Desde Sanlågu para Guåhan

Malak na Puti'on Tåsi--Dedicated to those lost at sea, again

2011-01-12T11:14:00.001+10:00

A few days after I offered up my mistake-riddled "Reinen I Langet, I Piti'on Tåsi," I realized that my favorite Chamoru hymn (and the only one I know gi kirason-hu) used metaphors of the ocean. I initially heard it at the first funeral I ever attended on island as an adult--for someone else who the sea took too soon, a fisherman.

It seems strange to me, upon reflection, that all of the Chamorus I know, myself included, automatically ask for permission when visiting the jungle--but do nothing similar when going in the water. Perhaps I haven't been here long enough or been around the right people (those people who bleed saltwater, they're there so much) to learn the proper way, or perhaps it's the guellas yan guellos who prefer the land, or perhaps we've taken our relationship with the sea for granted. Either way(s), it seems a shame to neither approach nature with humility nor awe.

*****

MALAK NA PUTI'ON TÅSI

Ma'lak na puti'on tåsi chachalåni i batko-ku
Radiant star of the sea, guide my boat
su'on mo'na gi tano'-hu u fåtto lalakse
[That] smoothly propels towards my land
Li'e' guini Maria i piligru na senlåhyan
Behold here Maria the numerous perils
Ya un tailaye i sahyan yanggen ti un gigiha.
And a cruel table if you do not lead the way.

Ma'lak na puti'on tåsi chachalåni i batko-ku
Radiant star of the sea, guide my boat
su'on mo'na gi tano-hu u fåtto lalakse
[That] smoothly propels towards my land
I ma'udai na taotao ha fa'poposgue i tasi
[Håfa kumekilek-ña i fino' Inglis, håfa i sihetu--i taotao pat i batko pat i piti'on tåsi?]
The boater leaves the sea
Yan i nanan mina'åse' chumochoma' i chaochao.
And most holy mother forbade rough waters.

Ma'lak na puti'on tåsi chachalåni i batko-ku
su'on mo'na gi tano'-hu ya u fåtto lalakse.

Reinan I Langet, I Piti'on Tasi--Dedicated to those lost at sea

2011-01-03T21:25:00.010+10:00

(Icon by Liliana Dumitru. You can also find her work here.)

The sea took two away.

I can't find any Chamoru prayers online dedicated to those who the ocean decided to claim. Perhaps because Santa Maria Kamalen is the patron saint of Guåhan, no one prays to St. Brendan (Irish apostle who saw a giant sea monster) or St. Nicholas (yes, the Greek bishop on whom Santa Claus is based doubles as the patron of fishermen and prostitutes) for the specific purpose of protecting those who make their lives gi tasi.

But it turns out that Stella Maris, or Our Lady, Star of the Sea, is the patroness for Catholic missions devoted to seafaring. Given the island's veneration of the Virgin, it would seem altogether appropriate--and culturally reassuring, no matter what one's spiritual persuasion may be--that some incarnation of Our Lady extends from the sandy floors to the waves on the reef.

And while I normally detest the metaphors associated with death, in this one hymn I do find some solace in the idea of "life's surge" (which I clumsily translated as "napun lina'la'"). My only hope is that the grieving families can, in time, find peace in theirs.

*****
Translation of "Hail Queen of Heaven, the Ocean Star"
ABE REINAN I LANGET, I PITI'ON TÅSI

Abe, reinan i langet, i piti'on tåsi,
Chachalenen i lina'on gi papa',
I napun lina'la' ha matmos ham,
Na'såfu ham ginen i piligru yan i triniste.

Nanan si Jesus, i piti'on tåsi,
Tayuyuti i lina'on, tayuyuti para guahu.

I Bithen benikno yan sensiyu,
Manisao ham, ta fanaitai para hågu,
Na'håsso iyo-mu Lahi ni apåsi
I presiu iyo-ta isao.

Sen pura i Bithen, i piti'on tåsi,
Tayuyuti i inisao, tayuyuti para guahu.

Yan Guiya na gaige gui' i langet,
Una na Yu'os, tres na taotao,
Humale' i lina'la', i grasia, i guinaiya,
Mandimu ham para hågu.

Sen ma'lak reina, i piti'on tåsi,
Tayuyuti para i famaguon-mu, tayuyuti para guahu.

JesusMariaJose--i essitan Chamoru

2010-12-28T17:51:00.005+10:00

For the record: sometimes I had a hard time understanding my grandmother when I was younger due to her accent. In the past two years I finally parsed out her two favorite sayings: "Kalakas!" ("Disgusting!"--usually in reference to cats who would defecate in her garden, and poop in general) and "JesusMariaJose!" ("JesusMaryJoseph!"--as in the High Holy Familia--usually in reference to something unappealing, like, let's say, adulterous spouses and/or ugly hairstyles).

So this joke's out for iyo-ku Nanan Biha, yan todu i i man'amko ni umessitan. Got any more? I'd love to collect some, and I'm bugging my Saipanese che'lus to do the same.

***

Auntie Uncha heard strange sounds coming from her daughter's bedroom in the middle of the night, so she went to go check on her. To her shock, there was no daughter where she was supposed to be--namely, in bed and sleeping!

Ilek-ña si Auntie Uncha, "JesusMariaJose!"

From under the bed came a panicky voice, "GUAHU si Jesus! Månnge' si Maria yan si Jose?!"

Felis nochebuena, felis pascua, felis navidad, tiempon minagof, etc. etc.

2010-12-25T09:29:00.009+10:00

Ginen si Walter A. Manglona yan i man'amko giya Saipan. (Like the spaceships in his earlier video, I don't get why he would ask for a Maserati because Saipan has literally one road and the speed limit is 35, but whatever.) Umespiha yu' i kanta "Puengi Yu'os," lao ti siña gi Youtube.

Na'maolek i ha'ani-hamyo!

Two odes for a dead boonie dog

2010-12-24T01:30:00.004+10:00

Never was boonie dog more persistent

Chasing cars he was sure quite consistent

He peed on my car

But did not wander far

For this dog's loyalty was infinite.

*****

Guard dog ferocious I never did fear

On his left side a flippy flop ear

He sprawled in the street,

Humped all dogs in heat,

But no bark could I ever hold more dear.

(Photo lifted from Guam Animals In Need Facebook page. This dog is different than Woofie in that Woofie had significantly less fur, more of a limp, and generally liked to play dead when he wasn't being . . . dead. Damn I miss this dog.)

Regrets

2010-12-23T11:02:00.006+10:00

Okay, I take back the unkind words I wrote in the previous post about Ernest the Pretty Good whoring it up with the mangy dog from the corner who pees on my car. That mangy dog just died in the backyard. Rest in peace, Woofie. May you have all the cars you could chase/mark in heaven.

Triste yu'. SAD.

Destroyer of Christmas mirth and cheer

2010-12-22T23:08:00.006+10:00

Don't be fooled by the tail that's wagging so fast the camera can't even capture it. Ernest the Mostly Awesome has been downgraded to Ernest the Pretty Good on account of: 1) Whoring it up with the mangy dog up the street who pees on my car, and 2) Chewing through the extension chord for the outdoor lights, thereby depriving our neighbors of festive twinkle. In hindsight it's a good thing we didn't get a light-up nativity scene. Given Ernest's penchant for chewing on plastic things, it would be less than stellar to wake up to a decapitated wise man.

Tiempon Minagof

2010-12-20T16:05:00.007+10:00

This is the first time I've been in a house with a Christmas tree in twelve years. While the idea of using a palm tree crossed my mind, previous attempts at keeping it alive in our radon-infested house seemed for naught.

In general, the whole concept of decorating one's tropical home with snowflake and reindeer-themed ornaments seems silly to me, so as you can see in the bottom righthand corner, I took some liberties and used a Palauan basket for holding pine needles (to bring out the smell of a real Christmas tree, as per The Boyfriend's request) and glass/styrofoam balls.

And in addition, poinsettia here is $35 per plant. Given our propensity for not using the air con and the fact that said poinsettia would meet certain doom in about two hours, we're going with the plastic glittery kind! 'Cause we're nothing if not classy this holiday season.

Of course, this being Guåhan, the more traditional and/or Katoliku familia Chamoru might ask where the balen (nativity scene) is, to which I would have an awkward time professing the atheist persuasion without totally sounding like a Christmas-murdering douche. My family here, to my knowledge, hasn't done the balen plus lumot (moss) thing in a while, so that's on my list for next year. I'm sure someone has a spare set of baby Jesus and kings they might be willing to part with. And in the interim, those two bell-ringing penguins on a tea tray will have to do for now.

Come on in . . . or not

2010-12-02T23:24:00.007+10:00

(Photo from Don Farrell's collection at Guampedia, you can see more here!)

The Boyfriend and I haven't had many guests at our house. First, it's a certifiable health hazard since we got a little slack with the cleaning when work lives got way tinane'ne'ne'. Second--and this is what embarrasses me--I only realize now that I've had a bit of shame about my neighborhood, unacknowledged, so much so I didn't even know I had it until I spent some time reading (some) military wives' blogs. I got over it.

You see: the barking pack of flea-bitten boonie dogs down the street. I hear: an awesome security system.

You see: the tall weeds. I feel: rainy season in full swing, and in the meantime, my banana plants are doing just fine, thanks.

You see: a small house. I live: in a place that's manageable, where when I open the doors the cross breezes air it out mad fast.

You see: concrete building materials. I know: strength in a typhoon.

You see: little square boxes. I get: that all together, the inhabitants form a clan/i familia/a network, on a road whose namesake marks history and foresight.

You see: a ghetto canopy over a driveway. I cherish: the nights spent underneath those playing cards, saying prayers, or barbecuing.

You buy: Paradise/Talo Verde/Anonymous Rancho Whatever Estates, whose brochures cry out "Just like the States!" I pity: a place with no signs of life.

Grateful for . . .

2010-11-27T23:19:00.010+10:00

waking up to chickens in the yard,

hearing chickens STILL at 2pm in the afternoon,

the neighbor's band pracice,

when the people down the street have a party and/or wash the car and blast the Chamoru music,

the 15-minute drive to Tumon Beach,

86 degrees year-round,

this precious double life I get to live, outside/insider, local/not local, the watched/the watchee,

rainy season under a tin roof,

drinking beer under the canopy in a friend's yard on a Saturday night,

waving to neighbors,

stars,

my zori tan,

kåntan Chamoru gi i rediu,

a loving family, and

generous people.

Goobernatorial elections

2010-11-01T23:10:00.004+10:00

Voting options irritated me in Sanlågu. Like, sure, eight years of Dubya was a travesty in the federal/global sense, but in general you're far enough removed from D.C. that you simply don't meet the guy at your local grocery store. If there's any upside to the stateside political ruling class/elites, it's that those guys are probably not gonna shop where you do, among the unwashed proles.

Not so in Guåhan. It's been at least THREE times where I've been at a coffee shop and a certain World of Warcraft-playing Level 70 Dwarf-Priest lieutenant governor candidate made me shake his hand in spite of my looking fully engaged with my blank screen.

These are dire times. One goobernatorial candidate's family essentially runs corporate empire (health insurance, grocery stores, real estate, Budweiser/Pepsi) on this island, and the best thing one of the other candidate's more fervent supporters could say to me was, "Well, none of those federal charges stuck!"

So what caused me mere irritation in Sanlågu is giving me straight-up hives here in Guåhan. There isn't enough sunscreen in the world to keep my skin from somehow getting scorched if I vote Sunshine/Democrat. And as for the Republican slate, the campaign motto of "All About You" might as well end with "because, in the end, I need to ensure you get paid so i familia gets paid via your health insurance deductibles, weekly grocery bill, and that six-pack you so desperately needed when voting was all said and done."

