What I should talk about so I'm just going to talk. I'm a bit tipsy, not much, but enought ohave to think about typing so I've had a couple. Anywhoze, so where I'm at now? I'm on vacation. I got 5 weeks coming to me and I'm not really sure how to what say it. I'm in some sort of weird phunk. I'm like, I don't know, not happy with something. I don't know how to explain it. Here's a good example, I'm the VAC president and I haven't done one single thing regarding this. I think about doing work on VAC stuff and I just get tired. Its like I just don't have the motivation that's required to get anything accomplished. If I decide to spend the night reading, I spend it in guilt worry about how much time I'm losing doing other "constructive" stuff.

Its messed up. Even on vacation, I'm not really on vacation. Now I'm not crying out like poor me or any of that nonsense. When I sit back and reflect on the things that I've accomplished, I'm generally happy about it, but it just seems like I'm too all over the place and doing sub-par jobs across the board and not giving anything my all. Its been waying on me heavy lately and bothering the hell out of me. Why should I feel guilty about spending a night reading, right? I don't know. I think that's part of who I am and part of what I came here to figure out.

When I think about what I thought the Peace Corps was going to be, I was like, this is going to be a walk in the park. I'll spend most of my days reading and when I'm not reading, I'll do fun stuff like socialize and not worry about anything. Hell, it would take a lot of reading to ever really get me to that point, but sometimes it does happen. Now, I feel like I'm just a feather blowing in some angel of the apocalypse's wing. It seems overwhelming, almost overpowering. I don't know how to handle it.

I know how I've handled this stuff in the past, I'd lay in bed and read until everything sort of blew over, then i'd head out of the house, apologize, do what I could and that would be that. Now, I don't have that luxury. I can't retreat and find solace in the nothing. What the hell am I talking about? I don't really know honestly.

When I drink I drink too much. Blinking Cursor, I'll let that one percolate. Blink... Blink...

What I need to do is figure out where "there" is. I haven't yet, and that's part of the reason, I guess. I know that I miss my friends right now. Megan, 513, I miss the hell out of you guys. Phi Kap, whazzup. Could use some easy friend time and just relax.

Well good things are coming down the pipeline. I'm taking a "holiday" over to the big NZ and I'm spending about 12 solid days just relaxing. I'm going to go snowboarding in the south island, that's something I always wanted to do and I've got a conference for school for the first couple of days, but other than that, the days are mine.

I find the fact that I've got to get out of Tonga for some honest to goodness peace and quiet overwhelmingly ironic. Isn't that why I joined in the first place? I have no idea anymore about anything really. Once, I thought I had a handle, but now, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about or thinking about. Such is life, I guess.

Enough of the philosophical for now. Got an email last week from the best teacher I've ever had in my life. Mr. S. knows my mom who, of course, birthed me, and relayed the word. Life is good there. Writing that letter to Mr. S. made me feel great, even for just a little while. It reminds me how much I really love teaching. Blink.... Blink... Cursor... Cursor...

Oh yeah, frank left. Let me see if I can find a picture of said palangi... Nope. Later I guess. Alright, enough of the freebasing. I'm gonna read a little papillion and get to sleep. You know I'm rhyming with D-O-Double-G... I'm tired and whiny. 1 comments - Post a Comment

• eh... namu ta'e... tapuni ho ngutu eh... nau lapa'i koe ke to ki lalo mate eh... namu siko... si'i me'a... namu ta'e palangi eh...??
  # posted by Tevita Hafoka : 10/19/2005 10:02 AM

And absolutely had to share it. Sweet Jebus! I have no idea how this site popped up or how I got to it, but I find it absolutely fascinating. For those of you experienceing some matrimonial woes, pick yourself up a beautiful bride! Its true! Make those crazy dreams of your's come true at shaddi.com! Submit your success story of how you and your mate got married, notify us that you didn't kill them or seperate from them for a green card and receive your free coupons! Hell we may even throw in a holiday for you and your new moa (chicken). Not only that, and I'll preface this by saying I don't really know that much about marketing or anything, but if your going to take your picture for a marriage site, you may not want to have one like this woman's who I'm pretty sure would kill her mate. Or, even if she is really nice, she looks like she would kill her mate and in internet dating, that's apparently a BIG NO NO! She (and you, if you're so inclined) might want to smile, though.

