After all those jam packed days, now a day of relaxation, blog updates and eating more seafood.
Ritsu ran some errands (like getting her driver’s license renewed, finally) and her mom even went with her (on her day off) … sure enough they also ended up doing some baby shopping … but they brought something nice for me too.
I finally figured out how to connect to the house’s ADSL thing (instead of using the neighbor’s wireless LAN) and I got a lot of stuff done. I also enjoyed finishing some more ikura (after I bought some the night before, it turned out that Ritsu’s mom has had the same idea … and it all has to be eaten fairly quickly) .. so .. my healthy food for the day was high cholesterol salmon roe, pizza flavored chips and some beers.
Dinner was another home style seafood feast: they brought again a tray full of uni filets, some nigiri sushi (individually wrapped) and some kani (crab) of excellent quality … the fresh seafood that is available really makes me want to move to Japan.
Since I did not take any pictures today, here a little photo essay on the plethora of vending machines which can be found all around Japan. Sometimes at weird locations (next to shrine, close to graveyard). All kinds of sodas, flavored teas, bazillions of different coffee drinks, of course cigarettes (brands with nice english names like “Peace” and “Hope”), I saw a few machines selling beer and sake too, but that is rather rare and may have to do with the area and local laws.
When we woke up, the rest of the family was already gone. We enjoyed a nice breakfast and then went out for a stroll and some shopping. A nearby CD/DVD store was quite different than the big megastores like HMV or Tower Records. We got more nice Sakura trees to see, since it was quite windy, a lot of the white petals were flying around like snow. Very beautiful.
By chance we passed a brand new apartment complex and big banners were inviting people to come see the ‘model apartment’ .. and we thought ‘heck, why not’ … so we rang … and were shortly afterwards in the middle of a longish sales presentation 
The lady who dealt with us (let’s call her ‘Bitch’) first sat down with us in the lobby and had Ritsu fill out a huge questionnaire … after that (by now she thought we actually might be potential clients) she showed us a bit of the building in general and then led us to her office, where she kept asking more questions as if she already wanted to do the financing with us. (Or maybe to see if we are at all worth her time) … we then looked at a couple of floorplans and we could only pick one which we wanted to see (silly, we actually believe they only have one model apt) … anyways … when we finally got to go to that apartment, I got my camera out and bitch-lady bitch-slapped me right away with a rude “no picture taking” … bitch!
(This is taken from the video, right at the moment she says something about “shachin” (=pictures) … what was wrong with her anyway? Her hairstyle indicated she was stuck in the early eighties anyway .. or one of her ancestors was a rooster,or a band member of Duran Duran)
The actual apartment was very nice .. actually way too luxurious (italian marble, nice hardwood shelves) and for my taste too western in style (no sliding doors, no tatami). It was quite spacious with around 90 sqm and 2 bedrooms and was nicely set up … I just could not figure out what a good place for the TV set would be … anyways .. we got hungry and I just did not have the 600.000 USD they were asking for with me .. so we left … the whole experience took us around 45 minutes … but sure was fun.
For lunch we went to a nearby, semi fancy Sushi place. They had some great lunch special. I had a omakase sushi selection (omakase means basically that the chef selects a variety of things for you) 12 pieces and soup for 10US$ .. not bad at all, and the quality was great. Ritsu had a bento box which had all kind of little things in it .. some tempura, some tofu, salad, some more stuff I cannot remember and pieces of oranges for desert.
There is even some silly videoclip of this lunch … but nice music and me dealing with too much wasabi going up my nose.
After that we did some supermarket shopping, went back home, rested a bit and then got ready for the evening. While Ritsu had some business stuff to do and later dinner with an ex-colleague, I was meeting Patrick and Jean to go get the most recent Pizzicato Five DVD release (big box set, 8 DVDs in total including 2 bonus discs). Unwrapping the box among equally crazy P5 geeks was like christmas.
This we celebrated at Jean’s place with some great homestyle Sukiyaki while watching some of the DVDs … that sure was a lot of fun.
