I did not think my counterpart would be back until the 11th but he came back early. The good news I got my computer back the one I should have been allocated from the start, he received a laptop in Vila. This is good news.
Managed to get some groceries and cook another amazing steak for lunch. The internet is super slow at work so slow I cannot make a connection to gliffy.com, which is where I put all my design documents. First 5 are free then you need pay a membership of either 5 bucks a month or 7.
here is something I made a while back a little art.
(10) Tuesday
Back at work, freshly shaved and showered... oh yeah good start to the day. I just skipped breakfast but besides that I am feeling ok.
Working on designs again and I found a backlog program online at https://agilebench.com/ which offers a 30 trail to use their product. I am hoping the NDMO will pay for the license and that way if we find a programmer I will have all the artifacts logged described with images and point values into each iteration for beginning our sprints to code up the program.
(11) Wednesday
I forgot to write yesterday. Not much to tell really worked and ate and slept. Oh i forgot I went into town and had a chicken wrap sandwich... so good. I skipped frisbee night again but I was fine I am learning you don't need much when you have nothing but yourself.
(12) Thursday
So today I made some more progress on the software design layout the database section but before that I ran into town and paid my electric bill and water bill twenty bucks I don't have but so it goes.
Bryan and kate came by and we went to check out a market for banana's and sorry we have no bananas today. So now its back to doing what I do best just reading a book and sleeping.
The sunset was so golden, lighting up the the tall blanket of erratic clouds like a messed up untidy bed. I watched it turn purple and red and then fade into grey and black like a punched up bruised boxer ready to retire forever into the darkness. I watched this on and off while a read kurt vonnegut uplifting tale of slaughterhouse five. Uplifting because his story of that miserable soldier Billy Pilgrim, in WWII, he is more pathetic than anything I have heard before. I laugh at it because you know... so it goes.
Then I thought about the strange request I received my landlord, George Vira. He asked me to turn off my internet to test his satellite TV.. he believed oddly enough that my signal was interfering with his. I can't believe it.. but they use the same frequency and one can cancel out the other. It seem to be the case. So he will have to move his dish to a different location. I said the only thing I could Aw Wo... Sory. One of the few bislama phases that makes me laugh.
Then some random stranger requested a friendship on skype only to discover that it was someone that wanted to know if I would like to see their Whooty... all i could say was hooty hoo. She appearently wants to show me her butt. I could care less... hooty hoo. And then there was a series of even odder questions that repeating her same scripted lines, like I did not register them the first time. I think she cannot speak a word of english she only has phrases to copy and paste into the chatline. I asked her if she ever read kurt vonnegut and she could only again plead for me to click on her porn website. I said no thanks I am reading a good book. You should try reading it. Then we could have a conversation. Hooty hoo.
I guess a whooty is a White Girl with a big BOOTY! and she says, i wanna show u mine. I will Pass. Thanks. and so it goes.
The heat is penetrating. It blasts into every pore of my skin, and even if I shower three or four times a day I stink like an animal. I don't even smell it anymore but I feel like others do so bought some cologne to cover it up a little. I hope that it works. I can't smell that either. so it goes.
I wonder if time is like the rocky mountains all laid out to see at the same time all at once, that's how it is for the alien race in the book, for the tralfamadorians, they see all time at once. I wonder if that means we are forever because they believe life never ends because you can just leap back in time. I like that idea because it means my best friend David Potosky who died of brain cancer in February 2012 is still alive in time. He was was the kindest more interesting man I ever met. I can't hardly believe I will never get to make him laugh at my adventures again.
We were going to do things together. Make all kinds of money building a new unthought of web application, built on my once upon a time, inventive genius. I had an idea of a web concept recently. It came to me in a dream. Something about it faded a bit so what I recall is less glorious than the dream was. But it was about a program that could collect stats about everything and put them into reality. Those stats were thing such as polls or news feed about how much money is spent on the arts or foreign aid or where our money goes from taxes and such because in reality we are pounded to death by supposed facts when most of the time they are just invented to support someones ideological truth. It would be nice to have an actual source of truth to be able to call upon to know what is really going on. But of course such a web app would be corrupted by powerful forces and then it would be destroyed by advertisement. so it goes.
I miss the twin cities like mad. I miss seeing bands like Dessa play and the way she came over to my table during their brief break and she talked with me saying something like I was the most sincere fan she met and she then insisted on autographing my small poetry book that i used to scribble in when at a concert. I read her books of poems she published and brought one with me here to read, and her signature in that book is right next to the page where joe biden signed his name when I met him at a rally in the railroad station by the third avenue bridge. he has the worst hair plugs you could ever wish to see. Why did he do that. Just just bald man. But you know... I should have been on the road with Dessa after their van was raided by thieves and his camera was stolen... I could have taking photos of her concerts better than that dude I bet and helping them set up for a show. so it goes.
