Even More Fiji

On the Wednesday Ally (SNZ Nat Ed Mgr) and I flew from Nadi to Suva to run a coach certification course for special needs swimmers. In the morning we had hearing impaired swimmers and in the afternoon some partially sighted swimmers. The hearing impaired kids included one with half a leg also but he was totally agile and had to be told off for 'running on the poolside'! We had a big rainfall while these kids were in the pool but it was warm rain so it didn't matter and, in any case, you only feel wet when you're out of the water! Not that I was in the water; I was the official photographer.

The visually impaired kids were great. The girl with Sideshow Bob hair was about 6'3" tall and a stick insect while the guy covered in freckles was albino. No doubt he will have major skin cancer problems later but he was a happy chappie that day.

More Fiji

Last Tuesday we went sailing. Eleven of us on a relatively small boat. This picture is taken after we'd stopped off at one of the islands for a beer or three. No lights and pitch darkness to cross Nadi bay; very interesting :)



The picture of the grinning kid is Gordon, the youngest son of Chris and Pitila who I stayed with. Chris is a pilot with Air Pacific and it's his boat we used.




Then we were back to the house for some well-earned beers :)

Clive is Alive!

I am a total slacker at the moment and haven't posted for weeks. I spent the last ten days in Fiji working as a volunteer with the Mako Club so we'll start with that and go in picture day order. There may be a gap on one of the days as I inadvertently 'moved' a hundred or so instead of 'copying' and am now waiting for a disk to arrive from Fiji with the moved pictures on. Silly me.

The first weekend was spent in Suva at the national championships. It's a three hour drive and follows the usual interesting country drives - cows wandering across the road, drivers falling asleep when coming towards you, just normal stuff. I placed myself under a tent at the meet but my legs still got totally fried from the sun reflecting off the water!

They run all events as timed finals with all ages and both genders combined so each event ranged from little 5 year old girls to big, hairy, 50+ year old men! One club didn't like that fact that the event order had been changed after the entries were submitted and decided to boycott the first evening by sitting in their van in the carpark.

The lane ropes were somewhat slack and looked as it they'd been chewed by a tractor. The timekeepers were local student volunteers who I don't think had timed before; one lane had a five second difference between two watches!!

Evenings were excellent with party-time being the order of the day and with the Nadi (pronounced Nandi) Mako Club parents leading the way :)

The drive back to Nadi on the Sunday took rather longer as we stopped off for three hours for lunch at one of the swimmers' grandparents place; all very civilised and happy.

Latest

The previous post was number 100 so we should have had a party.

I've been out of town for over three weeks so was expecting almighty progress. As has become common it wasn't as much as expected (but the folowing single week usually produces much more than expected!) , however I'm planning on being in Fiji next weekend so we may never know.

The weather was good but not spectacular when i was there around lunch time but it improved to totally spectacular in the afternoon.

Changes; outside stain, outside deck ceiling (wow!), internal 'blonding' which is very nice indeed (well chosen everyone), formal entrance door,, external lights - tasteful and mostly automatic movement-sensor controlled, the ditches have been filled in, there's a crawl-space under the house, the hose-taps work! and all it looks very impressive.

As usual (for the ones who can't remember from one week to the next); double-click for a bigger view.

Colours, colours, colours

Check out the pices of wood near the bottom of these photos. The dark stained one will be the colour of the exterior walls and the other three are choices for the interior stains/washes. Most people are going for the second from the bottom. The top one is too white-washed and the bottom one is to yellow. Remember its all the internal walls plus the ceiling so there's a lot of wood!

Internal doors will probably be this colour.

And no need to worry about the bathrooms, they're not going to be duck-egg blue - that's just the waterproof coating! They're going to be the colour of the tiles shown piled up in the garage.