Working Saturday

So in order to get the server up and running, we had to go to work on a Saturday. And in order to have tech support from Hawaii, we had to get here pretty early too. After watching Germany-Argentina (:-(), which started at 3.00am, we headed over to work and are still here. Shorts and t-shirts - it's Saturday! Evidently, we got it to work.

At least we got to see the sunrise. This right here could very well be the first picture of the sunrise on Saturday, July 1st. That is unless someone took a picture on the outer islands before I did. But let's just say they didn't.

Random Stuff

This box is stored in the conference room, right next to the PEACESAT VTC equipment we're working with. It belongs in the Family Planning division of the hospital, but on Ebeye free space is an issue. A 23kg box of condoms doesn't exactly fit...

Last weekend I was invited to a double anniversary of some hospital staff members. It was a great experience, but as I didn't have my own camera, I pretty much don't have any pictures from the party. Regardless, this is Clann, the tech support guy, and this puppy someone found. And me.

Once every month (or even less often, I'm not sure), a huge barge comes to the Atoll to unload supplies. Even considering the density of population on Ebeye, the amount of cargo still looks pretty impressive.

Here's another picture of four hardworking men. Note the laptop screen. There's little time for fun at work, but some people manage to play a quick game while the server is down and various versions of Windows are being installed on every machine available.

Camera is Here!

Finally, my camera is here - it's only been about 18 days since I ordered it. At least it's here all in one piece. I haven't quite learned how to use it yet, but this is what I got in the last fiew moments it was light outside. This is our trailer.637.
 That's a palm tree. Palm trees are very rare around here.

Not really; I think there might be more palm trees on Kwaj than there are Marshallese on Ebeye.
  And this is that I ride around. And look for when it gets stolen or "borrowed" by someone who needs a quick ride. This week Conrad and I are 1-1 in terms of how many times our bikes got stolen - in fact, he still hasn't found his at this point.  

The Ocean

While my own camera is still not here, here's another picture from Conrad. This is the "dock" at the yacht club for small boats and windsurfing boards. That's right, it's just a beach. Looking at the ocean at least a few times every day is one of the undisputable benefits of the island life. Even though the views are not always especially remarkable, there's still something captivating about the huge mass of water, and the eyes never get tired. I guess that's it for this post. Go Argentina!

Ghana vs. U.S.

Last night we woke up as usual to see the 2am game - this time it was Ghana vs. U.S. The Adult Recreation Center here was open for this occasion and about 10 of us watched the game there on a nice TV. Well, I guess there's no point of talking about the game; at least Ghana will go on... I blame CONRAD.

Water Taxi

So today we had to take a water taxi, which is what happens when we're late for that early boat. It's not that big of a deal (in fact it's considerably faster), but it's a whole $4 as opposed to the free ferry, and it's in general pretty hard to predict when the taxi will be there; what's more unpredictable, is whether it will have fuel so you can actually use it. Anyway, so we watched Argentina - Netherlands at 7 am, hopefully the lamest game of the Cup - hard to tell when we only saw so few. This picture of us with Clann (the younger guy, in charge of IT here until they fill the IT Director position) and Maung, a Burmese volunteer helping with IT since his wife is a doctor here and they want to be in one place.

Another Sunny Weekend

This past weekend we went sailing again, both days actually, so that was quite nice. We had some problems with the equipment the second day though, so we'll have to fix a couple of things before we can go again. Hopefully, we'll try to get licensed by next weekend though, so hopefully we'll be able to rent a bigger boat that time. Until I get my camera (which is on its way!), enjoy Conrad's masterpieces. That's probably me in the process of de-rigging.
After we got back, we came across sime fire fighters cutting the fish they caught that day and... feeding the sharks with the scraps. There's little rocks right by the water - you just stand there with a piece of fish in your hand, dip it into the water, after which like 20 sharks are bumping into each other while trying to get to the spot where your hand just was. And then if you're that guy, you try to catch it's tail. Don't be that guy.  

Sailing

So they had some sort of a Yacht Club open house or something, during which we could go to the beach, take the boats, and procede to have fun while roasting ourselves in the hot sun. It took some convincing of the Yacht Club people that we know what we're doing, but they made us pass some test or something, so we could rent the boats in the future.
Apparently, it wasn't that easy - after we passed the test it turned out we had to sit through a 2-day class and then pass some written tests and G-d knows what else in order to actually get licensed. The good news is I think we can get the motor boat license with that as well. Motor boat, motor boat... 

Ebeye. Our first impressions

We work on an island called Ebeye, which is the second most overcrowded place in the Pacific. I think. Ebeye population is disproportionally young, and children are pretty much everywhere - including this beach, where they spotted us and wanted us to take a million pictures of them and with them...
This is the ferry we use to get to Ebeye from Kwaj where we're staying. It's an ex-landing vessel, kinda like the ones you saw in Saving Private Ryan. I don't really mind the 25 minute ride one-way; the only problem is the schedule. We have to get up at 6.30am in order to catch one on our way to work. The worst.

Training in Hawaii

I guess there is a lot more that could be said about our training, but here's the only pictures I have that are really worth posting. We happened to be in Honolulu for the Memorial Day, and it appears there's a tradition of letting lots of candles float into the ocean (they put the candles on little boats and use some crazy big boats to actually push the candles into the ocean. Some candles don't make it and get back...)



This one is from our last dinner together with all the people who were there from CMU, i.e. instructors, mentors, program assistants, as well as all the student consultants who were soon heading towards various locations in Micronesia. Hawaiian 1lb burgers aren't worth it by the way. It's hard to skip something on the menu when it says 1lb and when it's meat though...