Has dating become that time consuming that no one has time to interface personally? I have no idea how this fits into the Tongan scheme of things or whatever, but its driving me crazy. Everytime I go to check my Hotmail, there's some porn star starlet desperately seeking dorks with hotmail accounts whose gender demographics are uncannily like mine. Its like they think they know exactly what I want. Well they don't. This is what I want: Mmmmmm.... Anna.

I love Anna and if I ever get off this tropical paradise, I'm going to spend a lot of time hiding in Anna's bushes (double entendre) outside of her house (not a double entendre afterall, boooo!). She is so intelligent and caring. I'm suprised that more women like her aren't working in the areas of math and science and enriching the world spiritually. I don't know, I just think its a bit weird that's all, not only is Anna Kournikova a fantastic tennis player but hands down she owns the smallest pair of shorts ever worn in public by a woman. Ever. I wonder what we would talk about? Would we even talk at all? I don't know. Probably.

Not. Of course, all of this is in jest. I don't really think Anna Kournikova is beautful or anything. She's so fake! God. And her abs, they look so stupid! Gawd!

Alright, I guess that's enough of the tawdry. Dog Update: No 'Ifo. I was going to post some posters but realized that most Tongan's don't give one 'ufi about their pets (with the exception of a few of course, not to stereo-type or anything). I guess I'm starting to get over it a bit more now. It sucks though because 'Ifo was really coming into his own and he was starting to figure out all the rules and how things work around the 'ol fale. Alas. I'm still here for like 20 months or so so I'm going to get one of the many absolutely indistinguishable Kuli's that run the roost here in Tonga. I think this time though, I'm getting a ceritifably bad-ass dog. Not one that bites or anything, but one that can hold his own in scrap and carries a dog switchblade. I'll also going to get his twig and berries harvested. I thik that would make him a lot less "aggressive" so to speak.

Gmail!

Finally, (i'm putting of doing my marking far too long) check out gmail.google.com certifiably the coolest mail client in the world. One whole gig of emails! That's incredible! Its so good I really can't believe it. There's a plethora of features that have msn and yahoo shaking in the booties. I think its still in beta so I'm not sure if they're giving accounts out just yet, but damn if its not the fastest most non-invasive email client in the world. I find it fascinating that people are worrying about the text ads on the side of the page, who gives a rat nipple about it. Yahoo and MSN do about the same exact things anyways. My html mail accounts are for catching dribbles of important stuff anyways and filtering all the product support, site password, cheap viagra and male size enhancer spam anyways. If you're interested in testing the beta, make a blog over at blogger.com and make a few posts. They'll give you a link (I think so anyways) for the beta service. I wish I would have checked this out weeks ago when I first saw the link. Give me a shoutout on my new account and spam indexers that are pounding my site sniffing email addresses, bring it. I'm interested in testing the SPAM capabilities anyways you flatulating fish-sniffers. Alright. I really have to put off grading papers longer so I'm going to dress up like a Russian tank flagger and I'm firing up Axis & Allies.

Simi E?

'Io!

PS - I'm adding a couple of links that I should have added a while ago. The first is Romo's Site he's another G66 volunteer stranded assigned to Niutoputapu and the other is the feel-good, happy tongan vibes of my neighbors and friends Mark & Erin. Enjoy the wholesome Tongan goodness.

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And I'm still Kuli-less. I keep having these weird day dreams about 'Ifo. Dreams like: What if he was protecting the honor of that bitch next door and he got into a viscious dog fight. I see him cirlcing a ring of excited dogs that are keeping the circle tight. They're making him fight. He does and its a good fight, but its too much on him and the evil foe dog delivers the death toll with a secret switch-blade that was banned by the judge dogs but he didn't know about. That one makes me sad, but there's good ones too.

There's the one where he was so cute that a couple of Tongans that don't eat dogs pick him up for his cuteness and whisk him away to some far off part of the island where he tends a whole flock of female dogs and gets fed left-over chicken bones and tutors Tongan's in animal cruelty education. There's also the one where he gets hit by a car, but that one sucks.

