Alrite, we’ve survived yet another Cyclone, “Gene“, which started hitting Suva around 3pm afternoon on 28th with strong wind and heavy rain. There were some warnings aired on radio and most of the offices issued the early break. Our boss also notified us that we can go home early. My dad called 3 times telling us to go home early but I didn’t care about it cos’ I couldn’t feel/hear the intensity of the wind outside the office. Our boss dropped us home around 4:30. There were some uprooted trees blocking the drive ways so we have to park the car at a friend house and walk back home. By the time we get home it was pouring cats and cows in the fierce wind. The phone line and electricity were already out and no water in the pipes after 9pm that night.

Tropical Cyclone Gene – Track and Threat Map

Fiji has been hit by numerous hurricanes and cyclones every year but this is the first time I’ve experienced the small glimpse of so call “Cyclone”. Most of the past natural disasters never affect much on our areas. Sometimes we didn’t even realize there was some cyclone passing through. The worst damage it could do to us is, some broken tree branches, wires and power/water outage. This is the first time I’ve seen many trees being up-rooted in our area. Seriously, the big trees just fell over from the very end of the roots. I tried to take some photos of fallen trees in front of our house while my dad was away. Took some videos with mobile camera as you can see below. It was (more…)

Auu la la…the Tees are out on Paradise Failed. Yep, the “Chest Porns” is included as well.

The guys are running a little competition for free T-shirt give away. All you have to do is email them your wittiest slogan to best describe their blog. Check out the design samples below and read about the competition rules and stuffs on their post entry.

I want one of those…wittiest slogan huh? Hmm…I’m not good at that. The due date is 1st Feb so I still got time; lets see if I can think of something by then. Well I’m just passing on the word for your chance to win one of those Tees. Geez I sounded like one of those Ads from TV.

Scenario: Being the lazy arses as we are (Bro and I), we don’t even want to clean up our dishes after dinner and always putting off each other to do in turns.

Bro: Do my dishes for me today.

Me: I was gonna ask you the same thing. Why are you always copying me? Come to think of it, you always copy me and follow whatever I do.

Mom: That’s right. He always follows you around when you were young. He repeated whatever you say and always following you. Lucky, he didn’t wear skirt but went for pants. LOL

Me: That’s right. Back in school too, you used all my books to study.
You took the same subjects as me.
You went to the same Uni as me.
You graduated with the same degree like me.
Now we work in the same company, doing the same thing!!
What’s wrong with you? Why are you always following me?

Bro: Hey, I’m not following you. I’m just treating you like a bulldozer.
Don’t you know in Chess, the pawns go in front and cover for the king.
The same thing applies here. I’m just using you to clear my path.

Me: You little!! @#$%#@$%#*!!!

Moral behind the talk: Being the eldest is such a pain especially with these kind of bad mouth siblings.

Regarding the matter of pawn and chess, I just read that the guys from Failed-Paradise were also cracking up about Chest and Porn.

I love the slogan for geek T-Shirt idea proposed by Digital Fiji.

“We are not chest porns to be played around with.”

There you go, I’m not your chest porn nor I the bulldozer. haha.
I’ll just wait and see how the designs come out as. Whoever wear them, go around in town and take some photo of yourself. If you’re lucky, your pic might even get into the next day Fijitimes post; otherwise you can always show off yourself on your blog.

Last Saturday, we (my bro and I) were honored to attend our friends’ wedding at Trade-winds in Lami. It was the wedding of one of our ex-colleague and seniors, “Strange Pants“, and his beloved, the fun and cheerful Alisi. The occasion was held on the auspicious and memorable day – 7th July 2007 at 4pm. (07-07-07) Very easy to remember for anniversaries.

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Promises and Vows
When we arrived there late and, it was already started; we were about 45min late. We gave our gifts to the welcoming party, sign the guest sheets and quickly went in front to take a seat. Nobody was taking photos that time so I started to take some, shortly followed by some guests and friends photographers. There are some speeches and prayers in both English and Fijian languages. Bride and Groom exchanged Vows in both languages as well. Jachin had a hard time repeating the Fijian words but he managed to keep up and done quite well in the end. The guests applauded him for his effort. While exchanging Vows and rings, Alisi was crying, happy tears…oh just so cute!

