judyonthenet

I hate it when people say “no offense”. I don’t understand how people think those two words can cancel out the crap that comes out of their mouth. Like saying “no offense” is really going to make me feel any less offended. Really, “no offense” just means “brace yourself, I’m about to say something offensive, try not to kill me”. The most recent public use was during the Miss USA pageant last Sunday. If you haven’t heard or read about the controversy with Miss California (gawd, I’m ashamed), here’s a video:

She started off not sounding like an idiot, but then it went downhill after “opposite marriage”. (WTF is an “opposite marriage”?) Aside from her offensively terrible attempts at sentence construction during the last half of her answer (which I interpreted as “I believe that all states should follow my belief that gay marriages should be banned because I was brainwashed by my family and church”), her stance on the issue is going to offend people. It’s incredibly divisive, and no “no offense” is going to make it any more acceptable or easier to swallow. You’d think she’d realize how dumb she sounded, but she didn’t, as apparent in her interview with Matt Lauer:

She freaking emphasizes that she said “no offense to anybody”. OMIGOSH YES I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER THANKS FOR TELLING ME. Maybe in her next interview she’ll tell everyone she didn’t mean anything she said because she had her fingers crossed. What a moron… no offense.

While I’m at it, you know what else people say that pisses me off even more than “no offense”? The word “literally” used in an incorrect manner. Like, “It was so hot I was literally on fire.” UGH. I feel like this word has lost all its meaning and value due to lame usage. People, get a friggin’ dictionary!

New thing I learned today: “Offense” is spelled “offence” in British English.

Over halfway through April, and I’ve only had one post so far. I think I’m feeling particularly uninspired this month. The last honeymoon post also kinda burned me out. I need to learn to write smaller posts in between my massive posts. I ramble so much; how people Twitter is beyond me.

Work has been a little rough, as they’ve started having daily 8:30AM (recently changed to 8AM, wtf) meetings a few weeks ago. I am NOT an early bird, so I’ve had to make adjustments. Sitting in front of the computer keeps me awake, so I’ve made an effort this past week to start going to bed between 10PM and 11PM. This is in contrast to my usual 12AM to 1AM time. I also can’t fall asleep immediately, so I play DS/PSP games or read until I pass out. This usually takes about an hour. My new sleep schedule has been working great so far; I’m actually pretty awake in the afternoon hours at work now. I used be dying for most of the day, especially after lunch. I’m going to see how long I can keep this up.

We still haven’t finished thank your cards, but there’s only a handful left to do for each of us now. It’s been that way for over a week. I don’t know why I don’t just get them all done and over with, as it always nags me in the back of my head. I still want to post stuff about the wedding, but we need to encode some video footage first.

TV has also taken up a lot of my evening time. I watch various series (either on DVD or, um, other methods) while eating dinner, but we usually end up spending all of our free evening time watching television because we don’t stop. It’s hard when I want to know what happens next. We’ve recently finished Big Love third season (theme of the season: how much plot can we squeeze into one episode) and Battlestar Galactica first season (the season cliffhanger is particularly cruel… I can’t imagine how pissed people who watched the actual broadcast must have been). I’ve also been good about leaving time for gaming, tho right now it’s mostly DS stuff before bed.

Was gonna post pictures, but I’m too lazy. Bleh.

New thing I learned today: What exactly an FHA loan is.

Friday, November 21st, 2008

Our fourth day in Fiji was super, super busy, as a lot of the things I’d been wanting to do ended up being today. What sucked was that the cold I was feeling hints of when I first arrived at Navutu Stars was coming back again. I wasn’t full on sick, but it was the feeling you get the day before you start feeling terrible. On top of that, I was starting to feel some tenderness in the shoulders from all the sun we were getting the previous days. I thought we’d been diligent about using sunscreen, but apparently not diligent enough. I shrugged all the minor discomfort off and went on with our full day. Regarding our activities to day, Kelvin said, “I hope it doesn’t involve snorkeling. I’m tired of snorkeling.” Well, tough cookies for him, cuz there was much snorkeling to be done today. What else are we gonna do on a tropical island??

