loaves and fishes

Summer continues here. It has been 30 degrees with high humidly for weeks now, but fear not, we have an air conditioner! Yes we broke down and bought an air conditioner after a few nights of troubled sleep and days in the boat reaching 36.8 degrees C! No that wasn’t fun, and necessitated a trip to some waterfalls. Normally we are blessed with constant trades, humidity below 60% and amicable temperatures. Normally people ask what do we do on the boat in terms of climate control and we say the breeze is sufficient, but Summer arrived and all that changed. We are lucky enough to have a neighbor who does plumbing and refrigeration. Until this heat wave began, he stood fast on the pretense that he installed and repaired the retched things and did not want the likes on his boat. He had to eat his words this month when the record heat descended upon us.

I am attributing the heat to it being a La Nina year, known for its increased sea and air temp, high humidity, and increased storm activity. All this equals a higher incidence of cyclones/hurricanes/typhoons. Whatever you call them, they are things I do not like. I like “cold” tropical waters. Not this year. The water in the north of the island is already hotter than it reached last year and it’s only January! Think cold thoughts for me. Maybe another iceberg can break off of Antarctic and make its way all the way up here this time.


Empire means different things throughout the world. For me the British Empire means roads and education systems and the French empire means their cuisine traveling the world. I think the British created colonies to improve its culinary pallet, while the French colonized for resources. Maybe that is why the British gave up its territories with greater ease, it already had the recipes and could return home to make better food. While the French needed to remain abroad for financial reasons (humor me with my brazen generalizations). From the above picture we are most certainly in a French territory. The bread is lovely to eat, but I think I enjoy smelling it even more when it is fresh and still warm. What is even better, it is a feast for the eyes. It is funny to walk into any gas station and see baguettes, but here is a photo from a local supermarket. What I like more than the bread is the French cheese. Oh, it is delicious all smelly, gooey, and whether subtle or pungent it adds something to any meal. We try to keep expanding our cheese palette. The other night was no exception. We had a Moulis and a Chevre sur Paillon. They are quite different with the Chevre having high sodium content and the Moulis being quite smooth with an earthier flavor.


Let us not forget that this is the South Pacific. This photo was taken next to the boat. It was taken right after a few days of rain and you can see the water quality is not good thanks to all the runoff. Look carefully and find the fish in the photo. There is a fish here, which defense mechanism is to camouflage itself as a leaf, pretty smart!


My classes have begun. The first few hours were a bit overwhelming to figure where I need to be checking, reading, posting, and downloading. One professor made a podcast with her reading her PowerPoint presentation notes for the first section. The discussions come by way of message boards where the professor poses a question and the students respond to the question and each other. In a traditional classroom setting students speak extemporaneously. On the internet one has time to compile and research ones thoughts and opinions raising the caliber of discussion. It should be interesting. I have a text book per course and am taking two courses. I one book is read and the other I am about 1/3 through, so the text reading is not an issue at the moment, but there will be a lot of time searching the internet. Google here I come.

Massive Position

Massive Position is what a banker from Société Générale called Jérôme Kerviel $7.2 billion in losses made on bullish bets in the vanilla market. They cannot figure out how or why he did it. He apparently did not benefit from these losses, but one has to wonder...Who would benefit from the demise of one of Frances top and most stable financial institutions. Why would a quite trader who was incredibly lucky to have a job ear marked for a graduate of a Grande Ecole be willing to risk his position for losses.

Maybe he did benefit from the loses, but not directly. Maybe someone else benefited from the loses and paid him to lose. hhmmmm....

I am certainly no banker, but I would hope that it takes a certain amount of effort to lose such an amount of money. I would also hope that someone would notice at say the 1 billion mark and start asking question. Mr. Kerviel has to be quite smart if he was able to outwit the bank for such a period of time and dealing with said amount of the money.

I guess we should always watch out for the quite ones.

These are merely my musings, for it all seems surreal.

On a final note this is also my bank here in Noumea.

Please Repeat – Répétez si vous plait

Things get lost in translation, ones ears are not as attuned to the foreign language, a speaker mumbles, different cultures speak at different volumes. It is not unusual to ask someone to repeat something. The following account is something I heard loud and clear. It was not lost in translation for lack of audio comprehension. I was unable to comprehend what I heard for the lack of logic driving the issue.

