Coming soon

A new post, and then a resumption of regular posts will be coming very soon (think by the end of the week).

These posts, however, will now be found here

It has been a turbulent 9 weeks since the start of the hiatus.

I suspect that we will be using both of these "blogs" eventually. But for now we'll be over there.

Interruption

We interrupt this hiatus with an important announcement.

As of today, 20th June 2009, Nicole and Matthew are no longer married.







because Matthew lost his wedding ring somewhere in the South Pacific

Hiatus

When you consider this blog and our previous livejournal we've been blogging for a little over 4 years now. We've posted some 600 posts. Posts were made from Atlanta, Washington State, Canada, Alaska, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, the Middle East and now the South Pacific. The quality of my posts waxed and waned but seem to have mostly waned of late. There are a lot of reasons for that none of which are at all interesting or exciting or scandolous.

With those 600 odd posts (and most were quite odd) I'm done.

For a bit.

Maybe longer.

For many reasons, none of which are at all interesting or exciting or scandolous, I'm taking a hiatus from the world wide waste of time. That means no more Facebook. No more reading blogs. No more reading optometry discussion forums. No more "surfing". I have other things that need to be done. And do them I will.

I'll probably be back with more and better posts in the future.

Minimum absence - one month.
Maximum? Six.

This isn't intended to be a teenage-girl-tell-me-not-to-go-and-tell-me-how-much-you-love-me-call-for-attention post. It is simply a warning that I won't be around. If you want to find me look on email (x matt od x (at) g mail (dot) com or Skype mn(ourlastname) ).

Nicole may or may not continue to post here.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully you'll find me again when I start posting again. Check back every month or so.

In the pursuit of peace, love and justice,

matthew

7 Years

We’ve lived in 7 houses in 5 cites in 3 countries.
We’ve been around the world visiting at least 11 different countries.
We’ve had scary train rides in Egypt and scary windstorms in Palestine.
We’ve had to duck in our dilapidated van as we heard gunshots in Palestine.
We’ve enjoyed sunsets in Maui and no sunsets in Nome.
We’ve had to listen to a woman have a very difficult miscarriage while we were trying to sleep in the clinic in Alaska.
We’ve cried together.
We’ve laughed together.
You’ve supported me when others wouldn’t.
You’ve loved me when you shouldn’t.
We’ve been through sickness and health.
We’ve been through a summer in Bucharest.
We’ve had the worst jobs.
We’ve had good jobs.
You’ve been (basically) strip searched at the airport.
You’ve been stared at until you cried – and then stared at some more.
You’ve been strong when I’ve been weak.
We’ve had good times.
We’ve had bad times.
More good than bad.
And looking back even the bad times were good.
I’ve scared you on theme park rides.
And then you’ve asked to go back for more.
I’ve watched you gamble away pennies.
And then win hundreds.
It’s been 7 years.
Seven wonderful years.
I think you’re swell.
I love you.
Thank you for these seven years.

Picture Post

Like we've said before, there isn't much that goes on during the weekends here. This weekend was a little different in that we had a yearly sidewalk sale to look forward to! It is basically kiosks mostly manned by Chinese folks selling fine Chinese goods such as:




With signs like this:



This is me SO EXCITED to enter the busy street full of vendors:



Others folks walking on the street:



And this is us done with the sidewalk sale. Someone's happy to be done with the hoards of people...most of which just run into us - are we so white that we have become invisible to folks here?



Other store fronts around the city:





We only braved one of four streets of vendors - I had to get away to our coffee shop. One street of junk was enough for me.







Well, that's our day. Afterwards we headed back home, napped, then headed back out to see Terminator - I'm so ready for the chick fliks to roll in!!! It was the loudest movie ever.

Tomorrow we'll head out to the local costco-like store and try to find pillows for my parents - exciting stuff, no?

swell

Bats

Did we ever tell you we have bats?

These big crazy bats are everywhere at dusk here.

Good thing I'm always with Nicole. It's a well known fact that bats won't attack Romanians... what with them being distant relatives and all.

We also have little geckos. These, unlike the bats, live in our home. Did you know geckos made noise? They do. It's annoying.

We've also just discovered that in addition to the spiders, millipedes, mosquitos and flies that are regular visitors to our house that we also have termites.

At least we have fewer roaches than we did in our first apartment in Atlanta. The bad news is that the fewer roaches that we have here are far, far larger than Atlanta roaches. Dude, these things are the size of small cars. So big.

That is all.

Whitey on the moon

We're minorities here.

Although there are a number of whities here, for the most part we're few and far between.

Most of the whities here are wealthy.

We are not.

We are treated differently than the locals. We are treated much, much better in shops and restaurants than others. Often we are taken to the front of the line. We always have help if we need it in a shop.

We're always stopped on the street (by the same guy - you'd think he'd get a clue) to tell us not to shop on the streets and warn us to keep our valuables in front of us rather than in our back pockets or in a backpack.

The beggars and charity folks stop us more than others. The beggars get a little hostile toward us when we don't give them anything. (Hostile here means they curse us under their breath).

