Rains on Everything

Our deck boards are stretched out in the rain right now, under tarps, waiting to be put on. Some of the framing is up waiting to be connected to a little bit more so that the metal roof can go on. Tools and supplies have been procured by Barbara and Claude yet key items are missing which requires them to go into Tahiti again for more stuff. Everything costs much more than anywhere else I have ever been, and workers want to be paid more too, yet the island climate makes the work go slower. I am fortunate now to have the indoor finish jobs, as hard as that is on a breeze clear blue day, when it is pouring warm and wet out side I don’t mind at all. In Washington work would go on as usual, as if it were a warm breezy clear day outside, here, as in California, this work will stop, the guys aren’t going to be wearing head to toe rain gear.

Our departure date is approaching rapidly, less than two weeks away, and as expected the job is in full swing with many tasks in the pipeline. That’s why we worked Saturday and Sunday, it wasn’t bad, les boys weren’t here to add to the confusion. Roger did show up Friday to do some painting, brought his two younger kids along with him (wife’s day off) and a supply of cigarettes and beers too. The kids were very sweet, the three year old spoke only French, probably Tahitian too, but understood some English, the eight-year-old girl spoke Tahitian, French, and a very strongly accented English. She was a quiet and helpful girl who was obviously very well trained, Barbara told me she said that she does the cooking at home.

Outside the sound they hunker down and in a very pleasant way make their way through the ever present bullshit. I have learned much more about the French mentality since visiting here, I was always a bit prejudiced anyway from my time living in Quebec, that cold place far in the north that they abandoned and left to the English. Quebecois people have very little in common with the French, even the languages are clearly different. French law, when it is enforced, is also quite different than what we Anglophones are accustomed to. Basically here, or in le Metropole (mainland France) you are guilty and must prove yourself innocent, where as in the English speaking countries you are innocent until proven guilty (as I occasionally glance at the International Herald Tribune headlines it is beginning to appear that in the US the French, or Roman, attitude of guilt first ask questions later is becoming the norm).

I remember for so many years saying of the rain is increasing, too bad, oh well; this too will come to pass. The deck will get finished, the veranda roof will go on. Claude and Barbara are very positive and determined people, that yeah, Bob Dylan was right, a hard rain is going to fall, yet at the same time consumer goods were pouring out, military-industrial trickle-down prosperity was gushing, the weather was good, and Americans weren’t so hated. My kids or sibling always gave me such a hard time when I would say the end is near kind of stuff, or the roses of our American abundance and resource abuse don’t smell so sweet. Now the statistics are in, and the candy coating of the real news has become so pathetically thick and cheesy that the house of cards can almost be seen. It doesn’t take much to pull up one of the blinds and see that clearly a hard rain is falling out there, and worse yet, what goes around comes around. If it looks like a duck, smells like a duck, and tastes like a duck, it is a duck, and the ducks of the so-called American dream are quacking their death quack these days as the 2000 and 9/11 coup d’etat becomes more evident to the common man.

Aloha Friday

The Friday clean-up really takes it all in, move big messes, collect all tools, get something doneish looking so it can be enjoyed all weekend and then…Claude brings out the Hinano beers, the ones labeled with the Tahitian woman who has an arm amputated at the elbow and missing her baby toe. I guess all of the beer advertisers figure that she is in some sort of lusty, subservient pose, maybe I will have to be the one to draw the logo from a front view where it is easier to see how severely challenged she is. That drawing could even be used as an anti-beer campaign telling about the high rate of abuse among families here and fatal car accidents on the beautiful little ring road. As mentioned earlier, there are few laws around here and those that do exist are seldomly enforced, that is part of the charm.

Sitting around at our aloha Friday circle after work was little America expatriateville Moorea, I hear there are actually a few expats missing who have been here a long time and live the Tahitian way, i.e. Paradise Mike. We six hailed from California, Washington, Missouri, Florida, and New Jersey, nobody was your regular American, but amazingly, all of us being close in age, could remember scores of old TV shows that used to be on, the characters and theme songs too. When you get this far away from the crowd, off of the interstate, in a hard to reach place, in a hard to stay place (short, strict visa regs) everyone automatically becomes a character. The island keeps the group penned in so that moving slow with anything is fast enough, backlash time is short, that is, the characters are pretty well set and any personality peculiarities must be respectfully ignored or confronted clearly head-on.

