The joy of speedos

Ooh... Im not here anymore. There. Far... Its been a while.

And its over. And it sucks. But life goes on. So now go here:

http://spaces.msn.com/alexpio11

Its partly cuz its easier, and mostly cuz im lazy, and also cuz im in switzerland.

So adios todo el mundo...

and a la prochaine.

Farewell, the ashtray girl

Tonight I got to witness the wonders of technology first hand. You always read about the way that computers are replacing more and more jobs, rendering so-and-so number of people unemployed and la-de-da. Well, it’s a lot more real when you see it happen to a co-worker and friend.

We just installed a new cashier system, where every waiter directly inputs their order into a computer terminal, and then it automatically gets printed out in the kitchen, increasing efficiency enormously. Unfortunately, it also rendered the cashier person obsolete. And that’s all she knows. That’s it. That’s been her job depuis l’époque. They don’t really know what to do with her here, so they’ve just stuck her on sick-leave for a while. And now we’ve got a black touchscreen instead.

The night that everything happened.

And by everything I mean two things. But lets not get ahead of ourselves. I’ve decided to re-start my blogging for absolutely no reason at all, and I hope this reason continues to motivate me till I leave, because really there’s so much to write about. About the people, the life, the…uuh. Yea.

The more time I spend working in this hotel the more I realize that everything here is different from everywhere else. Normally, there is a head waiter with an assistant that have a certain number of tables each- say 7 or 8. Here they split the restaurant in 2, and then add a bunch of assistants that scurry around in constant panic, trying to do everything at once. Normal hotels have a separate department for room service which are fully equipped and able to deal with the customer’s orders. Here they pick an assistant waiter, give him a bunch of trays and a bicycle and send him off into the unknown. Of course, normal hotels aren’t in Bora Bora.

As my boss so eloquently put it: ‘We don’t want people to order room service.’ Why? Cuz we’re just not equipped to deal with it. What happens is that the customer calls the restaurant, places the order, we tell the kitchen, prepare a tray, wrap the food in plastic-wrap, stick it on the tray, stick the tray on the bicycle, arrive at the bungalow, remove the plastic (which has now fused with the food) and knock on the door. Our hotel can house 160 people, so if they all order room service at once, I have a heart attack and die. And that’s not good. So we rasied the price of the room menu and put disgusting things on it (think anything french), and that keeps it down to about 3 or 4 orders per night.

I’d gotten to like doing room service- it was something new, interesting, and you got to bike around the hotel grounds a lot. Of course, that was before it started getting old and boring. Tonight I had 10 orders. That’s a record. That’s complete chaos. Plus, they had forgotten to prepare my trays before service, so it took twice the time to get the stuff out, cuz every time we got an order I had to go steal things like knives, salt, and napkins from the restaurant (we’re kinda low on supplies).

So, back to the stuff that happened: I was coming back from picking up a tray, in a hurry cuz I had 2 more waiting for me in the kitchen, and I realize that my pedals don’t work anymore. I’m pedaling but its not getting to the bike. I think the chain’s come off the gears, so I try pedaling some more to get it to hook back on, then-Whoom! The bike gives way, the right wheel falls off (I got 3 wheels) and the bike spins over on its side. Great. So I pick up my wheel and go ask reception for the maintenance people’s phone number. Bicycles hate me.

Then another thing happened, a very cool thing. I was out on the over-water bungalows retrieving another tray. I saw a bright light in the sky, so I looked up got to see the end of a shooting star. It only lasted for half a second, but it was beautiful. It sparked the sky, with a tail of light that scarred it like a line of smoldering ashes put in fast-forward. And then it was gone, As if it never happened. And what’s that quote about the tree falling in the forest supposed to mean?

Sunset Cruise

Yabba.

I finally got to stow away on the catamaran for the sunset cruise around bora bora. and here it is:



The south pacific.



aaaand the mountain from yet another angle.



canoing. The national sport. These guys train every day at dusk, going around the lagoon. There's a housekeeping lady here that does it, her arms are about as big as my neck.

More Pics

A pearl farmer in taha'a

Taha’a - The vanilla island.

This is bora bora at 5 am. Which is about 5 hours earlier than any human being should ever be expected to wake up. I didn’t even know a world existed at 5 am. Why then was I awake at such an outlandish hour? Two words… ROAD TRIP!!!