And for parting words . . . I imagine that there were liberties taken with the translation, but I can only turn to Plato: "Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being ruled by those who are dumber."

The Canine Rototiller

2010-10-29T18:09:00.004+10:00

Meet Ernest.

She is technically the neighbor's dog and technically has a different name, but seeing as she likes to run around our yard, bark at the 200-pound wild pig that brazenly visits under the full moon, and sleeps near our door, I like to think she is partially ours.

Her original name (her original name, other than the neighbor's selection for her) was Ernest the Awesome, but given her farts when you pet her stomach and the utter destruction of The Boyfriend's kangkong/seedling boxes, she got demoted to Ernest the Mostly Awesome.

The infinite wisdom of Chris Rock

2010-10-27T12:10:00.010+10:00

I made a conscious decision not to post musings here about politics/colonialism/race/militarization/the environment/sartorial choices, since there are others far better equipped to expound on such subjects--in blog form--than I. You'll see some of those writers to the right.

Also, I have no other place in my life to publicly post photos of slugs or what I ingested for breakfast.

But despite a mighty effort, I can't ignore those nasty "little" incidents popping up in daily life, whose occurrences increase in their frequency and ability to irritate me. The Drowning Mermaid's recent post about contact with military personnel exposed the marrow more clearly than I (and I imagine, a lot of locals) care to admit, and my mood's been a bit on, ahem, check, as it were.

So without yakking on about my thoughts on racism and all that other shit--acknowledging that her post touches on profound theories of local/tourist, military/civilian, Chamoru/not Chamoru--I guess the best possible way to (not) explain where I'm at personally, desde Sanlagu para Guahan after two and half years here, is to rely on Chris Rock to do it for me:

"If you're black, you gotta look at America a little bit different. You gotta look at America like the uncle that paid for you to go to college . . . but molested you."

Uncle Sam, indeed.

Walter A. Manglona just revived Richard Marx's career in the CNMI

2010-10-23T17:37:00.007+10:00

I can't believe that I never posted it (I first heard this song maybe back in April), but am glad I finally got around to it. The Chamoru rap starts at 3:10.

Walter A. Manglona, you're an effin' genius. (I'm not quite sure what the snowy New England background or spaceship have to do with Saipan or someone's broken kurason, but what do I know about artistic license?) Si Yu'os ma'ase for showing our young people that Chamoru can be relevant to pop culture.

(By the way, Walter, yanggen you're out there . . . Umekungok yu' i kanta-mu, something about throwing kannai-mu on someone's daggan, and I have no idea where to get your album. Let me know, nai?)

In case you've got an extra $3,000-$6,000 lying around . . .

2010-10-21T11:00:00.015+10:00

You too, could be the proud owner of this piece de resistance.

I just happened to spy an October 19 New York Times blurb about a book put out by the Museum of Modern Art's Library Council, which is based on Oliver Sacks's medical anthropology travelogue Island of the Colorblind.

Given that I finished reading this very book not two months ago, it seems somewhat fortuitous that I would happen across the blurb about--let's say it again, because we simply don't hear it enough out here as an indictment/excuse (but interestingly enough, never a point of pride)--"just a tiny tropical island in the middle of nowhere!"

Although, really, MOMA's overpriced book/art thing-y is less about Luta/Rota per se and more about the good doctor's nostalgia-inducing trip to the island. I think. I don't know because I haven't seen the book + excerpted text and am not jetsetting back to New York anytime soon to see the images in their respective gallery.

All I know is that New York Times called the MOMA book "mysterious" and "seductive." Given that it's a book with photographs of ferns, it sounds like the artist did a hell of job making them sexy, and I'd really like to hire him to take my next MySpace profile pics.

Airport/plane scenes, Guåhan-style

2010-07-05T22:46:00.003+10:00

Scene 1
Whereupon the plane taxis to the gate, and over the intercom you hear, "Auntie, can you please sit down? The fasten seatbelt sign is still on."

Scene 2
Whereupon waiting in the U.S. Citizen/Green Card line (note to self: always take Line 41, which is only for U.S. passport holders, which therefore moves at least twice as fast as the Green Card one), the guy coming back from training at Fort Benning looks at the quicker moving Line 41.

He says, "That line's moving a little slow because there's a youth soccer team who played in Korea. See that groups of kids up front?"

And I say, "Yeah, Korea--that's cool."

And he says, "Yeah, that guy right there is my nephew."

And about ten minutes later, looking at the old dude holding up our line, the same observant Fort Benning trainee notices it's the mayor of Mangilao.

Scene 3
Walking back to the car, I run into the spokeperson for one of the utilities, and we chat about her half-marathon in Australia for about five minutes before her ride pulls up.

As someone who has traveled extensively throughout the world, I can attest that contrary to Friendman's claim that it (the world) gets smaller and flatter, it is only at Guåhan's airport where I can own such small and special experiences.

Kåtu

2010-02-15T01:23:00.006+10:00

Unlike other people who blog but stray, I'm not gonna publicly berate myself for not keeping up regular updates, life gets in the way, blah blah blah, unsure of focus for writing, blah blah blah.

NONE OF THAT.

Instead, here's the feral cat The Boyfriend and I have been feeding for the past four months. She was pretty mean in the beginning (as evidenced by the consistent hissing despite our daily offerings of quality food), and so we called her Sourpuss.

But suddenly (about as fast as the chicks and chickens in our backyard mysteriously began to disappear), Sourpuss got really friendly with me. She started rubbing up on my feet or legs when I would feed her, and The Boyfriend and me never got around to catching her and taking her to the local animal shelter to get spayed because we wanted her to keep coming back.

HOWEVER. (You see where this is going. Maybe.)

It turns out that cats get friendly--not because they realize that the wonderful smartly dressed humans in Barrigåda occasionally dispense chicken breast and other tasty morsels--but because they GET PREGNANT.

Sourpuss, we are now taking the discourtesy of renaming you.

An introduction is in order. To all friends and familia: say "håfa adai" to her majesty SluttyCat (pre-pregnancy).

Full of it

2009-08-26T10:02:00.004+10:00

One of my biggest fears, in being charged with the care and maintenance of this house, is the septic tank system. To my knowledge, there’s no handy dandy gauge that lets you know when the tank is nearing capacity—literally, when it’s full of shit.

According to my mom, the tank needs to be pumped “every now and then.” But I’d prefer not to be alerted—even if it just “now and then”—by overflows in a bathroom whose existence is already marked by a questionable state of cleanliness.

This tank business is all new to me. In Guåhan, sewer hook-ups are not consistent throughout the island, in part because there are still major tracts of land that are “undeveloped” (or “pristine,” or “primitive,” depending on your perspective). On my little seven house street alone, we all have septic tanks, in no small part because hooking up to the municipal sewer lines would individually put us out about $10,000. Additionally, because we’re on a slight slope, we would have to install electric pumps. Which, in a typhoon or post-typhoon conditions, wouldn’t work... and again, leave us to deal with the shit.

I think of these issues whenever I’m behind a sewage-related/pump truck, which isn’t infrequent. A few months ago I also escaped near death as I followed a truck which had three port-a-potties strapped precariously to its back. That would have been a gruesome end.

This morning, I had the delight of following a Todo Mauleg truck for a few blocks. In Chamoru, todu maolek means “It’s all good.” Which is a sentiment I can’t argue with. Especially when you can handle your shit.

Here’s to the company that “comes rushing to get you flushing”!

Epiphany in steam and sea

2009-08-12T22:59:00.010+10:00

What's that?

It is indeed disconcerting when you think your dinner is climbing out of the biggest stockpot you have--especially when that stockpot is a little more than a foot across.

In fact, this is what the stockpot had in store:

The problem with this photo, mainly, is that there is no way to impress you with the scale of this creature. I tried taking photos of my hands next to the crab, but my hands are scrawny as it is anyway, and short of putting it right next to my head for reference there's really no way of convincing you that this beast is nearly 14 inches across. That claw? In diameter, it has to be at least four inches.

A friend was wonderful enough to bring this crab from Pohnpei when he visited a month ago. The crab has been sitting in my freezer for a month, while in the meantime I borrowed a crab cracker and agonized over when to spend the necessary hours savoring such an ungodly animal.

Never mind that when I finally opened the freezer bag last night, I had a mild panic attack, seeing as I have never actually cooked shellfish before, and it was already in the stockpot steaming away for nearly 15 minutes before it occurred to me to look online for instructions on how to not die from eating self-prepared shellfish. The thought of potentially effing up meat that goes for about $20-25 also made me slightly anxious.

I'm still alive--and not drowning in sorrow from throwing away $20-25--today so I didn't mess up, thankfully.

In fact, I was truly overjoyed to be able to capture in a few photographs what I can't call anything less than a food epiphany. I've had two before: one while eating lobster for the second time in my life at a lobster supper on Prince Edward Island (with its fresh hot rolls and melted butter, bottomless bowl of clam chowder, and blueberry pie with real cream whipped cream for afterwards), and another that involved a Muslim Chinese beef dish with coriander seeds and cilantro after an eight year stint in vegetarian naivete.

Things that I learned throughout this experience:

1. I will never be able to again have a first time eating crab from Pohnpei,

2. Claws and legs are absolutely worth the effort of gnawing away; it's about enjoying the sea water within and the firm texture of the flesh. However, if you only eat the legs, there are no words to describe your loss in neglecting the more tender and interesting body meat,

3. A ball-peen hammer is a reasonable substitute for a crab mallet,

4. Despite a genuine commitment to make sure that the intended dinner did not die in vain or wastefully, and given that the five foods on this planet I just don't like include kidney and liver, it is sometimes worth wasting a little bit (in this case, crab lungs) so as not to spoil the entire experience,

and,

5. Despite 2 1/2 hours of committed eating, slurping, picking, and smacking, it is reasonable to expect that one will, at the end of such an effort, be as hungry as one was when one started.

However, it was worth every second. The crab did not die in vain. Its shell and leftover parts (minus those suspiciously textured lungs) will be resurrected in stock, and maybe I'll end up keeping part of that claw as a memento for what is really, truly great food.

An American education?

2009-07-15T00:32:00.006+10:00

Today I met Chuukese man who had been a community worker back on his home island. He taught everything from breastfeeding and preventive healthcare to what he called "consumer education."

Specifically, he talked about how in Chuukese people make kon, a foodstuff made of boiled-pounded-oiled/dried breadfruit, and fishing. Those activities, in his words, are "custom and values"--which seemed to imply that he considered them the soul of Chuukese being. However, since Chuukese people have adopted elements of a cash economy, he said that he needs to "go with them to the store, show them how to buy."

Whatever he teaches in consumer education, I certainly hope it includes a lesson in how to NOT blow up their economy by securitization, deregulated markets, and cheap credit. Although to be fair, if a Wall Street trader has yet to figure out to tranche up coconut futures, I can have high hopes for Chuuk after all. Here's hoping.

Håfa i mas bunitu na mångga gi Guåhan? (Could you be the most beautiful mango in Guåhan?)

2009-07-10T21:12:00.009+10:00

Probably not. For one thing, you're a bilembines (star apple). And as confused as I am that you're around (considering that my grandma's tree fruited something like two months ago), I would still consider chopping you up, sprinkling brown sugar, and roasting you in the oven. If only the oven didn't create an ungodly unfathomable heat around 4 in the afternoon...

Håyi hamyo?

Yeah, okay, you're definitely contenders.

Ya hamyo?

I am impressed.

Given my bloggy keen interests in plant life, don't worry, ti kumakaduka yu' (not going batty/fuminihi). It's just that once I abandoned the greenery-starved regions of Sanlågu where I rode my bike, I picked up new interests.