My favorite one though is the one where via some crazy sort of highjinks he gets stuck in the back of a big ass truck and taken all the way to the other side of the island. Its raining and he's not really sure where the scent is. He's looking for it and he's trying to track me down here at the paradisical "Lake Tupou". He meets up with a witty cat that hates dogs but not really, just sort of. They have crazy adventures and then make it home. I hear him open up the front door and come wagging-his-tail-ass into the house. That one is my favorite.

The shittiest part about the whole thing is the not knowing. If I knew he got hit by a car I could deal with that, its the whole "Well what the hell happened?" vibe that's got my mojo all in a SHHHHHHHHHiiiiiiiiiihsappppppooowwwwww! I guess I'll get over it, but its a bummer.

I was just walking home in the rain on a Friday night and as I was coming towards my house I just automatically thought "Here comes 'Ifo rushing full speed to see me..." Alas, my fair friends he wasn't. He's been gone with no sign for like 4 days. It also makes me feel like a bad owner because I'm like missing a dog and stuff, but Tongan dogs are not like American dogs. This is a COMPLETELY different country when it comes to that stuff. Sia pe though. I'll get over it. Its just crappy.

Well I was going to wax philosophical and talk about the meaning of life tonight. Instead, I'm gonna just, I don't know, do stuff. I guess. Maybe have a smoke and listen to the 24th day of rain in a row. Clowns are scary, but not like evil scary. Scary in a different way. Scary like bleu cheese. Shoe knows. Alright. I'm fakasesele. Pouli'a.

Semisi. 0 comments - Post a Comment

And no kuli. Pretty sad. Yesterday morning 'Ifo took off with a group of bigger dogs and I haven't seen him since. I just spent some time looking around for him with no luck. Pretty shitty. Well I can still hope... 0 comments - Post a Comment

Da word?

So new stuff this week in the drama that is my life. So I'm finishing up my grading this week and I'm going through some of my students papers and I realize, about 3/4 of the way through it, that 18 out of the 24 students in my level 6 class all turned in the same exact paper. Some of them made feeble attempts at "pretending" they wrote their own papers and stuff, going so far in fact as to ask me to "double check" because their's were the real deal. I basically grabbed three different assessment and told them if they could pick thiers out I would give them full credit for the class. Needless to say, they all guessed wrong. It was pretty funny actually now that I've got some retrospect working on my side. At the time I was pissed as HELL! Actually, I'm still sort of bitter. Not exactly because they tried to cheat, I think just about everyone has done at least once in their life, but because they did it so half assedly. I mean I took pride in my cheating. Lord knows I didn't want to get caught. By the time I ended up using a copied assignment, I had pretty much put enough time in to have done it myself in the first place. Not only was the quality of the cheating so bad, but the fact that they thought I wouldn't notice it. Arrrrggghhhh! I was tempted to walk into class with "STOOPID" written on my forehead. The freezing cold shower before class chased that ridiculousness from my mind faster than you can say "Cold Showers in Tongan Winters SUCK!".

Oh yeah, what the hell is up with google? Is anyone else getting the google.com.co page when they load google? For some reason I keep defaulting to columbia. I don't know what the heck that's about. Also, I've learned a bunch of my emails haven't been sent. Evil tevolo!

Couple of other things... Career Day is coming up! June 18th at Queen Salote Memorial hall! Be there or be ufi! Its 3:30 or so and I'm just finishing up my little graphic. Its wonderful and beautiful.

Oh yeah! Ifo, my dog. I let him out this morning and he was hanging out with like 12 other dogs. I haven't seen him since. I'm a little nervous because he's not very good around traffic and he's still in his puppy stages. I sure hope he shows up, he was really starting to fill out well.

Pouli'a.

Simi

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Two posts in a single day after months on hiatus? Has the world come to an end? 'IKAI!

