The week falls away before my sandaled feet and I come closer and closer to re-alterpatriation, bipolymigration, repetimmigrasidence or whatever a good made-up word might be for reentering a country that is temporarily taken for one's home. I'm sure the correct word exists. It usually does.
Terminology for such complicated things and myriad bewildering alternatives for established speech tend to prey on the mind after having read anything by Stephen Fry, as I have been doing (The Hippopotamus, not for the weak of spirit, Fry 1988) which is entirely inevitable. Inescapable. Ineluctable, in fact.
Subsequently one is left feeling a tiny bit inadequate merely as a fellow anglophone, not to mention a fledgling wielder of words, and not just a little bit relieved, appalled and amazed as well. Interesting book, you see. Really not for the weak of spirit or prudish of morals (or language) though.
-
And now I'm in Christchurch again. Aren't I fast? This is what happens when you start something and don't immediately finish it, of course: a mess of tenses I simply can't be arsed to clean up 
-
I was pretty much lying about the sandaled feet by the way, mine broke on a beach in Pacific Harbour after a night getting leathered with a crowd of locals, although I may have told you as much already. I cannot imagine why I thought it was interesting the first time, except perhaps to highlight my hatred of flip-flops, sunbathing and the beach mentality both individually and as a whole loathsome package, so perhaps the timely destruction of just one of these just made me so perversely smug I had to share.
On the night in question I might have passed out on the sands in the clasp of midnight and much rum, but I had in fact lain down for only a minute or two to have the ocean lap at my feet. The sandals bought on the first day in Nadi were not up to much, being mere flip-flappy wastes of otherwise useful atoms and cosmic fluff, and fell apart for no particular reason save that their very existence was a minor insult to me. Weaving back to the party I could hardly tell the difference, anyway. So for the most part boats and bare feet have been carrying me around the place.
All this talk of errant footwear is terribly thrilling, I know, but I really must tear you back to the facts of my last week of freedom, as I have come to think of it, before I jet back to Christchurch and thence to somewhere else to be a proper person again (as I have now almost done; the jetting that is, I'm in Auckland airport at the moment awaiting a transfer; I suppose the proper person idea will have to wait again) and go back to some kind of normality and routine. I would hate to disappoint you however or become bored myself, so I will try and do at least a couple of dumb or dangerous things every week, just so I have something to fill this space with. Suggestions are welcome. Bear in mind I am an abject coward at heart. I'm now mindful that this would make anything very silly or stupid immeasurably funnier, but I'll go out on a limb and accept anything you can think of.
Except a bungee jump or canyon swing.
It will probably be Nelson (my next location and pro tem place of residence) at the very north of the South Island, pretty much because I like the name and it has a population size I think will be to my liking; and into the immoral and greasy machinery of the employed shall I descend once more. Or ascend, depending on how you look at these things - I certainly won't be getting any warm remarks from you, my lovely audience, for not having had a job for the past 10 months, but if it's any consolation I am now poorer than a Soviet church mouse in the midst of a vodka famine and will soon be engaged in much toil, to the amusement of, not least of all, you lot 
-
Enough already!! Five paragraphs of nonsense and I haven't even started on the final week in Fiji, the Island Hopping Tour on and around the Yasawa islands which, possibly, is the first proper content yet in this post, Jesus queuejumping Christ.
I have to admit that I almost got annoyed with the legendary Fijian friendliness at times, as hard as that is to believe and as much of a grumpy old bastard that makes me sound. The fact everyone is so aware of this legend is most of the problem - for this sort of thing to work a little more grace is required for it to...work.
I wasn't actually pissed off you understand and not at all with any individuals, just a little weary from hearing that people are so friendly here sometimes from very drunk and very friendly Fijians, or listening to the same welcome/farewell song for the 13th time, or from being mobbed by staff members at every place because I have DVDs, something akin to flaunting hard currency about in the former USSR if you are to judge from the reactions of most locals.
At some points you don't want to have to explain yourself or where you come from yet again, and you might not like being coerced into appreciating the culture more or less at the point of a knife (or at the point of practically infinite friendliness, which in a way is far worse) and have traditional music, dance and art thrust inavoidably before your defenceless sense organs.
And particularly, because I'm ranting now and this needs to be said because almost all you humans have so far been unable to recognise this, particularly one might not want to be interrupted while watching a film. Why do people talk to me when I'm watching films?
It's like interrupting a deep conversation between two entirely absorbed strangers, never with anything important and usually some inanely trifling nonsense anyone else could help with. Is it assumed that because I'm in the middle of a movie I actually want to meet someone for the first time or engage in some whimsical bollocks of no account, or even talk about the movie itself when I am halfway through? Surely this cannot be a sane assumption, but if experience counts for anything then 10% of people I've met in my life are partially unhinged.
Actually that's quite a conservative figure given the many colourful ways people I've known have been deficient of hinges, but the movie interruption thing is one of the more consistent warning signs.
That singing thing is a famous and unmistakably Fijian feature of any holiday there - it is carefully designed to be so, a cynic might say - where each place you stay at apart from busy hotels and resorts welcomes each batch of new arrivals with an choral song performed by the massed ranks of staff. It can get quite impressive, with the Coral View resort where I first stopped sporting a choir of about 30, and a full range of singers from bass to soprano to the confusing womaney-man who helped out in the dorms. But more on those guys (or gals) later.
