A letter from Fiji...

the ITM Fiji 400

Fiji for your next conference? Have a look at this fun day.... with thanks to Rosie DMC and of course thanks to Rosiloa for permission for the use of their tracks from their latest album: Ancient Pulse...

If you are having trouble viewing this slideshow (and waiting a minute or so for it to load didn't help) then there is a smaller but less clear version to view here

Giving up Chocolate II....

So here's another go at the post that I lost.... that's possibly the last time I try to set something up to publish at a future date. Also I have to apologise for the wrong column width at the moment on the blog clipping some of the images: typepad are helping me get the CSS right.... if I fail too much longer I will of course have to default to hiring Jonathan and his team...

Anyway Rina, Miriam and I had finally caught up for a long awaited lunch together, and were at Salt (at the Sofitel), which was very pleasant. The conversation turned to the usual topic lately: it seems that exclusion diets are the "in thing" with the GP's (family doctors) here at the moment. I'm sure it's the same the world over, but we're on diets for all sorts of maladies from allergies, sinus, asthma to lethargy, moods, weight gain and obviously type II diabetes- the list goes on and on.... Most commonly we're giving up gluten, sugar, or dairy; sadly often all three at once, but poor Veronica has even had to give up chicken (which would frankly leave me quite hungry).

So I ordered my sugar free soy latte (it still had caffeine in it thankfully, or it would have been that beverage known as a "why bother"), and it arrived in a stylish white mug with a very pretty little cookie on the side. I immediately took a bite out of it (well it would have been rude not to!) and Rina asked if there was anything in it we weren't allowed... Well it's made of butter, flour, milk and chocolate, so it's not made of anything we're not allowed, it's made of EVERYTHING we're not allowed. It was abandoned as above, with the one bite missing... so sad....

All is not lost of course, even in Fiji there's still lots of good food to be found. Yes, stop laughing, there IS. We have headed for the markets several times lately with visitors in two and found the best ever bananas (tangy with green peel), passionfruit, and ...guavas! The guavas were in season and we bought 2 big piles from the ladies at the market for FJD$2 (just over a $ US?); they were deliciously scented and the most beautiful colour, and disappeared completely soon after we got home from the boat....

 So yes look. I feed my children healthy stuff. OK um... mostly... see below...

Oops... caught outside the supermarket with these on the front seat, about to go in the kids' lunch boxes. But who could resist "Funkees" in wild BBQ curry or chilli cheese!?!! And what better way to entertain visitors than to feed them strange ice-creams that make their tongues go green; combined with the curries from chicken bites they now know what lunch at Namaka is all about.... 

 

OK I have to go now, I see on facebook my friend Steph is trying to stay away from chocolate, I'm off to link her to the post below (that will put her off), sota tale (see you later)! Oh and what happened with the cylcone? Thankfully for us nothing (see on Treasure blog here), but our thoughts are with those further east who were badly affected...

Giving up Chocolate....

I typed a post a few days ago, saved and programmed it to post today and well.... it's gone... I'll wait another day to see if it appears back from cyberspace tomorrow (incase it's posting on US time, which is pretty ironic given all the jokes about Fiji time), then I'll give up and retype it. Probably on monday or tuesday.... aaaaarrrrgh the frustration!

In the meantime this is actually on topic to the "lost post" which was already about having to give up chocolate (amongst other things). Here's a very real reason, and shudder..... this would certainly put you off eating the stuff anyway (fairly gory content). 

When will big businesses realise they can't use palm oil or palm waste products (yes YOU Fonterra) if they are causing ecological damage such as deforestation? 

Monsoon Season again...

It is just typical of how slack my blogging got there that I hadn't even blogged about one cyclone before another is on its way! Or maybe that's just typical of this season.... who knows...

So while we sit and await cyclone Tomas who has been threatening the country since early Friday why not blog a quick run down of Mick....  Mick snuck up quickly and quietly in December, on our wedding anniversary actually! We watched it approaching as a tropical storm and monitored it overnight. The Fiji met was quite unconcerned, but GB decided it was a great opportunity to have a full cyclone drill "before cyclone season".... So shutters up, sky dishes down (a lot of grumbling from our house when they came and took ours down), guests briefed to assemble in the restaurant.... 

 

Imagine our surprise when around 1pm a cat 3 cyclone hit us! The kids and I peeped out the back door of our place in confusion, we had already seen a cat 2, and we knew it was stronger than that. We sneaked thru the back of the spa and thru the (leaky) kitchen where they were rinsing dishes under the rainfall to save water, and into the restaurant to join the others who were as gathered there as instructed. Well we had to -we had no food at our place and we were starving! 

After about 4 hours sitting in the damp of the restaurant (cyclone = lots of water + lots of wind so everywhere tends to be wet), the cyclone dropped back in intensity and we were allowed out to have a look around, a little photoshoot, and to go back to our bures before dinner.... and what do you know?! Something had trashed our resort!!!