Hågat's Mango Festival 2009 was two weeks ago. Unfortunately the photos of the bob-for-mangoes didn't turn out, and technology has yet to evolve a simultaneous web and smell-o-cast of the mango donut demonstration pavilion, but you'll have to take my word that kimchee mango pickles are gof mångge'.

Given that the backyard banana trees are doing wonderful things by not dying on me (unlike the Indoor Bonsai Ficus Number 1), too bad the bananas themselves continue to curse my existence. Blech. One day I will in fact be able to eat a banana.

Until then, I stick to the left side of the table. Or maybe at a house somewhere in Sinahåña or Chalan Pågo, where the despondent owners of a mango tree put a massive sign out front begging people to take them off their hands. This story might be apocryphal, but I'm willing to keep driving to determine if it is so.

What's in my backyard

2009-07-09T22:33:00.014+10:00

Like most other blogs, this one has obviously taken a break--partially because I had to figure out how to do some Photoshopping, and partially because the subject of this post took about two months to develop.

First of all, here's a decent view of our backyard. The grass was just cut, so the weeds aren't the usual foot tall. The vines you see at the base of the banana tree bunch are chains of love, which is this nasty invasive species from Asia which is basically covering all of the natural vegetation (including, unfortunately, massive swaths of land by the roads with their respective papaya and breadfruit trees, and the swordgrass). But you can also see our mansanita tree, and the banana trees' suckers sprouting up, in the bunch and to the left. Oh, but wait . . .

What's that? (Click on the photo to enlarge.)

I noticed this the blossom growing a few weeks before I left for Sanlågu in May, and so had a chance to at least take some shots to capture the rate of growth. Surprisingly enough, unlike everything else that shoots up here on Guåhan, the fruit bunch takes a relatively long time to mature.

Here you see the inside of the blossom beginning to face upwards as the blossom leaves fall off.

But the leaves don't just fall off--they do this interesting curl just before doing so. It's pretty elegant.

Slowly you see the rest of the bunch beginning to form . . .

I really don't know why industrial designers haven't taken this shape into account when doing new light fixtures.

Anyway, that is what I saw. And then I went away for three weeks, and then got lazy and forgot to take more pictures of the trees (actually, the weeds got long and annoying, or sometimes it was raining or it was too late in the day to catch good lght, or I didn't want to walk out there because the mosquitos would feast, and basically I was a wuss).

But finally we cut down the banana bunch and gave them to Nanan Biha.

According to her, we probably should have cut off the blossom about two feet ago so that the tree's energy could channel into the fruit (as opposed to the flower), and then let the bunch go for another month to ripen.

But as you can see, there are plenty more plants that might bear within the next year or so, so it could possibly be ensalåda fafalu from the backyard.

Back to Guåhan

2009-06-15T00:22:00.009+10:00

I've been gone for three weeks to Sanlågu and just returned a week ago to a blooming bunch of bananas, a bathroom where the cockroaches ran wild (you can tell by the eggs that were laid in our absence--gross), and a dead bonsai ficus in the living room. Disappointed. Dumesganananao yu'.

But at the same time, it's stories like these that make me glad to be back in our turquoise house on Guåhan:

POWER UPDATE: 9:15 A.M. - GPA: Chickens cause power outage

Pacific Daily News • news@guampdn.com • June 10, 2009

9:15 a.m. — Two stray chickens shorted-out a transformer in a Guam Power Authority substation this morning, cutting electricity to Anigua, Agana and Agana Heights.

GPA spokesman Art Perez said power went out at about 6:50 a.m. but was fully restored by 8:15 a.m. Perez did not expect lingering power problems to affect any of the villages in the outage.

Perez said the outage was unusual. GPA employees found the animals when they went to inspect the source of the outage.

“The chickens are not OK,” he said.

You can find a photo of the surprisingly well-preserved birds here
(probably for another week more) and another article on why the Guam Power Authority is trying to protect its dåggan.

Empanåda

2009-05-06T22:13:00.000+10:00

If there is one thing I craved while in Sanlågu, it was Chamoru-style empanåda. I had grown up only knowing these kinds (on the rare trips that my grandmother made to Sanlågu, carrying bags of frozen ones in her suitcase), so it was quite a shock when I got to Los Angeles and had my first taste of Filipino empanadas.

For those of you who have never tried the ones available in Los Angeles, Filipino empanadas are filled with chicken or pork and baked in a slightly sweet bready dough. I assume that variations include baking the fillings in flaky pastry dough and frying the things, but I never had any prepared that way in L.A.

I had tried some empanadas from some South American countries (I can't remember which ones now because it was more than a year ago) at Empanada Mama in New York: cheesy and tasty. You can also find recipes for nouveau varieties --like those for fillings with goat cheese and dandelion greens in the Los Angeles Times, which, frankly, sound sort of silly.

And so, the first morning I awoke in Guåhan, the first thing I did was get myself over to the Aguon store in Barigåda and get me two empanåda and a King Carr ice tea...

... and promptly, a little heartburn, too, because I wasn't exactly used to eating a spicy deep-fried something at 6:30 a.m.

But i kirason-hu, a little more clogged for the wear, nonetheless appreciates the goodness that is a Chamoru empanåda. As you can see, it's 1) deep-fried, 2) consists of a corn-based dough as opposed to all the other wheat-based ones I've tried in Sanlågu, and 3) orange, courtesy of the ubiquitous Chamoru spice, achiote seed. From the picture, you can't see that 1) it's got perfectly crunchy edges, and 2) it's warm, having been fried probably not less than an hour before, but probably less than even that.

And on the inside?

That's either toasted and ground rice or toasted cream of rice boiled with chicken stock and enhanced with bacon (or chicken), lots of pepper, and more achiote seed. Also notice that the outer dough has broken into individual crispy flakes courtesy of a deep fry job well done.

Simple breakfast bought for about $1 each from the Aguon store. But of course if you're not here, you can always try making them yourself (look under "Meat").

I palabrå-ña i gereru 2 ("Them's fightin' words 2," or a summary of Terminator 2)

2009-05-04T22:05:00.006+10:00

In the spirit of continuing to evolve the Chamoru language, as per i ga'chong-hu si Miget, a continuation from the previous post... Given his propensities for things sci-fi, I think he'll appreciate my efforts.

I sindålu siha mañadalu unu na taotao ni' pumarehu yan umali'e' i mimu na tano'. I litratu kahon humihot i matå-ña i taotao. Ilek-ña si Sarah:
"A man is saluted by his soldiers as he crosses a destroyed hallway and starts to inspect the battlefield from a safe distance. The camera [no Chamoru word for camera, from here out I use "picture box"] zooms in on his scarred face as Sarahs voice-over continues:"

"'Si Skynet, i Dangkolu na Måkina ni mumanea i dikike' na måkina siha, numå'i dos lulok na pekno' siha gi i tiempo; i hangai-ñiha: dåñu i maga'låhi di mata'pang na taotao siha: si John Connor, iyo-ku na låhi. I mina'hacha Lulok na Pekno' ha na'espånta yu' gi 1984, åntes mafañagu si John. Ti siña gui'. I mina'hugua Lulok na Pekno' ha na'espånta i patgon si John.'"
"Skynet, the computer that controlled the machines, sent two terminators [literally, we're going to go with "Steel Killer"] back through time; their mission: to destroy the leader of the human resistance: John Connor, my son. The first Terminator was programmed to strike at me in the year 1984, before John was born. It failed. The second was set to strike at John himself when he was just a child."

Taigue i matå-ña si John Connor gi i guaifi, ilek-ña si Sarah: "I Taotao na Sindålu Siha kenå'i i hacha na gereru ha' ni prumatehi si John. Håyi humånao si John?"
The close-up of John Connor dissolves into a blaze of inferno, as Sarah continues: "As before, the Resistance was able to send a lone warrior as a protector for John. It was just a question of which one would reach him first." [I have no idea how to write that, so let's go with a rhetorical question.]

I palabra-ña i gereru, or, "Them's fightin' words"

2009-04-29T22:44:00.012+10:00

I've been slogging away through one of the few Chamoru language texts, I Manmañaina-ta: I Manmaga'låhi yan I Manmå'gas: Geran Chamoru yan Españot, available and have developed a pretty awesome vocabulary in doing so. My word list has grown to about 220 words and though my reading is far from fluent, it's gotten much easier over time. As with any language learning practice, the key for me is to be disciplined and take a little at a time.

This word list gives you a sense of the book's topic:

aniti = devil
åtmas = weapon
chiget = to run over
dåñu = harm
dudeng = to cut, amputate
embeste = to challenge
espånta = to threaten, frighten
go'te = to retain by force
håtme = to attack
honño' = to hold down, suppress
hulat = to overpower, subdue
låmen = harm, wound, punish
mumu = fight, combat
ñaka' = hang (to death)
ñukot = to strangle
paki = shoot (a gun)
pekno' = killer
si'ok = to stab
traduti = to ambush
utot = to cut
yamak = to break, destroy

Needless to say, once I find a regular conversational partner I'm going to have some very action-packed dialogues.

In the meantime, I'm working on a translation of the plot synopsis for Terminator 2, which is probably one of the most violent movies I had ever seen as a kid and which probably scarred me for life.

"Lulok" means "metal". So I've translated "androids" and "robots" lulok na taotao siha, or metal people. Ideally, I would be able to call them "nefarious lulok na taotao siha ," but my vocab's not quite there yet. (Also, thank you to Creative Commons license user lrargerich for the photo!)

Courtesy of IMDB (with some liberties taken on my part):

En li'e' bula i kareta yan i famagu'on ni ~~humugåndo~~ manhugåndo gi plåsa.
"Production credits appear in shots of traffic lines and children playing in playgrounds."

Umasut i litråtu annai ~~mumaitai~~ manmatai i bos-ñiha i famagu'on; despues en li'e' i Los Angeles gi ~~2029~~ dos mit sientos bente nuebi.
"The shot starts to fade into blue as the sounds of children's voices die out, followed by a flash-forward to Los Angeles in 2029 AD."

Sumasalåguan i tano': bula fatso na kareta, bula i gima ni yamak, yan umattilong na plåsa kon i ha'iguas siha yan i kalabera siha.
"The world has become a wasteland of wrecked cars, destroyed buildings, and black-charred playgrounds filled with skeletons and skulls." [No word for "wasteland," so I'm going to go with sasalåguan, which means "hell."]

Ilek-ña si Sarah Connor: "~~Fakpo'~~ Manakpo' tres [billion] na lina'la' siha ~~gi Tenhos alas huega na fulu sigua, 1997~~ i diha bente nuebi gi Agosto/Tenhos mit sientos nubentai siete. I taotao siha ni la'la'la' i Gof Dångkolo na Guafi ilek-ñiha Dia Dethuisio. Ma Siha embeste i nuebu na pesadiya: mumu kontra i makina siha."
The voice of Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton) starts narrating: "3 billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. [No Chamoru word for "nuclear fire"; I'm going with "Really Big Fire."] They only lived to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines."

Now we get graphic.

I patas-ña i lilok na taotao ha yamak ha'iguas gi i tano'. ~~Tutuhon~~ Tumututuhon i mimu kontra i taotao siha yan i lilok na taotao siha.
"The foot of a metallic android smashes a skull on the ground. A battle is starting between human guerrilla troops and a technically far superior robotic army."

I makina siha ma chiget hai'guas siha, ma hulat i taotao siha ni ato'.
"Crushing skulls beneath their tracks, robotic tanks open a full-frontal assault on the humans, who are trained to make use of what shelter the ruined terrain offers them."