Greeting Guests
The couple received lots of congratulations and blessings from the family, relatives and friends. They proceed to greet all the guests and went out to take some family photos. The session was halted for about 30 min to prepare for the next part.

Fijian Ceremony
Second session started with an exchange of gifts and formal greetings/welcoming in Fijian style. Both sides talked in Fijian. I think it’s something like bride’s family handing their daughter formally to the groom’s family and vice-versa. There is this thing called, “Tabua“, whale’s tooth which is used as a gift. I think it’s similar to olden days Burmese style engagement/wedding gifts where Burmese groom side has to give a set of cows and a set of coconut and bananas (Ok I’m not so sure. Different places have different way of giving gifts in asking for their bride’s hand) to the bride side. The more set of cows you give, the better for you. But nowadays, no more cows involved (may be coconut and banana are still used) and getting more materialistic, some bride’s side would ask for money or housing or jewels. Well don’t know properly cos’ I never get to see any close relative’s wedding yet. Same thing in Fijian society but instead of cows, they use this whale’s tooth. I think Jachin side offered quite a number of whale’s teeth during their engagement to Alisi family.

Honored Guests
There were quite a lot of guests attended the wedding. Many came from various part of Fiji and some from abroad. Some special guests are introduced; some came all the way from Tonga and Groom’s relatives from Brisbane Australia. There was a Tongan style food preparations ie. whole pig roasting and plenty of seafood. I forgot to take photos of the food. The meal was splendid with many courses. About 3 or 4 fish dishes, pork, Indian curries, salads, Lobsters, crabs and Fijian dishes. There were lots of food and many people took second helpings. My bro and I enjoyed a big plate full each.

Entertainment
There were three parts of entertainment. The first was a lovely song sang by one Fijian lady, the second was another song sing by Jachin’s younger brother (Jonathan or something) and his friend. I think they sang pretty well but there were some kids at the back screaming and playing and some people are not listening properly. I think the guy relized that too so he didn’t smile or say thank you towards the end of the song. But they did have some audiences, some girls came up in front to take a video. The last one was a dance performance by a young girl. I think she was one of the Bride’s maids too. It’s not a Fijian dance…Tongan?…not sure. The dance involves lots of hand movement and gestures with little head shakes and small footings. I like her costume and head part. She was very shy dancing in front everyone but she received lots of kisses from the audiences and some men danced along with her. It was overall a cute performance.

Speeches
Speeches were given by the fathers of both sides as well as the special speech by the Groom and the Bride. The speech by the bride’s father was quite amusing where he talked about how he remembered the newly son-in-law in their first meeting and their very first impression on Jachin when he was introduced to the family for the first time. I’ve finally found out the reason behind the disappearance of Jachin’s long hair and big beard from that speech. It was after all because of Alisi’s Dad’s ultimatum to cut his hair if Jachin wants to date the daughter. haha It must have been his family influence…I discovered those big beards run in the family. Check out his Dad and the brother. When I first met Jason, he got a big beard, mustaches and a whole lot of long curly hair. He was one of the guys to interview me for my job. I thought he was about 35+ or something because of his appearance. He did scare me a bit during interview compared to the 2nd interviewer, Ian, who looked quite well and keep scratching his head that time. Though Ian has a beard, he didn’t have a big hair like Jason so not that scary. hehe. I thought Jason looked like a grandson of Frank Einstein and I called him “Sir”. Later I found out that he actually was just a few years older than me and quite fun to work with once you get to know him. Apart from that, Jason’s Dad and the couple speeches are quite normal mostly thanking God and everyone. Jachin and Alisi said about 20 – 30 thank yous in their short speech. I think they didn’t prepare their speech properly. But it was fine.

