week 61 - few more rounds

Monday May (25)

It is hard to leave such a beautiful place to return to a week in Santo... but here I am ready to do whatever.

There are a few other g26er's are visiting on Santo... Elise was here for a day or so... and Steve and Alexi. Hope they have a good visit.

Forgot to post a photo of the bookshelf that is being made:

(26) Tuesday

So far the day is going great... ordered more supplies 59, 4x1 by 2.5 meter treated whitewood boards and they will be ready for my work this weekend. Then they are making some support X's for the internal stability. 100 bucks. Bought a few hundred screws, snadpaper, stain, drill bits and that came to 100 bucks. So much material with so little red tape. Love it. I can buy it and not have to beg for it. Ratua Foundation RULES!!!

Then I found my world bank books and will have them delivered this weekend.

That is a big plus.

Things are looking bright this week.

(27) Wednesday

I went for a walk to the Brisk office and looked at the books I will be receiving. Not sure how many there are but none of them appear to be french, all english. One box i opened was English fiction stories for junior / high-school age kids. They are used but in good condition. They look great. Hope their are more of them and lots of other cool things inside.

Not much else going on at the moment.

(28) Thursday

Went to Nindautu again and hauled over the generator, tools, a bench and plywood and such... I get to the library and i see a nivan kid with a paint tray on the beautiful rosewood table i made getting grey ugly paint all over it. I freaked out WHAT THE HELL MAN.... ran over tossed the tray off and started scrubbing it with alcohol. He ruined the finish unfortunately so I will have to resand it and restain it.

We managed to clean the rooms of the all the rubbish and sweep it pretty well. Made a leg for the bench, fixed the bookshelf leg and prepped everything for the electrician that is going to be here tomorrow.

Photo of the room before cleaning:

(29) Friday

It was a day  of mostly being patient and letting others use my tools and I was there to make sure nothing was lost or broken. I tried to get back to Ratua to build but i was stuck on Malo all day with little to except help the electrician install power at the site. But he needed little help. Good news is most of the power was setup.

(30) Saturday

Day two of babysitting at the Malo while most of my work is put on hold. It was tedious just being idol. Good news is the workman at Malo installed the windows using my tools and he likely will buy them from me so it was good in that way. But I was wishing that I could have used my time to build my things more than watch him do his work. Best part is I got all my things back and he only broke one drill bit. Also the power was setup and now if I work at the site I don't have to drag a generator over.

(31) Sunday

Bryan and Kate came over to Malo and we painted again... and worked on my bookshelf. Marc the owner of Ratua was around he was happy with all the work we were doing for Ninduatu. Here are a few photos:

not finished yet but close... it's based on something Isabelle wanted us to paint from some french kids story book called TinTin... never heard of it but was like sure we can do whatever. We put a volcano in the background erupting.

week 60 - building like mad

(18) Monday

Placing a large order of building material at Veneer Lumber ... and trying to get ready to construct 5 large bookshelves. Huge quantity of stuff for this place 155 8x1x2 meter white wood. just for the shelves.

Excited to build these and then the last major construction item is finished. They think it will take them a month to get the material ready... that is too slow. I need it this week. Oh well hopefully they can give me partial orders and I can make it worth going to Malo this week.

(19) Tuesday

I like looking at this blue and green beach from the air.

Back to making more benches and bookshelves this week. I should have plenty of rosewood to make benches and enough to make at least one bookshelf. That and Sam and her dude vato will be working with me this weekend.

Next week I will bring up this one girl I don't know that well but she seems nice and then Bryan and Kate are back so they will be up again to help paint the last bit of the mural.... If laura wants she would be welcome to join me anytime... and Maybe I will ask I can have the smiths visit once unless they are too busy swimming at million dollar point.

Suppose I will stop in at the NDMO and make sure nothing is going on... but after breakfast.

So I had a great breakfast and then got an haircut. Feel like a million vatu which is like what 100K us.

if you ever want to read some new from this place this link is interesting... has the local stories that are quite bizzare: http://www.dailypost.vu/

It is funny when i am town there is absolutely nothing to do. When I leave town I have work... this is the opposite of what most people experience town = busy... not for me.

I was walking home from NDMO and this kid oh maybe 7 built up the tremendous courage to say,  "Yu go Where?" heh I said, "Mi go house blo me." I know i still suck at bislama but whatever... and then I tried to get them to talk more but that was all they could handle I think... because when i turned back to look they were giggling and high fiving each other just from saying that and hearing me talk. Pretty funny.

(20) Wednesday

So tomorrow I am making better versions of this. Five of them, one extra board in the middle with separators and backs... should be pretty nice:

(21) Thursday

Wood supplies are not here yet so i am preparing my plan and getting all my things ready.

Having time to think is nice i guess... the boat ride out to Ratua takes about 40 minutes... It's kind of funny what you get used to week to week... this to me is like my bus ride or train ride to work... I rather be on a boat skipping across waves and getting a taste of sea salt on my face as we dart over the choppy water. But at the same time it's always sitting and waiting. Waiting for the boat to show up, waiting on the boat to get to the site and then waiting for the boat to leave and drop me back in Luganville. I don't mind waiting so much anymore as long as I know I have a sure ride and that part is taken care of.