Beers get opened in the heat of the late afternoon, as always the first slack is the best. As much as the second bottle seems necessary to keep floating, that spells the turning of the corner. Things go into a special group haze zone and conversation seriously loosens up, memories of specifics are rare although knowing that you are sitting drinking cold beers and soon leaving the worksite are enough to celebrate. When you see the boys stumbling into their third beer you begin to see the door opening on another aspect of island life. Combine this with cigarettes and the crazed intensity of these voluntary-isolation-in-a-seeming-paradise characters becomes quite clear. This sloppiness is not limited to the expats, it is island-wide. Consumption of beer and cigarettes are a pandemic here, among French, Tahitians, and anyone else visiting this place. The high accident rate and road related death rate speaks for this indulgence, not to mention the alcohol abuse related trickle-down personality and family relationship disorders. I keep hearing that so and so is stoned (on pot) but have not seen any weed floating around as of yet, just mellow so-and-sos.

The Big Swell

The word got out, in the news, on the coconut wireless, between saw cuts, a thousand mile long swell several hundred miles wide was coming our way from the south, Antarctica. As it hits Moorea the waves breaking on the reef at the south end, not far from us here, will be over 4 meters high (over 12 feet). All of the Tahitian and French surfers are excited and out riding these rollers. Fortunately this swell does not bring cold water with it, just the force. Claude and I forced ourselves away from the job around 3 PM to go for a swim and were quite surprised at the condition of the lagoon. Our beach was packed with Big Kahuna kiteboarders, preening themselves before they zip out onto the water. They are nailing signs to the coconut trees with beach rules on them (unfortunately for them this not their beach) that say things like “swimmers watch out for the fast moving kiteboarders, move out of their way”.

The water was not its usual clear bluegreen, instead a milky light green sort of like glacier water. The wind was blowing hard one way with a strong current going the other, we swam in that. Our safety valve was that we stayed close enough in shore to touch the bottom with our feet, but whenever we swam it was like being in a swimming machine, you’d stroke as hard as possible and only manage to stay in the same place. Occasionally coconuts and palm fronds would come floating by, it was clearly a large mountain of water that brushed over these islands for a couple of days. While walking to the wi-fi place there is a little river coming down from the valley, it also acts as a drain when the lagoon water backs up into the island. It was much higher than usual and flowing strong full of plant debris. I’m sure some of the smaller islands, motus, and atolls were much more severely affected.

On the same day as this the news of a 52-year-old Air France pilot who lived in Papeete sent us all a clear message. He was having a great time, like some of the wild jet-ski rental people from the resort club a mile down the beach from here. Some of his buddies were playing too, following him with their small speedboat. The pilot spun a turn and flipped off into the water…right in front of his friend’s boat, that was it, got his head cut in half, not cut off though. His teenage daughters were coming the next day for a visit from New York. Now they are in Tahiti with his ex-wife to put his affairs in order etc. The 5 mph law for the boats in the lagoon is not enforced at all, like so many other laws around here. Not knowing when the last moments are coming, we must all enjoy the ones we have, hopefully when the troops come in to put our affairs in order they will also say so-and-so had a good life.

This is a Job, not a Vacation

Bill in the midst of multiple realities.

Gaston and crew getting some below ground drainage works going.

Steve doing his amazing framer magic.

Without a doubt there is a lot of work going on here, the moments at the beach or cruising around the villages are of excellent quality, that is what makes working in this hot (now winter, December would be 10 degrees warmer, i.e. sun-baked) environment a must-do-if-can situation. Breezes are frequent and shade is also available, so if the remodel part were done or eliminated the percentage of perfect moments would be quite high, you’d just need the cash to match them, the high price of basic commodities on these islands never fails to shake you. Oh yes, a good mosquito net and an extra large hammock would also be nice to have, I’ll write that down on the next-time-list.

We have all been so excited about the job these past days that the ritual mid-day beach recesses have vanished, how could this be? Charlie has been on task and working quick and clean, even if his hour management is a little off, he is blending into the job mode. Steve and Roger are on a silent yet noisy quest to get this framing up up up. With the foundation footings behind them deck framing and roof framing are whipping together. Claude and Barbara, not carpenters, are doing as much as they can, cutting their design on the top of the fence posts, getting supplies (local and in Papeete), handling visitors, cleaning up messes, keeping the most current design ideas and procedure in our face, and organizing the tool area. I am doing the interior remodeling and back-up project management which includes taking photos. We are all hustling together with noted progress recharging our tanned and sweating bodies.




