One of the most annoying things I can’t figure out right now with this phone is how to get the photos out of it so that I could post stuff. I’ve sent numerous emails with the photos as attachments to myself, and none of the emails ever make it. I only have these because I stole them off my social networking site (the phone seems to post there just fine).
So anyway, here was my Friday. We went here…
…to support and watch this…
We also invited a friend, which I tried to document with a picture…
…but as you can see the flash went off WAY before the photo was taken. So we tried again and got this…
…through which process I learned that my phone’s “night” function creates a flash so blinding that neither of us could see for 10 minutes after that photo was taken. (I also learned I hate flash that close to me. I look so gross.)
After the show Mr. W and I went to see the new Karate Kid movie, starring 11 year old Jaden Smith and produced by his parents, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. I think this is my favorite movie so far this year!! Jaden is AWESOME. Jackie Chan is hilarious. I heard Jaden actually trained in Kung Fu in China before he took on the role of Dre Parker in this movie. If you’ve seen the original Karate Kid movie from the 80s, you’d enjoy the inside jokes of this new movie running a parallel plotline with the original, but taking liberal departures to update the tone whenever it felt like it. The fly-catching scene and the waxing scene are two that come to mind. Watching Jaden is like watching a little Will Smith. All the same charm, humor and charisma. Plus some kick-ass martial arts moves. I’m happy the cheesy crane-kick has been replaced by a much more exciting single-legged back flip cobra kick. Read the synopsis here by Reuters, with interviews with Jaden Smith (big big personality! I look forward to great things from him in the future) and Jackie Chan (a personal friend of my deceased actor uncle in Taiwan). Does anyone wanna see this? I’ll go again!!
(Watch the above for Jaden’s musical performance and clips of the movie! I got a nice laugh in the end.)
So I may have inadvertently ruined the battery from the new LG Ally cell phone. Since all cell phone batteries have become universal and my old LG EnV2’s charger plugs into the new phone, I’ve been using that charger. The first day I had the phone, the battery drained in 8 hours. The second day, it lasted about that long with little to no use, and I tried using the USB charger that came with the new phone. After plugging it into my CPU, I checked it in 45 minutes to find that it had DRAINED 3%. I left it in all day and in almost 8 hours, it had charged 60%. This means that the phone drains at a faster rate than it charges on USB, and this is even with my Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi, and Syncing turned off. I was so irritated I took the phone back to Verizon. They tested the phone and gave me a new battery. One of the salesguys says that these new batteries take about 2 weeks to “season,” so with regular use in about 2 weeks, I should see a noticeable improvement in battery capacity. I happened to ask about using the old charger with this phone, and one guy said that’s not recommended because the old phone and this smartphone are so different, even tho the charger fits, it may be the wrong input capacity or whatever and having the wrong amount of voltage (I’m probably using all the wrong terms here) would ruin the new battery. Oopsie. When I got home I put away the old charger and pulled out the new one. It charged the phone MUCH quicker than the old one, and now that I’ve had the battery a few days, even with heavy usage playing online and downloading apps, the amount of usage time has at least doubled. Whew.
My LG EnV2 (which I LOVE) has been giving me weird problems in the last couple months. It’d shut off by itself and I wouldn’t be aware of it until I come back to my phone and see that it’s been off for who knows how long. Sometimes it’d shut off when I’m in mid-text-message. This happens even when the battery’s fully charged. It was driving me nuts so I looked it up online and found numerous complaints from others with the identical problem on this phone. Turns out the culprit is the battery not making perfect contact with the phone. I had a case on the phone until fairly recently, and when I took the case off, this started happening, so the case must’ve kept the battery in place. The solution is to remove the battery, clean off the metal points of contact carefully and gently with a pencil eraser, then put the battery back in. Some problems are more severe in that the battery is too short to fit the phone so when the battery slides up the millimeter, the contact is broken and the phone shuts off. People have resolved this by putting a sliver of cardstock (such as piece of a business card) between the top of the battery and the case to push the battery downward toward the base of the phone, maintaining contact between the metal parts. Altho my problem seemed to have gone away with just my eraser-cleaning, I started looking into the new-every-two program just in case, and discovered I’ve been eligible for a new phone for about 2 weeks now.