Without the road, that is. Cuz yesterday I went to Taha’a, which is an island about 2 hours from bora and about 4 times as big. Dominique invited me to his native land during my days off this week, so, of course, I jumped at the opportunity and soon found myself on the boat headed south.



There were dolphins jumping all around us as we headed through the pass and out of bora’s lagoon. Our boat was small. Like those little hydrofoils going to haiphong, but smaller. And this thing shoots out at amazing speeds right into the south pacific, I don’t think those things are meant to go onto a full-fledged ocean. This boat was bobbing like crazy with the huge waves- it was like 90° vertical- ‘oooh sky’ and then back down 180° ‘ooh sea’ for about 2 hours.

Then I finally wobbled off the boat and arrived in Taha’a. And it is absolutely beautiful. Its like one huge park. They use flower bushes instead of fences there (which are stylishly underlined by barbed wire) On the outside of the road there is a line of neatly cut grass that goes all around the island, dotted by palms and other trees, and with benches about every 100 meters looking out onto the ocean. On the inside is and extremely thick rainforest that covers all the hills, mountains, and valleys of Taha’a. All around its got bays that cut deep into the island and lakes on either side of you.



Dominique let me borrow his scooter to go around the island. Yes, the same Dominique that gave me the bike from hell…so I was a bit suspicious. But I didn’t explode and wasn’t jettisoned onto a spikey rock quarry, so its all ok.

Once I turned off the motor for a bench break I realized that it is quiet. If you want peace relaxation then this is where you need to be. There’s hardly any cars or transport of any kind… no construction or noisy people, not even waves. Sometimes you’ll see a sailboat lazily exiting the bay, a pearl farmer diving into the water or a fisherman reeling in his catch.



A bit too peaceful. There’s 1 restaurant on the whole island. No bars, nightclubs are illegal, no tourists either. Ya. Good thing I’m only visiting. So I spent the day encircling the island on my scooter, slept at Dominique’s and oop, come 5am I’m awake again. Time to take the boat back to bora. Except Thursdays there is no shuttle- Thursday you go by cargo ship.



The Vae Anu- formerly from hamburg- comes once a week. Unloads all its goods from Tahiti, loads its 6 or 7 passangers, and goes on its way. For $10 you can get to bora bora. The highlight of my trip. Cargo ship is a great way to travel, not only cuz you get to lay on wooden planks for 2 hours while bobbing like crazy, but mainly cuz people that travel by cargo ship are cool. I met a 70 year old Hawaiian returning to bora bora after 40 years. Last time he was here there was only 1 hotel and 500m of road. 3 french students backpacking through the islands. A Chilean who’d been on the ship since Tahiti (two weeks) and started swaying when he got on land.

Destructive and static.

Aaaand here's the mountain at another angle. taken from the hotel's dock on the main island

Intravenous agnostic.

There was supposed to be an eclipse this morning. Some great awe inspiring moment of zen or something. So I went to the supermarket. The hotel sent out messages to all the rooms telling the people not to look directly at it, cuz its bad for the eyes. Isn’t it always bad to look at the sun? I don’t see why an eclipse would emit special eye-frying rays that doesn’t normally happen… or maybe during an eclipse everyone has the urge to look up like idiots and sizzle their eyeballs.

So this morning on my way to the supermarket I passed one guy who had pointed his huge binoculars straight at the sun. He obviously didn’t get the memo. Great idea by the way, cuz the binoculars probably magnify the sun or whatnot and burn a whole right through his head.

Then on the way back I looked at the side of the road and burst out laughing. There was a guy squatted on the side of the road, holding a cardboard box over his head with and looking up at the sun. hmm. No comment.

Well I never got to see the eclipse. Big disappointment. I wonder if cardboard-box guy is still out there.



I know, its not an eclipse. but eclipses are stupid anyways.

Nothing special.

I run everywhere. I constantly stare at tables, wear flabby shirts, talk to myself, and I now answer to Augustin. I am a waiter.

My kitchen days are over, meaning no more free food, big knives, or magnanimous hacking at shellfish. I’ve forever hung up my food-splattered kitchen uniform, and I’ve been given the waiter’s Hawaiian shirt. Except its XXL. I’m sure it was used as a sail for some galleon before being handed over to me. But whatever, It’ll stop being funny in a few months. I hope. I’ve also got the ‘Augustin’ nametag, cuz they don’t got no Alex’s. At first I just ignored people when they called for me, but now I’m starting to get the hang of it.

