bula-licious

greetings from fiji! we're down to our last few hours here in the tropics... had a great time.

last week we were in a remote part of the country, the yasawa islands, site of the infamous lagoon where brooke shields lost her innocence. it was only a 2 hour ferry ride to the small island but we felt much further away than that when we were there. there was literally nothing to do but lay on the beach and play new zealand edition of trivial pursuit. even the kiwis couldn't answer most of the questions. the place was a very low key resort (our room was a "luxury" tent complete with mattress), the reception office had sand for a floor and the communal dining area was a big grass shack on the beach. there were one or two activities each day ranging from learning to tie a sarong to traditional song and dance show and a visit to the local village for fijian church services. we had no idea what was going on but we understood when
to put our money in the collection plate. at the aussie beach bbq there were party games with big ticket give-aways. we won a bottle of champagne after a blindfolded russell was able to identify rachel's knees in a lineup. party indeed. the snorkeling was absolutely incredible just right off the shore, beautiful reef and coral like we've never seen, nice tropical fish and a family of squids.

we spent the last few days in the southern "coral" coast of the main island. we rode the local bus to get down here, passing fields and fields of sugar cane. there's a fringing reef here about 100 yards offshore that breaks up all the waves and makes a tranquil bay-like lagoon for miles. underwater is a different story (a more appropriate name might have been the "dead-creepy-get-out-while-you-can-was-that-a-sea-snake?" coast) but from the beach you'd never know it. for whatever reason the resort we stayed at was virtually empty and we had the place all to ourselves.

today we went to a fijian zoo and saw endemic birds and iguanas, but the highlight was definitely the two fruit-bats getting it on. i think we might be permanently scarred.

tomorrow we're off for new zealand where it won't be 85 and sunny, but we're very excited. more adventure to come...

hope all is well with you all. happy summer!

much love and bula,
R&R.

about those indians

bula!

all is well here in fiji. starting to remember what it's like to be in travel-mode... it's fun and your back hurts and you drink lots of cokes.

so the indians here are the real-deal indians (red-dot and all), they came over 100 years ago as indentured workers to farm the sugar cane and are now indo-fijian. they speak hindi and english. then there are the real-deal fijians, they are the ancestors of the original fijians and they speak fijian (similar to hawaiian) and english. every village has a "chief" and if you don't ask nicely for something the chief eats you. yesterday we went on a great hike in the highlands and visited one of these villages. when we arrived we were greeted with a traditional kava (fijian "grog" made from kava root) ceremony. we asked nicely for everything and learned how to count to 10. then a woman swatted flies away from us as we ate lunch. rachel accidentally ate some tuna that was
mixed in with the taro and claims to have liked it.

just kidding.

today we took our driver moona on a trip up to fiji's "second highest city" as he kept telling us. it wasn't so high, just crowded. that must be what he meant. there was a big market there with lots of spices.

tomorrow we're off for the yasawas, a group of slightly remote islands known for their white sand beaches and good snorkeling. we'll be at "the octopus resort" (http://www.octopusresort.com, tel. 666 6337). castaway was filmed near there. we'll be on the lookout for wilson.

how did your award cermony go? wish we could have been there. congratulations again!

ok, much love, be in touch again in a few days,
R&R.

bula!

so here we are in fiji! the flight out wasn't too bad. rachel actually slept this time. it's a lot like hawaii here only less people and more indians. and they say bula here instead of aloha. we had some tasty curry for lunch at an indian temple (but no challah or forks), now our hands smell like sujith's basement. the hotel is great, it's a whole bunch of huts on the beach. it's like a deserted island. with lots of indians. and we think satellite cable too so we can see game 5! go pistons!

it's unfortunately really expensive to call but there's tons of email cafes, minus the cafe. plus lots of indians. so email will be the best way to communicate, we should be able to send messages for the next few days, then maybe not for a few days when we get out to a more remote location, then again after that.

bula!

much love,
R&R

uke

very happy to report that i have begun learning the ukulele. i'm taking this ridiculous community class, the teacher is this hawaiian-chinese self-taught 85-but-not-a-day-over-60 year old man. he told me about this friend of his who didn't speak any english when immigrating, so he just pointed to the guy in front of him when coming through customs. turns out the immigration officer was asking him his name, and the guy in front of him's name was greenspan, so the immigration officer just put down greenspan. so now there's a "greenspan's dry cleaning" in san francisco. my long lost chinese brother. sorry, i digress... man the class sounds bad, but it sure is fun to be learning hawaiian songs. whenever i pick up the guitar now it seems ridiculously big. rachel's even learning to hula. we're in.

november

classes are great. do you have those mcdonald's commercials "i'm lovin' it" over there? (guy rapping, best/worst line: "i can't cook but yet i'm never hungry") well i'm lovin' it, loving what i'm learning. every now and again it's even applicable and evident in the work i do for tutor. i dig that, when i get to see in real life the theories i've been learning about. did you ever study genetic algorithms? i've got to tell you about it, it's one of those very cool ai things. basically, imagine you have a problem and you really don't even know how to go about trying to get the answer. you create some potential random answers, then evolve them by matching pieces of two of the answers and creating child answers from them. you do this for many generations, also adding in some random mutations in the child answers to guarantee you find an optimal solution. just like nature. super cool.

hawaii is still kickin, learning to catch the waves like a pro, or more like an eight year-old hawaiian really, but hey, i'll take it.

rachel is a real hit with her first grade class -- she's a teaching assistant and also runs the creative movement stuff they do once a week. her parents + sister will be out here in a few weeks, it's going to be great to have some company.

over water --> on the road

so we are totally chillin hawaiian style, which has got to be the best of styles. everything here is beautiful, even the people match the ocean and the beaches. from all i'd heard of how developed it had become i wasn't expecting there to be so much natural beauty left, but it's all here. it's like the best parts of being in a foreign country with all the comforts of home.

we found ourselves a very nice little pad (furnished) and a vehicle (convertible) practically right away after we got here, it all worked out real well. rachel is still looking for a job, there's really not all that much that fits her needs (few hours, lots of time for the beach) but hopefully she'll find something soon... i started class last week and am really enjoying it, i'm taking database theory and artificial intelligence from uhawaii and operating systems through an online program at uillinois, which i think is how i ultimately want to get my degree... more on that as it develops.

more aloha

so i think we're a-ok, we found a nice furnished place this week, got our digital cable working, might have even found a car. alas all this "stuff" has left little time for the real reason we're here, suntanning and surfing, but i guess the ocean will still be there once we're finished setting up shop. we (i) did have the most amazing gyoza the other day, the guy was just right there making it and he just fried up some up. so good. it's like tokyo + west palm beach here. i love it. have you heard of pidgin, the jamaican-style english the locals speak? we got "da jesus book" - the new testament - in pidgin. a big hit. "jesus feed four thousand guys: an he take da seven bread an da fish, and tank God fo um" or "jesus get love an aloha fo all da peopo inside jerusalem". can't wait to show you.