OK, this is a novelty for me! I am using wireless internet! This means that you all are getting a post a few seconds after it left my brain, traveled through my arms and into my fingertips (sorry for the spelling mistakes). Happy New Years! Here is a fun little fact, I am here in the Marshall Islands in the first time zone in the world... This means that I will experience the new year aproximatley 19 hours before any of you! So, greetings from the future... If there is any big bad thing that happens in 2008 I will call you all and tell you to be ready.
My family are all stuck under the covers in their hotel rooms fighting a stomach virus, so their new years will not be so great...
Meanwhile, Glenda is looking for her next big adventure... I wouldn't be suprised if she stayed behind to master outrigger canoes...
Go Ducks
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Thursday, December 27, 2007
What's on the Tube?
Do you ever think about what it would be like if your life was a television show? What if, every week, millions of viewers around the world tuned into a section of your life? Sometimes, especially now that I am on a tiny coral atoll in the middle of Micronesia, I wonder how my own show would do.
The questions that churn through my head are would people like my character on TV, would the show be boring and what kind of product placement could I snag...
OK, the last one was a little tongue-in-cheek but you get what I am saying.
Some weeks I am sure that my ratings would be high.
Be sure not to miss the newest installment of “Tall Man in a Little Island” where our hero educates impoverished youth, braves the depths of the sea with fins and a spear to catch dinner and still has time to work on the next great American novel...
Well, maybe the last section of the show would experience a drop-off in viewer ship. There is only so many people in the world who would be content to watch me peck away at me laptop — and I don’t think that mothers count in the Neilson Ratings — but it would be a good opportunity to get a Dell Computers tie-in anyway.
However, there are also many times here where I know even the camera men would be yawning.
And on this episode of “Tall Man in a Little Island,” or protagonist spends three hours trying to stem the flow of ants invading his cupboard — and his thumb is his only weapon...
There isn’t even an ad tie-in for this one. Maybe I could do something with Raid where there are fifteen seconds of me in my kitchen squishing ants one by one with my thumb before big, red lettering is stamped across the screen, “Don’t be this idiot — use Raid,” the announcer would proclaim.
It’s an idea...
Anyway, I am pretty sure that my Christmas Special would be a hit. My two brothers, mother, father, aunt and girlfriend (who are all visiting, and have brought gifts, including fresh coffee — someone get Starbucks on the phone) and I went down to the Rita Christian Church to watch Marshallese Beat.
Beat is something that the Marshallese do every Christmas. It is a sort of choreographed dance that is put together by the local churches. The dances range from completely contemporary to little numbers that show a fishing story. The girls go in one line and the boys go in another and the tall white tourists come and watch.
Actually, my family and I were the only foreigners watching but right when we came in the Pastor of the church came over and offered us the best seats in the house. My mother, father and aunt all took him up on his offer and marched up to seats in the front on the left side of the altar. They were laden with shell necklaces, homemade fans and water and juice. They watched kids and adults do some incredible dancing.
My brothers, girlfriend and I watched and laughed from the pews. Less than 48 hours off the plane from blustery, cold Oregon and my family were the guests of honor in a Marshall Island’s Christmas. Simply a tight shot of their faces would be priceless — the running punch-line could be how my family laughed at every Marshallese joke told in Marshallese despite the fact that they know no Marshallese.
I think that would have gotten some respectable ratings — I am pretty sure Neilson counts extended family in their polls.
I’m still thinking about what advertising I could plug in...
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
The questions that churn through my head are would people like my character on TV, would the show be boring and what kind of product placement could I snag...
OK, the last one was a little tongue-in-cheek but you get what I am saying.
Some weeks I am sure that my ratings would be high.
Be sure not to miss the newest installment of “Tall Man in a Little Island” where our hero educates impoverished youth, braves the depths of the sea with fins and a spear to catch dinner and still has time to work on the next great American novel...
Well, maybe the last section of the show would experience a drop-off in viewer ship. There is only so many people in the world who would be content to watch me peck away at me laptop — and I don’t think that mothers count in the Neilson Ratings — but it would be a good opportunity to get a Dell Computers tie-in anyway.