My thoughts upon here this issue were, “Certainly this is impossible. How can people make such assumptions and presumptions?”, but here in New Caledonia certain individuals feel this makes perfect sense?

The unions in France are very strong. Anyone who pays attention to French news sees the annual strikes which seem to grind the country to a halt with a certain amount of regularity. Next transport yourself thousands of miles/kilometers away and you will find yourself in the New Caledonia. Here we are France, or as I like to think France when they want to be. So guess what we have with even greater regularity… strikes! The garbage men strike not for higher salary (of course), but for further respect, i.e higher salary. I always make sure to say hello to the garbagemen, to make sure they feel they have the appropriate amount of respect they are due. The Pizza workers strike. Do your Domino’s delivery guys strike, because the equivalent here do.

Unions are even stronger here than in Metropol France. The government seems to kowtow to them for fear of having a repeat of the social unrest from the 1980s. Until the referendum in 2014 they do not want to be too heavy handed. For more information see Winkpedia.

What is unique about striking here in New Caledonia is the amount of time, energy, duration of which the strikes last. In France metropol – a few weeks is normal. Here a few months is normal. People camp out, they build structures, sleep there, decorate for Christmas. People have been known to strike for years. The business simply closes, the owners file for bankruptcy, life goes on, but the strikers remain.

Solidarity is another strong issue here. It follows the lines of race, union, and island affiliation. The unions themselves are not racially divided. If someone from Wallace and Fatuna (an even smaller French island nation -comprising two islands east of here) has a problem and wants to strike there have been numerous instances where everyone from the island goes on strike with them. There are a lot of people from Wallace and Fatuna here (more than on the islands themselves) and this makes for a certain amount of unrest I have been told.

The most recent strike involves the local city bus drivers, and like many strikes has been going on for over a month- I honestly lost track of time when it began. I shall give you a little historical background to help understand where we are today. The buses are privately managed and owned, but receive support from the government. Over a year ago a bus driver was caught steeling money from his employer. He said he “borrowed” the money under the auspices that he needed it and would return it. After lengthy negotiations with his union (USTKE) he was given a year’s salary, plus a bonus equivalent to tens of thousands of dollars and was asked to leave his job. One year passes, his salary is over, and said gentlemen want his job back. When the employer says no, his fellow workers rally for him to be able to return. Eventually a strike ensues, soon after the garbage men are on strike in solidarity. Last weekend this strike erupted in violence where the police officers were attached and thirty arrests were made, this all in the defense of someone who stole money.

This is where things get really interesting or entertaining. The union’s defense of the actions was the following. The newspaper reported that the union leader said it wasn’t fair that the men caught were arrested as the police didn’t give them enough time to run. Since they have jobs, families, and homes they must be upstanding citizens (who accidentally were throwing rocks and attacking police). They employer is depriving this man of his right to work. One person told a reporter for the local news that is normal to take money from your employer, apparently “everyone does it”.

So people are striking in order for someone who stole money from his employer to get his job back. Let me remind you for the Americans especially, people here work 35 hours a week, get 5 weeks vacation and receive full healthcare. The bus drivers make a living wage here. What is so hard about all this?

I heard this on the news, read this in the paper, and heard people speaking about it, but truly I did not understand it.

If you want to read more about this issue in French go to www.lnc.nc. If you want to read an English translation Google Les Nouvelles, Nouméa and click on the English translation option. It is not 100% accurate, but one may obtain an general understanding.

A note about safety: the violence happened in the industrial zone near the nickel refinery. A place we do not go to, so we were never in danger.

Recieving...guiltily

Receiving a package here reminds me of summer camp, always wondering if they will find contraband to confiscate or in this instance pay tax on. I always enter the OPT (French postal service) office feeling guilty, like a child owning up to a crime. I enter tentatively with my slip stating, I have a package, always fearful they will force me to open it up in front of them and sort through its contents. I have a flashback to summer camp where a counselor would have you open your package and confiscate any candy your parents lovingly sent to you hidden within the package, knowing full well that, ‘candy was not allowed.’ I think I had gum confiscated once, no financial burden incurred, but the thought of someone taking my possessions from right in front of me still rings as severely unjust. Stories circulated that one parent went so far as to cut out the pages to a book in order to fill it with candy. I cannot imagine my parents doing this, not for lack of creativity, but simply for the sacrilege of ruining any form of reading material.