I batkon aire siha ma espiha i taotao siha, yan T-800 lilok na taotao siha ma espiha lokkue'. ~~Pumadesi~~ Manadesi i taotao siha, lao ma yamak bula i batkon aire, meggai i lilok na taotao, yan bula i [tanks].
"Flying aircraft search the ground for targets, as T-800 androids sweep the terrain at places the tanks cannot access. Although they suffer heavy losses, the humans manage to destroy several tanks, aircraft and androids."

I can't wait to see what happens next.

UPDATED: I diha trenta gi i Abrit/Lumuhu. Kumomprende yu' i fecha ta'lo gi på'go i ha'åni.

Kaffo' and pahong (pandanus fruit)

2009-04-22T14:03:00.009+10:00

While wandering on a northeastern beach, I came across a plant I'd never seen before. And it was sprouting what seemed to be a big fruit, so naturally I had to do some research.

A person in our group said the fruit was edible, but that it could make one's mouth itchy. I didn't bother to find out.

However, it turns out that this fruit is from the pandanus plant (pandanus fragrans) and is in fact edible, eaten most notably in Kiribati and the Marshall Islands. It's ripe when the those pod-like parts, called phalanges, separate, pop out and turn orange.

Obviously this fruit isn't ready for picking, then. If you look closely on the left side of the fruit, you'll see it beginning to turn slightly.

The phalanges then can give off a sweet smell. You can apparently eat them by boiling them or scooping out the pulp within, and they contain seeds--which themselves contain oxalates and are the little buggers that can cause itchiness or irritation when ingested (though they're not supposed to be toxic). [Note: the kaffo', eaten by fanihi/fruit bats, is different from fadang/federico palm seeds, which was theorized by Oliver Sacks (Island of the Colorblind) to cause the infamous lytico-bodig disease. Sacks thought that the fadang-eating fanihi concentrated the seed toxin within their body fat, which then transferred to Chamorus when they ate the bats.]

So if I happen to go back and get a ripe kaffo', I guess I'll be trying out this recipe, courtesy of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community's (2001) publication, The Fruits We Eat. I've paraphrased the exact directions, but here's the main gist:

1. Boil phalanges. Alternatively, you can also pound the crap out of them.

2. Remove pulp.

3. Strain out the seeds. The resulting juice should be thick.

4. Dry the juice on leaves in the sun or over a hot stove, in either small cakes or as a large rectangular one.

5. Flip it over, dry some more, and then cut.

Some variations include adding coconut milk or grated coconut to the juice itself. It's supposed to taste like a cross between coconut and almond, so maybe it would go well with a tumbler of... rum?

Munga umamot i semnak-hu away

2009-04-21T15:30:00.007+10:00

On the Chamoru language front, things are progressing, albeit pretty slowly. For the most part I've been disciplined about studying for about one hour a day, including a half hour of vocab review and a half hour of reading and/or writing. I've got a working vocabulary of about 800 words now.

You'll notice there's no speaking or listening practice in there; unfortunately, I've yet to gain a steady conversational partner. Like many other young Chamorus trying to learn their native tongue, it can be very hard to find a supportive conversational partner--partly because the old people may not have the physical stamina or patience to listen to young Chamorus stutter through 30 minutes of Chamoru babytalk (which is an inevitable and necessary stage of any language learning), and partly because I've got to get over my own personal embarassment at being in that babytalk phase myself.

So that embarassment thing has got to go, and it's one of my personal attitude change projects for this year.

In the meantime, I've started translating things for myself to practice and learn some new grammar. I listen to the Chamoru radio on a weekly basis and realized that one of the songs my mom used to sing a lot in English seemed pretty simple, and that I already knew a fair amount of the vocabulary. So here it is, my translation of:

Munga Umamot I Semnak-hu

Hågu i semnak-hu, i semnak-hu ha’,
Un na’magof yu’ anai humomhom langet
Ti un tungo’ hu guaiya hao
Munga umamot i semnak-hu.

Desde i painge gumuinifi yu’
Hågu gaige gi fi’on-hu
Puminiti yu’ anai makmata yu’,
Tåya hågu pues tumånges yu’.

Hågu i semnak-hu, i semnak-hu ha’,
Un na’magof yu’ anai humomhom langet
Ti un tungo’ hu guaiya hao
Munga umamot i semnak-hu.

Ilek-mu neni, tåya otro sa’
Ni håyi tumupa kurason-måmi
Lao må’pos ni guaiya i etro
Un na’yåmak i guinifi-hu.

Hågu i semnak-hu, i semnak-hu ha’,
Un na’magof yu’ anai humomhom langet
Ti un tungo’ hu guaiya hao
Munga umamot i semnak-hu.

"Munga" is a negative imperative and the root word of "umamot" is "amot," which means "take away." "Somnak" means "sunshine." Therefore this is a lame attempt at "You are My Sunshine."

A few translating things: First, there's a line in there about skies being gray. Well, the word for gray is "kulot apu," which sounds less than poetic, and so I went for cloudy, which is "homhom." That's a pretty awesome word, both in its repetition and round vowel! But alas, it also gives me 12 syllables in a line where there should only by nine. But you know what? It's a cool word so I'm going to homhom wherever the hell I want.

Second, the fourth stanza (which my mom left out, for reasons that will be obvious if you think about singing this song to a kid) goes like this:

"You told me once dear, there'd be no other
That no one else could come between
But now you've left me to love another
You have broken all my dreams."

The last line in that stanza is a pretty convenient phrase and I'm sure it's not included in the Donald Topping's Chamorro Reference Grammar, so for those of you wannabe Chamoru broken hearts, you can now say "Un na'yåmak i guinifi-hu," but if you really want to drive home the point that literally ALL of your dreams are now in the toilet, say "Un na'yåmak todu i guinifi-hu." I left out the "todu" part in the song because it was two extra syllables.

Third, this song doesn't make much sense on Guåhan, because let's face it, there's never a day without sunshine. Even in rainy season. The sun is relentless and every local will complain about how hot it is, even though this is a tropical island and that (literally) goes with the territory (that's a political status joke--ha ha groan). So yes, there's always sun--my yori tan testifies to that!

Morning surprise

2009-04-20T14:54:00.005+10:00

The title of this post could be taken in so many ways, but happily, over the weekend, it only meant one thing ...

... PUPPIES. These guys got loose from the neighbor's cage and of course I couldn't resist feeding them a little.

You call that dirty?

2009-04-08T16:11:00.005+10:00

At least two locals who grew up here have told me that they would prefer to live in Washington state or Saipan, because the air is "cleaner" and "fresher" there than in Guåhan.

Now, The Boyfriend is not the greatest photographer in the world (although he is pretty good), but he wouldn't have to do anything by way of Photoshopping to improve the actual look of the sky here. This is Tumon Bay during an outrigger canoe race in October 2008.

I'd say that's pretty awesome, particularly since I spent over three years biking in this mess in Sanlågu. Locals, that is what I would call air that is neither clean nor fresh. You can ask all of the accumulated particulate matter in my lungs.

(Thanks to Creative Common license users Ben Amstutz and Al Pavangkanan.)

The reading life

2009-04-05T11:11:00.004+10:00

If there is one thing that I do miss about the old places I used to live in Sanlågu, it's the availability of high variety bookstores and libraries. When I was younger, I used to buy at least one book a week. By the second year that I was working a job in Los Angeles, I began to stop buying books altogether once I realized the supreme wonders of the Los Angeles Public Library system, with its reasonable selection of academic titles, awesome online book catalog and automated email reminders, and ability to get the latest titles out to readers within a month's wait at most.

One of the fondest times of my life involved working part-time and being able to literally devote one or two full days out of the week to reading. I think that during that year I tore through about 100 titles.

Since then, I went to grad school, which effectively quashed any love for recreational reading outside the required 400 (frequently very boring) pages I got through a week. It's only now that I've started my reading again by limiting time on the internet.

And so it's off to find books once again. I paid $65 for a yearly friend-of-the-library card to the University of Guam library, and have found some titles I'd like to get have to come from off-island--and thus can take up to three months to get here and upwards of $50 in fees. So far I've taken out the cranky bastard Paul Theroux's Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific and am struggling to get through the last curmudgeonly chapter. I think it's two months overdue, but with a $.10 a day overdue fee, I'm not exactly in a rush to return it.

The Guam Public Library system I shamefully haven't looked into yet, but the on-going issue for me seems to be being able to get books that are most recently released or are a little bit, let's say, off-beat in topic (anyone on the cultural history of collective joy? anyone?). I do feel badly that here, like other library systems, the money is so tight that the air conditioner was out for two months and with it, the library's opening hours for two full months. The operational costs for protecting books in this tropical climate must be absurd.

Amazon delivers to Guåhan with shipping fees per book and thus eliminates savings from the cheaper prices, and MediaMail, which takes a week tops in Sanlågu, takes up to two months here. Barnes and Noble ships for free but costs way more than Amazon. Amazon's Kindle, or electronic reading device, is way too expensive right now, and each subsequent book in the library is going to cost at least $10 anyway. It would take me a long time to break even.

Which leaves three options in Guåhan: the Håfa Adai used bookstore (a great place to swap!), Faith Bookstore (good for local titles but with about 99% other inventory which I not only have no use for but am probably hostile towards), and Bestseller Books.

Bestseller is kind of like an airport bookstore; for shipping reasons (I'm guessing), its titles come in the airport/grocery store style compact editions. It does a good job of stocking local interest books in a way that online distribution has not yet acheived well for Guåhan-oriented titles. And because of its kind of limited selection of titles--once again, due to the high costs of maintaing and moving inventories on Guåhan--makes me think about getting into topics and titles I probably wouldn't otherwise purchase. Because last week I bought a history of Russian culture and politics since Tolstoy's death, called The Magical Chorus, which makes almost no sense to read on a tropical island in the western Pacific, but nonetheless does contain this pretty awesome excerpt:

"The 'sex problem' was a dominant topic in the influential intellectual salon of the St. Petersburg writer and philosopher Dmitri Merezhkovsky and his wife, the poet Zinaida Hippius, a red-haired beauty with the eyes of a mermaid... On May 1, 1905, a group gathered at the apartment of the decadent poet Nikolai Minsky, including Berdyaev, the influential Symbolist Vyacheslav Ivanov, the writer Alexei Remizov (all with their wives), Rozanov, Fedor Sologub, soon to be celebrated for his novel, Petty Demon, and a certain musician, as an eyewitness recorded, 'a blond Jew, handsome, unbaptized.' They dimmed the lights and twirled in a dervish-like dance in a mock Dionysian mystery. Then they symbolically crucified the musician, who had volunteered for the part.

"The point of the fathering was to perform a blood sacrifice. Ivanov and his wife, Lydia Zinovyeza-Annibal, dressed in red chitons with sleeves rolled up ('just like an executioner,' that eyewitness put it) cut the musician's wrist, mixed the blood with wine in a chalice and offered it around the circle. The ritual ended with 'fraternal kisses.'"

There were three copies for sale, but almost nothing in nonfiction about Asia, other Pacific islands (including Hawai'i), South America, Africa, and any other countries in Europe. What's the process that booksellers here undergo to determined the local market interest? Bestseller Books otherwise has the best variety of manga, religious/self-help, and mixed martial arts magazines. Rock on, regional interests.

The city I should live in...

2009-04-03T22:54:00.004+10:00

is apparently not Barrigåda, Guåhan.

It's New York City, because according to this quiz, I need to be assured that I:

"will blend into the crowd. You are the brooding type--introspective, creative, and eccentric--and NYC's cutting-edge, individualistic culture and ambience will appeal to you."

This is probably a nice way of saying that I'm mean and weird.

I wonder what options I would have had to tick off to get Guåhan. Prolly something to do with knowing how to barbecue at the beach real well and/or having had a few kids by age 25. I swear this island is crawling with i famagu'on.