It's great when you have been friends with the people for a couple of days who then, for example, seranade you as you leave. That is charming and warming and supremely friendly. But when you have hardly said a word to anyone at all and have been there for just a day, possibly not even a ful day and much of that spent sleeping or talking only to the barman, and it has, for the sake of argument, even all been a bit shitty there and many of these same said people singing you off have been gruff and rather less than friendly, then it just smacks of something terribly false and even belittling to all the other wonderful people you have met. I speak mostly of just one place, but really there are three drawbacks to this island-hopping lark and I mention them here for good, even fluffy reasons:
item: On arriving at the port of Denarau where all these cruise thingies depart from, things are immediately confusing because you have to check in your main luggage, but are never told where or with whom. Two companies operate from the adjacent booths and their staff all wear the respective company garb, yet only one company apparently has anyone to deal with luggage so you (well, I) am left drifting uncertainly with all your (my) gear as the time of deperture creeps ever closer. The check-in staff offer no help, they just take your money and look weary and a bit pissed off, and you eventually have to track down fellow passengers to find that your luggage goes with the other company while you stay under the less-than-close wing of your own. Great exercise for your anxiety glands as you give your stuff to people you are apparently not even dealing, with and wave it a mournful goodbye from the quay as it disappears into thickets of dockside workers.
The check-in staff there were the first unfriendly Fijians I had met as well, which didn't improve my impressions.
item: You are almost constantly hurried about the place, unnecessarily as it usually turns out, and it seems you are always being told what to do which isn't much of a holiday, let alone one that's costing you as much as three weeks elsewhere.
This is linked to the strange and hugely overplayed notion of `Fiji time` which became an irritation not because you might be late (the idea being that it's all very relaxed over there and no-one cares much for times and schedules) but because everyone seems to think it so bloody funny, clever, charming or whatever. That it was almost never noticeable that anything was ever even late made it all rather banal, and achingly trite.
The meal times were always maintained to the very second, and were regimented enough to disprove the idea of Fiji Time entirely. The food was bloody good, and most were buffet-style affairs ideal for big fat greedy buggers like me, but they were at the same time every day which I can't get used to after years of making it up as I go along.
What actually became a problem was that it often ran in reverse, and we were all sent scurrying around far too early to do things such as when we were sent off the Wanna Taki cruise ship (or at least they tried to send us off, myself and a bloke from Kerala rebelled and refused to take part in their enforced shore leave, both claiming ailments of the leg, but really presenting classic symptoms of an irritation of the wallet) for mysterious cleaning purposes. A few days later my scheduled afternoon dive at The Pinnacle, just off the Wayaleilei coast, went ahead a full two hours before we had arranged, and had I not busted in on them to rearrange matters due to the promised (and paid-for) kayak tour of the lagoon not being run, because no-one could be bothered to do it, I would have completely missed it.
item: The Wanna Taki cruise was boring as fuck, quite frankly. It also wasn't even a cruise at all, because we arrived at a moored ship, the Wanna Taki, departed from that ship still moored and had not moved at all in the interim. It was, in fact, like being on any other island without any benefits of an actual island, such as a beach, some jungle or some room to walk ten feet without hitting something. Of course I could have gone ashore at the prescribed time, but refused on sheer principal because the staff came in at 9am and all but frog-marched us out of the dorm, claiming that we had to leave so they could `spray` inside, although all they could have wanted to use were deodorants and air fresheners, which I can quite happily cope after all my years inhaling more fruity and pungent airs.
Also the bloke in charge was the most boring bloke in the history of bad choices for blokes who run cruises. I once had a brilliant job as a salesman ("during the war....") where I was earning very well and was, in fact, pretty bloody fantastic at it being the highest earner not only of the people in the field, but of those in the office on the phones as well speaking to literally foour times as many people as I was every day. When some other guy came along with more training and experience than me and earned and performed even better, I didn't mind being second best because I was still damn good.
Then along came a guy called Bret who simply knew nothing of the world of sales, a world where spirit and attitude are everything and the very best can be brought low by the wrong kind of person. The kind of person who tells you a joke and then explains why it is meant to be funny - and the joke wasn't funny anyway. The kind of person who will talk at great length but do so just a little bit too quietly, so you are forced to pay attention, and you find after twenty minutes of your life have passed that you'll never get back that he has said the same thing he did yesterday, in four very slightly different ways, and it was never worth saying in the first place.
A stater of the extreme obvious, a crude and crass misfit with the social skill of mucous, the antithesis to the salesman and a cringingly bad communicator who could not read a dissatisified look if you wrapped it around his neck and pushed him from a gibbet, which is of course the kindest thing to do to these people.
I had to share a car with him for up to two hours each way every day for three weeks, to then be informed he was being made the permanent field sales manager. I quit the next day.
This big boring man with his big boring introduction was exactly like Bret, and any high spirits we may have had on entering the boat were taken from us and disassembled slowly and painfully before our eyes. That there were only nine guests on board, and that of these there was an Aussie girl with in infection of a dark nature and everyone else set to bitching and moaning about the food at another resort as soon as they sat down (and like I discussed with someone just the day before, it amazes and saddens me that a lot of people only seem to travel for the food; this is the most terrifying form of madness) only really made things worse.
I did my valiant best to rectify things though getting hugely drunk as soon as it seemed acceptable, and took part in the evening games and generally made the best of it including adopting (and subsequently killing, natch) my very own racing crab, but in reality I would rather have been almost anywhere else.
-
Anyway besides that, and the annoying fact that drinks were expensive throughout, and that the brochures and staff lead you to believe you will not have to pay for anything extra but you do in fact rather have to, it was a bloody good week. And now I have done all my complaining in one post, all the good stuff is coming in another. Hence the fluffy 