Claude showing us the glass block tiles that will become the new indoor shower wall, the outdoor shower will be in the patio to-be-made near this same space.
Without Barbara’s dedication to planning and organization the show would be just limping along, instead we are pedal to the metal getting multiple tasks opened up and engaged. The supply pipeline is also kept primed this way, due to the nature of materials’ availability here searching and ordering must always be far ahead of les boys on the job.

We got so deeply into the job recently that five days went by before we could soak ourselves in the nearby lagoon (480 easy feet from our deck to where the water meets the sand). We all know that there is a time limit here, a day, a couple of weeks away is coming where we will be packing up and moving out. The place must have a roof, be lockable, and the original interior rentable for the next eight months while Claude and Barbara take care of their affairs in Port Townsend and New Zealand. Somehow they have made this itinerant schedule work for them, and it is a kind of work. They are always on, open to the universe, willing to play with it, or as Claude would say, willing to “biff” things, that means toss it, dump it, give it away, move it, in order to keep momentum and move forward to what ever the great energy has in store, this is courage. Claude loves to talk with people and is quite jovial, yet at the same time, when it comes to making deals, expediting specialty tasks such as plumbing or electrical, or conducting trans-oceanic financial affairs (albeit not large), he is shrewd and efficient, shaking out the best deal, usually resulting in a win/win arrangement.

On a completely different note, doing remodel work, which is a special art unto itself in the world of construction, always involves the demolition of old construction and exposure to various unknown, although not unexpected, hazards. Nasty materials, extremes in dust and noise, dangerous debris being moved around in areas that look more like war zones force one to stay alert and ready for surprises. Under these conditions one accepts the occasional scrape, cut, or poke which breaks the skin and draws blood, as part of the profession. In a tropical area such as Moorea the occurrence of what is an acceptable wound takes on a new dimension, it doesn’t behave the same as it would in the more temperate climes. The cut or wound is warm; it stays warm and wet in a juicy way. Bugs, little flies, and powdered demolition debris are instantly attracted to the reddened area. Because of the heat it is quite uncomfortable to wear the amount of protective clothing usually considered standard. Washing the damaged area is a must, putting an antibiotic ointment on it immediately then spraying it with insecticide to keep the bugs from feeding on it come along with putting on a band-aid. Lurking in the background is the fear that your wound could upgrade itself into a staff infection, thus festering, becoming more painful, going deeper into your body. A staff infection must be treated with great respect, uncontrolled it can cause blood poisoning, turn into the difficult to control flesh-eating disease, and occasionally lead to death.

So, when remodeling in a tropical environment, one might have a beautiful blue lagoon only 480 feet away and thousands of coconuts hanging from the palms, but hot sweaty work is hot sweaty work, and infections on the skin are just as common as infections in the guts. The availability of food is limited and very different from the temperate diet. One naturally eats the tasty fruits and locally caught fish, yet this requires refrigeration if not eaten immediately and also doesn’t quite give you the full feeling you are used to. In particular, here in this French colony, white bread is the standard, very light and empty. There are completely familiar food items for sale in some of the stores, the packages of junk food chips etc. along with very French connoisseur bad-for-you items, it is all so expensive you think there is a trick of some sort, like a 75% discount at a secret insider register, that kind of thing but there isn’t.

Separate Message, Not Really Part of The Blog (yeah right)

Hello Family and Others, It's 2:30 AM and I can't sleep, our Tahitian
cat is resting on my arm, the fan is blowing, window holes open, the
occasional mosquito is whining, and it is quite warm and humid. I
knew I was used to my Internet lifeline for chatting, e-mail, blog
entries, news, and money management, yet it's not until that system
breaks down that I really become fully aware of this convenience.
This little computer, a PowerBook G4, has also been acting up quite
regularly, frequent sudden freezes and crashes, I've become accustomed
to doing manual saves often, although what is really bothersome is a
crash right in the middle of an upload or download, but presently that
is not an issue as our island service provider's very casual attitude
toward customer service has put us off-line. Therefore I type this in
hopes of copying and pasting later today through the use of the rather
expensive wi-fi offered by the little camera store nearby ($.20 a
minute). Our server might be accessible by Wednesday afternoon, the
big problem is a password, that's all, and no one knows it, not even
the people running the business, just the owner who is out of town.