Its interesting being a minority. We get stared at a bit (but not as bad as in Palestine). We feel guilty about being treated better but what can you do?

There was a point to this but I can't recall it now. So I'll have to come back to it.

The title of this post is taken from a song the I heard as a cover by Every Day Life. I don't recall the original artist.

An Update for the Sake of Updates

So, where to begin?

I guess the best place to begin would be the beginning.

The start.

Where it all began.

The problem with this beginning is that this beginning is the same as the present and will most likely be the same as the end.

This story has no beginning. It has no middle. It has no end in sight.

We are. We breathe. We eat. We sleep. We "work".

That is what we do. That is who we are.

No more. No less.

We are the epitome of boring. If they made a reality show about our lives it would be right up there with Big Brother - but without the "excitement". I guess that would make it like "the Mole" but without the inability to understand the rules. Like American Idol without the obnoxious singers and judges (read all the singers and judges). Like Celebrity Rehab without the celebrity or the rehab.

If you were to watch this faux reality show about our lives you would have seen us, when not working or sleeping or eating, watching the entire Road to Avonlea series.

A good bit of Canadian television history. That was fun but we soon ran out of episodes and now we mourn the loss of our friends, Mr. and Mrs. King, Felicity, Felix and Cecily, Sarah and of course Gus. Who could forget Gus?

We have yet to replace that excitement in our lives. We are sans DVD series to watch. We have a few movies that we haven't watched yet and Fraggle Rock but that's about it. Soon we will be left with only TV. I've grown to love Shortland Street but we've lost ESPN for some reason. One day it was just up and gone.

So we're left with just a few channels, most of which are news. News.

The news here is still only half an hour. When we first arrived it was an hour at 6 o'clock. Now, what with censorship and all, it is only half an hour. For some reason they've taken the bold step of making the second half of the 6 o'clock hour Rowan Atkinson tribute time. First it was Mr. Bean now it's the Thin Blue Line. We can only hope for Blackadder next.

I've found out that I'm able to sit for my oral exam for Fellowship in the American Academy of Optometry. This type of fellowship is gained from doing a whole lot of nothing. You have to collect mythical points (much like Pepsi points). When you reach the magic number of 50 you can either sit for your oral exam or cash them in for fabulous prizes. I debated between the exam and a nice beach towel. I chose the exam because the towel was pink.

You collect points by doing a variety of things. Mine were collected the easy way. Twenty for my graduate degree. Ten each for two published papers and the final ten for a case report I wrote about some poor kid going blind here. Mother's don't let yer kid's play rugby. It will maim and blind them as we're learning.

So the acceptance of my materials and the granting of this relative plethora of points means I need to get to Orlando in November.

How does one get to Orlando in November when one has no money? (No money? Don't you get paid? Yes we do but not very much and any money we have is owed to Mama and Tata who paid Uncle Sam so as to prevent their lovely daughter from being thrown in the hoosegow). Well how? Well the big idea is to have someone else pay for the ticket.

So we wrote an abstract that we're submitting to present at the big conference. If its accepted we can say "Hey work, pay for us(well probably not us, probably me) to go to Orlando where we'll talk about work we're doing."

So we wrote an abstract together. Well not together together. It went something like this:

Matthew writes the abstract. Nicole reads the abstract add, about, one, million, commas and says "its ok but..."

Matthew says "oh I know BUT. But its worth a shot."

Nicole says "I don't know about this."

Matthew considers Nicole's changes and adds some (but removes some of her dang commas) and then she reads it again and says "Ok I guess"

They send it to someone in their organization for approval.

He writes back and says its fine if you submit but here are some suggestions.

Matthew erases the first abstract and rewrites it completely. Nicole reads it and makes her changes (more substantial than commas but there were commas added. Lots of commas)

Matthew reads it again. Makes more changes and they finally agree on sending it in.

The limit of 2200 characters was a challenge.

It will be submitted for consideration tonight or tomorrow (depending on when the AAO adds our dang affiliations to the drop down list. They tell you to pick an affiliation from a list. We're not affiliated with any of them so you have to email them to add the affiliation to the list and then wait two days for them to do it. Why can't we just type our own affiliations in? Stoopid system).

So that took up a good amount of time. Much of it at night when I should have been sleeping.

So now that the conference abstract is done now it must be turned into a paper (to be submitted somewhere after the conference). I also have another paper I need to start on and four more I volunteered to be part of.

If only half of them get done and published I think it will have been a successful two years here.

When we're not doing the above we're going to movies. We go to the theatre here at least once a week if not twice. This is a big deal for us as we rarely went to movies back home (too expensive). Here the movies are less than $3 US. The theatre kind of stinks (the smell not the quality) and the guy who controls the volume must be deaf but its still fun. They have some new movies that come out the same time as in the US and some older ones that we're not entirely sure why they are playing (like Nightmare before Christmas).

So we're caught up on movies.

Got my first haircut here.

Had it done two weeks ago.

Nicole is still laughing at me.

We're anticipating the arrival of Nicole's parents in three weeks time. Should be fun. They'll be here during one work week so we'll only see them in the evening and will remain for one of our two fall break weeks. During that second week we'll probably go to a resort somewhere.