The way back home was less fun since it was raining cats, dogs and penguins and even with umbrella I got wet good. I met Ritsu at our home station and we walked home through the rain. The alternative, taking a taxi, was out of the question: There was a huge line at the taxi stand. But finally we made it.
I had my favorite midnight snack again (Ikura and beer) and soon we were sleeping like babies.
We travelled quite some to find the biggest “Babies R Us” store around Tokyo. Since Fiji is a bit behind in terms of selection and quality regarding babystuff (our understanding is that all expats get their stuff from overseas) we were very happy to find great stuff … while other things still puzzle us .. either “what is this” or “how can we get that on the plane” .. anyways .. trying on those baby carriers was sure fun.
After several hours we were pretty much done and were craving food. In that area was pretty much nothing … we finally found 2 places next to each other .. and both places’ theme was ‘noodles’ … Ringer Hut seems to be some Ramen fast food chain … when we were looking at the menu outside some grumpy waiter approached us and that made our decision that we would not want to eat there .. the other place was called “Jolly Pasta” and also seems to be a chain … focusing on italian pasta and pizza … and boy what a pleasant surprise … for 5.80 USD i got a 12″ basic but tasty and double cheesy pizza of really good quality, garnished with fresh basil. And Ritsu’s spaghetti arrived al dente. They even had non alcoholic beer for the pregnant lady. To add a bit of japanese touch, several extras were available (in separate jars, not as a topping) .. so for a mere 1US$ i got like 3 spoonfuls of Ikura.
Before we headed back home, we stopped by a pretty large electronics store (Yamada) and I looked again at that camera I wanted … and after confusing a nice sales lady a lot with “we pay cash” and “he lives abroad, how about duty free” … we got a pretty kick ass price on the cam and a free video cam pouch on top of it … the cash part nearlt fell through though .. had we had any more food before, we could not have paid it .. so .. we basically emptied both our wallets .. but well worth it … the camera I got is the Sanyo Xacti … a nice little gadget I got interested in when Ritsu found the add in a japanese newspaper. In my opinion the first real well made hybrid still / video cam which does not use tape at all … sure .. there have been miniDV cams out there for years which alse take (crappy) still pics … or most digital photo cameras these days also take short video clips which are ok for emailing or websites … but this cam takes DV quality video AND does 3 megapixel photos .. and all that in a well designed and tiny housing, great functionality (no worries that the 170 page manual is japanese only) and it also comes with nice extras like remote control and belt case (an accessory for which Sony would easily charge another 40USD for) … I will post some first videos shortly .. so far I am very happy with this new toy …
The way home took a while again and we did not have much time, as we were planning on meeting Ritsu’s friend Utako in Kitijoji, an area of Tokyo I had never been before, but it was Ritsu’s old Highschool stomping grounds … we walked again to Sengawa station but took a bus this time .. we arrived a bit late, thanks to high traffic … but we met and walked around and found a nice Izakaya place where we had great food …
Among the items we had (and i recall) was some very good Sashimi, some fried fish, salad and something I have not had since my last trip to Japan .. raw horse meat. Hey, how about a first movie clip of that evening … not super spectacular .. no nude table dancing … but still .. its like being there
After dinner we went to a nearby park to marvel at the drunk, happy and chanting masses of sakura celebrating people and we walked around the pond. It was too dark to take pictures (but Patrick took some just days before.) … when we called it a night it was too late for the bus, so we had to take a couple of trains to get back .. plus that 25 minute walk .. so we were tired and happy when we returned.
We just got back from our shopping spree at Babies R Us. After taking a train and then a bus (gotta love those super friendly / polite japanese bus drivers), we found a mall like complex where we shopped around for several ours … trying on carriers (settled for a nice one from Baby Bjoern, got the japanese version of a diaper genie (after we were contemplating several different versions, including a compact travel version, which we found too fragile to consider) ..
