the 29 degree heat as the sun set on Sunday afternoon this week. Even managed 40 winks in the lounger chair …………………. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Us old farts get worn out by the lifestyle mentioned above!! Now the highlight of the past weekend for Samoa was that Condoleezza Rice, the American Secretary of State, was visiting. She was here for…… wait for it ……. All of 3 hours! We know someone who works at Aggies at the airport who had been told to cut his hair as it didn’t look very traditional Samoan. This was just for Condoleezza’s visit. I hope she noticed. I saw on the news though that she did a bit of shopping while in NZ so good on her.
Adam has reminded me to mention that we have averted the Jack Daniels crisis!! Yes the 2 bottles we brought in duty free ran out and the bottle store (THE bottle store as in the only one in town) had run out too so it has been a dry week or so. Never fear though as we now have a 1.75lt bottle to keep us going until Latika and Hedley arrive in September (I’ve put in an order for some more!)
Well it was a bit of a weekend of losses wasn’t it? First the AB’s on our Friday night. Many jokes were made at the party we had at work on Friday night as to whether I’d still be talking to my Australian friend on Monday morning – she is actually not that interested in the rugby so I got off lightly there. Speaking of the party – it was a leaving do for 2 of the senior lecturers. The culture around contributing to these sorts of things has blown me away. A list came around where we could all “pledge” how much money we were going to give to the party fund. Not wanting to look miserable I dutifully followed the lead of the other senior staff who had gone before me on the list. This meant contributing WST$50.00. The party was held outside where tables and chairs were set up. A massive cake was delivered (chocolate mud cake – very delicious). There was Vailima beer provided and red wine neither of which I drink so I stuck to the soft drink. Lots of lovely food, chicken, pork, palusami, taro, breadfruit, salad etc all cooked in the umu. Anyway not wishing to outstay my welcome we left at about 7.00pm. Low and behold I get to work today and an email is sent out to all staff with a spreadsheet outlining what everyone contributed (yes we were named) and a breakdown of the budget that was spent. Of course this then erupted into an argument over who’s contributions were left off and how the totals were added up wrong and how the balance was “demanded” to be deposited into the Senior Staff Social Group fund immediately!!! Well firstly I was astounded that everyone now knows how much I contributed and secondly that there would be an argument over the totals!! I then actually found out that some of the “boys” were still there drinking at midnight (long after the guests of honor left) and that the extra money not accounted for had been spent on more beer and CIGARETTES for them!!! Well oh well next time we will have to get our money’s worth right?
Anyway back to the losses, so first the AB’s, then Adam and I both lost our netball games (very depressing), the NZ Women’s 7’s team lost to the Aussies in the qualifying tournament for next year’s world cup and the Magic lost to the Swifts so not a good weekend all round for sport. Actually we weren’t even sure if the rugby was going to be shown on the TV as they started a movie 45 minutes before the game was due to kick off but in true Samoan style, the movie was cut off in it’s prime just in time for the game! (It resumed after the rugby of course).
We have been up to the new and improved supermarket on the corner of our street to look for Tim Tams! 1 packet polished off now. Sad to say though they are not like at home. These ones were made in Indonesia. They are thin and small in comparison and of course the chocolate does not taste the same but hey some chocolate is better than none right? I miss the double chocolate coated ones in the blue packet. This supermarket will be very handy when I’m having a Tim Tam crisis in the future.
I’m trying to grow some Frangipani. According to my trusty friend Mr Google you cut a piece off an existing tree (the ones by work sufficed here) and then starve it for a week. When I broke bits off it leaked a sticky milky stuff which I wasn’t expecting. I had to swiftly find something in my bag to wrap them in, all the while trying not to look dodgy hanging around on the street corner and breaking bits off people’s trees! I put these bits of stick on the table on the deck for a week until they looked suitably shriveled up. They are now planted in yogurt pots with Samoan dirt and a bit of water. Well this is supposed to be the recipe so I’ll let you know how they get on. Hopefully lovely fragrant and beautifully coloured Frangipani next time you visit ;-)
Friday, July 25, 2008
Netball Shield Match Article
Hi All
Check out Flickr for a copy of a letter that was written to the editor of the paper here. Last weekend we started our outdoor Netball season. Apparently SMOGA are the current holders of a Shield therefore every time they play it's a Shield match. Shield matches are shown on TV3 here!!!!! Lots of exclamation marks as next weekend my team will be playing SMOGA (and yes we will be on TV!!!!!) Anyway just thought you might like to read about he fist-i-cuffs during the first game. Since the article I have heard that the GA got severely annoyed (obviously) with the GK who was mouthing off at her for the whole game and contacting. This was not controlled by the umpires (the umpires have a lot to answer for) so she eventually took matters into her own hands. Hopefully we will not end up in the paper after our game. Oh and I might even be having to umpire the Shield match this weekend so I will be sure to watch out for any contacting and mouthing off!!!!!!!!!!