Then we're hoping my sister can come visit for a couple of weeks during her summer break from "teaching". Maybe others will come see us too.

We're quite homesick but making do. We're just at that "we've been gone for four months and have 6 to go" stage. Once we're over the half way hump and have had some visitors we'll be ok.

So after reading all that - would you watch our reality show? I wouldn't and I live the life. I swear its like we're 90 years old.

La Multi Ani Mamica!!!

Hope your day smells better than it did on this day:

From Online Edits

Have a good birthday!!! Just one more month and you will be here!

Lightening the Mood

So as you may have read in the preceding post this has been a tough week for some folks that we really love. Whenever I know or hear of someone going through some sad times I don't know what to do with myself. I feel like I should join them in their sadness/disappointment/what have you.

I find it difficult to carry on. "Why should I write a post when they are so sad?" A silly thought but one reason why I often choose not to watch the news, read the paper, etc. I know enough of the world's problems that I don't need to overwhelm my overly sensitive self more. I get enough of that from reading books and knowing what the world is like.

Anyway in order to lighten my mood I thought I'd tell three stories from our time here in our new land. These are three old stories but I haven't bothered to tell them yet. I hope that they are entertaining and a bit of a distraction from the real world.

Story 1
Matthew "Nuku, did you just hear that on TV?"
Nicole "I didn't hear anything?"

Matthew "Exactly. They just bleeped out some words on a stupid American show!"
Nicole "What did they bleep out?"

Matthew "I think they bleeped out the words ass. And now the word sex. Dude they're bleeping out some strange words."
Nicole "Matthew did you just hear the radio?"

Matthew "Say what? What just happened on the radio?"
Nicole "They just DIDN'T bleep a word. Wait, they never bleep that word."

Matthew "What word?"
Nicole "The n-word!"

Matthew "Things are sure different here!"
Nicole "%&#@&*!"

Story 2

Matthew "Nockies you know how Vision 2020 is the main vision and public health document in the world right?"
Nicole "Yes. It tells countries that they should form working groups to concentrate their resources on infrastructure development, human resource development and disease control."

Matthew "Right, they encourage the concentration on 5 major avoidable causes of blindness"
Nicole "Yes. Its what you wrote your published papers about and one of the things that guides your working life. It is one of the reasons we came here."

Matthew "You got it lil' Nicles. Did you know that the bathroom the staff uses here at work is one we're actually borrowing from the Vision 2020 office down the hall?"
Nicole "I did know that. Did you hear the latest about that bathroom?"

Matthew "Hear what? Its not a great bathroom is that what you mean?"
Nicole "No. It isn't a great bathroom but, apparently, its the best one here. I'm talking about how we're all forbidden from using it now!"

Matthew "What Knickers?"
Nicole "They sent us a patient and we told the patient we would schedule them for when we had time available."

Matthew "Well we only see people by appointment and they don't have patients they just do organization stuff so...?"
Nicole "Well, they got mad that we didn't do what they wanted so they've forbidden us from using the bathroom."

Matthew "What do we do then?"
Nicole "Well we can use the gross bathrooms now. We've also staked out a single stall in the gross bathroom that has three stalls. We're going to lock the outside of that stall so no other people can use it. Its pretty gross though."

Matthew "We've been banned from a toilet?"
Nicole "We've been foiled by Vision 2020."

Matthew "Curses to Vision 2020!"
Nicole "Indeed!"

Story 3

Matthew "Nico what in the world makes those curtains move like that?"
Nicole "I think its just a draft from the sliding doors."

Matthew "A draft?"
Nicole "Come put your hand over here. Feel that draft?"

Matthew "Oh. Ok a draft."

Three days later

Nicole "Its drafty again. See that curtain move?"

Matthew "I'm going to go look at that curtain a little more"
Nicole "Its just a draft."

Matthew "No...it's a mouse."
Nicole "A MOUSE!"

Matthew runs and grabs a shoe.

Matthew finds the mouse again.

Matthew with shoe raised above his head "Die mouse!"

Just as the shoe is about to connect with the mouse
Nicole "NOOOOOO!!!"

Matthew "What Nockies?"
Nicole "Don't kill the mouse. Just trap it and throw it outside."

Matthew "Trap it with what?"
Nicole "Dunno. I'll find something."

Matthew "You want me to catch a mouse with a dust pan?"
Nicole "Yes!"

Matthew "Ok you move the curtain I'll trap the mouse."
Nicole "One two... eek!"

Matthew "Where did it go?"
Nicole "It almost touched me."

Matthew "Well where did it go?"
Nicole "Dunno."

Thirty minutes later

Matthew "I can't find it."
Nicole "Maybe it left."

Three days later

Matthew "Nicole GO TO THE ROOM and close all the doors to other rooms."
Nicole "Why?"

Matthew "GO TO THE ROOM!"
Nicole "Ok."

Matthew grabs his dress shoe and a flashlight.

Matthew "I'm going to get you mouse. Your time is up. I know you're by that curtain again. Where did you go?