Today, I made sure to get some laundry done before we headed to New Zealand. All the bures have a laundry basket apparently (I thought the basket in the bathroom was a trash can) that they empty out when they clean your room. All the clothes in there are hand washed and hung dry, so keep that in mind if you’re in a rush or have fragile clothing. The weather was great while we were there, so the clothes dried in one afternoon no problem. I believe it was like 1FJD for each article of clothing, which isn’t that bad compared to American hotels. It’s just weird to me that a pair of panties is the same price as a pair of jeans. You find the clothes in your bure, nice and folded, when they’re ready.

At a previous breakfast, we had told Seruvi that one of the things we wanted to do was go spearfishing, and he arranged for us to go this day. The best time to spearfish is when the tide is low, and today the tide was low early morning and late afternoon. We got up bright and early and set out spearfishing with our guide, Lui, a little after 7AM. He took us in the fishing boat to a spot close to where we went snorkeling for the first time. I thought spearfishing was where you wade near shore with a pointy stick and throw pointy sticks in to fish swimming in shallow water. Apparently, spearfishing is where you snorkel with a rusty, pointy metal stick and fling it with a giant rubber band. I’m serious, our “spear” was like a straightened coathanger that been laying on the porch in sun and rain. With a couple days of snorkeling, I was no longer intimidated by swimming in the middle of nowhere, plus the tide was even lower this time around. I chose not to partake in the hunt; I left the sharp objects to Kelvin and focused on not drowning.

Kelvin didn’t have much luck fishing. It turns out snorkeling in wavy waters and slingshoting spears underwater at fast moving objects isn’t trivial. Lui gave him tips and showed him how it was done. One thing you need to do is to hold your breath and dive down deeper (deeper = bigger fish), and Kelvin had some trouble with this at first. (I’m too frightened to even try diving.) Lui is quite the spearfisherman; he pretty much immediately caught a pufferfish in front of us. I asked him if he would really eat that, and he’s like “Of course!”

Unfortunately, this section of the ocean is very wavy, and I was getting nauseous. I had to climb back on to the boat a couple times and eventually stopped snorkeling so I wouldn’t puke. Climbing back onto the boat was an impossible task for me, a person with no arm muscle. I got a couple large bruises on my legs trying to climb back in.

Kelvin’s catch. Yes, it’s a really a fish.

Kelvin did eventually manage to catch a couple fish. They were both very small. He said they were unsatisfying catches because they were very dumb fish, pretty much sitting still in front of his spear. He said he had caught a faster, larger fish on his spear, but when he tried to remove it, it got away and swam off with a giant hole in its gut. Too bad I wasn’t around to film that.

Why didn’t he just stay on my spear? He’s just going to die somewhere else now! No one will believe me that I caught a normal-sized fish! WAH!

Lui, on the other hand, caught around fifteen decent-sized fish, including a giant clam thing. Kelvin’s catches were stuck with Lui’s, including his second catch at the very top next to the clam. What I found both sad and hilarious was, when we got back to the resort, one of the resort girls was so excited about the clam, she took the spear of fish, pulled off Kelvin’s second fish and tossed it on the ground, grabbed the clam and ran off gleefully to the kitchen.

After spearfishing, the restaurant was open for breakfast. Once we finished breakfast it was time, it was time for our next activity, visiting the Sawa-i-Lau caves. Seruvi had mentioned this would be a highlight of our Fiji trip, so I was hyped up. The boat ride to the island took a pretty long time because of the distance from Navutu Stars. The side of the island we landed on is mountain-y with rocks lining the water, except for a small beach with a couple trees. A fairly large group of college aged backpackers were on their way out of the caves, and a few ladies from the local village were selling their wares.