We also got some nice clothing items .. but things like a car seat / carrier were just to big and / or we had no real idea how to select those … but we keep looking into that. What is really different at a japanese baby store is the display of some (need to find the right word) kind of altar stuff which are put up at home when baby boy or girl reaches something called boy / girl day … i need to ask Ritsu to explain that later in detail … the displays ranged from small shoe box size to friggin 42″ TV set size
A display like the one above (the biggest I have seen there) sets you back 2000 US$ … crazy .
Today’s main events were a long morning walk in a nearby park to look at the beautiful cherry blossoms (Sakura) which are blooming right now. Sakura is a big event in Japan. In many parks you can see that in the afternoon people start setting up … companies often send their youngest employees to secure a good spot using a big blue tarp .. and then after office hours everyone else is coming and celebrating .. which means basically that they drink until they can hardly find the way back to the train station. But the admiration of the beauty of the blooming trees is the main reason. (Or so they claim)
For lunch we went to a tiny, but very popular neighborhood Ramen place. Fairly big portion of noodles in a tasty broth topped with some pork and seaweed. Small places like this are impossible to ‘use’ for foreigners … there is no real menu … there is a ticket vending machine which has buttons explaining the food items .. all written in japanese … so .. you press what you want .. put the money in … and then get a ticket … hand the ticket to the chefs behind the U shaped counter and minutes later you get your freshly prepared dish. This way no waiters are needed and no one has to deal with cash. Simple and easy.
In the afternoon we first went to Hamadayama to visit a friend of Ritsu, but I split to meet long time online pal Patrick Benny in Shibuya, where we chased around for electronics. Patrick was a great help in language things and I was so close to buying a new digi-cam, but in the end, Bic Camera did not like my credit card … their loss. Afterwards we went and then had some (overprized) beverages at Cafe Apres Midi, for me best known for their mellow CD compilations.
On the way back I met with Ritsu at Sengawa Station, the closest station to our house, and further on the way we met with the rest of the family at a Yakiniku place (Table top BBQ). We ordered all kinds of food items and put them on that little BBQ thing and ate, drank and laughed. Our waitress was nice, albeit a bit hyper … too much caffeine I guess. But a great way to eat .. and I had forgotten that beef actually has flavor (not like the flavorless stuff we get in Fiji)
On a very lighthearted note, thanks are going out to the person in the immediate neighborhood whose wireless network has the charming name of “0007405F4802″ .. the name alone gives away that this is most likely a PC network .. but heck .. while we were struggling to get online .. we suddenly noticed that Ritsu’s iBook ‘sniffed’ this network .. albeit faint .. but not password protected .. so .. we used that for a bit .. pretty cool .. makes one hope that one day being online is so natural that sharing a wireless connection is no big deal and wherever you are, you are just connected …
Today we visited Ritsu’s friend Atena who recently had a baby boy (Ritsu wrote about this before here, with photo).
Cute little bundle … what scared me most was that after Atena said that he does not like men, but prefers women, I got along very well with him.
So, the rest of the flight was ok, the next ‘light’ meal was choice of lasagna or mini sandwiches. We both had sandwiches and they were ok. We landed ahead of time, while Ritsu could go through the “japanese passports” booths, while i had to line up quite a while till I got through immigrations. I was surprised that there was no customs form to fill in. Ritsu had already secured our luggage and we had no trouble going through customs …
Getting from Narita Airport to anywhere in the city seems to be a major drag and offers a bazillion of choices. Taxi is financially out of the question. We first took a “skyliner” rapid train for 51 minutes (with pre-assigned door and seats) … we had to change trains 2 more times, which was fun with 2 super heavy suitcases (27 and 18 kilos) and the 20 kilo computer bag on my back.