What to get? I definitely was not gonna cave despite the pressure from coworkers and people at home to buy into Apple for the iPhone. Besides, I was happy with my LG enV2’s capabilities (especially Vcast and the VZNavigator system), and wanted to stay in a similar realm. I didn’t want to pay a bunch of money for crazy access to apps and data downloads and supernatural capabilities of a phone which I mainly used for phone calls, texting, and emailing. If the iPhone could come up with an app where a little chauffeur pops out and drives me around so I can nap in my morning work commutes, I’ll buy in. But I probably couldn’t afford that app. So I researched what phones would be free for my new-every-2, that had a qwerty keypad, and that worked without changing my current data and phone package. After reading many positive reviews from people exactly like me and even going from the same phone, I decided on the Samsung Reality. Another perk that I read from the reviews is that this phone uses the same charger as my enV2, so I don’t have to buy new accessories! Yay.
So hubby and I went to Verizon after work yesterday. Somehow, somewhere between the door and the cash register, I ended up with a purchased LG Ally, which is an Android phone. It’s larger, heavier and bulkier than my last phone so it no longer fits in a specific pocket on my purse, but oh well, that just means I need to get a new purse. =D I was warned of a few drawbacks of this phone (sort of a hybrid between a feature phone like my last one, and a smartphone like the Blackberry or Droid), things that aren’t as great compared to the Droid, but I have friends who aren’t entirely happy with their Droids AND its price tag and 4-month waiting list crossed it off as a possibility for me. Plus, I didn’t like the smoothness of the qwerty keyboard on the Droid; I need tactile feedback to know where the keys are. (This is also a problem on the Samsung Reality, I found when I finally touched one.) I also wasn’t sure I wanted such an extreme phone. Hubby pushed for the Droid Incredible (most similar thing Verizon has to the iPhone) but I was clearly reluctant. Somewhere in there I was talked into compromising with the LG Ally, and I’ve been playing with it off and on since I got it. It does require the costlier separate data access plan, but the difference between my old plan and this one ended up being about $8/month, and the phone was free with the new-every-2. Additional perk: turns out that all phone chargers have been standardized! So I still don’t have to get a new wall or car charger for the new phone.
The new phone has a learning curve for someone who isn’t used the Android OS or smartphones, and I also think it’s much more phone than I need. Having 1/4 of the battery life I’m used to is gonna suck. Not having a detailed phone user’s manual was uncomfortable (I’m actually one to spend a couple of hours going over the manual with my new phones), but the box does include a Tips, Hints and Shortcuts booklet that I’m gonna read. I was advised to check out the video tutorials online to learn the phone features. So far I’m still pretty confused because I don’t know what a lot of the symbols on the phone displays mean. I plan to take advantage of the 30-day return policy to see if this is something I could love. Oddly, Mr. W is almost giddily happy that I got this. He keeps talking about switching to Verizon for an Android phone if he finds out through mine that it’s better than his iPhone. I think he just sees this as free opportunity for him to play with a new tech toy that he wasn’t able to get for himself.
Here’s a Friday ha-ha for you guys, altho it wasn’t funny at the time…
Yesterday morning, I posted this status message:
Cindy does not like dreams wherein Dodo’s tail falls off. =(
Claudio: It was a dream. Just put it back on!
Me: I thought it was going to grow back on its own! So I wasn’t TOO worried…until his intestines started coming out, too! Then I ran around trying to find a phone book in English so that I could find a 24-hr emergency pet hospital to take him to, but I couldn’t find any medical help! *cry*
Claudio: That happens when u only feed them chia seeds!
Me: cats aren’t vegetarian!
Earlier as I was sitting in my courtroom, I heard peals of laughter and giggles coming from the hall behind me. I poked my head out the door and saw two judges and a court reporter laughing. I said to one of my favorite judges, who apparently was the one entertaining the others, “I came to see what you’re drinking this early in the morning, and to ask if I could have some.”
As the other two waved their goodbyes and left, this judge said, “I’ll tell you the story, since I’m telling everybody…yesterday I was picking a jury on a double-murder trial, and one of the attorneys asked the [prospective] jurors, ‘Are any of you going to be squeamish looking at photos of dead people?’ One little blonde raised her hand. The attorney asked, ‘You’d feel squeamish?’ She nodded shyly. He asked, ‘Why?’ She said earnestly, ‘…Because I’m a vegetarian.’ ”
He laughed so hard he took out his handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes.