Ensalåda fafalu (banana blossom salad)

2009-04-01T08:27:00.013+10:00

We're lucky enough to have at least 20 banana plants (apparently they're not trees, but pseudostems--thanks Wikipedia banana article!) in the backyard, which are nice to look at while I'm working from my office. Unfortunately for me, I hate bananas because they induced a vomit-y trauma in childhood. The smell alone makes me want to ralph.

So we've let a fair number of banana hands fall to the ground and rot, in part because we don't have a ladder to reach them, and in part because I just can't bring myself to look at these bunches and figure out how to use them for anything other than banana bread. However, I was at the vegetable stand and happened to see these big purple cabbage-looking things, and got totally intrigued. Because what were being sold in the veg stand were essentially these things, which hang from the bottom of the banana hands in our backyard:

Some cursory internet research revealed some recipes for banana blossom salad, which apparently is eaten in Vietnam and Thailand. The recipes I found tended to assume that the cooker knew exactly to prep blossoms, so I had to wing it the first time.

So here's the banana blossom. You can get a sense of how big they are; generally, I've found that it's best to work with one that's at least a foot long.

Get a blossom with leaves well-attached to the stem at the bottom. Leaves should have no or very little black around the edges and should be tightly packed. When blossoms are older, they also tend to give off a slightly alcoholic smell, which I don't particularly enjoy.

Peel the leaves off one at a time, removing the stamens along the way. I'm not sure if you can eat those, so if you know, please write so in the comments.

Most recipes suggest that if you eat the blossom leaves raw, you soak them in lemon juice as you trim the rest to prevent browning.

Generally, some of the recipes I've gleaned from local Filipino residents include using the blossom leaves in soups and stir-frying them with onions. Surprisingly enough, I haven't met any Chamoru yet who has actually prepped fafalu. An old Pacific Daily News article I found from the early 80s suggests cooking it with ground beef and coconut milk--which seems to be the default method of cooking in Guåhan if one doesn't know what to do with a vegetable-like substance--so maybe I'll try that later.

In the meantime, I threw together a mixture of diced red peppers, cilantro, green onions, garlic, red pepper flakes, kalamansi (the local version of small limes or lemons) juice, fish sauce, sugar, rice vinegar, and oil. The dressing resembles that of Thai green papaya salad. You can check out some recipes on banana blossoms here and here.

Otherwise, I was able to patch together a not-bad combination of shrimp with chili garlic sauce and ensalåda fafalu. Overall, the chopped leaves resemble raw cabbage most closely in texture, and have a pretty neutral flavor which will lend themselves to heavy spicing and improvisation.

My photos are obviously not as good as other food blogs, but I guess it's one more thing I can work on while here.

Lessons learned about Guam Power Authority

2009-03-30T15:31:00.004+10:00

1. There are no disconnect notices.

2. You might be a month overdue with your bill, and your power will get shut off. I have to hand it to GPA--they are phenomenally good at doing the shut-offs on time (excepting cutting power to the Guam Public School System, who at this time owes something like $1.5 million).

3. There's a $50 reconnect charge.

4. Go to the Harmon GPA office exactly at 7 a.m., and you can pay your bill with a minimum wait--there was only one customer in front me. Go to the customer service desk first (that's to the right of the double paned doors that lead to the cashier counters), and then to the cashier desks to pay.

5. Then, fan, sign up for electronic bill pay, because tåya iluktrisedåt means bula mad at home!

Thanks to the neighbors who let me put one whole chicken, bag of shrimp, one package of chicken breasts, three bags of frozen fruit, and some leftover coconut milk in their chest freezer.

Also, that one night without electricity wasn't for naught... we had to eat out, and I can't say I totally minded. B)

I got a headache, and my insurance company caused it

2008-08-26T21:37:00.003+10:00

I have thought very hard about the following post for a few reasons, chief among them that because Guåhan is small, the concept of burning bridges is not merely a cute anecdote but one that, in my opinion from my first two months here, can have very serious ramifications career-wise and personally. The fact that Guåhan is small exacerbates the niceties and drawbacks of close relationships, which themselves entail intimacy, gossip, nepotism, reciprocity, and lots of other facets too numerous to name here.

But the current debacle That Boyfriend and I are facing is one not unique to us nor lots of other people in Sanlågu, so I feel it’s worth sharing and trying to create some space for people to offer advice/receive information. This was written as a very long post and I’m going to split it up into sections for easier web reading. But this information is essential for any civilian who intends to relocate to Guåhan—or indeed, anyone who already lives here.

Essentially, I want to start posts that relate to health care on Guåhan. It’s certainly an ongoing challenge here, where Pacific Islanders’ health outcomes are some of the worst in the U.S.: high rates of diabetes, cancer (some of which are certainly related to environmental abuse perpetuated by the U.S. government), obesity, and heart disease. Additionally, from what I’ve observed so far, a high birth rate, meth epidemic, and culture of alcohol consumption stresses the health care system here in a unique way.

Our situation so far: we are part-time workers, currently on school group rate health insurance based in Sanlågu. We are looking for employment and think that our employment options are very good; we will get jobs (we’re very lucky in that way) but most likely our employment situation will most closely resemble that of a consultant or independent contractor. My coverage runs out this week, and so I’m currently shopping around for individual plans—which I expect to be more expensive than insurance through employers. I’m a very healthy young person under 30 years of age.

There are essentially four insurance companies on Guåhan, only two of them offering individual health care plans. One company would not give me a range of possible estimates for monthly payments for an 80/20 payment plan without me first paying $50. The $50 is a reasonable fee to research my medical history, but the fact that this company wouldn’t even give me an estimate for coverage prior to paying out this $50 strikes me as fishy. I essentially did, however, manage to beg out an estimate from an employee, who quoted me around $390 a month.

The second insurance company has an upfront estimate of individual monthly payments for a plan that offers similar benefits to the first company. The monthly estimate? $485 a month.

These benefits are generous, and probably too much so for the kind of coverage I need. For someone in my health and age, for example, I would probably want to pursue catastrophic health insurance, which has a high deductible (like $5,000) but low monthly rates (when I was in California I paid about $100-120 a month a few years ago). Yeah, I couldn't get basic doctors' visits covered, but if I got into a car accident (one of the leading causes of death for young people), at least my hospital stay would (maybe?) be covered. And I could pay up to $5,000--it's a lot, but manageable on a credit card if it came down to it.

The next post will delineate a little bit as to why these rates are so high. Some of the reasons are similar to those in Sanlågu (poor community health outcomes) and others are those specific to small markets. Any comments are very much appreciated, unless you’re just going to accuse me of being a communist because right now my gut reaction is to loudly proclaim love for single payer health insurance.

Gollai kalamasa (pumpkin tips)

2008-08-24T19:31:00.007+10:00

In the interest of trying to eat a little more locally due to our lack of refrigerator space (most of the shelves are consumed by the rice and baking supplies to prevent mildew and rancidity), rising food prices, and a generally dismal state of imported produce quality, I bought some gollai kalamasa. I had never actually eaten this green before, but assumed that it would be okay in one of my favorite local dishes, gollai appan suni--otherwise known as taro leaves in coconut milk.

You can get a sense of how big the cut tips are here:

Before preparing gollai kalamasa, you first have to peel the slightly prickly skin from the stems.

As you can see from the thin threads that result from this peeling, you can imagine that this process takes a really long time. I think in the future I'll just cut off the stems since I didn't think they were particularly flavorful anyway.

The leaves are pretty large, so I would also suggest cutting them to quicken the cooking process and make eating easier.

The actual cooking process, according to Chamorro.com, is fairly simple. Essentially you boil the leaves with coconut milk, lemon juice, onion, ginger, and fresh hot peppers. You can find the gollai appan suni recipe here.

It was only after I had cooked the gollai kalamasa that I found out from locals that the tips are usually cooked in soups with chicken. Since it's a relatively tough vegetable with leaves that are a slightly furrier version of kale leaves, that would make perfect sense--but in my defense, I still think this version of gollai appan suni turned out pretty mannge'!

Wishful thinking

2008-08-20T21:18:00.001+10:00

Ha ha! Just kidding... turns out that this little pop-up thing-y window allows me to upload pictures after all and I can return to my irregularly scheduled posts.

On the recommendation of The Boyfriend, I checked out this website, which allows you to create your own avatar. I then wasted two hours of my life making avatars of various friends, family members, and, of course, myself. This is the avatar I made to represent me:

This is the avatar he made of me:

I guess I should be happy that he at least got the glasses right.

Technical issues

2008-08-19T22:01:00.003+10:00

Blech. I have some pictures but Blogger is being very uncooperative, which is unfortunate since the idea behind this specific post is picture-centric. Hopefully this will get resolved within the next few days.

We signed up for phone line-based internet service a little more than a month ago once we realized that Marianas Cable Vision's advertised Internet 10.0 is a little slower than we were willing to pay $90 a month for. (Note: the speed test on the MCV website runs at least three times faster than it should, compared to other speed tests available. Also, MCV apparently knows this but doesn't really tell you that when you sign for service.) The Boyfriend started interrogating various workers at GTA Teleguam around July 10, and we have yet to successfully switch over to our hopefully awesomely fast internet connection. This is due in part to the previous tenants who ripped out the phone box--which required GTA to install both a new box and dig up part of the yard to install a new line--and also due in part to a general sort of slowness. On the plus side, only on Guam would the customer service rep who's been assigned to you after various complaints actually invite you to barbecue and a hike at Talofo'fo Falls.

We also called the local NBC affiliate and as of two fifty-something a.m. this morning, Guåhan officially has internet access to the Olympics. We missed all of goldenboy Phelps' shenanigans, obviously, but I guess our newfound participation in NBC's digital monopoly on the Olympics allows us to sit and enjoy synchronized swimming with my grandma. I can't wait.

This is one way to sum up the Guam Experience

2008-08-09T23:09:00.002+10:00

First of all, while that submarine in the previous post did leak radiation in Guåhan's waters, according to the U.S. government, the amount was a "weepage" as opposed to an actual leak. You can read about it here.

And in other news, of course the Olympics is happening. We don't have a working television (we do have one--it's on loan from an aunt, and it's in the closet) and decided that the internet is itself enough of a time-suck and so didn't get cable either. Consequently we're going to watch some Olympic events on the internets.

But we can't. Because we're not attached to servers in the stateside "U.S."/Sånlagu (according to NBC), we can't access Olympics coverage on the internet. (NBC has exclusive Olympics distribution rights in the U.S., so any coverage via the internet goes through NBC, so to speak.) But because the server we use on Guam is also not "international," we can't access Olympic coverage on YouTube, which has the international distribution rights.

So between the nuclear leak from a military vessel and this internet purgatory of between-international/U.S., you can pretty much deduce a significant bit about the relationship of Guam to the rest of the world.

Note: And yes, I used the term "Guam" here intentionally as opposed to my usual invocation of Guåhan.

Is this why Guåhan's waters are warm?

2008-08-03T18:51:00.006+10:00

I went swimming today a mere few hours after reading this article in the Guam Pacific Daily News:

"Submarine leaks radiation: Navy says risk minimal; Guam tests due Tuesday."

I still get substantially fewer rashes here than I did when I swam in California.

Essentially, a nuclear submarine that is home-docked in Guåhan went to Hawaii for maintenance and was found to leak nuclear material-containing water. The leak could have been undetected for the past five months.

It is possible that the amount of water leaked contains "negligible" amounts of radiation, but I wonder what kinds of formal responsibilities the U.S. military has towards Guåhan's land and people when (and I write when, not if) more of these accidents occur.