The last stretch we took a taxi and arrived at Ritsu’s parent’s house after 8 PM. After a very warm welcome we were spoilt with a fantastic dinner. Sashimi including my 2 alltime favorites: Ikura (Salmon Roe) and Uni (Sea Urchin) … the latter was a real treat as the quality was outstanding and the amount I had (well, I was kinda ‘forced’ to finish up, since the uni would be bad next day) would be used in a Sushi restaurant on 20 pieces of uni-sushi. The ama-ebi (sweet shrimp) and tuna and hotatte (scallop) were fantastic too. All this together with nice cold Asahi beer .. I was in heaven.
After dinner we took a stroll and went to a nearby Seiyo supermarket where I had fun checking out all the different things, like huge bottles of Sake, mini shopping baskets and looking for my favorite chips, which now also come in double cheese and hot’n spicy flavor.
While walking I kept being amazed as to how narrow all the streets in the rural areas of Tokyo are, and how people still manage to drive their cars there, without constantly killing all those pesky pedestrians and bicyclists.
while I am typing this I am on the plane right now … so fun to have the computer as a nice diversion.
We woke up early enough, did our packing, checked out and took the free shuttle to the airport (which is really just a stone throw away). There was not much going on at check in, which was nice … but it seemed that some large japanese tourist groups had some automated pre-check-in .. so there were no 2 seat window side seats left. So, the next best we could get was a 3 middle row for the 2 of us.
We spend some time at Republic of Cappuccino, where Ritsu tried their ice chocolate (basically just chocolate ice blended with milk) … When we had to go through all kinds of security controls, we had to deal with lots of korean and vietnamese tourists who had no problems with cutting lines and look silly when asked something in english (the japanese tourist groups where actually very well organized.
After some quick duty free, we were already up for boarding the plane … i’d reckon that 80% on board here are Japanese … that’s a new experience for me with Air Pacific. The security video is in English and Japanese and the food was great. Choice was Teriyaki chicken or grilled Mahi Mahi. But it came with chop sticks and cold noodles with japanese noodle dressing and wasabi … it rarely happens that I eat all the food … in this case I even ate Ritsu’s desert too.
Best part so far: the flight is pretty empty … no idea why they said all window seats are taken … right now we are occupying 5 seats … Ritsu has the 2 window seats and I have a whole 3 seat middle row fairly next to her for me. I can spread out and do computer stuff …
As for the movies: They started with “intolerable cruelty”, but they quickly realized that their VHS copy was close to unwatchable .. so they switched to “school of rock” … only to find out that they put in the copy that does not feature a japanese dub track … so .. after 15 minutes they started the movie again with japanese dub track … so much fun to watch Jack Black dubbed in japanese …
The service here so far is much better that I had on any Air Pacific flight .. and I have the feeling that I have more leg room … though according to the statistics in that booklet it is 32″ throughout the fleet for coach (50″ for business class) …
Can’t wait for the next meal .. and can’t wait for japanese food once we land !!! yeah.
For the first time, instead of taking one of those small planes to Nadi, I decided to try a taxi cab ride … the maths behind it is fairly simple: It takes 20$ and 45 minutes to drive from our house to Nausori airport, check in, possible delay, possible problem with luggage being to heavy, the one way ticket is 120$ … The taxi is 120$, picks you up at whatever time you want, no luggage restriction and total driving time is about the same, plus you can stop whenever you feel like. This makes especially sense on the way back when we are 2 people and have tons of excess luggage (I called the Air Pacific Nadi office to clear that allowance already).
So Ritsu discovered this one driver “Bobby” just recently, nice car, air conditioned, safe driving and not trying to talk too much. He came right at noon as planned … but since I was not ready yet, I sent him to have lunch first. So around 12:45 we left.
After 1 hour I got already a call from the alarm company that an alarm in our house was triggered … great. I knew both cats are out .. so I made a couple of phone calls, and Candice, the daughter of our Landlady took care of it … seems it was a false alarm.