It’s a lot more hoity toity than kitchen work, which I don’t like. You gotta know everything about wine, be all formal with ‘desirez-vous’ this and that. Everyone’s a lot more uptight about everything too. “The knife placement is all wrong, it goes a millimeter to the left” “You use the Bordeaux glasses for the Chablis grand cru 1978’s second harvest” and “Alex! Take that corkscrew out of your nose!”.

But it is also a lot more fun. You get to talk to the guests. You make friends with them, and I’ve gotta say, the Italians are the best. They’re always the friendliest, nicest, and most curious. But man, its hard to remember whose who. So you make up names for them, or remember their weird traits- like the Russian mafia guy, billboard forehead, Italian hippie, Jacob’s creek. It always starts out the same, why do you speak fluent Italian/English? then: what brings you to bora? And inevitably they either know someone or know someone that knows someone that’s done hotel school blady bla.

Pop.

I opened the door to my bungalow today and standing there in front of me was a tall guy in a miniskirt and heels. I blinked and he didn’t go away. So I shook his hand. Meet Tamera, the new intern.
He/she? is replacing my roommates which are just about to leave. This should be interesting. So first, lets get something straight… It’s a girl, in a guy’s body. Guy’s body. So will somebody please explain the boobs?!?! I swear, this guy’s got boobs… I’ve been trying to figure it out all day…he’s not fat enough to actually have boobs, they’re not socks, plastic surgery is basically non-existent here…for the love of god, breasts just don’t grow on guys! Maybe I’ll ask him one day. That’ll make for an excellent awkward moment.

“You have boobs.”
“Yes.”
“But…you’re a guy.”
“Yes.”

“Sometimes things happen” – Yamini Kashimshetty

Well, today something did happen. I got ransacked. Pilfered. Robbed. And the worst part is that I know who did it but I can’t do anything about it.

I went to the beach in the morning before work. The same beach I’ve been going to for the past 2 months. The deserted beach on the side of the motu that has only one family living in its vicinity. I brought my discman along, as I often did before. So I listened to some music, read a bit, got really really hot and decided to take a swim. So I stuck my discman in my bag and put my bag in the hut on the beach. I went swimming right in front of the hut, and looked over at my bag every once in a while, but nobody was around so I wasn’t worried. I came back from swimming, reached inside my bag, and my discman was gone.

The weird thing is that the thief had carefully opened my bag, taken the discman out of its case, closed the bag, and then made off with my CD player and my Sennheiser earphones which were my graduation present from my parents.



I looked around and there was nobody in sight. I went towards the shack on the other side of the beach and there was a guy about 25 years old there. I think I was too much in disbelief to be mad. I should have probably screamed my head off and scared him into giving it back. I asked him if he’d seen my discman. “3 young kids took it. They ran off that way.” How convenient.

I told him my predicament, that he was the only person on the beach, and I’ve never seen any kids around here, and that I didn’t want to blame him without proof, but from what it looks like…

He was just working. 3 young kids. He was just working. I scanned the area, felt a couple of bags, there was nothing that resembled a discman. He could have hidden it anywhere. Now I start getting pissed, cuz not only does this little shit steal my discman, but then he has the nerve to stand there and lie to me about it, knowing very well that I can’t prove anything. We have a few more exchanges, I tell him that if he didn’t take it, then he wouldn’t mind if the police came and took a look around.

Then he started getting defensive, I gave it a bit more time, we argued some more… nothing. By then it was almost time for work, so I menaced him with the police one last time then headed back.

But it’s not only the fact that it’s good money gone down the drain. But also that for the next 4 months, I can’t listen to music. And that I’m in a feud with the family that practically lives on my beach. And that whenever I go back to that beach I won’t be able to enjoy myself cuz I’ll be constantly looking over my shoulder towards that shack on the side of the beach.

I’ll social commentary you!

I always thought that religion originated from ancient tribes’ need to explain and feel able to control natural phenomena and disasters. They created gods that reacted to their actions, therefore attributing themselves the ability to ‘control’ nature. And then it evolved into intricate rituals and rules which eventually formed the basis for today’s modern religions.