However, there are also many times here where I know even the camera men would be yawning.
And on this episode of “Tall Man in a Little Island,” or protagonist spends three hours trying to stem the flow of ants invading his cupboard — and his thumb is his only weapon...
There isn’t even an ad tie-in for this one. Maybe I could do something with Raid where there are fifteen seconds of me in my kitchen squishing ants one by one with my thumb before big, red lettering is stamped across the screen, “Don’t be this idiot — use Raid,” the announcer would proclaim.
It’s an idea...
Anyway, I am pretty sure that my Christmas Special would be a hit. My two brothers, mother, father, aunt and girlfriend (who are all visiting, and have brought gifts, including fresh coffee — someone get Starbucks on the phone) and I went down to the Rita Christian Church to watch Marshallese Beat.
Beat is something that the Marshallese do every Christmas. It is a sort of choreographed dance that is put together by the local churches. The dances range from completely contemporary to little numbers that show a fishing story. The girls go in one line and the boys go in another and the tall white tourists come and watch.
Actually, my family and I were the only foreigners watching but right when we came in the Pastor of the church came over and offered us the best seats in the house. My mother, father and aunt all took him up on his offer and marched up to seats in the front on the left side of the altar. They were laden with shell necklaces, homemade fans and water and juice. They watched kids and adults do some incredible dancing.
My brothers, girlfriend and I watched and laughed from the pews. Less than 48 hours off the plane from blustery, cold Oregon and my family were the guests of honor in a Marshall Island’s Christmas. Simply a tight shot of their faces would be priceless — the running punch-line could be how my family laughed at every Marshallese joke told in Marshallese despite the fact that they know no Marshallese.
I think that would have gotten some respectable ratings — I am pretty sure Neilson counts extended family in their polls.
I’m still thinking about what advertising I could plug in...
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Here Comes Santa
My earliest memory of Christmas is sitting in the back of my family’s minivan, the weather outside frigid, and on the radio there was a fake news program playing.
“Well there has been another sighting of old Santa Claus boys and girls,” the overly excited announcer said. “It looks like he is heading west. Rudolph looks amazing.”
I sat there peering out, my nose growing numb on the cold window, hoping with all my soul that I too would be able to catch a glimpse of Old Saint Nick.
A few years later I learned that the radio program was fake, and I also realized that the concept of one man delivering gifts to millions of people in one night was a little far-fetched.
I forgave my parents for their lies, it seems that the general rule on this one is that lying to children is OK in the case of Christmas, but I still mourned the loss of that Christmas magic I used to feel leading up to the 25th of December.
Coming to the Marshall Islands, I had no idea what to expect around this holiday of tinsel.
My students started filling me in throughout my first five months here. They told me about the dancing that everyone will do, they told me about the parades where candy is flung out like hail from the sky and they told me about the singing.
I was excited to experience all of the new aspects of Christmas in an entirely new culture. However, as little as I would like to admit it, as this month approached I began to feel pangs of longing for the old Oregon Christmas I was used to. I began to get emails from people back home talking about their new Christmas trees and how they were excited that egg-nog lattes were out again.
I started remembering every Christmas in my house: we wake up late and then crowd around the tree in our pajamas and socks and open the gifts one by one with our steaming teas and coffees hovering below our lips. It takes hours. I thought, “how nice would it be if Santa Claus were real?” then all the people on this world would be a little bit more connected than before. Maybe some semblance of Christmas spirit would permeate things. I would be just one man
away from Oregon.
Alas, I had learned long ago that Santa Claus was a myth and Christmas spirit was usually attributed to a little too much nog in the egg-nog.
The other day though a Christmas miracle happened that made me turn a 180 — Santa Claus came to my house.
I came in the door and there he was standing. His beard was full, curly and white and his cheeks were rosy. He held a sprig of holly in his hand and blue and red lights shot out from his beard. He was dancing by bending his hips and thrusting a fisted hand to the sky like he was calling for revolution. He was 14 inches high and was made in China.
It was a Christmas miracle.
Or a strange side-effect of globalization.
Either way, here was irrefutable proof that Santa Claus was showing up all over the world.
