I would say, water, water, water. We are surrounded by water. Well, all continents are and our Peautiful planet is Blue. But when you live is such a small island, this reality becomes painfully obvious sometimes…
Maybe this is why you feel blue rather than green or yellow… you feel blue because it is blue all around you! Blue blue blue! But, thanks god, we have internet here… and this is the best place to just lazily spend a full morning in internet without felling guilty that you could actually being out… backpacking, or skiing… It is a good place to be an artist, write a book, read many many many books, and catch up with the rest of the world, or, to be more precise, discover those meaningful things about the world that you would never pay attention otherwise.
I feel like I have never spent so much time in my life readings other peoples blogs, reading stories from all over the world, googling words like “dush bag”, “Coolio” or “Sam Kinison”.
Not long ago, in my friend’s bathroom, a book caught my attention: “364 things about the world that you do not need to know”. I wondered if the author wrote his book while living on a small island like this one, possibly even here…
Did you know for example that Bidet means “little pony”? If you do not know what a bidet is, well, google it!!! I did not learn this from the book I just mentioned, but this is just a mere example of things I learn while living here…. Also, check out the song “Day trip to Bangor”, at http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=pMNrrLBdhuM (if you are one of my Bangorian friends, you must!)
Did you know that as we were enjoying the Pacific Art Festival, tons of people were gathering in the Kenai inlet in Alaska, spending the weekend dipnetting?
Dipnetting is a particular way of fishing, in which you mainly walk along the shore in VERY cold water trying to catch some migrating salmons with a kind of net (check http://dugsbigwildlife.blogspot.com/2008/07/kenai-dipnetting-part-1.html for more descriptions and pics!). Did you know that we do something similar here in Samoa to catch the palolo? The palolo is a worm from the coral reef that spawn once a year few days after a full moon night… next spawning should be soon… I will tell you about it when it will be time!
And… did you know that a new species has been identified from a fossil (in amber) bought on e-bay for 20 pounds? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7572052.stm)
These are just few examples of interesting things about the world I would probably not be exposed unless I would be living in Neverland.
What is happening on island? Well, yesterday I went to a local version of American Idol. Six participants fought on the stage armed with 2 songs each. The singers were very good, as expected, as Samoans are incredibly talented singers. The winner and runner up will be sent to Western Samoa for another competition, whose winner will be participating to a bigger competition including New Zealand, Fiji, and other Polynesian islands. The final winner will have a contract with a discographic company and a cash prize of about $2000! Exciting!
It was interesting, because the first song they had to sing was a country song (the second one was a song of their choice). So… to return the to the discussion I was made before, did you know that in Samoa they sing country song? I also learned that the right title of a song I liked was “Men, I fell like a woman” and not “Men, feeling like a woman” (I always though it was a song about being fafafine…)
(Lisa on the last hole, as another beautiful sunset paints the island pink and orange)
Golf is a new interesting experience… being in the court is an experience, the view is just breath taking, and the whole game just fun, for $3 you can play 9 holes, barefoot naturally. I do think golf is one of the most ridicules game ever: who ever thought of hitting a very tiny ball with very funny looking clubs, along very long distances, trying to the put the ball in a very tiny hole (ok, I know, I googled it naturally… the Scottish in medioeval day...). It seems to me that in this case, golf is just a good occasion to be together, drink beers and drive tiny electric cars around the court. Even if a couple of people can actually really play, most of the people are beginners like me.
(Lisa and the electric car...)
The game consists of the repetition of 3 main steps.
Step 1: everybody as a shot.
Step 2: teams consisting of a driver and a “collector” will jump in one of the electric car and drive as fast as possible toward the team’s balls, wherever they ended up in the field. The driver job is to drive the car as close as possible to the ball (again, it is a very tiny ball), while the “collector” will be leaning on the side and with an agile swing of the car collect the ball, still full speed.
Step3: all the cars will the be driven toward the ball that was launched the farer; the collector will drop his and the driver’s ball around that ball, and steps 1-2-3 will be repeated again, hole after hole…
I believe this is a great idea to allow everybody to play, despite the skills, without holding the field forever. And the all running with the cars reminds me of a sort of Palio* (see footnote), something like the Palio della Quintana… I think I will refer to golf from now on as the “Friday’s afternoon’s Palio” (well, why not? after all Golf is a medioeval sport, right?) .
*For you knowledge a palio is… “the name given in Italy to an annual athletic contest, very often of a historical character, pitting the neighbourhoods of a town or the hamlets of a comune against each other. Typically they are fought in costume and commemorate some event or tradition of the Middle Ages, and thus often involve horse racing, archery, jousting, crossbow shooting, and similar medieval sports. Once purely a matter of local rivalries, many have now become events staged with an eye to visitors and foreign tourists. The most famous is undoubtedly the Palio di Siena; but there are hundreds of others throughout Italy and the surrounding countries”.
1 comment:
I used to dipnet, but I never did it from the shore. We would float down the river in a boat and drag out nets along the bottom. Every now and then a big old salmon or a red would swim into the net. Just as often a net would snag on a rock or tree beneath the water and the net would be instantly pulled under water and gone forever. Most of the time people were smart enough to let it go.
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