Now that I’ve FINALLY finished posting about our early-May trip to French Polynesia, I can write about current life again! Yay! So a couple of weekends ago on May 23, we invited Eddie & Michelle to our lake for a South Coast Symphony concert. They brought Michelle’s aunt, visiting from Taiwan, and I invited my parents, who had immigrated here from Taiwan. The “grownups” somehow made it into a Chinese food potluck. My mom made beef stew & tendon noodle soup, brought some vegetarian chicken, and Michelle’s aunt made some buns which she tucked cheese inside of. I was glad for the meeting, so my mom could stop asking me, “Who’s Eddie?” every time I tell her about attending their upcoming Napa wedding events, and it turned out my mom and Michelle’s aunt came from the same town in Taiwan. Unfortunately for Mr. W, since everyone got along capitally, he was left out of a lot of Mandarin conversations. 🙂 I TOLD him to learn Mandarin. We found out that Michelle’s aunt is a musician, and my dad loves the symphony, and the rest of us liked company, the Lake, and wine, so it worked out really well. The ONLY thing contrary was that Eddie had to wear and bring Trojan gear (as he always does), so I made sure to wear my Bruin wear. We probably looked funny in public together.
Mr. W and I had prepared cheese and crackers, cut up a variety of fruit, and Eddie and Michelle are wine connoisseurs, so they brought some great rieslings and bubblies. Here Eddie’s serving alcohol to us waiting folk at our spot on the lake lawn.
This is how close our 3 blanketed areas are to the stage. Mr. W and I had gone to the lake early to snag the spots and set up.
My vantage point behind Eddie.
The symphony played a variety of show tunes, and there were 3 opera singers performing. I just remember that one of them, a woman who seemed to be hosting the event, used to be the female lead in “Evita.”
Mom and dad had fun.
Look at all that ‘SC crap! blankets, scarves…
…and portable cooler bags. But WAIT…why does a Bruin have it in hand?
That didn’t last long.
Because Moorea is so close to Tahiti, the M/s Paul Gauguin had already docked there the night before we were to disembark. We disembarked on Saturday morning, May 8th, to an overcast port.
Our luggage was already waiting underneath some tarp. It had rained the night before, and as we waited outside for our transportation to a day room at the Radisson, the sky opened up and large drops of rain drove against us sideways. The side of the tarp blew open and luggage on the edge were instantly drenched. I was impressed by some ship boys, on their way to town for some rare free time, who came running back to the tarp and hussled to resecure the tarp and protect the luggage. They moved luggage around to bring them into some protection, and climbed large metal bins to refasten the ropes that held the flapping shelter together. Soon our shuttle to the Radisson came and we jumped in.
Tahiti is very different from the other islands. It’s been built on and commercialized, like a downtown city. Highrises, street vendors, shops, restaurants, banks, traffic, concrete, paved roads. I didn’t think to take photos on the car ride there because it was so dirty and unattractive to me. We did pass something interesting, tho — something that looked like a carnival or county fair with many people attending. “What’s that?” we asked our shuttle driver. She said it was a biannual street mart. We, along with another couple who was on the shuttle, decided to taxi back and visit this street mart for cheap souvenirs. First we checked into the Radisson.
What a day room is, is a hotel room given you only for the day and not for overnight. Our ship kicks us out at 10am, our flight leaves at midnight, so what were we to do in the meantime? Our travel agent arranged for us a room where we can keep our stuff, take a shower and a nap, hang out by a pool, etc. But check-in was at 2pm so we just let them hold our luggage and asked the front desk to call us a cab to take us back to the street fair.
Here was where things got weird. The receptionist seemed genuinely unaware of what event we were speaking of, but said the cab drivers should know the city well enough to know. She described the affair to them, and told us the cab knew what we were talking about, and that they’d be here to pick us up. When the driver got here, she didn’t know what street fair we were talking about and called her manager on her cell phone. They spoke in whatever language Tahitians speak, and then she passed us the phone, saying, “My boss want to talk to you, he speak English.” I heard Mr. W describe the affair, and then pass the phone back to the driver. The driver spoke to her boss a bit more, then hung up. Mr. W said the boss said that the street fair was really a public real estate convention, and that if we wanted shopping, then the place to go was all the way back to Papeete at the dock. When we’d driven by the fair, there were way too many people attending, and people bringing kids, to look like a real estate convention. Also, going all the way back to Papeete was 3000 Francs, whereas where we wanted to go was halfway, so it would’ve been only 1500 Francs, but we consented, figuring they knew better. The taxi took a turn to go on a street parallel to where we knew the street fair to be, and we never drove by it. We think she was instructed to bypass it for more fare money. Anyway, she dropped us off in a ghetto open-air market and we did end up buying souvenirs and random stuff. It’s remarkable how a place like that in the US would be selling dollar items, and in Tahiti, everything was still $20+. A keychain ran $15. Crazy. A vendor in a booth took pity on me when I bought souvenir keychains for my coworkers, and gave some money back to me, so I still walked with a great deal, considering. We took another cab back and that driver took us on the same route as the shuttle earlier that morning, and we went right by the street fair. We saw bouncer houses, kids with packaged toys in their hands, people eating cotton candy, etc. It was SO not a real estate convention!! But at least when we went back, we were able to check into our awesome room.
