HAPPY NEW YEAR

Here is me sipping a weak cocktail at "Shooter's" - one of the three bars in downtown Vila, and the only one that seems to get any Ni-Van clientele. The others bars are mostly just ex-pats and yachties - bleeech!

Happy New Year!

I think I look sort of strange in this photo, but it's appropriate for the occasion. I'm still sporting some pretty sun burnt cheeks so that adds to the strangeness i suppose.

There was hardly any other PCV's in town for New Years Eve. Kael, my friend from Tanna who was on holiday with me, and a PCV from my training group named Teresa decided to make a night on the town. Just the three of us. It soon became apparent that we were a little triangle of sexual frustrations. She wanted me, I wanted him, he wanted her. But I didn't want her, she didn't want him, and he didn't want me. It was a classic impasse. Nothing left to do but make the situation worse. We grabbed a bottle of wine from Terry's liquor cabinet and started drinking in the bus ride into town. You can do that here. In fact, you can walk around with open bottles if you like. And just because we can, we do. There's a tremendous novelty feature in public drinking. But don't worry Grandma - I'm not a lush. Then we got ourselves some pizza. Actually kind of tasty. Oh the joy of delicious foods!

It was AFTER pizza that we headed to Shooter's. After a couple drinks and hanging around for a bit we headed to the water front to watch the midnight fireworks display over the harbor. I was told they were being put on by the Iririki Island resort so I made the mistake of having higher than reasonable expectations. When they went off, which was intermittent, they looked a little bit like this...

Actually, some of them were pretty good. But there was long pauses in-between fireworks - like they were looking around for more matches or something. At the same time there was a cacophony of noise coming from the main street drag. Cars were driving around honking horns and pick-ups over-flowing with screaming people were given police escorts, sirens and lights blaring, as they drove around and around the loop. Then we headed back to Shooter's for another drink and some dancing. My knee has been absolutely killing me lately so I was well supplied with Vicodin. Thank god for effective pain killers. We danced like fools for about 2 hours before deciding we should try and find transport which we knew was going to be a problem since our house is almost 10 minutes outside of Vila and tonight is a dangerous night to be driving around. Ni-Vans are known to not be able to handle their drink.

So it took a while, including a series of unsuccessful negotiations (screeching tires, flipping of the bird, angry face-making and so forth) but finally we got ourselves a little old man in a tired and beat-up micro bus to take us out to Mele for double the usual price - still a bargain at 2am on New Years Eve.

Halfway to our house some asshole jumps up from behind some bushes and hurles a rock into our windshield. The rock makes a hole the size of a large foot, but miraculously bounces off instead of coming in. Glass hits me, sitting in the back of the bus, and the windshield completely shatters so the driver can barely see out. Kael was in the front passenger seat, covered with glass, but so lucky that he didn't get hurt at all. The driver didn't stop, which was probably a very smart move, but once we got the house he was too scared to drive back. We phoned the police and left him by the road to wait.

Now I hate to disappoint my 10 loyal readers by not finishing the part about the love triangle, especially since this is the part where the story gets interesting, but some peeps here are pressuring me to hurry up and get off the damn internet. Time for lunch. Time for the next persons chance to use the computer. The story about love in a developing country will just have to wait until next time.