The drive was great, very comfortable and after 3.5 hours and lots of rain we reached the hotel in Nadi that Ritsu has been staying in for a week already. Nice place, but weather was not really like hopping into the pool … so we lounged around, had some beer at the bar .. and around 6:30 PM we left for a place called “Piranhas” that Jon told us about … they have great stuff, leaning towards steak and seafood … they also have a huge outdoor TV screen … but it was still raining like crap. The taxi ride cost us 5$ … for a distance that in Suva would have been 2.20$ … seems in Nadi they do not use their meters … they just make up their prices …
Anyways … back to the food … we shared a caesar salad, lime chili calamari rings (very tasty and not fried / breaded !!!) and baked ribs … they were very yummy .. albeit not much meat on them and the sauce per se is too sweet …. but a bottle of tabasco was at hand and spiced things up very nicely … they also have Fiji Bitter and Fiji Gold on draft … all in all we paid like 45$, which is ok … There are rumors that they will open a branch in Suva .. and I am very much looking forward to that … they have a seafood platter for 2 on the menu for 60$ which looked great .. and people also seemed to order the green lip mussels a lot. A nice added thing was when we arrived by taxi, a door person came with an umbrella and made sure we would get in dry.
The way back from the restaurant was a bit more adventurous: We tried to hail a cab, but instead some minivan stopped .. and we just got in … I jokingly asked if this is like a bus or taxi … turns out it was one of this rather ilegal money makers, picking up people along the road … well .. they brought us right to the hotel for 1$ … one of the passengers was very inquisitive as to where we staying and whats our name and room number …. having read about this before a lot, I had no problems coming up with all kinds of stories just to make this guy shut up … after he left the driver told us that this guy was a local loony
To end the day, we hopped in the nice hot bubbly jakuzzi … but when we wanted to take a shower afterwards, it turned out that the whole Nadi area was without running water until midnight …
I love when I come across a good one of those little Java applet games … while earlier ones were simple and mainly about shooting Santa Claus with your mouse … new ones are getting better .. like Rocket Mania, a fairly simple puzzle game, but against the clock and not super easy.
Thanks to William for finding it via Weblog Wannabe
Today was a super rainy day, perfect weather to drive Ritsu to Nausori Airport. (She had to go to Nadi to attend some business thing). The drive is about 45 minutes and in both directions I met several traffic assholes that really got me angry: reckless driving while they have the whole family in the car. The way back was even trickier as it got dark, and a cab behind me had nothing better to do than bliniding me with his high beams.
Needless to say, I was a bit stressed out when I came home and I really felt like having a beer. Too bad there was none in the fridge, and store cannot sell it on sundays … but I know one place that does anyway … so .. I went there … turns out they got busted 2 weeks ago and no longer sell beer on sundays. So, i ended up at the bar of the Holiday Inn (freshly renovated) … I got to chat with a young guy who turned out to be one of the many sailors from the USS Higgins on shore leave. It was quite fun to compare these 2 very different worlds (Fiji vs. living on a ship). He could not believe that I cannot just order stuff from amazon.com or ebay He also puzzled the bartender a lot by ordering an Amaretto Sour. Honestly .. i was very surprised they actually had amaretto.
The above pic is taken with my SE T610 cell phone .. so .. in low light the pics do not come out that great.
Took us a while until we could decide what we want for dinner and we finally settled on chinese at Great Wok. We usually can park right behind the restaurant, but this time some big Pajero kind of 4×4 was blocking the way and some fijian guys were hanging around the car … after some stress around the Flagstaff roundabout, we found a spot and while approaching the restaurant I jokingly said that this car must belong to some snotty diplomat (their license plate has a pink CD = corps diplomatique sticker) … but it was even better , it was a government car (their plates start with a G). And inside the restaurant we saw Prime Minister Qarase sitting in the lounge area talking to some people .. seems they waited for some more and then took to the seperate area to have dinner … yep, without us
But we had nice food again, although our first 3 choices for the main course resulted in “sorry, we are out of that” … e.g. they told us we should call ahead if we wanted the steamed fish But we were happy with our soups (as much as I am against shark fin as an ingredient … their shark fin soup is great .. and I actually think there is hardly any shark in it at all) and then had chicken with veggies and fresh wong bok …
no, it is the first ‘portrait’ shot of our kid.
