Random Observations #2: An Epilogue

...continuing on from this mornings post (please read it first before this one).

I now suspect that while the local dogs (pretend to) have no road sense that they may actually be intelligent enough to get online and read blogs, such as mine. After I whinged about their lack of road sense this morning I have had not one but two casually wander in front of my moving car this afternoon. Both times it caused me to completely stop while waiting for them to nonchalantly amble past. I beeped my horn at both, one completely ignored it and just kept slowly walking, the other gave me a look like "hey what is your problem buddy, I'm just walking here man...".

Both of them looked at me first before deciding to wander out in front of me too. Clearly they wrote me off as a sucker that would definitely stop for them. What gets me is both could have waited about 5 seconds and crossed after me as there were no cars behind me both times. I was extremely tempted to try to give both a little bump but of course I refrained. Maybe I need to buy one of those small low powered bb gun pistols with just enough power to sting but nothing more.

So I therefore believe It's all a canine conspiracy, where the dogs are actually pretending to be dumb and inbred but really it's just so they can exert their dominance over us mere humans.

Palau: Random Observations #2

For a while now I’ve been meaning to write another post about odd things I’ve noticed here. Hope you find it interesting/amusing.

I know I’ve mentioned the dogs before but have I stated that the local chickens and roosters have better road sense than the dogs? It’s quite incredible that most dogs seem to have no understanding what to do, yet the chickens just seem to know how to get safely to the other side (must be due to all the jokes at their expense). The dogs are way too complacent here, relying on slow and highly defensive Palauan drivers to stop for them or to go around them. This doesn’t happen all the time though as I’ve seen a couple of flattened dogs on the road and quite a number of dogs seem to have bad limps with a hind leg. No doubt losing a battle with a vehicle. 

Also over the past few days we’ve seen lots of crabs crossing the road, there has to be a joke in here somewhere…

While still on the local dogs, I don’t think I mentioned how a good portion of the dogs here seem extremely short. It’s like their legs only grew half the normal length. I’ve since been told that this is what happens with constant inbreeding and is also the reason a lot of the cats have stubby tails or no tails even.

Ok enough on the dogs, back to the cars/driving. Something I failed to mention last time was about the window tinting on certain cars. Like a most rules here they aren’t enforced so become more of a vague suggestion of what you should do. Legally you can’t have tinting that blocks more than 35% of light. Some car windows are completely blacked out, I have no idea how the driver sees anything (maybe this explains the terrible driving!). A lot of others have put one of those retractable, suction cup windscreen shades across their front windscreen (yes, whist driving). It looks ridiculous to see all these cars driving around with the shades pulled across. But I guess at least they can retract them at night. 

Since school has started again the traffic of a morning and afternoon going down the main road on the island is terrible. It’s stop/start, extremely slow moving traffic. With no traffic lights they station cops at various ‘major’ intersections to loudly blow whistles and vigorously wave at traffic to keep driving and stop letting people in. What is probably more frustrating than the peak hour traffic is when driving outside those periods on fairly clear roads when you encounter somehow who refuses to drive quicker than 20kph as it far too dangerous to go any quicker.  

Also Palauan drivers have no clue how to drive near a cyclist. Twice I’ve seen someone who was driving adjacent to a bike, speed up to get 2 metres ahead of the cyclist only to turn across in front of him causing him to hit the brakes to avoid running into the side of the car. If that was in Australia the cyclist would probably be dragging the driver out of the window and laying a good beating on him. I’d honestly hate to see a typical Palauan driver attempt to drive in Australia or elsewhere, they would probably be the cause of multiple deaths. 

While still on cars: I have often noticed people driving on completely bald tyres. The worst was the one where most of the rubber was gone leaving a significant section of the fabric interior. Crazy!

On slightly related note I saw a roughly 18 month old child standing unrestrained in the front seat of a 4WD, half hanging out the window with two hands on a can of coke that it was chugging down. Amanda sure has her work cut out for her!

At finally a quick note on the service industry. It’s a really interesting mix in Palau, being a former US territory tipping is sometimes included on the bill, sometimes encouraged, sometimes not expected at all. We have received service that ranges from amazing to the worst ever. Some places know you by name, expertly split the bill without request and know what your regular order. Other places you  are made to feel like a complete inconvenience and have to get up from your table to find someone to give you a menu or take your order. Let’s just say the former places get tips, the latter do not. And one final observation which is kind of cool is that the service (petrol) stations still have someone who fills your car for you. 

