I got to accompany Austin out to Plantation Island overnight for some of his coral work again. We were supposed to leave on the first boat – and had to leave way early to be at the port on time through the typical Nadi morning gridlock …. so we arrived at Port Denerau before any of the shops were open:
It felt strange and empty.
And then it started filling up, but the staff for the Malolo Cat never showed up. Oh yes, the first boat was canceled. Island life.
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Evenutally we got on board — and I learned a few nifty things during the trip.
Behold this photo
Two nifty things about it. One is that the MOUNTAIN right behind the flag and under the cloud is Mount Koroba (Koromba) – the mountain we see from the farm directly to our north.
The other nifty thing here is the FLAG. Does it look a bit odd to you? Turns out this is Fiji’s maritime flag – red background instead of standard blue.
I guess the standard flag lacks the necessary visibility at sea.
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Killing time on the boat ride, Austin showed me the weird line on the skin of his hand:
a definite ridge line between the skin of his palm and the other skin. This led to a discussion – Austin saying how much more sensitive the skin of this palm is – which led to experiments (tickle here, tickle there: mine is more sensitive, too! … and I guess everybody’s is). And now finally I have an explanation for why my feet have always been SOOO ticklish. Lots one can learn when bored!
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Random shots at Plantation Island. Do any of these strike anyone else as odd?
Palm trees
Saving a pool chair
Thing that went bump in the night
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The Weird World of Burl
These are typical tree burls.
I do not get the appeal, but for some reason some people think it is really classy to buy bowls that are carved out of tree burls. This is a display of carved burl bowls at Jacks. I didn’t go look at the prices, but I know they have to run at least US$60 each.
Anyhow – I’m going into details about the burls because there was another oddity on Plantation Island that I saw this time that could have starred in PT Barnum’s side show if only it was human: the Warty Casuarina Tree.
It has a moderate size burl here.
And the more burls on the branches. And smaller ones on the smaller branches.
Until every single twig has tiny burls all over it. YIKES!
That’s SICK.
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FIJIAN WORD OF THE WEEK
I was going to give you “sick” – tauvimate – but I already taught you that.
So instead I’ll give you yatevuso – which means “lungs” . I’ll leave it to you to figure out why these words might be coming to mind right now.
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Happy week, Everybody!
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