Things are rarely what they seem. Magic shows are invisible wires and trap-doors, coral atolls don’t float, they are just clinging onto a sinking volcano and Santa Claus doesn’t drive his sleigh of flying reindeer all around the world in one night.
He does get everywhere though — or at least to the Marshall Islands — and that is pretty amazing to me. It makes me feel close to home in a place as far from it as I can get, and that is Christmas magic if I ever knew it.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
“Well there has been another sighting of old Santa Claus boys and girls,” the overly excited announcer said. “It looks like he is heading west. Rudolph looks amazing.”
I sat there peering out, my nose growing numb on the cold window, hoping with all my soul that I too would be able to catch a glimpse of Old Saint Nick.
A few years later I learned that the radio program was fake, and I also realized that the concept of one man delivering gifts to millions of people in one night was a little far-fetched.
I forgave my parents for their lies, it seems that the general rule on this one is that lying to children is OK in the case of Christmas, but I still mourned the loss of that Christmas magic I used to feel leading up to the 25th of December.
Coming to the Marshall Islands, I had no idea what to expect around this holiday of tinsel.
My students started filling me in throughout my first five months here. They told me about the dancing that everyone will do, they told me about the parades where candy is flung out like hail from the sky and they told me about the singing.
I was excited to experience all of the new aspects of Christmas in an entirely new culture. However, as little as I would like to admit it, as this month approached I began to feel pangs of longing for the old Oregon Christmas I was used to. I began to get emails from people back home talking about their new Christmas trees and how they were excited that egg-nog lattes were out again.
I started remembering every Christmas in my house: we wake up late and then crowd around the tree in our pajamas and socks and open the gifts one by one with our steaming teas and coffees hovering below our lips. It takes hours. I thought, “how nice would it be if Santa Claus were real?” then all the people on this world would be a little bit more connected than before. Maybe some semblance of Christmas spirit would permeate things. I would be just one man
away from Oregon.
Alas, I had learned long ago that Santa Claus was a myth and Christmas spirit was usually attributed to a little too much nog in the egg-nog.
The other day though a Christmas miracle happened that made me turn a 180 — Santa Claus came to my house.
I came in the door and there he was standing. His beard was full, curly and white and his cheeks were rosy. He held a sprig of holly in his hand and blue and red lights shot out from his beard. He was dancing by bending his hips and thrusting a fisted hand to the sky like he was calling for revolution. He was 14 inches high and was made in China.
It was a Christmas miracle.
Or a strange side-effect of globalization.
Either way, here was irrefutable proof that Santa Claus was showing up all over the world.
Things are rarely what they seem. Magic shows are invisible wires and trap-doors, coral atolls don’t float, they are just clinging onto a sinking volcano and Santa Claus doesn’t drive his sleigh of flying reindeer all around the world in one night.
He does get everywhere though — or at least to the Marshall Islands — and that is pretty amazing to me. It makes me feel close to home in a place as far from it as I can get, and that is Christmas magic if I ever knew it.
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Monday, December 10, 2007
Here Comes the Lady
My girlfriend came to visit me here in the Marshall Islands this last Thursday. I had been counting down the days one by one ever since she bought her ticket. My frame of reference was broken down into B.T. and A.T. (her name is Tiffany). People would ask me if I wanted to do something and I would run it through my head to see where it fit in relation to her.
In my class I shoved it into the regular lineup of other mundane announcements. Quiz on Wednesday, basketball game on Thursday and Tiffany will be here in 29 days. Towards the end of my countdown I elicited groans from the crowd.
“Ah, Mr. Tim,” my student Bryant said one day, “all you talk about is Ms. Tiffany, Ms. Tiffany, Ms. Tiffany all day and we are tired of it!”
Finally the day came and I took a cab out to the airport way too early and set about waiting. I paced all around the airport until she came and I am sure that if it were a bigger a facility with more security concerns, I would have been stopped and questioned. As it was, her plane was only ten minutes late, a ten minutes that seemed so long I felt 80 afterwards, but 10 minutes nonetheless.