Where are you?"

Matthew shakes the curtain and comes this close to having a mouse on his head as it had somehow climbed the curtain. He sees the mouse scurry off and lays chase. He pulls out the couch puts everything that was on the floor on the couch. He ties the curtain up. He looks in crevices and under the entertainment unit. Finally he sees the mouse. He lays chase again. This time the mouse makes the mistake of running toward the doors that Nicole had closed.

Whack!

Matthew "Dagnabit. Stupid mouse."

Whack

Matthew "Victory is mine!"
Nicole from behind the closed door inches from where mouse murder occurred whimper whimper.

Sad News #2

Our hearts and thoughts go out to the Lauer family as they mourn the loss of their father and husband.

Last Easter we were lucky enough to share a meal with the Lauer family at their home in Maui. Unfortunately the day after our meal together Kit was diagnosed with leukemia. Story here


He remained a man of great faith throughout his fight but was called home earlier today.

We have many great memories of the Lauer family including bumping into them accidentally in Italy. Story here

The following picture was taken at the train station.

RIP Dr. Kit Lauer. Thank you for your witness. For the rest of the Lauers you remain in our thoughts and prayers.

Conversation

Scene: Vegetable section of the local supermarket.

Matthew is holding the red plastic basket while Nicole selects from the small selection of decent looking vegetables. Matthew continually looks around nervously.

Matthew "Nickers. Why is everyone looking at me?"
Nicole "DID YOU FORGET TO PUT YOUR PANTS ON AGAIN?"

Matthew "No"

He quickly looks down to verify his answer.

Matthew "NO!"

Nicole sighs "Nobody is looking at you Matthew".

Matthew "But Nicle's those guys are looking at me and laughing."
Nicole "Let's just finish shopping you paranoid freak."

They fill the basket with their vegetables and figure they have enough to last the week.

Matthew "Nickies I don't want to go get these vegetables weighed by the weigher dude. He was looking at me this whole time. And laughing. With his buddies. I don't like them."
Nicole "Dude, you're such a big fat baby. I'll take them."

Matthew "Thank you sweetie."

Nicole heads to the weigh station and Matthew hangs back and looks at the fruits. He notes that Nicole is now talking to the weigher dude and they are BOTH laughing.

He checks his pants, yet again, and realizing that they are, in fact, on his body (this time) he skulks forward to investigate.

Weigher dude pointing at Matthew and speaking to Nicole "... and he looks just like Tom Cruise!"

Nicole "Ha ha ha ha.... ha ha ha ha.... ha ha ha!"

Matthew "Oh great..."
Nicole "Ha ha ha ha... ha ha ha ha.... ha ha ha!"

Shhh... it's a secret

Easter weekend was pretty crazy.

Pretty exciting.

Pretty fun.

A little bit scary.

We had big plans for the four day weekend. That’s right four day weekend. We had Good Friday, Saturday, Easter Sunday AND Easter Monday off.

Awesome.

We asked around and were told that a certain resort that shall remain nameless was a good place to go. We specifically asked people for a resort with a nice beach.

We saw the pictures of the recommended resort and visited their website. It looked perfect. The price was amazing (local rate) so Nicole booked it and we were off on Friday morning to spend four days and three nights there.

The resort is about 3.5 hours away from our place so we had to catch a bus. It was an uneventful bus ride.

The resort is on an island separate for the island we live on. It’s a short distance off shore but you have to take a boat from the main island to the small island.

Our bus stop was 3 km down a dirt road from the boat launch. We arranged with the hotel to get us a ride from the road to the boat launch. We were a little dismayed that the ride was a regular taxi and that it cost $5 to go the three kilometres.

None the less we were on the way. We caught our little boat and walked to the lobby of the hotel. It looked quite nice and we received our welcome drink as we checked in.

Picture taken to prove we had these bags in case of theft as they sat up there forever


Having to sign an indemnity was a little concerning but we did it anyway. We were quite early and our room wasn’t yet ready which was fine as we had plans to travel to the nearby city and look around.

And we had plans.

Big plans.

Eating plans.

You see there is a Hard Rock Café here and we were nearby.

And we were going to have American food no matter what.

So we took the little boat back over and they called us a taxi and we were on our way and we travelled much further than we expected.
And the taxi was expensive.

Very, very expensive.

But we had fun.

We had a good meal.





We looked around at the nearby resorts.

Very, very nice resorts.

Very.

Very nice.

We paid for a very expensive ride back to the boat launch.

And crossed the water to get to our resort.

While in the lobby getting our key it started to pour rain.

Pour. Rain.

And puddles began to form around the entire resort.

We got our key and a hotel lady led us to our room.

Well I should say we led her to our room although we had no idea where we were going. She was walking behind us barking our orders. It didn’t work very well.

And by this time it was pitch black out and the paths were not well lit and we were walking through deep, slippery puddles.

But soon we were at our room and were sorely disappointed.

We had a bure which is a separate little “house”. We were paying for an ocean view and could see the ocean but it was that little sliver WAY over there.