We had an ocean view room. Straight ahead is a separate HOT TUB room. The slats on the walls open up and you’re on the balcony with the ocean waves crashing behind you.
This is the giant bed.
The bathroom was pretty awesome, too.
When I took this photo from the balcony (which was so big it was really a terrace), Mr. W was in the hot tub next to me watching me thru the slats.
Here’s the view from the patio table on the terrace. I couldn’t get a good shot of how close the ocean was, tho.
So I walked to the edge of the terrace and took another shot.
Kids were playing on the surf and boogie boarding. Mr. W watched for a bit from the terrace before turning around and realizing that he was mooning everyone in the rooms above us, who were on their balconies looking down at our terrace.
We passed the time checking out the pool bar, exploring the hotel shops, watching TV, eating $24 paninis (everything was overpriced! we were so glad we had the cruise cuz we couldn’t afford to vacation on our own there), and soon it was time to meet our shuttle to take us to the airport. The shuttle driver (who had greeted us upon arrival with fresh flower leis to take us to the ship) put shell leis on us. “We say hello with flowers, and goodbye with shells,” she explained. My shell lei was itchy in the humidity, and it still rained off and on. Our flight ended up being almost 2 hours delayed and we didn’t board our 11:55p flight until almost 2am.
I love Air Tahiti Nui, tho…they feed you such great hot meals on their flights. I still didn’t take advantage of the free alcohol. Mr. W bounced away from his seat next to me into an empty center row before people had even finished boarding, more eager to lay down than to spend time next to me. 🙁 But that means that once again, I had the two-seat window seat to myself, and I controlled both TVs. I kept one on a movie, the other on our flight progress.
8.5 hours later, we were passing over Catalina Island near home.
When things go gray and ugly, that’s how you know you’re in LA.
I snapped this cuz the building border reads “Welcome to Los Angeles.”
Here we are, landing at LAX just past noon. It was FREEZING in the mid-70s, we were so used to a constant muggy 85F degrees, day or night.
Yay. We’re home. What a contrast. At least Mr. W climbed over and sat with me when we started our descent, so I didn’t feel quite so abandoned by French Polynesia.
We had an excursion this morning, the second day anchored at Moorea, to get a little tour of the island and Opunohu Bay by speedboat and the excursion was to end with a visit of some stingrays and a snorkeling spot. We had breakfast and met up with the excursion group. There are some NICE overwater and mountain bungalows around Moorea! The Intercontinental has a new resort that’s beautiful but probably way more than what we could afford as a nightly rate. We got to the area of the ocean where we expected to see the stingrays, but saw something else, too.
That’s right, black-tipped sharks! I was used to rays by now after handling some in the Dominican Republic and petting them at Sea World, but I had never been this close to sharks in the wild. How close? THIS close…
The sharks were pretty docile and didn’t really want to come around people, and the guide was feeding them to get them to come to us. They viewed us as potential threats and not food. The stingrays, on the other hand, knew the guides well and were all over them (and sometimes, us). “Feed me!” “No, feed ME!” “Pet me!” “Pet ME!” You could tell the rays were comfortable because the large bone barb on their tails were pointed down instead of up. They behaved more like dogs, vying for attention. Oh, and I learned that the male of the species has two penises. Each. One lady on the excursion asked, “Why does he need two?” The guide replied, “I don’t know — so if one doesn’t work, he has a spare?” This reminds me of a video we were forced to watch in high school biology, in which a bored-sounded male narrator recited, “The [male] snake has two penises. It can use either one, depending on its positioning.”
After our visit with the carnivores of the sea, we went to the snorkel spot. We had to fight the current to swim to the good parts, but I enjoyed it for the exercise.
Mr. W had fun, too.
Parts of the swim were very shallow, and I was shocked I didn’t get scraped to ribbons going over high-reaching corals. I think there was a lot of divine intervention at work on my behalf that morning, just so we could watch stuff like this:
Look at all those teeny blue baby fishies! And if you think you could just reach out and grab one, well, you’d be wrong. As one fellow excursionist observed, “I think those fish have eyes on the backs of their heads!”