We went to a routine check-up today. We are at halftime now, 20 weeks done, 20 more to go. We tried to determine the gender, but 20 weeks is pretty early to see and though 3 grown ups were trying to idenfy baby genitals, we could not really see anything … we will try again at the next appointment.
But the baby looks great, gets actually too big for the small ultra sound screen, so we checked it out section by section .. all the limps are very visible and kiddo movies around a lot.
We had dinner plans with Yumiko, a japanese colleague of Ritsu, visiting from Kuala Lumpur. For some reason we all craved japanese food and went to Daikoku (for me and Ritsu the second time this week).
It was quite crowded for a thursday night and got even worse after 8PM, since some movies were aparently over and movie watchers came in. Coincidently they sat Jochen and Angela, the owners of Maravu Resort, who we know from several visits to Toberua, next to us, and while the girls were chit-chatting in japanese, I spoke german on the other side. Nice ‘resorts gossip’.
We stayed away from teppanyaki food this time, I just had some Tuna and Salmon Nigiri. Ritsu had mixed tempura and Yumiko had omelette and natto sushi and mixed pickles (which Ritsu said were pretty good)
I have been feeling kinda crappy the last couple of days (thus so few blog entries), but last night / this morning it got worse and I was determined to go see my regular doctor, but he was gone, so we took a cab to the Private Hospital and asked for the next available doctor. They put me in a bed right away (in a super refridgerated room, no wonder I was shaking) and I told a very nice doctor Joseph that I have had this few times before, never that bad, that my usual doctor said it is anxiety / co-pregnancy symptons, but this time I wanted to make sure that everything else is ok. And so they checked my heart by doing an ECG (for which they had to shave parts of my chest hair, looks funny now), took my blood for testing, I stayed a bit longer in that cold bed there, but soon left to go back home.
In the afternoon I returned, and ‘tadaa’ I am super healthy. Neither Dengue nor Diabetes, no real reason why my bloodpressure is going up from time to time and makes me feel bad. But at least I found that I am technically fine, and Dr. Joseph prescribed me some new medication which is already helping.
My dad has chimed in and left a nice list of suggestions and questions … which of course I want to reply to. I will losely translate his questions:
- your constant complaining about fiji telecojm is over the top and insulting them will not help you.
well, I think it sticks out that my constant complaining marks that this issue really is a pain in the ass .. in a way that I could have not imagened before … the fact that potentially when my wife goes into labor and I cannot call a taxi, just because some lazy ass did not do his job … well .. this topic really got my heart rate up … and it is a constant annoyance which just should not be …
- your favor for food is obvious and a good cook is a good thing to have in any household.
I guess some of my cooking love and skill I have from my dad … I recall a day in Morocco when we tried some weird mix of walnuts, sugar and orange juice … not really sure if we tried to invent some new form of candy or if that was dinner … or if we ever ended up eating it.
- how can one become Fijian, what would that mean eventually for your son Julius.
Very good question and all my online research so far has not been too fruitful. It seems that staying in the country for 3 or 5 years gives you the right to apply for citizen ship. So far, the majority of people we ask say that Julius will have NO right to be Fijian (unless he lives here for several years), seems that one of the parents has to be Fijian … my question back would be, why would he WANT a Fijian passport? E.g. with a german or japanese passport he can easily travel to Australia … with a Fijian, he needs a visa … so .. not really an option we are wondering too much about … as to German or Japanese .. well .. since he is a boy, there may be the question of military service .. but seems by the time he is old enough this waste of time for such service, which cost me 24 months of my life has hopefully been dismantled … the Japanese government promotes very strongly that you should choose between citizenships .. seems that no country really wants you to have dual citizen ship …
- how is Fiji connected to the international airline network?