Cutting Wedding Cake
Finally they cut the wedding cake. The cake looked cool and I like the porcelain doll at the top. They both look great posing in those photos.

One thing I noticed from the wedding was that there is no kissing involved after their exchange of Vows. It was absolutely PG rating. hehe The couple kisses outside while they are taking photos, just to pose. May be because the wedding was a mix styled, Fijian and Australian, some usual scenes are missing. Another thing is no throwing of flower bouquet from the Bride after the wedding…may be she did throw it before they left but I didn’t get to see cos’ we came back home early. Aww yah, I like the bouquet, it’s made out of “Tapa“. Alisi’s gown is also made of Tapa and is a beautifully crafted dress.

Anyways the wedding was great and everyone enjoyed it. Around 8:30pm, we came back home. We wished the couple many happiness and many many many children in their near future.

Rolling the “Promoting Suva” blog by Mr. Gilbert V. is like having an event calendar plug to your feed. He produces a well compiled list of everyday updates and event occurings, some of which I don’t even realize they excit. A good informational resource blog from Suva.

Stained Sole is new blog by one of my colleagues writing about error reports, good readings and tips & tricks on his projects.

I’m just here to post a note on awareness and familiarization of GV site. I’m sure some of you have already heard about this great news source site – Global Voices Online. In case if you haven’t, here is abit of info.

Global Voices Online is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.

Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.

More info check out the FAQs section.

You may or may not notice that authors and editors from GV has been aggregating your sites and occasionally featuring/linking to your interesting posts. Those who have wordpress blogs will notice it quicker than those of blogger as there is a link tracking feature WP provides to detect the back links frequently. Ofcos’ you can always check Technorati for back-linking and tracking conversations.

GV is very search engines friendly site. The post published there will be on google search hit within an hour or so. That means, your link will get a bit of search branches and link bites. GV is also an internationally well known center for collecting news hence whatever featured on the site will reach to a vast medium of global readers.
At the moment, my regions of interest are:

East Asia (rather South East Asia) – Myanmar
[ Direct Page Link ] [ RSS ]

Oceania – Fiji
[ Direct Page Link ] [ RSS ]

Global Voices Online provides “RSS feeds” of all its content as it is posted to Country, Region and Topic sections.

Here is a list of feeds they roll for each region. [ GV feeds on Bloglines ]

I guess they haven’t updated the list for quite sometime now cos’ it is an old, incomplete compilation. They got only a few Myanmar feeds that time and no feed from Fiji in there. But ofcos each regional author has his own feed list. I have my own compilation for Myanmar blogs and also quite a few Fiji feeds. Due to last year coup in Fiji, many political blogs bloom up along with a few personal blogs. There is a good possibility of more Fiji blogs to come as awareness of blogging has been spreading through media – newspaper, forums, social networking and among youth groups.

The main difference between Myanmar and Fiji blogosphere is that, Fiji blogs are excelled in English; almost all of them post in English language with a few exceptions of Fijian language blogs. Where else for Myanmar blogosphere, a lot of new blogs emerge in Myanmar language and also some of the formerly English blogs are now transformed into native language blogs. Each has its own pros and cons; I won’t go farther into that.

Anyways, GV is starting to get interested in Fiji and South Pacific blogosphere as well as Myanmar Blogs. So if you find any interesting blogs/news from these regions especially from Myanmar, just give me a shout. The world is listening, so speak up your voices.

Alrite it’s very sleepy, sneaky, slimy, stupid kind of gloomy weather here at Suva today, plus it’s Friday evening so I’m getting bored typing this up. That’s all folks!

Oh Lunchers, your Lunch in Suva blog has already been noticed; how about that huh?

My work mates “SSP“, “Strange Pants“, “Kiti” and “The Boss” team up to write a new blog called “Lunch in Suva“.

“Humans exchanging money for food in Suva between 1200 and 1430, and writing about it.”

It’s not a cooking/recipe blog, it’s about the lunches – the venue, menu, price and the verdicts. So just roll it along and for you next lunch, you can try out one of the places they mentioned.