When we were dropped off at the Moorea dock, we shopped with some of the vendors set up in the little square before taking the tender back to the ship.
As Mr. W bought pearl and bone anklets and necklaces for himself and his kids, I bought a wooden tribal carving of a bat ray for my dad (I’d already gotten my mom and grandma certified Tahitian pearl pendants on Bora Bora). He loved it, by the way, and put it on the fireplace among other wooden carved dragons, birds, etc. We got back to the ship in time for lunch.
Late afternoon on deck, we attended Chef Dean Max’s cooking demo on proper preparation of rare ahi tataki. Yum!
Chef Dean is the owner of the Fort Lauderdale seafood restaurant 3030. Very nice guy, friendly, fun-loving, and knowledgable. His lovely wife Amy is very personable, too.
What a pretty backdrop for cooking, right?
His delicious rare tataki with aioli he handmade right there was served with other hors d’oeuvres at the Captain’s farewell party on deck.
The service staff was introduced and waved their farewells.
We prepared to say goodbye to Moorea, as we were going back to our origination of Tahiti that night. This is Moorea from Cook’s Bay. Mr. W merged 3 photos he took at different exposures and then added a special effect. Cool, huh?
Moorea is the last port we visited before returning to Tahiti. It’s a larger, heart-shaped island with a rain forest in the middle, and it’s Mr. W’s now-favorite island in French Polynesia.
My mom said, in seeing our photos, “Your bones are so soft!” I wasn’t even contorted in here. My Wednesday pilates class instructor, by the way, has nicknamed me “rubber girl.”
I thought this mountain looked like a new lipstick.
This is the dock at Moorea where our tender dropped off and picked up.
An archeologist doing some excavations and other projects on Moorea came onboard and stayed the next 2 days with the cruisers to give lectures on Captain Cook’s voyages that led him to discover the Polynesian Islands, and about what REALLY happened with the mutany on The Bounty (the “fake” story, I guess, was made into a movie some years ago; this archeologist recently came upon a series of journals that one of the Polynesian women on The Bounty had kept through decades of this stuff going on, and since he has a specialized degree in social anthropology, he’s the lead guy in piecing this history together). We attended his lectures and took his excursion, “Trails of the Ancients,” in Moorea.
An elementary school kids’ school bus transported us from the dock for our excursion.
This is a view from Opunohu Bay, where Captain Cook first anchored for this island. Ironically, the other bay the cruiseship is anchored at is called Cook’s Bay, but Captain Cook was never at that one.
The archeologist explained that the way we saw this bay is pretty close to the way Captain Cook saw it hundreds of years ago; the family who owned the bay area refused to commercialize it, develop it, no matter how much money was waved in front of them to allow a golf course and resorts to be built on it. They were insistent that the land and the natural life on it belonged to the people and future generations, and needed to be preserved. When the family was dying out, the last son did finally sell the real estate, but not before requiring a stipulation be made in the contract that the land can NEVER be used for commercial purposes, and must be kept in the same natural state. So we saw the original plants, the life-sustaining trees whose trunks became canoes, whose vines were woven to be very strong ropes, whose fruits cure cold sores nearly on contact, whose leaves made something else really impressive but that I’d forgotten cuz I was distracted by the pretty bay.
We stopped the bus to admire the mountain line against the sky. There was some movie that made up a mythical mountain called “Mount Bali Hai.” I don’t remember the name of the movie, it was before my time, but Mr. W watched it as a kid and thought Bali Hai was a real place and always wanted to visit it. Well, they filmed Mt. Bali Hai in Moorea, and the peak on the left (Mount Mouaroa) is what they used for the made-up Bali Hai mountain.
Mr W. was so taken with the fact that he was standing there looking at his Bali Hai, that he kept taking pictures of Mount Mouaroa everywhere he could see it. I don’t even know when or where, along our excursion, he took this picture:
Next, we went up on a high lookout point called Belvedere that overlooks the two bays.
The shape of the sign is the shape of Moorea. See the two indentations on top? The left one is Opunohu Bay, the right one is Cook’s Bay. And here’s what the two bays look like from Belvedere if I turned around from the sign.
Richard B. Gump South Pacific Research Station is on the west side of Cook’s Bay, and this ecological research center is maintained by UC Berkeley (that’s right, OUR Cal), and any UC student (like I was) could request for a research assignment in Moorea at this station. How cool would it be to spend a quarter here?!