But was religion-or the worship of a greater power or being- also consciously created because of the need to have a goal in life (such a reaching heaven) -thus giving daily life a greater meaning- or was this a by-product of its evolution?

So when Krunk blamed god for an eruption that toasted his entire village, did he just want a scapegoat? An explanation? A way to have power over uncontrollable nature? Or did he desperately want to give his life meaning, such as the goal of pleasing god so that his village wouldn’t melt no more?

Requins

It just isn’t that scary without the music. This morning I decided to go to a new beach cuz I don’t want the old beach to become too ordinary… so I went to the complete opposite side of the motu; there the water’s a lot shallower- about half a meter at its deepest, and is full of coral; making it almost like a maze. It’s the place where the motu is closest to the outlying reef, so I decided to snorkel out there today and see what was so great about it.

So I’m about half way there, admiring all the fishes, Ooh…fishes. Fish-es. I turned to my left and about 3 meters away- Ooh, it’s a shark. and then turn back to the fishes. And cue the jaws tune. See, without the warning music, it’s just a big fish, until the information reaches your brain, you do a double take and your eyes get about as big as grapefruits, or paumplemousses- whichever sounds sillier.

I watched it while it swam off in the distance, and it was actually pretty cool. It was a small black tipped shark- probably around 70 or 80 cm long. Its amazing that they come to such shallow parts, cuz that water wasn’t more than 30 cm deep. It made another pass right in front of me, the closest it came was about a meter away, but it completely ignored me and swam off to the left, with a bright yellow fish silhouetted against its chest. Then, of course, my mask fogged up and my stupid snorkel tube broke, and I stepped on spiky coral and got bitten by mosquitoes… but at least I had a close encounter with a sharrk.

Ok, so this is a ray. But I already posted a shark photo and one’s all I got. So say hi to ray the ray.

I AM LIVING WITH CRAZY PEOPLE

…and its not so bad. Ok, they’re cazy, but that’s beside the point. They’re good company most of the time. Unless they’re crazy. Which is beside the point. #1’s name is Vahinerri. (best said while sneezing) She’s’ from the tuamotus, which is a whole bunch of atolls. So she’s pretty much used to living on a motu like this one. She’d go to the beach more often, but its too far for her. She’s crazy cuz she rearranges the whole house at least once a day. If she wants me to change channels she drench me in water until I do; or until I short circuit and explode. Then she has the TV all to herself. AND she doesn’t like ‘family guy’… she must be crazy.

The other one’s Belinda. Which proves my theory right. Cuz the really hot ones are always stuck up. Some of it is probably cuz she knows she’s hot. But a big part is cuz any guy would (and do) bend over backwards for her; so I guess she’s used to being handed the world on a silver platter, whether she’s asked for it or not. Still… she never says hello, goodbye, thank you, didn’t apologise when she made us miss the boat Saturday night, complains about everything, and never comes out of her room. Bla.

100%

I went partying for the first time last night. This is the first time I’ve seen bora at night. And stepping out onto the dock already made the whole soirée worth it. Mt. Otematu looks even more imposing at night, silhouetted against the starry sky, with a thin cloud hanging onto its peaks. I thought the lagoon was calm during the day, but at night it feels like the whole earth’s stopped moving. There’s not a sound. No waves, no fish, no people, no engine hums, no TV sounds- nothing.

The other’s arrived and we got on the boat. Another great experience- watching the lights of the hotel get smaller as we made our way to the island. I went out with my Stanley and heimata- both cooks, a waitress and my 2 roommates.

We arrived to the main island and got into stanley’s huge pickup. Riding in the open air staring at the full moon and the shoreline dotted with lights is really a great feeling. Time stops, you forget everything, you’re just along for the ride. We stopped at a warehouse by the waterside where the others went to watch boxing, the rest of us sat in the pickup and had a few drinks.

At around 1:30 we went to le récif- the island’s only nightclub. And it really is a club a-la-bora. It reminded me a bit of apocalypse mixed with phuc tan.



So we danced there for a while, and the music was way better than that stuff they play in swissland. Then when that closed we drove on to le ‘deps’ a big car park on the other side of the island. We get there and there’s about a hundred people gathered around two cars which were hooked up to massive speakers. I swear, those things were bigger than the cars themselves. Anyways, they blared their music, competing to be the loudest, and we danced into the sunrise.