The room was nice but not great. It was way too big for the two of us and we were lucky enough to have no running water when we first arrived.

We notified the front desk and they stated simply that it was a resort wide problem and they were working on it.

They must have worked quickly as the water was back on at most 45 minutes later.

We cleaned up and decided to go for dinner. Upon arriving at the main restaurant we were told that we could eat at 8:30 pm.

It was 6:30 pm.

We were hungry.

They said they were busy.

The vast majority of the tables were empty.

We said: “!!!”

They said: “You can go to our other restaurant.”

We said: “We’re in board shorts and that restaurant is fancy and cost’s $110 for an entrée and !!!”

They eventually relented when Nicole said “Am I going to be able to eat tomorrow?”

And they sat us down among the many, many empty tables.

And we ordered and the food came and it was terrible.

TERRIBLE

And expensive.

Nicole sent her first try back (Fish – they couldn’t cook fish) because it was overcooked and impossible to eat.

The second try came well after I finished my awful chicken and it was, of course, raw.

So Nicole went without food that night.

And we went back to our room walking through the overly dark paths and puddles.

And we were not impressed.

So we decided to leave the next day.

And go to one of the very nice resorts we saw earlier.

And when we went to check out the next day the trouble started.

Us We be checking out now.
Them But you booked for four nights.
Us No we didn’t. We booked for three nights and we be checking out now
Them Ok, three nights but you not be checking out now. No REFUND
Us We don’t want no refund. We haven’t paid anything. We’ll pay for one night and then we go bye-bye.
Them No refunds. You not check out. We have strict policy. We charge your credit card.
Us We don’t want a refund. We haven’t paid anything. We will pay one night cash. You charge our credit card for the rest and we’ll dispute the charge with our credit card company and you get fine!
Them We offer no refunds. You must pay for all three nights. We will forgive last night’s dinner and change your room.
Us Look, just let us go. You have many happy people enjoying their holiday why do you want two unhappy people to stay?
Them No refunds. We’ll charge you for all three nights
Us We won’t sign the credit card slip.
Them Then we won’t let you leave the island.
Us !!!

After an hour we finally convinced them to let us leave and we only had to pay for the one night and I paid for the meal we were charged for (Nicole’s was taken off the bill the night before).

Pretty ridiculous. We were not happy.

But we were excited because before we had the big fight with the reception folks Nicole had booked us into a very posh resort back in the town we visited the day before.

There are about 6 big, very nice resorts over there. We were getting this room for the same price as the other and it was ready when we arrived (three hours before check in) and was BEAUTIFUL.



















We had an awesome time the rest of the weekend.

So the big news around here…

Well we were told not to talk about it for fear of deportation. I’m going to go out on a limb and say I seriously doubt that anyone with any power is reading this drivel. The following may not be entirely accurate but the gist is true.

Anyway in 2006 there was a military coup. Those folks are still in power today although they are consistently called the “interim government”. The prime minister who was in charge before the coup sued the current government claiming that his ouster was unconstitutional.

The courts ruled in his favour.

What did the government do?

Well the president did what any powerful person would do. He ensured he would keep his power.

He fired all the judges.

ALL the judges.

He abrogated the constitution.

There is now no constitution. (Can’t do something unconstitutional when there is no constitution.)

He stated that he would appoint a new prime minister, which turned out to be the same one as before (the unconstitutional one).

He stated that he would hold elections after the crisis was over.

2014.

He has forbidden any negative stories about the government from being written or shown. He has put censors in the news stations and newspapers.

They have deported foreign press and arrested at least one local reporter for reporting negative stories about the government.

The paper was published with missing pages on Saturday indicating that the stories that were to be there were censored by the government. The main news was cancelled on Saturday and was shortened to half an hour today (most of which was sports).

Just today the government took control of the reserve bank.

But our lives continue on as normal. Our main concern is our funding. If sanctions are put in place we wonder if we’ll lose our funding.

We’ll see.

But it makes for exciting times!


More pictures here:

Easter

Short update

Well we had a great Easter weekend that was complete with a disastrous 12 hours at a resort that came complete with threats of being held against our will. The weekend also came complete with the transition of the country we live in from a pseudo-democracy to a military dictatorship in which the leader has decided to do a way with such nuisances as a constitution, judges and elections.

Our internet was broken when we got home so couldn't update earlier. Its working now but its time for bed. Hopefully I'll have time to expand on our weekend and our new-old military government (which comes with censorship and intimidation of the press all for free!) tomorrow.

At least we don't live in Thailand.

The Pearl

So as most of you know last weekend was a long weekend here. Something to do with "National Youth Day". We were excited for the long weekend and decided to get away from the hustle and bustle of the capital here. We went for a really cheap 45 minute bus ride (on which they were showing the movie Predator!) to the nearest beach town. Not much of a town. A few shops but we weren't there for the shops we were there for the resort - The Pearl.

It was a really good time. Warm but not too hot. Nice calm water (the break was about 12 miles out). We had a view of a few islands. There was a lot of things to do but Lil' Nicles and I decided to just relax and do nothing. It was a great time.