(22) Friday

Here is the bench prototype I made last week and I am hoping to make more of them full sized this weekend.

Here are my wood supplies:

Here is a book shelf but not finished yet because I am out of 8x1 boards to build the seperators... and support structure inside the bookshelf:



(23) Saturday

We made these:

And this is what it looks like unoccupied:

(24) Sunday

Made this:
The next day

Week 59 - Another quick mystery

(11) Monday

Well here I am at the NDMO. Not much going on again.

Already thinking about lunch since I skipped breakfast. Had the chicken wrap a million times but sick of pizza... no point in the burger since its mostly blah.

Last night I was the middle man in a text-a-thon that was sort of fun.

playing dodge the chairs in the pitch black night through the kava bar to the store and back... getting dodging advice from the nivans with their ultra night vision was the only other highlight of the night.

Look at this nice detailed map... shows both my town luganville and Malo... you can see the blue hole near the ninduatu village on Malo.

(12) Tuesday

Well life is getting simplier... sold my fridge and projector and trying to get rid of all my large ticket items like the BBQ grill and bike. All these items take time to sell so might as well get rid of them all before time runs out.

Not much really going on at the moment... has Hannah over to watch a movie and cook up the last of my eye filet steaks... no sense in wasting that beautiful steak.

Today I am posting up the items I am selling and thursday I hope to return to Malo to finish this furniture making thing.

(13) Wednesday

Let the liquidization of material items begin... I post my sale up and am unloading items as fast as possible. Less is more and more is less.

Can't wait to have zero overhead and be free of the burden of having items. It will make life easier.

I return to Malo tomorrow and hopefully that will end the boredom of the week. I have done nothing for like over week and it am tired of just sleeping so much. My body is not used to this level of inactivity, brain so unstimulated, and just seeing the same things every day. How can people live like this forever?

(14) Thursday

Well this is a picture of the table I made...

Look at those sexy legs... made of rosewood which they call bluewood because it turns blue in the water and stink wood because it smells when they cut it down. Both rare wood to find here... only 5 percent of the trees are hardwood and only 1 percent this red and beautiful stuff.

(15) Friday

 GOATs... RUN

Bunch of baby goats too.. they seem and scatter... pretty funny hard to photograph.

(16) Saturday

Yesterday was a mess had to run into town to get more timber to work with and isabelle is coming to visit monday so I want to finish a bench and my bookshelf. That is the goal for today.

Made another piece of furniture...

A bench but I have to decide if I want to have a back on it or not...i  am betting I will make a back because I have a curiosity of how that will look.

plus it is a prototype... why not experiment.

(17) Sunday

Returned to Santo. Ate at attar and went home.

Nothing much more to report. One of the most consistent things about life here is the boring nature of it all.

week 58 - The end game

(04) Monday

Getting closer and closer to finishing this Nindautu project. Can't wait to make some more furniture and get the rooms completed and filled with books and PC's. It is a brilliant project lucky I have a great sponsor.

Well back to work at NDMO not sure what that will entail. Hope there is something to work on.

Check out this barge carrying fuel... it was half flooded going over rough water with a broken water pump. I am glad it did not sink.

Yesterday evening we (Hannah, the Smith's, and myself) had mini-pizza at Kate and Bryan's. It was really good. Too rainy for frisbee which is fine by me... I hate running around in the mud because then I have to deal with the messy clothes after.

(05) Tuesday

Today I need to get more timber to built with and clean up my house for people to come over and watch a movie and have dinner.

Well some people came on time and others were late... but the dinner and movie night was successful. We watched really strange movie about a fat kid that was obsessed with his mom and only wanted them to be friends and does his best to sabotage his mother's new relationship. Had Marisa Tomei in it... she's ages since my cousin vinny but still pretty hot.

After a few hours of work at the NDMO, I had a nice lunch at attar cafe. Daria made an appearance.

Downloaded some software from the college and started playing with frontline sms. Might make my own messaging system.

(06) Wednesday

Started the day at NDMO... then went to eat... pretty much nothing intesting happened. I went to MSL (Melcoffee Sawmill Limited) made a small order of timber to complete the bookshelf and table... and then went home. I watched a few movies and played some Faster than Light video game... packed and got ready to work at malo then slept.

(07) Thursday 

So I got up went to the warp waited for 3 hours before finally breaking down and getting topup on my phone called the ratua folk... no boat today. So I went to get lunch and then went to NDMO.

It's ok... I kinded needed a break from Malo... was getting a little spoiled with too much work.

(08) Friday

Designing in my software doc all morning... made some progress on designing how the survery portion of the application might work.

Now it is lunch time and most likely I will go to attar again. There has been a couple cute people hanging out there lately.

(09-10) Saturday-Sunday

Pretty much nothing to report.

Had a movie night and made some food for friends...
We biked to Pelakula beach and swam on saturday...
Sunday I went o beachfront and had a pizza. Nothing exciting.