The fan blows, not always, but when the wind dies down there is
nothing better. Because of our time crunch I worked pretty much
through the weekend, wasn't bad, lots of rain, and being indoors
playing with tiles and finish work wasn't so bad. I made one attempt
to check my e-mail at a bar down the road, also 20 cents a minute and
did get through to Sophia for a moment; problem there was the French
keyboard. I'm sure that is a very practical thing when you are typing
in French, using all of those q's u's, and everything else in its own
way, but when trying to rip out a few messages in English and not look
severely dyslexic forget it, it's all messed up, and just to make it
worse the numbers and symbols across the top are in the opposite
configurations, symbol is in regular case and number is upper case,
not to mention the question mark, colon, comma, period, etc. are all
in different places too. Why did they do that?? Answer: Just to be
French. Which leads one to comment on one of the many reasons they
didn't become masters of the universe, they don't know how to put
together electrical or mechanical devices, their plugs are huge and
retarded looking, the little boxes they use in the walls and the
switches are also the type you rather smash with a hammer than use,
their fixtures in general are usually either too big and over built or
too flimsy.

The fan blows on and now here is why the Germans lost their battle for
masters of the universe. In Papeete there are lots of supply stores,
of course, this is the middle of nowhere, there better be. So you
have a wide range of various appliance, fixture, tool, and
construction items to choose from, every country that makes something
must have at least one item there. Well, we needed a table saw and
given the choices, lack of choices, and prices we chose a German
model, nice and strong, heavy, well put together. Only thing was we
got ours in a box with an instruction booklet, ferried it over here to
Moorea and opened it in the kitchen (the only functioning room in our
torn-up tropical remodel). Wow, there it was, all the parts, all the
nuts and bolts and other clever gadgets to go on it somewhere. Of
course getting things like this is common, every parent knows that,
but the Germans get the prize for making this a true torture. The
assembly instruction booklet was thick, in several languages of
course, and full of numbered parts lists and technical photos. Well,
I almost threw the book out, but being that we are so far from any
regular stuff and especially a table saw, I didn't want to make any
mistakes to I opted to read the directions, oh my gosh, these people
were serious, and I wish I was joking, they could write several
paragraphs on how to put in two bolts that are in your face and
obvious. Using lots of numbers, engineering descriptions, technical
drawings, and an English that was probably more commonly used a
hundred years ago in London during the industrial revolution. I think
an American farmer could have written an excellent assembly guide in
about 10 sentences not 10 pages.

Anyway, I have some stories ready to pop up to the blog and some
photos too as soon as our guy can wake up and give us the secret
password, until then I will only make minimal use of this 20 cents a
minute stuff with French keyboards. Just for comparison, in South
America you can use a nice PC with a pretty quick connection and an
American keyboard for around 40 cents to a dollar an hour, rarely more
than that. I might try to get a phone card today, but there are
almost no phones to be seen, most people have cell phones which are on
a very expensive minute by minute system, not the generous plans we
masters of the universe are used to in our secure homeland. So,
basically, all is well, snafu of course, we all know that. The deck
in on, the rafters are tacked into place, the weather just does its
thing, hot, sunny, cloudy, wet, humid, calm, windy, all in a matter of
hours. Looking out at the reef the past couple of days I could see
that the waves breaking from the open ocean were rather huge, I don't
know what is going on out there but it sure is nice to be on land.

Lots of Stories and Photos All Ready BUT!

Bilito's Mystery Travels officially does not endorse Macs. Period end
of story. For the time being I can use this very old PC for minimum
communication. Hopefully I can retrieve some of the Pics and Docs on
the Mac before it goes to the same place the Wicked Witch of the North
went to in the Wizard of Oz.

All well, SNAFU, making progress in the typical fashion. Blustery warm weather.
Photos and Stories abound, other things, well....