Tomorrow I am going to have dinner with bryan and kate, tacos or pizza something amazing for sure. I would be lost without them. They are the kindest most glorious Minnesotans you could ever hope to meet. They just give without thought, thats amazing. I try to do the same. They have no idea how important they are. They're just nice. If you read this you two... thanks a million billion.
Oh I just recalled another idea I had... some kind of program that would require an implant in your brain... it would capture all your thoughts and record them all and put them into text or some media we don't yet have to allow you see and understand the person it recorded. Then after you become someone important or perceived of as important, later generations of fans could look at your mind history up, and really know who you were as a person, know what you felt and thought so they could have a clear picture of your person. I dated a girl once a greek princess who studied historical figures like jane austin and wanted to know wierd facts like, what did she dress like or what books she read and or how she navigated life in a time when women could not be famous writers... I would record my mom and dads minds because there is so much to know that time does not allow to know and the use of oral communication cannot possibly capture with words. Then I would know what my somewhat slowly speaking, dad was thinking or what he experienced in life, the same of my mom except she is like me, a talker, which is nice. I ask questions all the time but it comes to slowly. You ever wish you knew what people were really experiencing? I do.
(13) Friday
Work was sort of challenging. The internet was down. I needed to do some research and that was not possible. I wrote a bit on the design docs but had to wait to get progress done until another day because I could not get a page to load. We need the government internet which it like 10 times faster than what we have now.
The good news is that I am going to get to work on the Malo project... which means I will get to build again. I have approval from the director and the SG and my counterpart. This is HUGE plus because at my last site the principal said I was his property. Yeah freedom to work. Thank you NDMO.
After a long day of internet frustration I went to bryan and kate's and has some freaking great tacos and we watched a weird ass movie called BIRD MAN. Pretty ok.
I sat on my stepout outside my oven, I mean house, and looked at the stars because it was a clear night and I saw orions belt and a bunch of other formations... the stars are incredible. They just burst in their brightness letting me know there is something so much more amazing out there to see than gecko's and cockroach bodies laying on the floor that I should sweep in the trash but I like them on the floor. They are like a open cemetery... beware jerks... if you enter you will get killed. They are big as boxcar's lumbering around slowly crashing into your leg or the under of foot. They don't even try to hide the shame of their existence.
I spoke with my Mormon neighbors. They ask me so many questions. I never ask them anything. I don't care. They want to know what America is like. They are from Samoa. The Mormons I knew in America annoyed me but these guys are more interesting... they seem sincere. Not trying to get me to join their nonsense religion they just want to know why I don't date a nivan. I said I don't have anything in common or to talk to with them about. I would not want to hurt their feelings. I just try my best to say they are nice... but I am going back to America. So they say "America has everything" I say yeah but we have problems, we have poverty we have more poor than rich... 1% with the money and 99% with enough to make it to the next paycheck. It's because our rulers are just as corrupt and selfish as the ones here or in any corrupt system of rulership... I think thats why we cannot get it more equal. It s only in the last few decades that we became ruled by evil. If only we could have more investment in doing good things instead of killing people in foreign wars. But things might change. There was once apon a time that people could make changes. When time comes and it will one day there will something new.
(14) Saturday
...Just returned from town got some more of that amazing meat they call it high Filet. We call it Filet Mignon. I love this shit. With some potatoes onions garlic and olive oil some red hot chili pepper, salt and lemon pepper cooked medium with a tender red middle bloody and juicy. It is so good. I have a cast iron pan too that is KEY. Without that you can't even call it cooking. I pity those who don't know what I am talking about.
At LCM there was a new group of baby docs... I never asked if they were such but they screamed it with their thick accents mostly ozzies the brits are way cooler sorry. They are. Oh well. They come and they go in three weeks usually. Not much point in trying to make an effort because they are in the throes of being here like a pack of animal herded with linked arms, together skipping around yeah. Who cares. I have awesome steaks. And Kurt V. to keep me company.
(15) Sunday
I was a out at Nandiutu village on Malo to do a site visit and see what the new plan was for the computer lab and library. It was chaotic. We marched up and down down all over the campus looking at this building debating its merits. We seemingly settling on one being used as the lab, even though the tin roof on it could not possibly last more than a few year then trying to find a place to store the 3000+ books for the new library.
Would we use the middle section of the big building, and have no tables and quiet areas for the kids to study? Just check out a book and go with it... no, yes, no. Would we use the big classroom and build a partition and have both computer and library in that, yes, no, yes, no. And after being confused and turned around for an hour or two I think they made their decisions. I mostly listened. They mostly spoke French.
After all that was done I went back to Ratua and had 3 tender juicy sirloin steaks, a huge plate of perfect crisp fries and a white russian. All free and part of the kindness of Isabelle.
Next week I will go back and start building the lab, smashing in walls and gutting one room, painting it and then put together tables and hanging bookshelves. I can't wait to start building again. The Rauta Bar is great.