 

 
 
 

 

Miraculously it completely cleared by the next day and was sunny and calm again! So all that was left was a clean up. A BIG clean up....

 

But first.... that same evening... ah! my sky dish is back up, good service (!); even though we didn't actually have contact with the rest of the world (due to our comms tower blowing over) for another 3-4 days...

So now here we go again, but this cyclone (Tomas) is approaching us in an entirely different manner. It has been hovering with its mate Ului north of us since Friday when they closed the schools at lunchtime thereby also forcing the postponement of Amy's birthday sleepover weekend... Now it's Monday, there are no plane flights, no boats running anywhere, and while Ului has luckily headed off the other way Tomas is just assaulting the north east of us around Cikobia and Udu where we hope they are all ok. 

 

Tomas did approach as a cat 4 which is scary, but it seems it will pass to the East of us here. So our guests are trapped here at the moment (well actually helicopters are still running), and as yet the only sign of the storm is all the storm shutters up around the resort, the info board in the reception tracking Tomas, and the twice daily briefings in the restaurant and bar and the fact we are missing Jane and Chris who were meant to fly in the am, but found their flight out of Auckland cancelled. Currently the resort looks like this:

and I kid you not... if you look closely you can see the maintenance crew pimping the storm shutters on the restaurant with extra 4x2's... There are a few less deck chairs now as any that won't take to being suddenly thrown in the other pool as a storm approach have been put away, but otherwise this is how is currently looks... Hopefully we wake up to find Tomas has headed further east without touching us, and that the north are cleaning up without too much serious damage... Well, we'll see! and our thoughts are with those of Cikobia and Vanua Levu....

Another from Udu

 

...starring "pinky" the piglet!  For those of you outside Fiji this is part of the process of getting coconut milk (lolo) from the coconut flesh. Pinky however just wants to sup on that nice fluid coming out of the coconut when it's cracked open. I love the detail of the cat watching.... 

Anyway I will post more from this same trip (previous post here) soon; I need to get to work on them as they are also to appear as an exhibition at Bulaccino, and then in a cookbook featuring recipes from Udu by one of Fiji's most brilliant chefs (and cafe owners)... more to come sometime soon...  

The Beautiful Dress

I have to admit I had never seen a truly amazing dress up close. There are so many beautiful dresses around, and Fiji weddings tend to be more casual anyway, I think; and I guess back when I was wedding dress shopping all those years ago it was in a small town where dresses were made to order rather than there being a lot you could see up close. I read bridal magazines of course, but you know I expect those to look amazing, after all they're being worn by models... 

No one had seen Rebecca's dress, and when I asked if I could take some photos of it it was still hanging in its big bag. Everyone gathered around in Bec's room as it was unzipped, family and close girl friends and as it slid out I thought it was possibly one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. It was soft, silky and the most beautiful subtle colour, with sparkling crystals picking up the form... but the best was yet to come.... 

But I get ahead of myself. Nathan and Rebecca, an extremely likeable self assured young couple, were getting married at the Shangri-La Fijian, a resort I really like, and not just because of its beautiful location surrounded by lagoon and beach on the Coral Coast south of Nadi (this is the view from the bride's room, stunning huh? and the lagoon side is different again).

 

The wedding was attended by a large group of close and obviously loving family and friends, and was an amazing day. Rebecca owns a hairdressing business and I'll state here that I'd like to shoot hairdresser's weddings from now on! The hair and makeup were just beautiful to shoot, and the details were stunning....

 

While the Bride and her best girls worked flat out doing the gorgeous hair and makeup, over where the groom and his party were getting ready there was lots going on too. Apart from the quiet moments both parties were sharing as they prepared, there were also celebrations of Greek tradition over at Nathan's room that were fascinating (to a girl from Dunedin) and a very worthy photo subject on their own. But I won't share those in detail here.... this post is sort of about the whole wedding, but mostly about the dress....

 

So to the best part: the dress. The reason this dress is extra amazing is because it is the sort of the dress that doesn't look its best on a hanger or even on a model, even though it still looks pretty incredible on either of those.... it.... needs.... a body! Almost no one could wear this dress like Rebecca did and I hope she proudly shows it to her daughters and/or grand daughters one day; to really come alive this dress needs perfect arms and upper body, and curves: a combination that almost nobody and certainly no models can provide. It looked amazing.... and so the magic began...

As we walked down the stairs the dress lit the muted surrounds...

 

It shimmered in the middle of the Shangri-La chapel...

 

Amongst all the friends and family it was the centre of attention...(can't help it, love the movement in this image)...

 

It caught the late afternoon and evening light...

 

 
 

at times it looked nostalgic like a scene from a classic movie...

  

and it moved, swirled and flowed as they danced... 

