Living in a Tropical Paradise

Nov 2005 - Scav Hunt, Funeral and World Cup

Scav Hunt Party
Three of the AYAs had birthdays in early November and arranged a weekend away beach party at Lolumanu that all the AYAs attended. It was a lot of fun. Part of the birthday celebrations included a scavenger hunt in the weeks previous, which included surreptitiously collecting certain items from the other AYA houses and undertaking various tasks around town. This included singing at the karaoke bar, buying dodgy second hand clothes, photos of dogs in lewd positions and collecting a full set of Tim Tam packets of different varieties. The dodgy facial hair component was a classic with most of the boys growing dirty moustaches.

Funeral
A less jovial event was the funeral I attended for the father of a work colleague. It was at the Jehovah’s Witnesses church followed by a dedication at the grave site, which is in the front yard of the family house. The service was interesting (but in Samoan), with the casket open for viewing (I didn’t look – he’d been dead for two weeks) and they showed a powerpoint presentation of photos throughout. Apparently it was very short funeral compared to some of the other denominations in Samoa. At the grave dedication we were given mountains of food and drink, starting with melted icecream, followed by bbq chicken, chopsuey, sausage, savoury banana, taro and curry. But all in takeaway foam containers. We loaded up the car with several containers each and heaps of soft drink and headed home.

World Cup Qualifier
This funeral coincided with the broadcast of the first soccer world cup qualifier match between Aus and Uruguay, not that it was on tv in samoa – only on shortwave radio. I did, however, stay up late and listen in to the second match that won us through to the World Cup. It was so stressful and exciting – you have to imagine us sitting around a small short wave radio, with the sound literally coming in and out in waves. It would usually go out at a crucial point of the match so that we would have to wait a minute to find out we’d kicked a goal. It felt bizarre to be in the south pacific, listening to a soccer match on the radio, and our nerves were so shaky when it came down to the penalty shoot out. I think it was possibly more exciting to listen than to watch the game, well a unique experience anyway. After all these years when I would watch the final qualifier only to see Aus lose, this was a great day!

In other weird, non-me things to do… I competed in the 10km Samoa Island Run! At 6am on a Saturday! However I did not actually run – a group of us walked it in about an hour and a half – thank god it was a flat course mostly along the harbour, but I was surprised that it wasn’t really that hard after all. It was a good exercise to help mitigate the party to come that night – the first of our group of AYAs was leaving the next week, so this was his early b’day cum farewell party and it was a big one starting at the golf club balcony at sunset and going till very late.

posted by N-Lo @ 3:51 pm