Arriving at Sawa-i-Lau

To get into the caves, you climb a staircase carved into the rock, going along the water around the island. It passes through a doorway of a pretend structure (I think it’s sole purpose is the doorway) and eventually goes down into the caverns, where the steps are a little slippery from tourists coming and going.

The cave is filled with water, so being in the caves means you gotta snorkel. Seruvi didn’t allow any cameras without water protection, so it was a good thing we had an underwater case. The swim in the cave was very intimidating. The water is cold from being hidden from the sun, and it’s also deep, especially since the tide was high. Jumping in wasn’t as nice as jumping into the ocean earlier; it was very brisk! And I was swimming as fast as I could to the nearest rock to cling on to. The other women with us were equally anxious as I was about the swim, though the guys seemed to have no problem. Seruvi pointed us to all the good rocks to cling to dear life with. Despite the deep, dark, and cold waters, the cavern were amazing to look at. Very high and cathedral like.

The cave has two sections: a large well lit area and small, more underground area lit by a small hole. Usually there was a hole to swim through from one area to the next. Because of the high tide, this hole ended up being very tiny. In order to get to the other side, we’d have to hold our breath and dive underwater for a second. Sigh, more freakiness. While I found that task to be a little scary, it was worse for the woman who couldn’t swim and spent most of her ocean time in a life jacket. She couldn’t dive with her life jacket, so she had to take it off in order to go inside. She seemed to have a minor panic attack (I don’t blame her) while her husband and Seruvi convinced her to go underwater without her life jacket for a second and that they’d be there to make sure she’s safe. She eventually got enough courage to go to the other side with their help, which I found impressive. I went to the other side towards the end, also needing Seruvi’s and Kelvin’s encouragement to make it.

The inside… not so impressive. A little claustrophobic, and really dark. I couldn’t really see anything, save for the small hole at the very top of the caves where sunlight shone through. I mean, it looked kind of cool, but it wasn’t gorgeous like the other area. After hanging out in there while Seruvi made ghost noises, we dipped back over to the other side, took some pictures, and proceeded to climb out of the cave and walk back to the beach.

Once we were at the beach, guess what we did next? More snorkeling! The water was much warmer outside of the cave.

After snorkeling, Kelvin made it known to me that he was all snorkeled out for the trip. I checked out the stuff the Fijian ladies were selling on the beach. Items ranged from 5FJD to 15FJD (1FJD = .55FJD at the time), and it was mostly seashells, wooden carvings, and jewelry made out of seashells or coconut shell. We bought a couple necklaces ranging from 6 to 8FJD. Seruvi had told us that we didn’t have to pay immediately and could just tell him what we bought, and he’d charge it to our room bill and pay the ladies himself. This is very convenient if you don’t have cash, and when you’re on a resort like Navutu Stars, there is no reason to have cash on you. We had cash on us, so I didn’t have to do this.

The ride back to Navutu Stars was longer than our trip to Sawa-i-Lau, as the boat made stops at a couple villages, dropping off and receiving supplies with locals. As soon as we got back to the resort, I rushed to my manicure appointment at the spa bure. The french manicure I got for the wedding had been peeling off, and my nails were looking unsightly. I had made an appointment the day before, but they had run out of nail polish remover and was waiting for the next resupply. As a result, I had to schedule another appointment in the middle of an already busy day. I had a nice chat with the head spa lady as she did my nails (she’s apparently from Fiji’s main city, Suva), but as soon as she was done, I had to rush back to eat lunch before the next activity. In the process, of course, I jacked up my nail polish again. (Aside from the manicure I had before my wedding, I seem to always mess up my manicures.) I ran into her later in the day, and she asked to see my nails. I was embarrassed to show her, but she was very nice about it. She removed the nail polish on the spot and said she’d redo it the next day since she was booked for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, we’d be leaving early morning, so that wouldn’t be possible. It was nice of her to care tho. So much for my manicure.