Now is when we started walking the “Trail of the Ancients.” We looked at various excavation sites of temples and houses that our tourguide’s team had uncovered. Here’s the remains of a large temple.
One might assume, as I did, that what we’re looking at is the few rocks and walls left of a formerly enclosed building used for worship. Not true. The native Polynesian religions worshipped things they saw around them (much like Native Americans), so nature was it. They built their family temples (“marae”) to be open-air, facing the highest mountain on the island. The oldest son had his seat in the middle, and the seatback is made from a flat piece of rock.
Seated correctly, the worshippers faced the mountain, which is mother earth. Father sky visited mother earth in the form of clouds meeting the mountain, and father and mother mated, causing rainfall, which makes all things fertile and gives life.
We walked deeper into the rain forest to see other family maraes, as the archeologist explained how his team found various sites, what they saw when they got there, what the purpose of each area was. He also talked about local botanics and how some plants were used medicinally, pointing out the wonderfully-scented flowers of a fruit growing around us. As we sniffed the flowers, he warned us not to eat the fruit because it was so toxic that it would cause respiratory failure in 2 minutes, and this natural toxin is undetectable in the body in autopsies. (Hmm!) The ancients would mix the fruit into dishes when they had to offer food to enemies. One commonly used plant had roots that were chewed and spit out by the village boys, then drunk by the elders during town meetings. The root-spitjuice were hallucinogenic and made the elders high and relaxed, so they could air their issues with each other without inhibition. He pointed to one of these plants growing to the side of a marae and said they are now an endangered species with very strict laws to protect them, the plants are not used anymore, and warned us to be careful not to step on them or damage them…upon which a large oafy American instantly and obliviously dug up the plant in front of the archeologist, pulled it out of the ground and said, “These roots? Are these the roots that you were saying would get them high?” The archeologist calmly said that’s right, took the plant from the guy, got on his hands and knees, dug a hole where the plant came from, and tenderly replanted the plant. Idiot.
You have to keep your eyes peeled walking the trail of the ancients because otherwise, you miss some interesting stuff, like the carvings some women way back when put into some river rocks…
…and cool root systems…
…and ants cleaning up dead gross stuff.
Here’s a really large marae, probably for more public use.
The four corner pillars of the marae are made of heavy rock driven into deep holes in the ground. The archeologist’s team found skeletal remains of young boys in fetal position with crushed hips under these pillars. He explained that when the temples were built, they would put the boys in the hole as sacrifice (usually captured from unrelated tribes they’d been at war with, which the team was able to ascertain through DNA tests of the bones), then drop the pillars on them which killed them. The boys’ youthful and strong spirits would then be absorbed into the temple and bring it luck and protection. We asked what the excavation team did with the skeletal remains. “We left them in there!” the archeologist said. “I don’t like dealing with human remains.” He’d shuddered.
On the walk back out of the jungle, it rained on us a couple of times. So that’s why they call it a rain forest. It did yield some pretty rainbows, tho.
Out of the forest, we walked through a field of pineapples.
The archeologist said that local pineapples are smaller and sweeter than the Hawaiian pineapple we’re used to having (totally true!), and that they’re natively from Brazil. Apparently planting all these pineapples is very corrosive to local land, too.
We saw a pretty sunset by the time we got back to the docks, so we missed our tender to take photos and explore the area instead.
I took my shots from the edge of the pier.
Mr. W’s vantage point was farther in from the pier.
We were anchored at Moorea for 2 days, and the tender to and from the ship ran every half-hour, so we walked the half mile or so to town to look around, not fearing we’d be left behind. Again, virtually nothing was open except for a couple of restaurants, and why pay $45 for a sandwich when we had free gourmet food on the ship? So after admiring the views…
…we went back to the ship.
We got back in time for dinner and the Polynesian dance show with live Polynesian band.
As a side note, Mr. W wanted to sit in the front for this performance on Deck 8. I said no. “Why?” Because they always drag volunteers onstage from the front row, I told him. “They’re not gonna do that, this is their performance.”
I am rarely wrong, BTW.
Oh, were you looking for me in that video? Sorry, Mr. W was dragged up by a girl right after I was dragged up by a guy, so we were too busy jiggling our hips to take pictures. Be grateful.