Decorating an office

2008-07-29T22:07:00.013+10:00

I swear I'll be able to get (more) photos up eventually. For now, however, you'll have to envision the design aesthetic I'm attempting to force on this island house--or, at least, the room where the bills get paid, my internet procrastinating happens, and the work is supposed to get done. I was inspired by a place in Los Angeles where I used to get my haircut, and various tattoo shops I've visited over the years.

So far, the paint job is awesome. It's purple. It might be a good sign that the paint store guy took one look and said, "That's kind of the color we painted my kid's room." Then again, it could also mean that I have an office fit for a 7-year-old girl who likes unicorns (nothing wrong with that, just not exactly the look I was going for).

But it would take a very special 7-year-old indeed who wants Fred on her walls. Who's Fred?

This is Fred.

The Boyfriend thinks Fred is scary, so he (Fred, not The Boyfriend) is officially banned from the bedroom and his office. Also, this is the picture that I want front and center. It's a lithograph (maybe?) of Magellan getting killed by the natives.

And, yes, by the way, that is the super amazing vintage vinyl floor tile from the eighties that runs throughout the entire house. I've decided to call it faux neo-Spanish colonial.

In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out how to cover the gnarly air conditioner. There's an article here that describes some cover-up techniques. This should at least confirm that I do indeed have dumb yuppie concerns like figuring out how to incorporate the window box into a coherent design vision.

I have decided to go with a custom-painted big screen painted by yours truly, something like six feet tall and about four feet wide, with a giant freehand paint job of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe. Or the Santa Maria Kamalen, which in this case requires me to paint Santa Maria coming towards Guåhan accompanied by two giant crabs with votive candles on their backs. You can read about that legend here. I better start working on sketches of crustaceans. Life drawing class only covered naked chicks and dudes, inconveniently NOT posed on the backs of crabs. Useless!

Why did the chicken cross the road?

2008-07-22T20:55:00.002+10:00

I still can't answer that, despite watching all of the roosters and hens do so every day in our village.

But tonight I almost ran over a crab in the parking lot of the Hågatña pool (I know--why a pool when I'm on an island? I'm working on technique). My mom says that when she was a little kid they used to hang out by the road during full moons--during which time the crabs would go nuts and just crowd the streets, so much so that eventually you would just crush bunches under the car tires. I think this weekend is supposed to bode well for a big full moon, so I better get the boiling water and cocktail sauce ready.

(As for the cocktail sauce, I don't have a mortar and pestle yet, so I guess the cement on our new driveway will have to do.

Liberation Day

2008-07-21T22:56:00.002+10:00

Two things:

1. Today Guåhan (maybe) made some headlines in Sanlågu--naturally for something related to the military. You can read about it here and here.

2. And according to the Guam Pacific Daily News, there is a plaque donated to Guåhan that honors one of the (many) days the U.S. military landed here:

"On July 21, 1944, two groups of people came together to liberate Guam from its Japanese oppressors. The United States military came in from the sea, armed with the latest weapons of war while the Chamorros in rags came down from the hills, armed only with the simplest of tools to join in battle. One liberated the island from without while the other liberate the island from within. Together forever they will be known as 'The Liberators of Guam.'"

I have no idea where this plaque is or under what circumstances it was dedicated here, but this is the last time I'm going to write about Liberation Day. One newscaster came up to me and asked me if I thought it was important to celebrate Liberation Day. I told her that is was important to celebrate the liberation of people worldwide, but I should have said that day's not coming.

Mood: not great.

Radon is not a comic book nemesis

2008-07-19T23:09:00.006+10:00

...but apparently it does increase the likelihood of one's developing lung cancer. It's the leading cause of lung cancer in nonsmokers. You can read about this fantastic inert gas here.

The gas results from uranium depleting in the soil and is naturally occurring. Especially in central and northen Guåhan. (But not in southern Guåhan thanks to erosion--needless to say, that environmental nightmare is for another post.)

Thanks to the helpful folks at the Guam EPA and the free radon test the department gives out, we now know that our house contains dangerous levels of radon, which can either be mitigated by a) Leaving windows open 24/7 (impossible with the electronic equipment we have) or 2) Installing a $3,000 fan that circulates air from the foundation. In the meantime, I guess we're inhaling the approximate equivalent of 135 cigarettes a day.

The one interesting thing to come out of all this is that it's gotten me to thinking about how lifestyles change over time. Apparently, radon has always existed on Guåhan (and in most parts of the world), but it has not presented a problem in societies where people live in the open air or have adequately ventilated houses (i.e. like huts, or houses with open terraces). It has only been the advent of earthquake and typhoon-proof building, in conjunction with a move towards indoor living on Guåhan, which has necessitated the check on radon.

In the meantime, I guess I'll have to put off asking the landlords for new cabinets and a bathroom sink. Stay tuned for more info on exactly what other mini Superfund sites the inhabitants of Guåhan live. There are lots.

How do you say "ibuprofen" in Chamoru?

2008-07-15T22:59:00.002+10:00

Sage' i tåttalo'-ku yan i apåga-ku. Santa Maria, I'm not going paddling for a while. Beginner's and novice group, i doggon-mu!

Håfa na ga'ga?

2008-07-10T22:18:00.006+10:00

We found this thing sitting on the inside of our screen door and weren't sure what it was (still aren't). At first I thought it might be a big piece of mold, but we realized that despite our less-than-perfect housekeeping skills, we would have certainly picked up on this thing growing on the door. It's about as long as my index finger.

We took the thing outside to inspect and photograph it a little more.

It didn't move and we threw it out into the side yard. When we came back a few hours later it was gone. Maybe the chickens got it or maybe it moved of its own volition, but if you happen to know what it is, then let us know, put fabot!

Geckos, roaches, and ants (and something else)

2008-07-09T22:10:00.001+10:00

Thankfully it wasn't in the house.
And I'm very happy that if we had to see one, it was in the road, as opposed to wrapped around my grandfather.

This is the gem from family folklore:

My grandma awoke one time to find the 8-foot long colubrid wrapped around Grandpa. Being the tough lady that she is, she promptly went out back to get the machete and chopped it into a few pieces. The kicker is that she did it without waking up Grandpa.

I guess I could tell The Boyfriend that I would also kill the snake, but that I couldn't guarantee that 1) He wouldn't wake up, and 2) I wouldn't miss any vital extremities.

He who tells you owning a home is awesome is LYING

2008-07-08T15:13:00.000+10:00

We don't own a home, but after doing this house thing, we sure aren't going to. Two die-hard apartment dwellers are we, and we have yet to see the advantages of living the American dream. House maintenance nightmare is more like it.

Some of things are particular to living in a tropical climate, but we've so far learned that living in this house (and this is a 1200 sq. ft. two bedroom, one bath, one story house) requires the following:

1. Waterblasting twice a year to prevent mildew on the outside of the house,

2. Gutter cleaning (don't know how many times a year), especially important during the rainy season,

3. Cutting the grass every two weeks (but you can't do it when the grass is wet, and since it's rainy reasons, that's all the time),

4. Cutting out this thorny vine thing called Chains of Love, which is an invasive plant species that chokes off the banana trees and pretty much anything else that is native to Guåhan,

5. Planting/maintaining a bunch of greenery around the driveway to prevent the driveway from washing away during the rainy season,

6. Caulking all holes to prevent ants,

7. Weatherproofing the areas directly around the air conditioners and windows to lessen the geckos and bugs getting in,

8. Replacing or repairing a few busted window screens (also, the termites have no compunction whatsoever about trying to get through the screens even though they lose their wings in the process--as we were horrified to find out),

9. Running the air conditioners in every room at least an hour every day to prevent mildew,

10. Cleaning out the air conditioner filters,

11. Going through the house at least once a week to brush/dust away gecko droppings on the windowsills,

12. Sweeping/mopping every two weeks (and we're being pretty chill here, considering that it's muddy out and we don't wear shoes inside),

13. And my personal favorite, waiting around the few times a year for when the sinks or toilet back up a little... because we're not connected to the sewer, and apparently septic tanks don't come with a little dial that says "75% full, you better make an appointment with Todu Maolek Plumbing for next Monday or you're in trouble, pal." (Todu Maolek = All Good in Chamoru.)

All of this, of course, is not that bad in the grand scheme of things and we're glad to be learning how to do it. (I don't want to bitch: it's not physically hard to put on the air conditioner--it's just something I have to remember now). But I really don't see how--given that suburban populations are aging--these kinds of lifestyles are possible.

This was probably unnecessary, but...

2008-07-06T16:24:00.000+10:00

I really hate cockroaches, and I really hate the crunchy sounds they make when you stomp on them. To make your own roach bat, take the end of a broom and cover it in newspaper. Bash away (recommended only for vinyl and tile floors).

Things to do in Guåhan when the power goes out

2008-07-04T10:01:00.000+10:00

Drive to K-Mart. Get drenched in the rain because there are no close spots in the parking lot. Obsess about the number of flashlights available (I now know that Mag-Lites are to flashlights what Nalgeen bottles are to water bottles) and play with the wind-up ones. Get a Slurpee. Go back home and sleep.

This is my first, and probably not last, power outage since we got here. When I was a kid visiting the water and power would go out pretty consistently, but given that we've been here three weeks, and last year I was here for one month, I'm optimistic!

OOG

2008-06-29T23:55:00.000+10:00

There's a publication I found here called OOG, which stands for "Only on Guam." This mag purports to get military personnel used to Guåhan by providing some cultural and historical info, a business directory, maps, and other miscellaneous information for the deployed personnel here.

Here's my OOG experience for today.

We bought this shelf that was pretty big, but given that we've been so far able to stuff lots of crap into our Toyota Matrix, we were optimistic that at least we'd be able to put the shelf into the back with the seats down, tie it in, and just roll back home with the back trunk open. Well, naturally the stupid shelf didn't fit, and in the process we ripped one 40-pound bag of rock salt we had previously bought for my auntie's water softening system... all over the floor of the car.

Anyway.

We're standing there with a bunch of salt pellets at our feet, filthy from the dust on the shelf which we had carried laboriously throughout the Micronesia Mall, and pretty pissed at each other after a long day hashing out this grant proposal due on Tuesday. But some random guy comes up to us, offers his truck (as in, "We got a truck. Let us help you" as opposed to, "Do you need help?"), and drives the shelf to our house--and also helps us get it in the house. We're taking him and his wife (who was also in their truck with their four kids) to dinner. No word yet as to if the kids are with the babysitter, but even if we end up springing for four kids' meals, we'd be overjoyed to pay back the favor.

And so while some might bitch about OOG in the context of, "The power don't work" and "The government can't do anything right"--I want to emphasize the Chamoru concept of generosity, which has pretty much saved our butts for the past three weeks.

Actually, here's one

2008-06-28T09:46:00.000+10:00

At the risk of dwelling too much on that dominant narrative of "look at the natives!", I still thought it was charming to see cows at the bus stop. Look closely for the calf actually in the bus stop.

Åhe, you can't see

2008-06-28T09:38:00.000+10:00

I still need to get a digital camera, because looking at walls of text is undoubtedly boring. There are certainly lots of opportunities here in Guåhan, despite the fact that rainy season just started and every day entails a decent amount of foreboding skies.

Two awesome developments on the project front:

1. My project partner and I are nearly at the end of completing the first round of our project. Basically, our kids were able to interview an elderly person about her time during World War II with a minimum of boredom-showing (they are ranging in age from 4-10 years, after all, and a certain amount of fidgety-ness should be expected) for nearly 40 minutes, and they loved every minute of it. Most of all, I am really proud that I took the interview--done entirely in Chamoru--to my mother, and she listened to the whole thing in a wholehearted way. I don't think I've ever seen her be so interested in a strictly auditory thing, including my old radio show.