The food was decent and not too expensive. The only downside was that there was a wedding there and apparently all of the attendees had a million kids and they didn't much feel like parenting them. As far as we could tell the only one watching the kids was a single staff member. The parents would eat elsewhere, do other things sans children and see their young uns once in a blue moon. Even if they were eating at the same time as the kids they ate at a separate table. So for every meal (no matter what time we planned it for) there was a table of 20 kids with no supervision. The oldest kid was all of 10. They were loud and obnoxious and ran around and... oh well.

All in all it was fun. Very restful.

Not much else to say about it but I'll show you some pictures.

A funny sign on the walk to the hotel


Our Welcome


The Resort


Our favourite spot


At Night


Some pictures of the view












My Nicles




Our Home


Dudes! You can see more pictures here. Clicky clicky.

The Pearl 1

Potential Visitors

To all our potential visitors please find below our tenative travel schedule for the next two years. Also included is a likelihood rating that we will actually travel at these times. Please plan your visits accordingly.

June 13-27, 2009 Traveling around Fiji (High probability)
December 4-12,13,14, 2009 Maui, HI (for CE) (High probability)
Decebmer 12, 13, 14 - December 22, 2009 Washougal, WA (to finish CE) (High probability)
December 22- late December, early January 2009-2010 Edmonton (High probability)
Mid-January, 2010 Romania (High Probability for Nicole, mid for Matthew - someone has to work for a living)

Mid June, 2010 New Zealand (Mid probability)
September 5,6,7(?) 8-10, 11,12,13(?) Durban, South Africa (High probability)
November 6-10 Denver, CO (Low probability)
November 14,15,16(?) 17-20, 21,22, 23(?) San Francisco, CA (Mid probability)
December 2010 Australia/New Zealand (mid probability)

Feel free to email if these dates conflict with your planned visit. Also feel free to email if you want to join us for any of the above dates in the above places.

I know most are a VERY long way off but I know that some of you are starting to put some thought into your visit.

Nicole is partying... I'm working

So Nicole is at home with some women from work. They are learning to make Indian food (from an Indian girl we work with). Its most of the women from work (well, there are only four women that work here including Nicole and two of them plus Nicole are there as well as our supervisor who has been working here for the past two weeks but will be leaving on Saturday). So four women in total are at our house cooking.

I have to do a rather complicated lecture tomorrow so I stayed behind at work to hide from people finish up the lecture notes while Nicole has her cooking party. I think the main thing they're learning to make is bread. Nicole loves her some bread.

Tomorrow is Thursday, of course, and we'll be at work late administering an exam to a student who was too ill to take it two weeks ago. Then Friday is more lectures, clinic, supervision and then its a long weekend!

We're so excited...

Our long weekend will be much like our short weekends. We'll spend part of the time working and part of the time not working. The exciting thing is that the part of the time working and the part of the time not working will be done elsewhere. We're leaving on Saturday morning for the nearest beach area where we've booked a hotel at a ridiculous "local rate" and we'll spend two nights there. We're not really planning on doing anything specific, rather we'll just see what the town is like and go near the ocean and do whatever strikes our fancy. Over the Easter four day weekend we might make more specific plans but we'll see if we can fit it into our ever growing list of things to do and our ever shrinking budget.

Not much else to update as we've been trying hard, unsuccessfully, to catch up on work.

Workshop is over

I'm sitting at home. It's Friday morning. I'm supposed to be working but I decided to spend the morning doing some personal/professional emailing/research that is not directly linked to my job but close enough.

Yesterday was the last day of our regional workshop and it was a lot of fun. I led a session that went very poorly and led a session that went very well.

The first of my two sessions was aimed at getting the nurses from the region to come up with lists of support that they need to improve their ability to provide care. We got the list you would expect: further training, more human resources, more equipment, etc. It went ok I guess but wasn't a lot of fun.

The second session was a session I through together in all of 15 minutes with some help from my dear wife. It was to be a clinical refresher for the nurses and it went very, very well. It was the nurse's last session of the week and they seemed the most engaged, probably less due to my great presentation ability and more because it was immediately relevant to them where as other sessions were for planning purposes.

I put together a powerpoint presentation for this session. Each slide was just a bunch of questions and the nurses did all the work by answering the questions with and for each other (well... I guess I did talk a lot but you know).

The best part was that my direct supervisor (who we met for the first time this week and is well published and well regarded in optometric public health work) received very good feedback about the session. So at least she knows I'm not a total doofus.

Since yesterday was the last day of the workshop (today the doctors and nurses are having a business meeting for the regional eye care workers' association - to which we were forbidden to go as we are outsiders and have no business being there) we had a banquet.

The food, as goes the food here, was ok but not spectacular. What was spectacular was the fact that the different countries without prior planning all got up and did a dance or song. It was a lot of fun to watch them. Three of our students (all from different countries) started things off with a very good dance based on dances done here in our home country.

There were some silly things and some really nice things done. Eventually many people started to dance just to dance and Nicole, being one who dances, tried to learn the dance but quickly became lost as she was just trying to copy someone who wasn't really trying to teach.