THE COMPUTER PROJECT. The desktop computer at home (where we have all our trip photos) is having major issues. The month-old two terrabyte hard drive began loading sluggishly, and audible clicks could be heard as it spun, looking for data. The concensus is that the hard drive is on the verge of crashing. Mr. W backed up the data and we went to a computer store to look into returning the old one and/or buying a new one. Since he didn’t have the receipt, he bought a new hard drive and for the first time, purchased the extended warranty. While there, he discussed the symptoms with a store techie, and learned that his particular motherboard causes problems on high density hard drives (hence clicking), so the only way to cure this is to buy a new updated motherboard ($$), which means he’ll have to update his processor chip to support the new motherboard ($$), and that means his memory should be updated, too ($$). And of course he has to replace the crashing hard drive ($). Meanwhile, he’s installed the new hard drive and is in the process of transferring data from the old to the new, to buy a little time. For me, it means I have to wait a bit until I can finish my French Polynesia vacation posts since I have one more island port, Moorea, to cover and the day we came home from the island of Tahiti.
THE INSANITY PROJECT. The makers of the P90X workout, Beachbody, listened to people complain about not having the pull-up bar or dumbbell equipment to do the intense-but-effective sessions, so they came up with Insanity. Every bit as psychotic and vomit-inducing as P90X, Insanity uses only one’s own body weight and gravity for resistance. Sounds great, but I think Insanity may be even more hardcore than P90X because it’s designed for a 60-day cycle, instead of the 90 of P90X. That both scares and excites me. I have the kit at home and am about to begin. I’m also counting on this to get me prepared for the Marine Corps Obstacle Course Challenge in September.
THE BABY PROJECT. I haven’t talked about this in specifics, yet, so here it is, for the benefit of my obsessive record-keeping and because when I searched for information, I found very little of it, so this may benefit others in our shoes. Some years ago B.C. (Before Cindy), Mr. W lost his mind (or perhaps he was being mind-controlled like a zombie) and had a vasectomy. I didn’t take our relationship very seriously initially because marriage and kids were not part of the equation for him. It wasn’t that I was set on getting married and popping out children, but I wanted the option, as I had explained to many friends that first year Mr. W and I were “hanging out.” On our 1-year anniversary, Mr. W started talking about wanting to give me “a real commitment.” I told him that was unnecessary as I didn’t believe he was any less committed as my boyfriend as he would be as my husband. The man was committed from day 1, more so than I was, except for some computer games but that’s a whole other addiction. Year 2, he started talking about possible children together. My parents were, of course, pushing for some sort of outcome to this relationship because they didn’t want me to die alone (I know, Asian fatalist gene). Mr. W’s thoughts were about artificial insemination by a family member, and one of his brothers seemed amenable to it. That way, he figured, the genetics would still be the same, or similar enough. I was not thrilled about having the conversation later in life when I would have to tell my kid, “Dad is really Uncle W, and Uncle X is really Dad, and Cousin Y is really half-sister Y, but I’m still mom…” It’s hard enough to have to re-assess and re-identify one’s own parent(s) (I think it’ll happen involuntarily), but an entire extended family, too? This kid would go nuts for awhile. Mr. W seemed to understand this and appeared open to an anonymous donor. Around this time I happened to have dinner with two doctor friends, Lily (radiologist) and Arnold (cardiologist). I blubbered about this obstacle, and both just stared back at me across the booth at Claim Jumper. They didn’t see the big deal.
“But he had a vasectomy!” I repeated.
“So?” Arnold said lightly. This is when I found out that he had taught fertility prior to going into cardiology. Apparently (apparent to him, not to me), modern medicine and technology have found a way to just go into the scrotum with a tiny syringe, before the area where the vasectomy had disconnected the vas deferens, and extract some swimmers. What happens after that was unclear to me, but I was hoping they could just use whatever they extract and put it in fluid like a donor sample, and “turkey baster” me (I think that was how Arnold characterized it). He did warn me that a smaller percentage of men, especially if they’ve had the procedure done awhile back, develop antibodies to their own sperm as a way for the body to get rid of free-roaming critters that have nowhere to go. Arnold’s lack of being impressed by our predicament gave me (and Mr. W) hope, Mr. W proposed at the end of Year 2, I accepted, and we were married on our 3rd year anniversary.
I dragged my feet on the baby thing, enjoying my lifestyle too much. Mr. W enjoyed our vacations as well, but time was more pressing for him because of the age difference. He told me a few times that I better figure out whether I want a baby because he’s not getting any younger. So somehow, we figured that we’d take our last two kid-unfriendly vacations this year (the hedonistic Polynesian vacation was #1; high-adventure Australia late fall would be #2) and then have a baby. We would be married a little over 2 years then.