Sorry about not keeping up appearances, I'll try to keep the techno babble to a minimum as most of you don't read it any ways. So I've made a discovery, I've been stuck maintaining the world's "most likely to mess up Jim's life" network here at Tupou. I didn't realize when I signed up for this job that that's what the network's name was, but after a few sleepless nights, the servers spoke to me and told me it they were going to fight me tooth and nail and ruin my social life. They also said resistance was futile the they started spinning their monitors in a 360 degree rotations and puking electricity. I am convinced, the servers upstairs are the spawn of the devil.

So if you read my dissertation on how much our sever spams and how its finally settled down and stopped sending out junk mail, then you'll appreciate the latest installment of "who reads this shit anyway." So I get our firewall installed and running beautifully. I turned everything off all of the stuff that we were running that we didn't need, and, most importantly I finally got the server to stop sending spam! Here's a kick ass picture from my homey and predecessor saniko that summarizes the emotion and the love that I felt. I stopped those bastards cold! .

So spammers are dead or at least they can't polinate their vile manseed using our servers and limited bandwidth, so things are looking good. We'll we were having some other problems where the students had been able to install video games and instant messengers and a whole bunch of other stuff that they should have been able to do. Well it turns out that the main harddrive that stored all of the server information on it as well as all of the student and staff files was bad. It crashed a few weeks ago like a plane full of 50's rockstars in a snowy december. So, for about 6 days and 2 all nighters for me and my IT cohort Mark, we essentially built a new server and learned a lot about exorcism.

"By the power of Jesus Christ we compel you... Give us the tape drive data... By the power of Jesus Christ we compel you..." Holy water was spilling all over the place, floppy disks and tape drives were spinning around the room like evil clowns that hide under your bed. It was pretty scary, but when it was all said and done, Mark salvaged almost all of the data from the destroyed hard drive and backup tapes and put it on the new server that we assembled and we got all of the lab computers ghosted correctly and working all right. It was a long, long time in the lab and not worth what i'm getting paid here. Suddenly, the American fascination with "planning" takes on a whole new concept for me and I understand it. Planning is next to Godliness so far as I'm concerned. Hell, I can't remember a time where I did so much friggin work for nothing. I've made a pact with myself after last week. When I get back to the U.S., I am never going to work as a systems administrator ever again. I think I have a budding career in computer exorcisms though, maybe I can get a show on the discovery channel or tlc. "Queer exorcism for a straight Sysadmin" or something. I'm a budding superstar.

So what else is new... Hmmm... here's a quick one. I was coming back from the fishers of bill last thursday and I got bit in the leg by a dog. I wasn't sure how to feel about it, except I know that it sucked.

Oh yeah, tikklady took off last tuesday. She was here for about 6 months and is heading back home with the rest of the bikini team. I never did get her an old milwaukee. Anyways, she's outta here off doing here own thing. Hands down this has been the fastest 7 months of my life. Absolutely incredible.

***************** Rugby Intermission *****************

So I stopped writing a couple of hours ago to go to the Tonga vs. Fiji rugby game. Tonga lost by a point, it was 27 to 26, but the game was great. I must admit that the more exposure I get to rugby, the more I like it. Its a hard hitting, fast-paced, huge-dudes-crashing-into-each-other extravaganza. Definitely of the highest caliber. I love the fact that for a mere $2.50 U.S. I can get seats on the 50 yard line too. (Its first come, first serve, but hey... no one yells at the palangis when your inching your way to the best seats in the house...) Its also hard to watch rugby and not compare it to American Football. I like American Football more, but that's because I've so much more exposure to it. For you American's reading at home, I highly suggest it. Rugby is definitely worth checking out. Hot times and good stuff...

Oh yeah, big ups to the Probasco's (RPCV Tonga G47 mo uife 'a Tonga). They were kind enough to bring me Kool-Aid© and herbal tea all the way from the states! WhazzzzzuuuuuppP! I'm sitting here right now and typing this with a big giant old Kool-Aid© smile and digging it. Its like a fashion statement here in Tonga and makes my students jealous. Malo Aupito!

More to follow a bit later on. Right now, I'm fiamohea aupito.

Semisi 1 comments - Post a Comment

• eh... it's fiemohea... not fiamohea... you fiepoto too much... faka sesele palangi boy...
  # posted by Tevita Hafoka : 10/19/2005 10:04 AM