"A good traveler has no plans, and is not intent on arriving."
Lao Tzu, C.550 BC-ish.
Dotted around the walls of YHA hostels in New Zealand are little quotes and apparent axioms from various adventurers, sports stars and philosophers and other such inspirational characters we seem to put so much stock in, usually ignoring their circumstances and often their literary ability. Many of them may be cornier than chicken feed but some of them are actually appropriate (A favourite of these is Edmund Hillary's "It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves" which is a great little saying even if Sir Eddie-baby did have the physical advantage only 6'5" of non-smoker can bring to bear, not to mention the time and burgeoning class to become a mountaineer in an age when gentlemen almost exclusively did such things) and when going out to jump off a bridge attached to little more than a big rubber band they are pretty good stuff for girding the loins. No-one's really a critic when their underwear is in danger of needing a second wash.
YHA Christchurch Central even goes so far as to have the above proverb from the itinerant Taoist made up in a decal and slapped on one of the doors in reception, and although at first I scoffed at it with much scorn and tincture of scoffing I'm now beginning to rather believe the old boy. Whenever I can't give two bits whether I arrive on time the journey is great, and every trip spent agonising about a schedule or obsessively planning necessary deeds becomes an intense irritation both to me and others. So let the word of the day be `chillax`, even if it is more useless than the sayings of anybody, except perhaps Yogi Berra.
I could have tried to enforce this sort of view on Lisa over this trip, possibly with carpet tacks, a hammer and a big indelible pen, but we have gone our seperate ways in order to not kill each other and have to anser any difficult questions. So it goes.
And I didn't even have to nail a sign to her forehead telling her to relax - I think she just got a bit crazy with not getting her own way any more 
I made it to Fiji two days before her, and man, the beach, the people, the weather: it's way too hard to get stressed about anything at all. I could lose a leg to sharks in this water (and I could, I'm not just filling out a paragraph) and not particularly care.
The only slight frustration at this point was that I came here to learn Scuba diving, which you cannot do if you have a cold due to the depth/pressure/ears & sinus thing, and it looked like I have the first real cold of the year starting just the day before I was due to get to the Scuba school. With just 5 full days on that island - my flights being booked up well in advance - this seemed to be pushing things a little.
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I am now putting up my collected and belated thoughts fom the last week or more, so you may have to bear with me on tenses and timings a little 
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The way to the little island nation was a bit hectic so I felt I deserved a reprieve once I finally got there. A delayed bus eventually met us for the trip from Queenstown back up to Christchurch, only to be told that the driver was himself waiting at our hostel specifically for us and our labours and time had been pointlessly wasted. Thank you, oh booking staff, your sign at main desk lies to us indeed ("Friendliest hostel in NZ!!!!" which I could have swallowed had I not come from Christchurch Central where the staff are plated with gold).
My flight from Christchurch boarded and left in perfect time, yet my fellow passengers seemed to take umbrage at the hour which it did so - 6:20am from Christchurch arriving at 11:45 in Nadi, the sole international airport in Fiji despite it being neither the capital nor a nice place at all.
Quite why my comrades in aviation were so touchy I am not sure, but there was much gnashing of teeth and chastising of family members at both customs areas. The flight itself was likewise marked by an unusual number of complaints regarding seats, temperature, in-flight entertainment (it's Economy class for Christ's sake, we're lucky not to be sitting on mailbags), noise, in-flight food and the like (when you expect good food on a plane it is time to start writing your will while you can still claim sound mind. When you ask for it in Economy class it's time to just give up your life's possessions to the first relative you find and practice your dribbling) which is quite strange behaviour even for tourists. Small children seemed especially fond of complaining at their extraordinary luck in sampling this paradise, their parents exhibiting equal testiness re: the ungrateful little shits, and even showed irritation with Fijian immigration officials (who were, let me state here, the friendliest I have yet met. They seemed almost like human beings) at their hapless fellow passengers, and at any God one might care to mention.
I sat gleefully smirking at nothing the whole way. I'm a git like that.
I probably had a good excuse to have a moan if I wanted, but there was nothing further from my mind. The day before I had slept for just two hours until 3am, and whiled away the pre-dawn morning writing up the last article-entry-post thingy. That night after no further sleep and a 7 hour coach ride I took a cab to Christchurch International, marvelled at the ease in which one goes about getting a plane even when a little bit tired and a large part stupid, and then 4 hours dozily smug flight over the Pacific and another taxi ride later I found myself checking in to a charming little place with some of the friendliest staff ever, and dialled up the smug yet further. I really can't help it. Perhaps it's all these drugs I'm taking (I'm joking! Unfortunately.)
The best thing about Fiji (okay, not the best at all but the best I could do in a passable hotel in a lacklustre town while awaiting bigger and better things) is that they have a cultural drink that, not to put too fine a point on it, gets you quite spectacularly out of your tree if you have enough of it. It is called Kava, and it's rather lovely even though you do have to sit around and sample it in small doses.
There is a protocol to taking it and it's ritualised into a fairly informal little ceremony; basically you have to be in a group of some size and each person has a bowl of the stuff in turn, and generally has to acknowledge receiving the bowl (the all-purpose Fijian greeting/affirmation/thank you "Bula!" works here) and after drinking eeach recipient claps three times. It's enough silly ritual to go through every time you have a drink because it makes you feel a little bit high and a little bit hazy, and is soporific in better quantities so a good night's sleep is assured after a night on the Kava.
Best of all it is completely hangover-free, the worst you can experience is a little more dopiness and lethargy than usual for the first few hours afetr waking. In my case it's very unlikely anyone would ever notice, and since I have a self-imposed lifelong ban from operating heavy machinery (including cars. Especially cars) there is no reason not to have a little as often as I like. I am, of course, trying to find out at the moment if I can export a nice big parcel back to England for when I return.
Aside from that the brief stay in Nadi was pretty unproductive, although I did meet Johnny and Graham, a couple of Yorkshire lads staying on the same small beach area North of the scanky town centre and was cheerfully sipping Kava with them all night (I tell ya, if they're not Irish they're Yorkshiremen, it's crazy. I think I've met about as many of the latter so far around the Pacific as I did living in Hull). In the grand scheme of things the few days there amounted to very little, but they did do so so very agreeably