  

So that Nathan only had eyes for his wife....

 

I have many other favourites from this fantastic day, and I'll probably put up another post of other quirky faves. But in the meantime there's more with the "sneak peek" for everyone on facebook: so I'll end with saying thanks Rebecca, Nathan, friends and family for including me in your fantastic day! Oh and of course where was the dress from? Arushi Bridal of course; if you're thinking of indulging in the dress of your dreams for your big day I now have a definite opinion: go for it!! 
 

where in the world are we?

Sadly the title is not a competition with rich prizes, so for everyone except Wilson who has already recognised it the answer is we spent 4 nights last week in... Suva! For the rest of the world Suva is the capital of Fiji, and is around 3 hours drive south of Nadi (where the international airport it).

Our stay in Suva is remarkable for the fact that although we have now lived in Fiji for 3 1/2 years I have never spent more than 2 hours at a time there, generally driving in, going to the apple service place and "cost-u-less", grabbing a quick coffee at Bulaccino Raiwaqa, and heading home, taking the obligatory photo of Korovou (here and here) on the way out. What this means is that everything I know and believe about Suva pretty much comes from blogs:- Paradise not found, Oceanic, Awesome Cake, and Lunch in Suva... Yes that's right, I went to Suva expecting hoards of intelligent witty folks who make erudite comments while dining in quirky restaurants, even though I was wary of muggers and hepatitis (yes thanks for that Albie). 

The first thing we discovered while trying to get to the school convention (which is the reason we were in Suva) is that Laucala Beach is not in Nausori. Yes that's right the two are not even close. Don't ask. We still got to our destination in time by some miracle... Second in Suva they have lovely water front housing...NOT! The above image just fascinates me, these are squatter houses built illegally as far as I can gather from the locals (feel free to chime in) over some pipes by the river. But it's looks quite picturesque no? This is just down from the KFC which marked our turnoff. Why didn't someone just say "turn right at the KFC"?!!!!!?!

While the kids were in convention, which was by the way extremely good, and will feature in another post (yes, still not sticking to the chronological thing, sorry Lee; also I will still post about Udu, trip home etc); I sneaked away a few times for a bit of tiki-touring. Suva downtown is fascinating, a real mix of old colonial buildings and new shiny ones, including the big-box style MHCC which even has escalators! I looked up "lunch in Suva" for dining ideas, and would have offered my services to go and dine with them and take photos, however I sensed that having an overweight 40+ year old kaivalagi with a huge camera tagging along would have completely and utterly blown their street cred... instead I simply read and appreciated the run down on the hibiscus festival food (as we were staying just up the hill)...

The idea to photograph the contrasts in downtown Suva is not actually mine, Neil Stollznow was the one who originally started taking these sorts of images showing the old colonial Suva contrasting with the new high rises. But I had to continue the tradition, even though I didn't feel inclined to wander too far incase I never found my car again. Note that the streets are quieter than usual- it's after 5pm, so everyone's heading off home... 

 

To finish I will shamelessly post something er... lifted from one of the above blogs, her reaction (aieeeee it burns!) reminds me of me eating with the other parents at Vivrass MH foodcourt (and nearly snorting water out my nose); though I did have to buy it myself. Someone please syndicate this guy immediately! We need to see more cartoons like these...

Na Vale ni Veitaba

As always when we've been away in NZ I'm behind the 8-ball. One of the reasons for that is that often I will either go somewhere with no internet, or I drop the macbook in for some sort of tweak or work for a week while I'm over (as I did this time). Then I always get back here and chase my tail for a few weeks and the first thing to go is the blogging.

I am absolutely loving the photos from Udu and will share a few soon. As I was saying we were heading for a destination I wasn't familiar with, I just went with it and enjoyed the view. One of the things that surprised me was my improvement in understanding Fijian. Lets not overstate this, really it's just the progression from only understanding "Bula" and "Vinaka" to having maybe 10 words more I can understand (even if not pronounce); but in Labasa (which I loved; big, busy and clean) I spotted this shop (photo above) while I was waiting for Eileen and I could actually translate the sign: the house of photography! I knew this because one time Isoa greeted me "Bula Dauveitaba!" (Hi Photographer! well I hope that's what it is...) and I of course replied respectfully ;) "Bula mBosso"... 

Anyway the trip took us across Vanua Levu, and out to the east coast where we caught a boat at Wainigadru (I can't pronouce this one either, it's as bad for a Kaivalagi as trying to say Nagado...: g is a "ng" sound and there's an n tucked in before the d that you can't see...)... here's a sneak peek...

Aunty Lena and I went and had a look at the village pool while Eileen organised us some goods and transport, then we boarded and went on our way.... (that's the Wainigadru shop above, and some copra is on the roof above the sign on the other building)... to be continued...