Let’s say “sufficiently” … there are a lot of little inter island hoppers, there are regular flights to the main destinations and they sure want to bring in tons of tourists … BUT … there is no or very limited competition .. there are no ‘cheap’ or last minute flights .. in fact every flight seems to be fairly expensive (very different thing if you travel from somewhere TO Fiji) … there is one local airline and some new airlines are trying to get into the market, but it is all about bringing money TO Fiji .. not flying people out of here … in some cases .. to visit islands not too far away (Guam) you need to fly to Hawaii or LA first … crazy … well .. small market place …
- Whats the pricing on general items like Butter, Bread, Water, Electricity, Gas, Phone …
I need to check exact prices on bread and butter, they never struck me as cheap or expensive, so I guess they are in a normal range .. I can get a loaf of bread for 60 FJDcents .. so .. around 35 EUcent / US cent .. cheap … Butter .. the question is more if it is available … I see in the early mornings that people buy bread and tuna .. that seems to be the common breakfast. Fruit, if local, is cheap … but very seasonal, and very questionable in quality sometimes .. i.e. imported melons are better than local … hawaiin papaya has flavor, local papya has not …
Water: tab water, cheap. Actually
For tonight we met Jon and Ethan at Daikoku. What we did not expect (and was totally unplanned) was the Rob and Hillary and Rob’s parents were already sitting on that table we were shown. So we all ended up having very nice dinner together. As some rare specials they had Natto Sushi and Salmon Nigiri.
Yes .. its a Big Mac !!! and fries !!!! (ever wondered how much a Big Mac costs in other countries?)
But .. i have to defend my sweet wife .. this is the first time in a long time that she had a craving for junk food. And she has had no other weird cravings so far, really .. well… there was that thing about oranges last week .. but that was ok … lots of vitamin C
In fact, I usually cut 2 kinds of fruit into pieces every morning for her breakfast (we just discovered a new tropical fruit: Kavika, also known as “Malay Apple”. Green / pinkish in color and a bit smaller than an apple .. has one big seed inside (which can be cut through) peel seems to be edible … flesh is like apple .. more subtle in flavor and very refreshing … good thing …
We also make sure that there’s lots of veggies in our meals … well .. and then there are the emergency rations of cookies, muesli bars and snack things at her office …
So, really .. that BigMac was an exception, but she sure enjoyed it… I had a bite too … but I really wish they created tiny bite size Big Macs (Mini Macs (trademark pending) ??? like that small 70cent burgers at white castle ?) … i can’t eat a whole Big Mac anymore .. but being brought up with “don’t waste food” … I make my way through the second half … well .. while we are at creating links … here is one that claims to be a great copy of the Big Mac Sauce … have yet to try .. also not sure what they refer to as “french dressing” (or at least, which brand)
What is the farthest / furthest place (on EARTH) away from Suva, Fiji ??
We kept wondering … Europe sure is far.. with the planet have some 40K km to surround, Germany with 16 K is pretty far .. but we found so far that Accra in Ghana with 18626 km is the most opposite place …
mathematically there has to be a point that is directly opposite … fat chance it is in the water .. but still .. someone know a website how to figure that out ??
toodles
It’s been a while since the last update – but no news is good news! We believe that our little one is doing well… Actually, I sometimes think that I can feel him/her moving, but not quite sure if it’s really the baby or something else. The movement is very subtle at this point…
We’re also researching what baby stuff we should buy… Some of our friends highly recommended “Diaper Genie“, which is a high-tech trash can for diapers. It’s supposed to cut off smells. Worth investing, I guess…
Our next doctor’s appointment is 16th April. We hope that we can find out if it’s he or she then!!
There is quite some construction going on in Suva. Below is a building the started about half a year ago, and they make progress fast. The Reserve Bank Building behind it will soon no longer be the tallest building in Suva. But even this new building may not hold that title, as 2 other high rises have been announced, and one is about to start.
And outside of the downtown area, close to Cost-U-Less and the USP (and the less greasy smelling McDonald) is a new shopping ‘mall’ about to be finished (well, they shot for July 04)
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