Enjoy your weekend I’ll be working by helping train 8 US Army people with their Open Water diving course. Hopefully they actually want to get in the water unlike the two girls earlier in the week :o

Palau Early Days: The ups and the downs

QUICK CATCH UP & UPPER #1

View from the cafeteria at the hospital

It's early days in our new life in Palau but we (or at least I) have already had some ups and downs. The past two days have been very interesting. As part of our orientation we've had a good tour of the major islands and Amanda's workplace, which is situated in the offices attached to the hospital. The hospital has to have one of the best views ever for a workplace let alone a hospital. So far the people we've met are great, everyone is super nice and very excited to have Amanda and myself here. I think I'm already being scoped out for a local canoe team for the Palau games in July. 

Last night we met a bunch of other volunteers and ex pat workers. Again everyone was awesome and It'll be great to hang out with them. I think I had my first "this will be awesome" moment yesterday. On a side note i found some great quesadillas and the local beer Red Rooster is quite good, i've now tried the wheat, amber and stout but unfortunately it is a little higher priced than the imported Asahi's and generic American swill. I've never seen to many "Grab some Buds" signs in my life. 

While yesterday was a great day that highlighted the potential of living in Palau today today seems to be a bit of a different story, a number of things have happened that have really frustrated me and I've had a few of those "what the hell are we doing here moments?!".

DOWNER #1
I'm a massive (ice) hockey fan and the NHL finals start today with one of my more favoured teams (Chicago) facing one of my most hated (Boston). I was seriously looking forward to finding some fellow crazy fans to sit with in a bar at 9am to watch the finals. Unfortunately the only sports channel here (ESPN) is showing yet another early season baseball game and not the hockey. So I assume i'll not see any of the Stanley Cup Finals and probably no hockey for the whole duration of my time here. And yes the internet is so shit i won't be able to stream or download the games.

DOWNER #2
The internet it is incredibly shit here, the country is not connected to any undersea fibre cables and instead is still on satellite. Apparently the wireless in this hotel is pretty good compared to elsewhere, So i'd hate to see what a poor connection is like. It does get better at nighttime when there is less load but it can still take an amazing amount of time to do something simple like load one webpage or to download the various photos on my facebook thread. It took me 20 minutes to load the google blogger page today only to have it fail while saving and to somehow lose my half written blog post.  

DOWNER #3
While on the computer internet topic, those who've read my blog would know about how my 6 week old Dell ultrabook died the middle of last week. And how despite the efforts of the local technician, Dell were unable to get me the parts in time before i left. I had to depart without my ultrabook leaving it at home to wait for the required part to arrive from Melbourne this week. It was fixed yesterday but when my parents tried to ship it over today they were told that Australia Post would not ship the battery. Apparently it's dangerous materials! They've tried quite a few other couriers and none will touch it except one that will charge $390 and i could still be subject to Palau import duty/taxes. So excuse my language but the whole debacle is now a fucking mess. I'm really pissed off about this as Dell were unable to take any initiative outside of their rigid processes to get this fixed in time.

DOWNER #4
Also in the last two days we've had a look at 3 units and 1 house to rent. Trying to find accommodation here is not easy, there is only one real estate agent and they have little to nothing on their books and are rather expensive. Typically accommodation is found by word of mouth or by directly contacting managers of unit blocks, who often live in and own those blocks as well. Yesterday we checked out a one bedroom unit behind our hotel in the middle of town. It was very small, hardly furnished and stank! I was very unimpressed especially as the real estate agent wanted $585 per month for it.

Today we have seen two apartments (1/2 bedroom) next to each other and a 3 bedroom unit which was the top floor of a house. (Costing $600/650/820 p.m.) The one bedroom was definitely better than yesterday's one but still below the standard i had expected we'd find here. The two bedder was better again but I'm still reluctant. The three bedroom unit/house was pretty bad, very old and run down. It had a nice outdoor area but we were basically threatened by local dogs on the way back down the street. I'm seriously not impressed at the quality of accommodation here. I think this caused my first true 'what the hell are we doing here' moment. Luckily tonight through our new volunteer friends we got some more contacts and also got to see one of the better apartment blocks in Palau. It was nice and at a decent level, it also had a truly incredible view but rather expensive. We'll now spend tomorrow following up these contacts and have also discussed that we might need to blow our accommodation budget a bit so we have a decent/nice place to live. We might just have to be on a waiting list for a while. 

UPPER #2
Despite the average day something positive did happen today. I got word from home that someone has signed a lease to rent our unit out. That is a load off my mind as it should hopefully look after itself financially now. We just have to make ends meet here so we don't go backwards at home.

UPPER #3
While catching up with our new friends tonight one of them has very kindly agreed to bring my laptop back over after she heads home to Australia next week. This is absolutely awesome of her and going to solve a massive issue to me. I'm definitely going to owe her one and i'm not sure how i'll be able to pay her back. Maybe it's more of a case of paying it forward at some point.

So I'll go to bed tonight hopeful that tomorrow we'll find a decent place to live or at least something reasonable for us to bide our time in until we can get into the nicer place we saw tonight.