There she was the girl I had been waiting for. She looked as beautiful as ever and had enough bags to cloth the entire island through a snowstorm if the climate should suddenly shift.
“It is so gorgeous,” she told me. “From the plane, I could not believe how beautiful it was.” I looked around and saw the coconuts swaying in the sunny breeze with turquoise beaches glimmering beyond. Suddenly I remembered that when I first touched down, I too saw all of these things and was blind to the trash and grit that has later caught my eye.
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” I said.
After she unpacked we went for a walk and along the way we saw many of the neighborhood children.
“They are so cute,” Tiffany said. “I love how every one of them gives you a smile when you wave at them.” I looked around and saw how wherever we went children popped out from their front yards and down from trees and waved their tiny waves and smiled their enormous smiles. Some shouted “hello” and some shouted “yakwe.”
“Yeah, I suppose they are,” I said.
A couple of days later the yacht club where I am a member (that’s right, I’m a “yachtie”) took us out on a “Learn to Sail Day.” We learned a little about the foreign language that is a yacht, cut the jib and all that, and then went out for an afternoon jaunt around the Majuro Lagoon. At the end of the day we glided back into port and drank coffee and ate cookies and talked with the couple who took us out. They were in the beginning of a five-year around the world trip. After a swim off the deck they took us back to shore.
“Sometimes I want to pinch myself because I am not sure this is real,” Tiffany said. “Sometimes it seems too perfect, like it is made up, like it is a ride at Disney Land.”
I saw the sun setting on the horizon and the coconut trees all black outlines in a sky on fire. I heard the lapping of tropical water on a dinghy. I saw a dock materializing and I knew that home was close by.
“Yeah, I suppose I live in paradise.”
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
In my class I shoved it into the regular lineup of other mundane announcements. Quiz on Wednesday, basketball game on Thursday and Tiffany will be here in 29 days. Towards the end of my countdown I elicited groans from the crowd.
“Ah, Mr. Tim,” my student Bryant said one day, “all you talk about is Ms. Tiffany, Ms. Tiffany, Ms. Tiffany all day and we are tired of it!”
Finally the day came and I took a cab out to the airport way too early and set about waiting. I paced all around the airport until she came and I am sure that if it were a bigger a facility with more security concerns, I would have been stopped and questioned. As it was, her plane was only ten minutes late, a ten minutes that seemed so long I felt 80 afterwards, but 10 minutes nonetheless.
There she was the girl I had been waiting for. She looked as beautiful as ever and had enough bags to cloth the entire island through a snowstorm if the climate should suddenly shift.
“It is so gorgeous,” she told me. “From the plane, I could not believe how beautiful it was.” I looked around and saw the coconuts swaying in the sunny breeze with turquoise beaches glimmering beyond. Suddenly I remembered that when I first touched down, I too saw all of these things and was blind to the trash and grit that has later caught my eye.
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” I said.
After she unpacked we went for a walk and along the way we saw many of the neighborhood children.
“They are so cute,” Tiffany said. “I love how every one of them gives you a smile when you wave at them.” I looked around and saw how wherever we went children popped out from their front yards and down from trees and waved their tiny waves and smiled their enormous smiles. Some shouted “hello” and some shouted “yakwe.”
“Yeah, I suppose they are,” I said.
A couple of days later the yacht club where I am a member (that’s right, I’m a “yachtie”) took us out on a “Learn to Sail Day.” We learned a little about the foreign language that is a yacht, cut the jib and all that, and then went out for an afternoon jaunt around the Majuro Lagoon. At the end of the day we glided back into port and drank coffee and ate cookies and talked with the couple who took us out. They were in the beginning of a five-year around the world trip. After a swim off the deck they took us back to shore.
“Sometimes I want to pinch myself because I am not sure this is real,” Tiffany said. “Sometimes it seems too perfect, like it is made up, like it is a ride at Disney Land.”
I saw the sun setting on the horizon and the coconut trees all black outlines in a sky on fire. I heard the lapping of tropical water on a dinghy. I saw a dock materializing and I knew that home was close by.
“Yeah, I suppose I live in paradise.”
The love you give comes back in the end.
--------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)