Check out Flickr for a copy of a letter that was written to the editor of the paper here. Last weekend we started our outdoor Netball season. Apparently SMOGA are the current holders of a Shield therefore every time they play it's a Shield match. Shield matches are shown on TV3 here!!!!! Lots of exclamation marks as next weekend my team will be playing SMOGA (and yes we will be on TV!!!!!) Anyway just thought you might like to read about he fist-i-cuffs during the first game. Since the article I have heard that the GA got severely annoyed (obviously) with the GK who was mouthing off at her for the whole game and contacting. This was not controlled by the umpires (the umpires have a lot to answer for) so she eventually took matters into her own hands. Hopefully we will not end up in the paper after our game. Oh and I might even be having to umpire the Shield match this weekend so I will be sure to watch out for any contacting and mouthing off!!!!!!!!!!
Road Switch
Many of you will be aware that Samoa is in the process of changing the side of the road that we drive on. Currently we drive on the right side of the road - the opposite of NZ – and most vehicles are left hand drive. Just before we moved over here the government announced that they would be changing over and now allow the import of right hand drive vehicles. That is why we brought our car with us. There is still a lot of resistance to this idea and all through this process no one has ever said when the change over is actually going to happen. Well, this week they finally announced that September 6, 2009 will be the big day and there will be public holidays for the following 2 days to help with the transition. So it looks like we will be getting an extra 2 days off next September!
Papaseea Sliding Rocks - Postscript
There is a little bit more to our trip to the sliding rocks that Angela didn’t mention - that is the trip home.
After riding the 7 or so kilometres uphill for our swim we of course had a nice long downhill ride home to look forward to. The first 2 kilometres is unsealed road, which is quite steep in some places and can be a bit rough. Anyway, Angela seemed to be enjoying the descent, or maybe she had forgotten how to use the brakes. I was following her and was impressed to see her reach 40 km/h without screaming! Next thing it looked like she hit a pothole or a rock and there was a bit of a bang and finally she came to a stop with a strange rubbing noise coming from the back of her bike. Usually this is caused by her mudguard (yes, she insists on having mudguards on her bike!) having been shaken out of position and rubbing on the tyre, at worst I thought it might have been a buckled wheel. On closer inspection we found that not only was the wheel badly buckled, but that she had managed to break 2 spokes. So, after bending the broken spokes out of the way we continued on our way home, at a much slower pace.
Before we came to Samoa I stocked up on spare parts for the bikes – puncture repair kits, spare tubes, chains, oil, grease etc, but I didn’t think I would be needing to rebuild a wheel. I have never had to do this before, so I thought it might be best to find someone who knows what they are doing to do it for me. There aren’t many (any?) bike shops in Apia, but I did find a sports shop that have some bike parts and can do some repairs, but they couldn’t fix the wheel. They did give me the number of someone with their own workshop that might be able to do it, but so far I haven’t been able to get hold of him. I have had a look at my big book of mountain bike maintenance, and it makes it sound quite simple. So, maybe I will have to get some spokes sent over from NZ and have a go myself. In the meantime there will be no more mountain bike adventures.
After riding the 7 or so kilometres uphill for our swim we of course had a nice long downhill ride home to look forward to. The first 2 kilometres is unsealed road, which is quite steep in some places and can be a bit rough. Anyway, Angela seemed to be enjoying the descent, or maybe she had forgotten how to use the brakes. I was following her and was impressed to see her reach 40 km/h without screaming! Next thing it looked like she hit a pothole or a rock and there was a bit of a bang and finally she came to a stop with a strange rubbing noise coming from the back of her bike. Usually this is caused by her mudguard (yes, she insists on having mudguards on her bike!) having been shaken out of position and rubbing on the tyre, at worst I thought it might have been a buckled wheel. On closer inspection we found that not only was the wheel badly buckled, but that she had managed to break 2 spokes. So, after bending the broken spokes out of the way we continued on our way home, at a much slower pace.
Before we came to Samoa I stocked up on spare parts for the bikes – puncture repair kits, spare tubes, chains, oil, grease etc, but I didn’t think I would be needing to rebuild a wheel. I have never had to do this before, so I thought it might be best to find someone who knows what they are doing to do it for me. There aren’t many (any?) bike shops in Apia, but I did find a sports shop that have some bike parts and can do some repairs, but they couldn’t fix the wheel. They did give me the number of someone with their own workshop that might be able to do it, but so far I haven’t been able to get hold of him. I have had a look at my big book of mountain bike maintenance, and it makes it sound quite simple. So, maybe I will have to get some spokes sent over from NZ and have a go myself. In the meantime there will be no more mountain bike adventures.
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