It was another one of those experiences that goes in the memory as THE memory of a trip:
1) Sitting on roof top in the West Bank looking around saying "I can't believe I'm here"
2) Sitting in the back of truck on top of cases of glasses driving through rural Honduras listening to the frogs saying "I can't believe I'm here"
3) Getting on a tiny little banana train in Honduras saying "I can't believe I'm here"
4) Walking along the street with Nicole in Moldova knowing that one day I'll marry her thinking "I can't believe I'm here with her"
5) Sitting in a tiny little cubicle with a sweaty, stinky Romanian kid and a patient in Romania with a bunch of rude Quebecers running hearing Nicole whisper "I can't believe you can stand to be in here!"
6) Riding in a rickety van hearing gunshots while in the West Bank thinking "I can't believe I'm here"
7) Walking through a checkpoint to enter the West Bank hearing distant gunshots and sharing in the humilation of an entire people group thinking "I can't believe I'm here"
8) Standing in our hotel room in South Africa and seeing the most beautiful sunset ever thinking "I can't believe I'm here"
9) Watching Eskimo dancing in Nome thinking: "I can't believe I'm here"
10) Standing on a little Alaskan Island looking out over the Bearing sea and seeing Russian land thinking "I wish Nicole was here"
11) Seeing Zumi and the Good one in Romania with Nicole's family thinking "I can't believe they're here"
12) Being with Nicole, Zumi and the Good One in Chesty Krumlov (not the correct spelling but what we call it) thinking "I can't believe I'm here"
13) Watching all these dedicated professional people being proud of their cultures and their homes and performing for us partly to be silly and partly to show us their talents and cultures thinking "I can't believe I get to be here."

Nicle's and I will probably repeat our movie date tonight and go see something silly and then we have a weekend of working as we didn't get much done this week as we were at the workshop.

We're happy. Very happy although this is not what we want to do with the rest of our lives. Its a step in the right direction and we just need to make the most of our opportunity (i.e. do research, publish papers, and make a good impression).

As all the emails I receive say,
Cheers.

Where does the time go?

It's all of 9:45 pm on a sweltering Monday evening here in our new home. I'm sitting at our very nice dining table on our very attractive, albeit very uncomfortable, kitchen chairs marking past graduate assessments. I'm not sure that I like the fact that doing something as strenuous as marking causes me to break out in a sweat.

It is hot.

This week is an atypical week for us. Our humble little office has welcomed in throngs of our colleagues from throughout the South Pacific for a week of workshops.

Well, our office didn't welcome them as we're holding the workshop at a local hotel but we welcomed them.

I'm not entirely sure on what the definition of a workshop is but our workshop is basically a series of sessions where people from around the region share their concerns, problems, solutions, questions, answers, etc. There are short lectures by some facilitators and then the workshop breaks off into groups based on their profession (ophthalmologist or nurse or student) or home country.

Since Nicole and I are not from the region we don't participate in the small groups but sit off on the side biding our time. It is a tad boring but I had the pleasure of being told volunteering to facilitate one of the focus group sessions about 45 mintues before it occurred.

Its been interesting because a lot of the higher ups from our funding agency are here for the workshop. I met them but they have been quite busy with other things so I wasn't able to make a real connection. I'll try to be good and send cards to them saying it was nice to meet them and blah, blah, blah.

Monday was actually a busy day for Nicole and I. Monday was a holiday here (Prophet Mohammed's birthday aka Muslim Christmas???) so the workshop couldn't start until Tuesday as none of the nurses or doctors from here would come in on their day off.

So on Monday Nicole and I assessed about 9 past graduate nurses on their practical skills and on a written exam. A bunch of others should be assessed but their flight schedules didn't allow them to be assessed on Monday. If there is time we may do it later in the week.

So for the past week or so I was busy developing an appropriate series of practical tests as well as developing an appropriate written exam.

The written exam that was approved by my "bosses" was actually a lot of fun to create but looking at the results I'm not sure it was well understood.

The first half of the test involved me telling a bit of a patient story. The first part of the first question read:

"A 67 year old woman presents to your clinic complaining of blurry, hazy vision. Her general appearance is that of a healthy woman although she did require the assistance of her daughter to guide her into your examination room."

I then gave the students a limited amount of time to tell me what other information they wanted to know about the patient's presenting complaint and what other history items they wanted to know. Nicole collected the papers after the time was up.

I then read more of the story (and put the pertinent information on a powerpoint slide). The second part of the story basically answered the first questions by telling all the information about the patient's main complaint and the rest of their genearl history. I then asked what tests they wanted to perform. And after a set amount of time collected those papers. I then gave the results of the tests I would have conducted and showed a picture and asked what their diagnosis was. How would they manage the patient and how would they counsel the patient?

I did four questions like this (it took about 90 minutes or so to conduct) and then wrote another 10 regular short answer test quesitons (I stole some of the short answer questions from the test bank...)

We did the written test in the afternoon.

In the morning I watched 9 students do part of an eye exam and Nicole watched 8 of them do a different part.