2. My project partner and I are trying to write another grant due July 1. I think this brings the total number of grants I've ever written up to three. I am seriously questioning, however, at what rate it is prudent to grow. Specifically, we're considering expanding our project's budget by nearly threefold, and only after about two months of in-depth planning and two weeks of actual implementation. My great fear is to devolve the way of other rapidly grown businesses and nonprofits, their capacities having been exhausted far too fast.

But then again, I'm not a huge business/financial/educational risk-taker. I do want to iterate, however, that I don't think conservatism (regarding risk) and innovation are mutually exclusive.

Bleh. Well, that was another stupendously interesting post. I gotta get some pictures.

First day on the project and I wasn't totally traumatized!

2008-06-18T23:16:00.000+10:00

I got up at 5:30 this morning to take a few breaths before reporting for duty at 7am.

Keep in mind that the youngest person I've ever taught was 16 years old, and a fairly mature 16 at that. I approached this day with a fair amount of trepidation--both because I just don't have that much experience with kids and I'm deathly afraid of getting sick (from what I understand, schools are hothouses of disease--and this probably only slightly an overstatement).

However, I did learn today that kids are actually not that different than adults. Teaching them requires a slightly simpler vocabulary and attention to how long individual activities take. But kids have essentially the same sorts of issues that adults have--needing a teacher who smiles a lot, projects lots of energy and enthusiasm, and is constantly monitoring for feedback. In many ways, I think kids have a greater potential to pay attention because they don't have cell phones or Blackberries to distract them.

So, in short, it was a real pleasure to work with 9-year-olds and above!

And on the project development front itself, learning to work with someone new is always challenging, but I'm really optimistic that my project partner and I are going to come to agreement about how to develop curricula.

I wish I had a funny little story about teaching today, as this post is more "technical" than I would like, but as it were, no kid threw up, cried (during our lesson, anyway), or got punished... so I'll take that.

Beginning Chamoru

2008-06-15T22:39:00.000+10:00

I need to start incorporating more Chamoru words into my everyday usage, even if most of my day language is English. It's pretty amazing--I started this blog not too long ago, and it is now reflexive for me to refer to the continental 48 as Sanlågu. I'm going to start using that term more frequently around my family and friends to see if it catches on. It's weird how normalizing a term like Sanlågu has so shifted my sense of how I perceive (and become aware of other peoples' perceptions of) that beast called here in Guåhan the United States, the States, Stateside, and the Mainland (that's used more frequently in Hawaii, but I've heard it here, too).

Anyway, I'm trying to get my project partner to start incorporating some Chamoru, too. He's half Iranian, so we'll probably end up with some weird private language between us that's a mishmash of Farsi and Chamoru--Farsimoru or Chamarsi, if you will.

He's learning:
Manana si Yu'os = Good morning, as in, "Manana si Yu'os, you're stinking up the bed, so please get up now."
Hunggan = Yes, as in, "Hunggan, whatever you say is right."
Åhe = No, as in, well, I haven't really taught him this one yet.
Doggon = Butt. I haven't used it in context yet but it's still probably a useful word for him to know.

The Ñalang has landed

2008-06-12T21:58:00.000+10:00

It's official. I live in Guåhan. And there is enough gecko sh*t on the windowsills to prove it.

My project partner and I will also be going into hyper planning mode this weekend, in addition to finishing painting the living room, looking at some furniture, going to the flea market (for food), going to a Chamoru comedy show, drinking beers/playing trivial pursuit/listening to bluegrass (?!) at the mermaid tavern, Sunday breakfast with i familia, and getting the house ready for my mom, who is coming in three days--not to stay with us, but help out with family stuff.

En route foodstuffs

2008-06-08T21:35:00.001+10:00

I'm in Hawai'i now marrying off my best che'lu (friend). The wedding is done (thankfully without me throwing up during the ceremony, as I was officiating it) and tonight I got to eat at Ono Hawaiian Food on Kapahulu.

When I go back to somewhere I've loved or had people whom I've loved, I always have a list of food that I have to eat. For Hawai'i, it's going to Zippy's and eating ox-tail soup (my popo's standard lunch order), poi, pipikaula, lau lau, and lomi salmon. The only things I'm going to write are that 1) Proust, with his dry-ass butter cookies, ain't got nothing on lomi salmon, and 2) tonight was the closest I've ever actually come to weeping while shoveling mouthfuls of rice, taro, and lomi salmon into my craw. It's perfect transition food... I ate my last piece of New York pizza almost three and a half weeks ago.

If any of you have recipes for the following, please let me know: lau lau, poi, haupia that's not too sweet, and something interesting to do with taro bread.

Another hiccup

2008-06-03T16:55:00.000+10:00

The great thing about going to Guåhan is, naturally, that as I pursue this project (about which eventually I'll elaborate its specific purposes and methods), I get to learn Chamoru.

Unfortunately/fortunately, in the meantime I'll make lots of mistakes.

Our first one has to do with our name, which is a pain because we already bought the domain name for our future website. Basically, there are lots of different kinds of pronouns in Chamoru, and while I didn't use the wrong one, it's not quite a smooth translation. It's the difference, apparently, between saying "Hi! Our name is..." and "Hi! Us name is..." You'd get the idea from the second one, but a native speaker probably wouldn't use it.

Obviously, this raises the first issue if you're going to name your project/business in a language you're learning: be sure you've thoroughly vetted your linguistic stuff. We knew we should have, but seeing as everything hit at the same time (major deadlines for school, moving, thesis due, general nervous breakdowns), I guess a protracted conversation with native speakers didn't quite make the priority list.

In the meantime, I'm soliciting some ideas for a new project name for any Chamoru speakers who might read this thing (at this point, one of you). The next post will give you an idea of what I'm looking for.

A slight hiccup

2008-06-02T16:12:00.000+10:00

Last week I spent approximately two full days actually using the Internet for work--namely, trying to figure out activities to engage the teenagers our project targets. Specifically, our project targets younger teenagers (like 13+) and develops communication skills, like listening, asking questions, and engaging in deep inquiry about complex concepts like history and truth.

My partner and I might be in for a slight curriculum adjustment, however, because we just got word that we're working with 8 to 12-year-olds. There are no words with which I can express the bone-crushing, nerve-rending trepidation now pulsing through my body.

1. We're working with expensive audio equipment. And we're checking it out to individual kids or groups of kids. Or at least we were. But I guess being a teacher is all about adjusting, eh?

2. I have never, ever, ever worked with children, except for the few months where I babysat a 9-year-old and his mouthy 11-year-old brother. But that gig didn't entail teaching and working with kids. It required me to have McDonald's on speed dial for delivery (yes, you can get McDonald's delivered in Manhattan) and say repeatedly, "No, not until your homework is done."

Oh. My. God.

Activists have conferences (too)

2008-05-28T19:48:00.000+10:00

Apparently it's not just the corporate leeches who get together to strategize. Of course, it is the rare plumbing supplies trade show or military contracts bidding session that would end with an open mic/poetry reading.

I spent my Memorial Day weekend going to this conference in San Diego.

Si Yu'os ma'ase for a great time, Famoksaiyan!

The desk post-thesis

2008-05-25T16:09:00.001+10:00

Unfortunately, the camera couldn't capture all of the trash that was piled up to the desk, next to the desk, and under it. Grad school is a public health hazard.

When I leave Sanlågu New York

2008-05-05T11:58:00.000+10:00

I Will Miss
Events like this
First days of spring when everyone is super-friendly and forgiving
Soul food
Taking the subway
Running by the Hudson River and seeing people walking their dogs
Specialty food shops like this one, as absurd as selling such simple comfort food is

but I will also

Definitely Not Miss
Walking by homeless people while eating $7 frozen yogurt
$10 sandwiches (it’s a grilled cheese whether it’s damn fontina or cheddar)
Crowds
The stomach i got from eating soul food
Taking the subway at rush hour and late nights, especially when I have to use the bathroom
Running by the Hudson River and being forced to smell it
Plastic take-out containers

Life after thesis-ing

2008-04-29T02:46:00.001+10:00

I can see now how blogging can be a pain in the ass. It's not that nothing has happened to me over the past two weeks--it's that upholding the enthusiasm in regards to writing about aforementioned things is difficult to do.

Regardless, a major milestone has been accomplished. I finally finished my thesis on nationalism and education, and can now begin doing things like regularly cleaning my room, riding my bike, and doing laundry.

On the project front, my partner and I had a good meeting on equipment purchases and curricula development last Thursday. By this Friday we intend to get all of the necessary tech supplies for the project. Our collaboration on-island has coalesced a bit more. Today we also have another meeting with the head of his department who was interested in potentially publicizing our work. We are definitely going to hit the ground running when we arrive in Guåhan.

Last but not least, I've downloaded a copy of Genius in order to work on developing my Chamoru language skills. You can read all about the program, which utilizes an algorithm to maximize individuals' memorization skills, here.

Guam Cribs

2008-04-18T12:18:00.000+10:00

I am generally offended by all that I see on MTV, and the show "Cribs" is no exception. The show, does, however, encourage me to discount the aesthetics of the nouveau and not-so nouveau riche, in particular their decisions to paint Chinese characters on the walls of their dining rooms (way to go, white people with no idea what that stuff means) and employ "dungeon" as a legitimate interior style.

For those of you not in the know, "Cribs" is an MTV-style "Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous," except in this case the rich and famous are the 15-minute kids of fame who had the right look and the right hook at the right time to get exploited.

However, I do love this send-up of the show by a kid on Guam. I can't wait to move.

The people you meet

2008-04-13T00:58:00.000+10:00

One of the things I do love about temping (other than the requirements that 1. I have to ask to use the bathroom, 2. I get abused by at least one office worker each time, and 2. I get abused by one caller at least once each time) are the other temps I meet.

I was a mid-level apparel company yesterday. When I say mid-level, this company owns a lot of other labels and tends to sell them in stores like Sears, JC Penny, and select outlets. One of the guy temps who covered my desk while I took my bathroom break I found out had escaped from L.A., where he had written for a prominent comedienne's TV show for five years, her subsequent talk show afterwards for three, and bought a house with the residuals and income earned from selling drugs. Oh, and he was a dressmaker for the studios. He's been here for a year.

The other great thing about temping is the mythology that you get to pick up. He told me about this other temp who got hired at a legal firm even though this gig hadn't been open for ten years, and the woman vacated it because she was getting married. This new temp is currently pulling in $110,000 a year as a legal secretary. I guess that is the Holy Grail of temps.

According to the dictionary...

2008-04-09T09:12:00.000+10:00

Sanlågu = Continental United States
San- = Directional prefix, used with locatives. Gasgas sanhalom-mu. Your insides are clean.
Lagu = North (in Guåhan and Luta), west (in Saipan).
Lagu = type of fish-gaterin diagrammus, also known as sweetlips.

Thanks, Chamorro-English dictionary (Topping, D., Ogo, P. & Dungca, D. [1975].)

Oh dear

2008-04-03T16:18:00.000+10:00

As if donor suspicion regarding nonprofits weren't enough.

The New York Times Report Sketches Crime Costing Billions: Theft from Charities

And on the project front, I had a really excellent meeting without someone who had worked for foundations before and is now in the academic machine. He essentially told me to take my project for-profit if possible, equating the nature of nonprofit organizations to slavery. Strong words, but given his stance on nonprofits as an extension of the service industry, not necessarily a stretch, either. When I was an undergrad way back in the late 90s I was expecting to maybe swing around $23,000 for a starting position at a New York nonprofit--and this was after I had already donated nine months worth of time (about 540 hours) to one museum.

His advice regarding my ongoing problem of figuring out how to network with other nonprofits and gain informal kinds of technical assistance? Be straight up, transparent, and if worse comes to worse, play the student card and pretend I'm researching the organization.