Enjoying a sundae with fruit before the next activity

After lunch, it was time for a trip to a village called Vuaki on a nearby island. There’s a village on the same island as Navutu Stars, but they had already arranged a trip there before we came. I read somewhere online that visits to Fijian schools and villages are a popular thing to do, and the schools appreciate donations in the form of supplies. Reading this, I brought a large box of Crayola crayons with me from the US. For the entire village trip, I was lugging around this box of crayons, which sucked cuz it was f*cking hot that day. The village isn’t next to a beach; it’s inland so it requires some hiking. It was a humid and uncomfortable walk into the village. Every time we stopped walking, we tried to find any source of shade so we’d melt a little slower.

The village isn’t anything like the resort; it’s very third world looking. The nicest part of the village seemed to be the school. I guess school was out today as there weren’t any kids to be seen in the school, and I became worried about what I was gonna do with this ridiculous box of crayons.

Seruvi took us to the center of the village, where the village women had prepared a shell market, selling the same sort of goods I saw at the beach earlier. I kind of wonder how the market works; do they pool all the money together in the end? It seemed like it, because sometimes a woman wouldn’t have any change, so she’d ask the woman next to her to give her money from her stash. What’s weird was that the pricing wasn’t always the same amongst all the women. In fact, the very first lady in the line was charging 15FJD for a necklace that a couple ladies later in the line were charging 10FJD! I don’t know what she was trying to pull! I was also disappointed that the necklaces here were a couple bucks more than what I had seen earlier on the beach. I still bought more jewelry, plus a wooden turtle. I made a last minute decision to buy a necklace for my mom. It was completely made of shell, so Kelvin suggested I wear it instead of putting it in my purse, where it could break. So I did, but I ended up liking it and keeping it for myself as a result!

On the way out, I told Seruvi about my crayons. Since we passed the school again, he took me to see if any of the school staff around. Indeed, the principal was hanging out on the porch of one of the classrooms, chatting with other villagers. I pretty much just gave him the box and ran off; I was so exhausted from walking around in the heat. I was finally able to get rid of the box of crayons, tho I wouldn’t have been surprised if the inside was just one giant, multi-colored crayon at this point. I hope they like the crayons. I hope they don’t think I’m some weirdo for bringing a box of crayons all the way from the States.

After the village, we took one last stroll on the beach by Navutu Stars. Then it was time for the kava ceremony before dinner. Kava is some sort of root that has effects similar to alcohol, and the locals like to grind it up into powder, mix it with water, and drink it socially. It looks and tastes like a mix of traditional Chinese medicine and dirty laundry water. And because they actually use a cloth to mix the powder into the water, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was part dirty laundry water.

Everyone drinks from the same vat of water and uses the same bowls. I was starting to feel sick that day; I hope I wasn’t contagious… or maybe I caught something this way. The drink doesn’t taste good, and I couldn’t drink much of it, so I didn’t get any of the cool effects. It was a nice social activity though, as most of the guests showed up to participate. Eventually all the guests gradually left one by one, but more and more staffers and locals joined the group as the night went on. During dinner, we could hear the drunken Fijians enjoying their evening around the bowl of kava, singing and shouting their night away.

For dinner, Kelvin had some sort of chicken stir-fry, and I had the “tagliatelle“. The plate of pasta was overwhelming, and I was starting to lose my appetite from feeling not-the-best. I only ate a little bit of it, which made me feel bad and wasteful. It was our last night in Fiji; I wish my appetite was better. The lady at the restaurant helped us snap a photo together.

Then it was bedtime… after some more Lord of the Rings, of course! I made an effort to rest so that I could feel better for the rest of the trip. Too bad it didn’t work.

Previously, Honeymoon Day 3 – More snorkeling and napping
Next, Honeymoon Day 5 – Vinaka Fiji, and kia ora New Zealand

New thing I learned today: Kava is an asexual plant. It is reproduced by plant cutting, which is where a part of the plant is cut off and planted elsewhere.