It was exhausting especially because I had to watch two people at the same time (due to time constraints). By the time I got to the 9th person I could barely stand but at least for the 9th I only had to watch one person and I could sit down for 5 minutes of the 45 minutes it took her to do the testing.

We were lucky enough to have morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea provided.

Unfortunately morning tea was at 11:00 am, lunch was at 1:00 pm and afternoon tea was at 3:30 pm. A lot of food in a short time.

The menu the caterer provided in their "bid" to provide food for us mentioned that we would be blessed with:

"Ass sandwiches, Ass scones, and Ass cookies" throughout the day.

Nicole was very disappointed that when the day finally arrived we only had ass sandwhiches and ass cookies. She was really looking forward to the ass scones.

This post is going backwards but that's ok.

On Saturday we went absoulutely crazy and ate out for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

For breakfast we tried yet another coffee shop and had some really good croissants. The best we've found so far. After that Nicole went and had a pedicure and I went and wandered the streets looking for a hardware store so we could buy a broom and a mop.

After the pedicure we went to our favourite Chinese place for lunch where for a mere $7.50 (local currency), about $4 US we shared a lunch that we couldn't finish.

We then went home for a bit before going to our first movie here!

It was a lot of fun despite the strange odour in the theater and the strange tasting popcorn. The popcorn almost tasted like it had some type of spice in it. I wouldn't get it again but it wasn't terrible.

We made the mistake of going to a movie we knew nothing about. Watchmen.

It is extermely violent and contained a fair amount of nudity. Imagine our surprise.

Futher imagine our surprise when as we realized what type of movie we were in we saw that their were many, many kids in the theater. The kids directly in front of us had their eyes covered by a concerened parent once in a while but the 12-15 year olds attending sans parent had a VERY good time. haha.

No ratings here I guess. Back home its rated 18a I guess. So funny. It was neat to watch because the movie goers are not a silent bunch here. A lot of interaction with the movie.

We'll make it a regular occurence to go to the movies here. Its quite cheap and it was fun.

Yesterday (not to make this post too confusing temporally)we were treated to a nice dinner by our funders. About 10 of us went to a Japanese restaurant. The food was decent. The service? Meh.

After waiting for some time to be acknowledged someone finally waved down a waitress and gave her order. Much to our surprise as soon as she finished her order the waitress ran off. She returned a number minutes later and only after being flagged down again. The second person ordered and the waitress ran off again. The first time was funny. The second? Bizarre.

We waited and waited. The waitress finally returned and I firmly asked if we could ALL order before she left. She looked very, very confused as she scanned the table. I said "I'll start and then we'll go around the table this way" (waving my hand in a clockwise fashion). She relented and eventually we all ordered.

The food took forever and then arrived in no particular order. People who ordered first got nothing. Others who ordered later got half of what they ordered. I waited forever! (Luckily I could sneak some sushi from Nicole). Some people never got what they wanted. Our CEO didn't get anything I think. She ended up getting full just by sampling from others. It was annoying but a funny memory. This was really the first time we've had any trouble with service. Its usually slow but this was ridiculous.

Next week we start a whole new module that we haven't prepared for so our days and nights are going to get a lot longer over the latter part of the week. A lot to do but we're having fun and are comfortable here finally.

We are expecting our first visitors in June during our break and will be spending that time in various parts of the island finally getting to see what all is out there.

We have another long weekend next week (10 days from now) and are trying to find a cheap resort to spend a couple of days at.

We'll see.

Well thats our big update.

Its hard to write thoughtful things when I actually have to work for a living now.

I Like

I like how no matter where you go in the world the taxi drivers are all the same (outside of the "developed" world that is).

I also like how I know I would be exactly the same as they are. They drive around in barely held together cars that some how keep moving forward. No shocks. Ratty seats. Dents and dings. Black exhaust billowing out of the exhaust system. The cars are all pretty beat up. But inside the car!? A very expensive looking sound system. Now its not a sound system that rivals the fools back home who spend thousands and thousands on their care audio system but these are nice stereos. The only thing in the care thats not falling apart is the stereo and you get to listen to it the entire ride too.

I also like how here all of the taxis have written on the passenger side dash board (the left side dashboard!) "Fasten Seat Belt Pliz". I like that the drivers are never wearing their seatbelts. I like that I can never find a seatbelt to "pliz" fasten. No matter how hard you look there are no seatbelts available to fasten.

I like how we saw that really nice delivery truck exclaiming that they ship your goods "foward".

I like seeing the homemade sign exclaiming "Pot Plants for Sale".

I like that by government decree all taxi drivers had to lower their starting price by 50 cents. Gas prices went down. Taxi fares go down.

I don't like knowing that a lot of people here are paid under $2 an hour.

I don't like how my "boss" told my patient that he was going blind and there is nothing we can do about it. It might be true but it should have been said with a little more compassion and tact. That's ophthalmologists for you though.

I don't like how I forgot to put sunblock on last Saturday and I'm all burned now.

I don't like how our work place and our home has been invaded by tiny little ants. Leave anything out (especially sugary substances) and soon it will be covered in ants.