Tadpoole

Who says nothing ever happens in Samoa? New Year's Eve is going to be busy this year with the scheduled arrival of a tadpoole some time on 31 December. Here is a pic of the tadpoole at 12 weeks:

Samoan Independence Day Part II (A Day at the Races)

Every few months or so, usually on the Saturdays either side of a public holiday such as we’ve just had, they hold a horse racing carnival at the local track. With Amanda’s great love of horses we were keen to get along and have a punt, plus sink a couple of cold beers and soft drinks in the sun.
Most of the horses we’ve seen around the country haven’t been looking too healthy, being of the pack horse variety, so we weren’t too sure if many of them would make it a full lap around the track. As it turned out though there must be a few racehorses tucked away in paddock we haven’t seen, although not too many because each horse had to race a couple of times each to make up the 9 race program.

The main race was race 4, and it turned out being the one that paid for our day with a 20 tala bet on Mama Tui paying us 5 to 1, despite the race caller suggesting the whole race that horse 4 Zeus was the one out front…. Luckily we didn’t rip up the ticket in disgust.


Race 5 did feature the pack horses combined with barefoot rider.

Can’t wait for the next race day coinciding with the tuila festival in a couple of months. 

Whinge Blog Part II

Hey life isn’t all good in paradise. When you think about it there’s a few things in paradise that are a bit irksome. Like for example its hot and sunny so that you get pretty sunburnt – especially if you’ve got a lobster-like complexion like mine. And its virtually impossible to buy a pack of pappadums (hint, hint if anyone is coming over this way!)…

Internet is really pretty ordinary, but we were kind of putting up with that. And after our first ridiculous monthly phone bill of over 850 tala we had got on top of expenses a bit by using Skype for our phonecalls, even though it apparently makes us sound like daleks. We really haven’t slowed down that much over here you know.

Well now our good friends at SamoaTel have introduced timed local calls… Being on dialup this really sucks. Looks like I’ll have to change my online habits a bit b’cos based on last month our bill will go from 35 tala, back up to near 500.
Admittedly not quite as bad as our first months attack on the hip pocket, but not really worth it if you’re still going to sound like a dalek.
I guess its SamoaTel’s way to get me to get outside and spend a bit more time out in the sun, and maybe I’ll even have time to make some roti bread to cover the lack of pappadums.

Whinge Blog Part I

Bloody Mail. Not sure who to blame but I thought I’d have a whinge anyway. I got myself really quite organised compared to normal and organised a trip over to Fiji using Amanda’s Frequent Flyer points to coincide with Amanda’s work meeting in Suva. The tickets arrived in the mail a week or so later, but a couple of changes in timing of Amanda’s meeting occurred, so I had to change it. Didn’t really have to send the tickets back for reissue, but as there was 5 weeks to spare did so. Well the bloody mail went missing **somewhere!!** and by the time I worked this out it was too late to reissue so had to cancel.
Two other bits of mail each with $5K cheque payments in the mail bag also got lost, so I guess that’s why never put cash in the mail.
As it turns out the Amanda had to cancel her Fiji trip too so maybe it was just meant to be that the tickets went missing.

Samoan Independence Day Part I

The first of June marked the 44th Anniversary of Samoa’s Independence as a nation. To mark this occasion there is a public holiday… well actually two this year, I guess because it was a Thursday it was just too good an opportunity to make it a really long weekend.
Amanda went to the Flag raising ceremony at 8am. She worked out the reason why this required her to be there at 7.30am when there was a 40 minute traffic jam to deal with. Unheard of in Samoa. Apparently every school child in the country was also down there to parade in the sun for half a day.


I took the opportunity to avoid these action packed events to go in search of some waves with a couple of guys up the road… wise choice!We (surfers) did get back to catch the highlight event of the day …the long boat races….

Unfortunatlely there was not an international flavour to the competition because the American Samoan’s didn’t send a team (oars were not of the traditional type or some such problem). The harbour shores were packed but we managed to get a few glimpses of the boats zip by – each with about 40 big strong guys, plus a drummer for entertainment, plus usually a big fat guy steering and barking out orders in the back. I say usually because there was Zeta’s boat which replaces the big fat guy with the far from fat Zeta who with her team took on the Americans and won a few weeks back in their race. In the end another boat pipped them at the line this time, with another 6 boats spread back about a km behind.

There was a bit more marching and parading on offer in the afternoon, but there is only so much of that any sane person can take in one day, especially when its 30 degrees and 90% humidity.