Post-Awful 2

Most mail deliveries to the island go smoothly and without too much of an issue, despite what my last post on the mail suggested. We do recommend using priority mail, as those get sent on the next airplane, parcel post takes a more circuitous route to us. My Mom sent us a few packages for the holiday season. Most arrived in a timely fashion and were able to enrich our holidays. One package that had a few gifts to Sara didn't make it.

It turns out the package didn't disappear, it just took the slowest possible route to our island. It had been sent by parcel post. My Mom shipped it on November 7, 2011 from Lafayette, California it was picked up from the AG's Office's Post Office Box in Fagatogo, American Samoa on January 20, 2012, 2 months and 20 days after it was sent. Thus the Christmas candies and decorations were not very timely. The candies we can still put to use, the decorations will need to go in the closet until next year, sigh. Once again, USPS, you've made island living a little more isolated.

Australia Day

We got a fully down-under accented email yesterday:

"Stone the f*%kin crows mate - it's australya day tomorra an we're gunna av a do at our place to celebrate. Yous guys are all invited so don ya thongs and ya green an gold clobber an rock up ere round 7 for tucker. We'll chuck some rissoles on the barbie (not bloody shrimps!) an will ave all the trimmings wif good ol lammos and pav for afters. Alls ya need to bring is yourselfs and some stubbies o piss or longneck coldies of amber nectar (or some plonk!) for drinkin' an we'll ave an esky wif ice. Aw yeah, and if yas are one of those vedgie types and meat just ain't ya thing, ya might wanna bring somefin else for ya burger.

See yas tomorra ya flamin galahs.

Hooroo,"

Who can say no to a celebration of Australia Day. The day commemorating when the British settlers of a penal colony first sailed the majority of their fleet into Sydney Cove after giving up on settling Botany Bay. Just as inspirational as the signing of the declaration of independence, if you nation was a commonwealth nation consisting of six self governing colonies and other territories that federated together into a parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the head of state of Britain. Bureaucratic negotiations totally trump a revolution.

Not to be one to deny an excuse to get together an celebrate, I eagerly agreed to participate. After a post-work paddle in the harbor that took us past the iconic Fatu ma Futi, I rinsed up at the pool showers at the Sadie's by the Sea Hotel and headed over to Coconut Point for the Australia Day celebration.

This mostly consisted of hanging out on Aussie Ben and Sarah's front porch, which Sara and I have written about a few times before. This time it was spiced up with burgers (and veggie burgers) with authentic Australian toppings like beet root, pineapple and american cheese. We also had it explained to us that Australians don't say "shrimp," those are called "prawns," thus the saying "throw another shrimp on the barbee" has been ruined for me.

That said, nothing's more Australian than a barbecue in January. Sara wasn't feeling well, so she missed out on the evening. Luckily I was able to bring her some of the traditional "lammos" and "pav," a.k.a Lamington and Pavlova. Those will help you get over anything that vexes you.

Yosemite

Totally unrelated to American Samoa, but Sara and I wanted to share this video on Yosemite to mark our (almost) 2 and 1/3 anniversary. While we're enjoying ourselves here in AmSam, we do miss our friends, family and favorite places on the mainland. Thanks for technology for keeping them as close as possible.

Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

Be sure to watch it on full-screen mode.

RIP Luigi's Pizza Pub

When Sara and I arrived in American Samoa, there were limited lunch options around our office. The Executive Office Building, not so fondly called the "EOB," is near the center of the island on the south edge of Pago Harbor. However, there's limited food options around here. There are a few sit down restaurants of varying levels of OK, but pricey. There's always McDonalds. A few food trucks are scattered around, but they severely lack vegetarian options. The various "Fast Food" places offer hotel pans of cold stir fry or fried food that had been sitting around for hours have never been an option that I considered. So Sara and I have been bringing left overs and eating lunch in our office or at the fales located on the beach in front of the office.

In August, Luigi's Pizza Pub opened behind the office opened. We'd been taunted with the "Pizza and Sports Pub" sign out front that offered the delightful combo of beer, pizza and TV for months as the business slowly crept towards opening up. Us eager contract workers were waiting for a place that combined all these factors here on island. When Luigi's finally opened, we were ready to embrace all that the sign offered. The pizza was good, New York-style thin crust, however the TV and beer were missing out of the gate. We kept returning for months hoping the minor issues would be resolved once the business could afford the TV and get licensed for beer. Those issues never resolved and the owner soon was complaining about the need for more business to offset his huge energy overhead costs (the electric pizza ovens are expensive to run on an island that gets all its power from generators that run on diesel fuel that is shipped in from thousands of miles away). Without money for advertising, the general public beyond those employed at the EOB, never really found the pizza place.

The place wasn't able to keep up with its bills and yesterday when I made plans to meet one of friends from the US Department of Agriculture there for lunch we learned the bad news: Luigi's had gone under. We had to scramble for lunch and go to one of the sit down places, not ideal, but we're back to the status quo for lunches here at the EOB. Luigi's We'll miss you.

Luigi's Pizza and Sports Pub, August 2011-January 2012. Rest in Peace.

Pese Video

Video of our pese performance got posted on You Tube. Hope this takes some of the sting out of the 49ers game from earlier today...

Translation Woes

Living in American Samoa has a few language related issues. The vast majority of the residents conduct their daily lives speaking Samoan. It's similar to other Polynesian languages like Hawaiian and Tongan, but decidedly difficult for us native English speakers. The long strings of vowels and guttural breaks are tough for me to mouth and with only 14 letters, it involves many repetitions of sounds.

English is the next most spoken language. It's the language of government, but most Samoans are not as comfortable using it. Thus it is less favored for day-in and day-out use.

There is a larger community of Chinese, Korean and Filipino immigrants than palagi in American Samoa. The members of these communities tend to be small business owners and run a number of stores and restaurants. They usually use their native tongues amongst themselves and learn varying amounts of English and Samoan for dealing with the general public. This somewhat-familiarity with English sometimes crops up in odd translations. A few recent menus from local restaurants demonstrates this. These things tend not to get corrected as both the menu translators and the majority of the patrons are not native English speakers.

Thus we're left to contemplate about dishes like "Slip the Meat Section," "Pot Package of Meat," "Fried Eggplant Box" and "Coke Chicken." There are numerous other examples of literal translations being taken into the absurd. I'll try to catch photos of them when I come across the ones that are worth sharing. Until then, I leave with the description of Coke Chicken:

"Coke Chicken stewed juice in the original basis plus iced coke with small fire boil chicken in all allows you to enjoy the chickeand also, can feel the coke."