Working in Paradise

Charlie is the name of the helper from New Jersey, although you would
never know he came from there. He has been here seven years,
Australia and New Zealand before this. Now he is married to a
Tahitian and has a French passport. His accent is heavy and
vocabulary strange as he has been speaking Tahitian and French while
living deep in the bowels of the backside of this island, the dark
half that is not lit up at night when flying over it. In this area
you will see the Tahitian flags, blue and white, the Free Tahiti, i.e.
no French control.

Charlie wants to learn as many trades as he can, he works hard and
clean. He has two children, half Tahitian, and wants to introduce
baseball to their school. He has a large and beautiful tattoo on his
whole chest depicting his life story with all of its struggles and
rewards. In addition to Charlie we have two other former Americans on
the work crew, Steve and Roger. They too have been here a long time
and have gotten French passports, they are builders, doing new
construction and remodels. Unlike Charlie they speak less French and
Tahitian, but do have superior handles on the island ways and
functional lingo.

We are in demolition mode right now, getting rid of the ugly stuff and
planning on what will replace it. As much of the material is saved as
possible as the prices of everything here are rather high, old 2x4s
are like big cumbersome chunks of money, coveted by neighbors and
carefully stacked. There is a small building supply store on this
island, but the big ones are in Papeete, a ferry ride away.

The weather is generally warm, really and truly don't need much
clothes, ever, so forget much packing when coming here. The
rainsqualls we had on Monday didn't stop work, just felt like what a
shower is supposed to feel like, warm and wet. Just before dawn the
calls and clucks of various birds start chiming in, dawn comes in
gently from the east, doors and window flaps open, the chickens are
busy plucking up any insects. We will begin day three. Pier holes
dug, concrete, hopefully agreement with the neighbors son whose deck
seems to sneak into our zone, hmm, an as-is situation.

Claude and Barbara were speaking of looking for their house and
comparing prices from Hawaii and other places. Here, one speaks in
millions, just like in Santa Barbara, but it is in millions of Pacific
Francs which in a simple conversion would be a million US pennies
which means a house costing CPF 27,000,000. is costing US$ 270,000.
So a fishburger down at Freddie's local mobile diner (called a
Roulotte) costs CPF 850, or US$ 8.50. Food is expensive here as very
little is grown here, not that it couldn't be, but other than some of
the regular tropical stuff much food in imported from all corners of
the world.

Charlie, Steve (former carpenter and foreman, Southern California
surfer married to a Tahitian and here for a long time), and Roger
(here for a really long time, also married to a Tahitian) all worked
their butts off today in the gentle but sufficiently warm sun. The
backdrop is the next-door Tiare Tahiti flower (Cape Jasmine, Gardenia)
farm and the dropping down mountains of Moorea. This is Claude and
Barbara's back yard which will have a new deck and veranda with an
outdoor covered kitchen, also an out door shower, a new Tahiti style
extra room and more. Very few Americans live here as Claude is French
(with a lot of American experience) he can live here as a regular
resident, work (if he wants), own property, gets full medical
insurance, and has one heck of a fun time speaking with all of the
French people around here.

At noon and in the evening after work we make sure to walk (100 feet)
to the beach and go for a quick swim, do the "bon jours" and walk out
on the dock. Right there in this water are big sea cucumbers, very
long skinny transparent needlefish, bright fluorescent blue and black
and yellow angle fish, puffer fish, and manta rays. One of these days
we'll rent a couple of kayaks and paddle over to the motu, the lagoon
island of which there are several. I met a 70+-year-old French guy
who was telling me about his triathlon training (this is NOT me) but
we did have a nice talk about the nice bike ride circumnavigating the
island, it is basically all flat with one big hill.

Doing a remodel here is quite interesting, a different world of
construction, mainly 2 x 3's and 3 x 6's and stuff like that. The
stores use a combination of inches and meters; materials come from the
USA, China, Australia, France, and everywhere else. We don't have a
car so deliveries come in small Japanese trucks with Tahitian drivers
smiling as they check out the new gringo's project. Tonight, after
dinner, after sunset at the beach, I did my 6.5-minute cruiser ride to
the neighborhood mini shopping center and wi-fi zone. It was a long
and interesting day like all the rest, unpredictable, hard-working,
full of little energies and dramas, amazing backdrop and a good
therapeutic swim.

I am still on the learning curve with Barbara's powerbook, so I
haven't had the time to edit and upload photos of this area yet, that
will happen soon, I want to see them too.