Future topic: Founder's Syndrome. He apparently had tried to write a grant for an organization, and it turned into a tortuous process (I assume, given his facial expression) because of the founder's inability to cede control (and perhaps rhetoric) in order to persuade rich people to give the organization money.

Cell phones

2008-03-30T13:10:00.001+10:00

I've tried to do some reading on cell phone etiquette since last night after I got into a protracted discussion with someone about my perceived lack of the existence of such etiquette. I was mainly annoyed that I was in a restaurant with this individual, and he answered the phone. The phone call was from a friend of ours calling because she needed to get a hairdryer from someone else.

I generally don't like cell phones but have never really sat down and thought about why that was so. Initially my distaste for them grew out of my work colleagues' tendencies to contact people outside of work--there was no way I wanted to be that "in touch" when I was officially off the clock.

Nor am I the Luddite that people try to make me out to be. I love washing machines, my computer (except for the time that the hard drive crashed and I lost a year's of grad school--but that's another post targeted towards you Mac evangelists), portable recorded music, fast internet connections, and antibiotics. I don't want to get into a conversation bashing cell phones, because there are obvious pros and cons for any given technology. It's not worth enumerating here.

But I do think that it is worthwhile to think about how technology has changed interactions between people, as trite as this sentiment has played out.

My initial thoughts coalesce around how cell phone usage potentially changes the prioritization of time, expressed through the "granting" of time to company and those trying to get through on the cell phone. This goes for call waiting, too. I was trying to figure out how being interrupted by a cell phone is fundamentally different than being interrupted by a live human. I wouldn't be so annoyed by the latter if we (my friend and I) were out. I think that the former bothers me more by the sheer inability for a tripartite interaction to occur. But then, speaker phone answers that. But then, why the f*ck would I want to be on speaker phone in public? Tacky.

I also welcome any suggestions as to how to articulate the scheduling flexibility that cell phones seem to promote. I say "seem" because I think that they promote flexibility for one individual, but not necessarily for another. More than once have I arrived somewhere at an appointed time, only to be called by that person with a request to cancel, change the time, or change the location because it's more convenient for the other person.

I do also love the following scenarios:

1. Sitting with someone else, chatting. Other's cell rings.
O: "Oh, hi, I'm out with Ñalang. Can I call you back?"
First off, if it's not dire for you answer your stupid phone initially, then why couldn't your voicemail have picked up until after we left the restaurant? The requisite response is that the person calling could have had an emergency. I can't argue with that, but I don't buy it entirely either--especially since no one in my immediate circle does brain surgery, delivers babies, or had an incapacitated parent/child/dog.

2. In a movie. Jerk answers cell.
J: "I'm in a movie. Can I call you back?" Protracted conversation might ensue, revolving around when the movie might end and what the phone call is about.

I take it back. I loathe cell phones. I think they turn people into pathologically dependent individuals.

Competition, nonprofit style 2

2008-03-28T05:10:00.000+10:00

In this week's previous post, I asked a general question regarding nonprofit organizations' abilities to patent and sue on behalf of innovations they make. In also used "nonprofit organization" interchangeably with "social justice movements" and will be more careful in this post to make the distinction.

I haven't read INCITE's The Revolution Will Not Be Funded (yet), but did read Gerard Alexander's (2007, April 23) "The Nonprofit Industrial Complex" from the Weekly Standard. Alexander's conservative orientations lead him to critique nonprofits (or otherwise termed the independent sector) for their left-wing tendencies, but he makes some salient points, namely:

Nonprofit endowments or foundations invest around $1 trillion annually
Nonprofits are largely unregulated, either by government or stakeholders in the organizations, like clients or government (this critique coming from a neoconservative, no less!)
Nonprofits can become unofficial extensions of government agencies
Foundational influence can decrease over time given newfound corporate influx in philanthropic giving and changes in the nonprofit sector itself, with specific transitions for hospitals and educational institutions into profitable enterprises (i.e. Blue Shield, University of Phoenix)

I'm going to exclude universities from my discussion of nonprofits and intellectual property as it should be self-evident what that relationship is.

But I will still open discussion regarding intellectual property rights for the nonprofits I am especially interested in, like those involved in youth social programs. Tangentially, here's a good case study.

Other countries, for example, were able to replicate the core business model of this agency. The core business model, however—a marketplace-style mode of matching donors and project proposals—was contingent on software that could produce matches and facilitate the proposal fulfillment process. I have no idea how sophisticated or expensive this software was to develop, but I am sure that the donation by Yahoo! of technical assistance (months of volunteering by engineers) amounts to a significant outlay of time, expertise, and would have been completely inviable without the donation. This agency, modelled as the primo example of social entrepreneurship, seeks to become self-sufficient through a user's fee paid out by donors, but I am not sure to what extent the agency currently is self-sufficient. I will be interested as the woes of this recession play out.

Indeed, anyone in the nonprofit world should be so concerned.

Competition, nonprofit style

2008-03-25T13:10:00.000+10:00

The program planning took a backseat role this weekend as I rushed the first draft of my thesis to a self-imposed deadline today. The good news, as far that headache is concerned, is that I have a lot data and ideas with which to work. The bad news is that I'm at 70 pages, I have a few more ideas to develop, and the department sets an approximate page limit of 50 pages. Part of me wants to continue just to see if it's possible to get an honorary doctorate for being prolific--but then again, I guess every lame-ass blogger would be eligible as well.

On the program front, I did have an awesome meeting with a program director today, seeking answers to questions about curriculum development. But here's the issue: given the funder limitations out there, how do nonprofits compete with each other?

The first answer is that those who do not write enough grants or who suck at programs/management just fade out.

The second answer is that some nonprofits (like those modelled on emerging social entrepreneurial frameworks) have innovative programming and therefore have some sort of first-mover advantage in securing funding.

The third answer is that some successful nonprofits are able to outsource their work through subcontracts to sustain other nonprofits that are not yet as "developed" or even incorporate smaller nonprofits to grow.

The answer I'm interested in, however, relates to the innovation and the intellectual property rights that a successful nonprofit might have. Since I do curriculum development, I want to get some ideas from organizations that are already established. Some of these orgs are set to publish their curricula and sell them, either to sustain programming or offset print costs. But at the same time, for a pilot project that simply does not have the start-up capital to gain technical assistance, I am really shy to ask, "Can I look at your work and take a few ideas?"

Culturally speaking, within the nonprofit world my first reaction is that workers are generous with their knowledge and skills given the lack of profit incentive. But philanthropy is increasingly directed by donors and competitive. Additionally, with the professionalization of grassroots movements and the exponentially growing field of "consultancy," is it possible that those involved in social justice movements will become just as assertive in claiming ownership of their methods as those in the corporate world? Could it be possible to patent and sue on behalf of a movement's techniques?

The start of March madness (not basketball)

2008-03-21T06:52:00.000+10:00

Having secured that aforementioned grant, now is the time to not only finish this master’s thesis which has been dogging me for at least six months now, but also to start program planning. I intend for this project to be a full-fledged program—partially because my inherently neurotic nature demands a pretty organized and logical follow-through and partially because I’m terrified to land in Guåhan and flail around physically, emotionally, and professionally.

So from here on out a few of my posts are going to be related to the maturity of my project and my reflections on the coming challenges.

To date: I’ve had one meeting with my project partner and we’re working on a logic model and mission statement. Today I wrote three emails outlining our current needs (lesson plans for listening, interpersonal skills development, leadership training) and hoping to schedule appointments with other organizations who either share our social justice goals, target populations, and/or mediums of projects (i.e. video, the web).

What’s a logic model? This is a chart that project planners use. Let’s say you want to start a project that addresses a social problem, like poverty. A logic model compartmentalizes the ways that you’ll tackle this problem. It shows you what kinds of resources/INPUTS you already have (money, facilities, staff), the ACTIVITIES you'll do to attack an aspect of the problem (provide social worker counseling sessions), some ways you'll measure the scope of what you're doing (listing how many sessions a social worker might have in a month and with how many clients), and some OUTCOMES (clients get hooked up to health and food pantry services). There's another box for IMPACT, which measures the long-term success of a project. An example of an appropriate impact here would be the eradication of poverty. Logic models show how a process works and where there might be problems in the implementation of that process, as well as reveal inconsistencies in the process and problem.

Here's an example of a logic model.

Good news, boring delivery

2008-03-15T15:39:00.000+10:00

I have to say: having friends in a time zone three hours behind mine is very convenient, particularly if it is 3 in the morning on the Eastern seaboard and I am suffering from mad insomnia/anxiety/general restlessness.

Got some excellent news recently about a grant request fulfilled, which means that I immediately go into a work mode that has not yet been challenged in the past two years at grad school. This is not to say that I have not done a significant amount of work. Grad school work, however, has been of the ideological labor kind as opposed to the kind that involves intense planning, administrative fortune-telling, and behavior (i.e. DIPLOMACY) that I normally associate with a paycheck and not reading books with “discourse” in the title.

Man, I really hope this blog gets more interesting to read with time.

Sanlågu: What does it mean?

2008-03-12T19:11:00.000+10:00

Both of my parents come from islands (one being a U.S. territory, the other being a U.S. state). Frequently islanders will refer to the continguous 48 U.S. states as The Mainland.

In the previous post I translated Sanlågu to mean “continental 48,” but I think from now on I might just use Sanlågu exclusively.

Why is this important?

Many an academic career have been predicated on defining boundaries around groups, who makes up those groups, and what those groups should be named. Political projects have also revolved around these kinds of categorizations, and often to the detriment of specific groups within a given territory. Apartheid and the Holocaust, to take the most extreme examples, capitalized on these categorizations to advance pretty horrific state agendas. Alternatively, these categorizations have also served to ensure that some groups continue or will live lives of privilege, and perhaps at the expense of other groups' basic human rights.

I am very interested in processes of decolonization and how they pertain to Guåhan. Decolonization is a complex concept and I’ll get to it over the next week or so. But just to start out the conversation, decolonization seeks to empower historically oppressed groups to look at themselves and ask, Who has defined us so far? How have those individuals (or states) defined us? Is that who are? Is that who we want to be?

When islanders refer to The Mainland, this might be an unconscious reflex. Habits are hard to break. But it’s worthwhile to ask, “Why should Sanlågu be called ‘The Mainland,’ when where I live, and where my family lives, and where most of my life’s important changes take place is here, on this island?”

Etymologically speaking, I’m also going to investigate the more specific meaning of Sanlågu, since the Chamoru dictionary helpfully points out that san and lågu mean directions.

Desnek yu'!/Surprise!

2008-03-05T18:17:00.000+10:00

I’ve got three months to go in my grad school career. During this time, I’ve spent most of it studying Chamoru sovereignty issues—thanks mostly in part to a fortuitous meeting with members of Famoksaiyan.

As part of this quest to learn more about my family and my family’s history, I also began taking Chamoru lessons. Alas, in the continental 48 I don’t know anyone else with whom to practice, and talking on the phone with my mom can be frustrating without seeing her gesture for me. So part of this blog will also record the trajectory of my language learning and challenges. Please excuse the mistakes.

And lucky me! I’m leaving here soon enough to live in Guåhan for the first time in my life. While I’m there I hope to do and learn a lot of things, not least of which includes raising chickens, husking a coconut, and fishing.

Håfa adai! Ma'pos na fanomñagan estudia yu' i fino' Chamoru gi i Unibetsedat Guåhan. Gi i sanlagu ti guaha yu' i taotao Chamoru para praktika. Malago yu' komprende sa' put fabot dispensa yu' i lachi siha.

Hi! Last summer I studied Chamoru at the University of Guåhan. On the continental 48, I have no Chamoru people to practice with. I want to learn so please excuse the mistakes.