So I'll have to stop now and get back to actual photography work... I will show more soon, infact I'm toying with a comparison of the Dunedin farmers market (in New Zealand) with the Labasa market (where we stopped briefly on the way home). But for the rest of the afternoon it's head down over computer, and the valeniveitaba? today for me that's right here at the computer and printer ...in my lounge!

Deepest Darkest Labasa

I've been on a trip with friends to Udu in the north. Don't know where that is? well actually I didn't know where that was either! Even as I was travelling there. But I did know we were firstly flying to Labasa, on the other big island in Fiji: Vanua Levu. Pretty much everything I know about Vanua Levu is from here of course...

Well Labasa was a surprise! It's really neat, clean, prosperous, sort of like the little hick country town in the back blocks with a big income from the surrounding districts. I really liked it, and of course I have LOTS of photos to get round to sharing. 

But for today just two from the airport. I have a new camera (thanks P&V for the help, and Miriam of course), and a new instruction book to read as well. So I tried out shooting black and white in camera. The good thing about a black and white jpeg is that you just reduce the size and it's ready to blog, yay (not that I'm claiming they're perfect of course). So here we are: Labasa in black and white...

 

 

I liked the contrast between the two cultures here (and of course the obvious relationship between the people in the moment). The girl from England is free to travel alone, wear a sleeveless top (though she's certainly not really wearing anything skimpy or tight) and talk unchaperoned to the guy from Vorovoro where she's just been staying... a note: she made a point of telling me how great it is there too, so it must have been another great experience from the friendly north, just like those I will share... in later posts... And if I write vina a va a levu it's not because the "k" has jammed on my keyboard... more to come...

nb: I also had a lovely photo of 2 kids peeping out the window waiting for the plane... but it occurred to me it's no longer cool to post pics of kids without permission eh?

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress...

...running like a watercolour in the rain... Al Stewart, The Year of the Cat)

I just marvel sometimes at the lyrics waiting to be discovered in a song. Yes, many are simple and banal, but some songs have the most exquisite poetry hidden within them. I'm one of the many people who have started to really enjoy music again thanks to i-tunes, and we downloaded "the year of the cat" a while back when AJ was studying woodwind instrumentsat school, and needed examples of tracks with the saxophone. 

When it was nearly time to shoot Danielle and John's wedding the weather forecast was for rain. Note that I didn't say the weather forecast was "bad", because over here it's not bad to have rain on your wedding day, indeed it's considered good luck or a blessing. And I wasn't too concerned about photographing in the rain, not because of my gear, that IS a worry in the rain, but because of the couple themselves; I knew they wouldn't cower in a corner looking miserable, indeed I had a picture in my minds eye of Danielle in the rain laughing, and I was quite inspired thinking of the images that might lead to. During that week before their wedding I also came across the aforementioned track on i-tunes. Actually it's the only track I have in the "folk" classification! and I listened and listened to it, especially the lyric "she comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolour in the rain". My Libran brain mused the various ways you could interpret it, but I had a picture in my minds eye of Danielle (who I had met over a coffee at the time of booking) running in a sun shower in the rain with the sun behind her, laughing, and in a silk dress... and just that thought was making my heart sing with excitement.  

Sure enough the day dawned sort of fine, but as we waited for Danielle's arrival on the "Raikivi" the clouds rolled up and then the rain started....

John kept waiting and playing the guitar as long as he could...

But as the rain increased and increased we were driven indoors where John was heard to say "Oh my Lord, why are you blessing us so?" (!!)

Finally there was a slight lull in the downpour and Danielle and her Dad, family and other guests came running in off the boat to where a relieved John was waiting. She was wearing a hand painted silk dress, and was running in the rain laughing, with the sun shining through the rain behind her...

After drinks and yummy looking food it was off on the "Raikivi" heading for Treasure, with a new take on the classic Titanic poses...

It's still raining actually, but spirits are high and jubilant... love that... especially as they transferred to Treasure Island (well who could blame them there?!)...

More sun, more rain, more happiness, more photos. Eerily I noticed another similarity to the "year of the cat" lyrics as I edited them.

"By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls

There's a hidden door she leads you to"

Well the door IS painted blue (if not tiled)... 

Look closely in all of these photos and you can see it's still raining... and why would you want it any other way I wonder?! Besides swimming in the rain with family and friends looking on is fun.

Lots more pictures of this fabulous day over at our page on facebook... but not the more risque shots heh heh... and for those of you who are too young to know what the heck I am ranting on about with the Al Stewart song... here it is. They made songs for the radio longer in those days, so it's just over 6 minutes.... 

Awesome huh? what other tunes do you reckon have great lyrics or sax solos that I should maybe add to the i-tunes? Because music is art. and art is inspiration. and John and Danielle's wedding reminded me how exhilarating inspiration (and love and fun) can be, and well sometimes we all need more of that...