I’m going to get into detail about the fertility process, so if you’re interested, click “more,” below. (more…)
Good morning, Bora Bora!
This fifth day of the cruise is the second day we’re at Bora Bora. We had an exciting excursion booked for the afternoon, which left our morning free. After breakfast, we took the tender out to Bora Bora.
I bought a postcard for my parents and another for my courtroom and mailed them out from the Bora Bora post office. In the one to my parents, I explained that I was MIA on vacation because there was no internet or cell access but that we were alive and well, and in the one to my work staff, I rubbed in that we were in such a great place that I may never come home. (It was important not to get the two addresses mixed up, or my mother would have a hysterical breakdown.)
It didn’t take long to explore this little town by foot.
The Protestant religion is common in French Polynesia because of Captain Cook’s influence when he and his crew arrived here.
I decided I had to buy SOME certified Tahitian pearls while I was there for Mother’s Day presents for mom and grandma. Here is a craptastic photo of me as the saleslady is writing up my purchases — 3 pearl pendants.
And then we went back to the ship, had lunch, changed into water gear, and headed back out for our excursion. This is the look of a girl whose dream is about to come true!
I’d been wanting to ride a Sea-doo for a LONG time, but I NEVER thought I’d be doing it for the first time in Bora Bora!! *faint*
I’d wanted to do this so badly before that I’d considered just buying one. The Sea-doo I was looking at came with its own trailer. At the time, I lived by myself so the garage had an extra spot I could park the Sea-doo and trailer. I asked whether my car at the time would have enough power to tow a trailer with a Sea-doo on it. The answer had me holding off. I did always wonder, though…what if I bought it and come to find out, I DIDN’T enjoy it?
Turned out that was just nonsense thoughts. Of course I enjoyed it. These photos are a bit misleading, though. We actually rode 2 per Waverunner, and Mr. W (who had experience) took us halfway out while I gripped the seat with my knees, ankles and hands for dear life to not get thrown by his wild speedy S-turns, with my eyes squeezed shut because the ocean water spraying into my face caused my eyes to water and burn. Halfway out, we stopped in a peaceful bay and Mr. W and I switched places. ReVeNgE was mine! He ended up with ankle grip blisters.
A 3+ hour Waverunner ride around Bora Bora, perfect weather, rough currents still, though. That just meant I had to stand up and go faster to avoid the waves splashing in my eyes. We soon “parked” on a remote motu. Some locals seemed to live there.
I turned around and prepared to wade in the bathwater-warm ocean to the island to relax for a bit, and discovered something that made this trip even BETTER!
I saw something grayish bobbing on the water, coming toward us from the motu. It turned out to be a dog! A big, happy, friendly native dog coming to greet us!
Unlike the main island Bora Bora dogs, this one was used to people, as she was very trusting and friendly. I saw an older man taking his windsail out of his house while we were on the beach and he smiled at me as he passed me in the water, so the dog may have been his. She put a paw possessively on me as I petted her, and I asked her how she got white sand on her wet nose. Later, one of the guys in our group whistled lightly, and she immediately responded and went to him. She laid at his feet as he petted her. Friendlist dog ever.
Here, Mr. W has palm trees on the brain.
That’s the island of Bora Bora behind us.
Look who came out and knocked me over! She was licking me when this photo was taken, altho you can’t tell.
She swam onto my lap for a proper photo.
Our tourguide made us a snack of island bananas, coconut (that he shaved by hand on a homemade contraption as we watched), which we’re supposed to put together like a sandwich, and grapefruit.
Then the Waverunners called to us again and we left to go back to town. Mr. W let me “drive” the whole way back and said I did a good job as we flew over the waves. It was another rough ride because of the current.
We made it back to the ship in time for sunset. Mr. W thought that going around Bora Bora by Waverunner in water beat going around it by bicycle on land, but I enjoyed both. We did both agree, however, that we were glad we’re here by cruise because aside from the beauty of the island, there really wasn’t much there to hold our interest for long. There was also virtually no snorkeling off Bora Bora directly. For me, however, it was still the best day yet.
P.S. My parents said I always meet local animals on trips, and that animals seem to follow me around. They reminded me of the dog in Hawaii and there was a black and white cat in Taiwan that looked a lot like Dodo, sort of like a foreshadow that I would one day be with Dodo. I wonder who this island dog is foreshadowing.