Though the rules are clear anything under 30,000 FCFP (French Pacific Franc) roughly $240 (the dollar really is painful to track these days) sent from a private individual or 3,000 FCFP sent from a commercial enterprise is tax exempt. I have some antiquated concept of mail as being extremely personal and beyond the hands of the law. For me it truly is a crime for anyone to open your mail, especially a package. So the thought of the post office having ultimate control is still not something I have come to terms with.

I also must provide a thank you to my parents who are always willing to send me things to any where in the world. Mom and Dad: THANK YOU

I have had only had two experiences thus far, and both were perfectly legal packages. The first time I felt I got a bit of the run around. The package arrived as a gift (and unbeknown to me), but was sent directly from a commercial enterprise, thus necessitating a facture (a receipt). This being a surprise gift I did not have a receipt. Visit number one was a bust. The second attempt I came prepared with facture and passport. I entered, took my number and waited. Luckily the wait wasn’t that long. My number was called I went to the appropriate person. She told me to go to another person. I went to person number two, he asked for the receipt. The receipt was presented and deemed acceptable, but then he smiled a big sneering smile, which in my experience of French public servants means, ‘I am going to make this difficult for you’. He sent me back to person number one. She retrieved my package and sent me to person number two who smiled again and sent me back to person number one saying it wasn’t for him to be involved with. In the end the package involved another round of back and forth, but was eventually received.

The second package was received last week. I was a bit concerned because inside the package was the book I requested, but there were also CDs listed in the contents. I was happy to see that no tax was required, but still a bit concerned as I did not know if these were new CDs or burned CDs, what would customs or OPT think of either circumstance/ There was a bit of a time lag between arrival in Nouméa and receiving confirmations in our Boite Postale (P.O. Box), but this time the visit to OPT was painless. Maybe one day I will get over my residual guilt from summer camp.

New Year's Sunset

DSCN6972
Originally uploaded by zayasail

This was one of the few sunsets we saw, but it was lovely while it lasted.

New Year's Adventures

I am writing this post to the readers of this blog and asking you what did you do for New Year’s Eve? You can email me the answer if you do not want to post in the comment box. How was your New Year’s Eve? I want to here what everyone did. This year I would like to collect everyone’s stories of adventures, mishaps and mayhem.

OOur New Year’s Eve was relatively quite. We sailed to Ilse of Pines, one of the small outer islands arriving Christmas Eve. It’s an interesting mix of tourism and island life. I wouldn’t call it touristy in comparison to the Caribbean, but you do see a lot of tourists. The island has a population of roughly 1500 people, so it is easy to for a visitng cruise ship to make a big impression on the population. There are cruise ships arriving every few days and there are resorts and gites throughout the island, but it is nothing like arriving in Nassau, Bahamas. In the fashion with Melanesian culture, the main beach has nothing for sale on it normally. When the cruise ships arrive there are some women selling fruit and some homemade snacks, but otherwise it remains a serene beach aside from the sole resteruant. I know the locals have worked to keep it that way. Lucky for us that the island cannot support a cruise ship entering it’s main harbor, so the cruise ship must stand off outside the entrance to the harbor and ferry people to land. So every few days the beaches would be inundated by Australian and Japanese tourists.

Isle des Pines is known for its beautiful white sand beaches. It is truly incredible to walk on the beach and have such soft white sand that is squeaks under your feet. We were in a beautiful location, but not blessed by the weather, as we had a lot of grey rainy weather, but it didn’t sop us from swimming. It did how ever stop us from visiting the other anchorages with the boat. As any passage through the reefs necessitates good visibility which we never got. We did make a tour of the island by bike. It is a small island and in a couple of hours of biking went around. Being out of biking shape we felt it the next day.

New Year’s arrived, and it was a grey rainy day at the beach. We did go swimming in the drizzle earlier in the day, and mother nature gave us some respite from the clouds with a lovely sunset before the clouds settled in once again. We were joined by our neighbors in Noumea, who were our neighbors in the anchorage as well. We did have wine, fois gras, and home-made bread (by me). We never got to the champagne, as we were so stuffed with snacks. Our neighbors, who just arrived in Ilse de Pines, had caught a fish on the way and gave us two giant pieces for us to cook later – quite a nice New Years present. Other highlights from the island were collecting oysters from a nearby beach which we cooked in a garlic sauce… so yummy

So that was my New Year’s Eve and the time leading up to the tranquil evening, and now I want to heart about from other people.