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Archive for April, 2007

The rest of the world? No, thanks.

Posted in Seychelles, WTF? on April 21, 2007| 1 Comment »

I was just bitching about island life, its frustrations and power cuts … I hadn’t even reached the part about shortages and how sorely toilet paper can be missed … and the pervading mentality that has moving at the speed of slug (the mollusk, thankyouverymuch) driving me round the bend.

Well … I take it back.

After reading this about decaptiation by children in Pakistan … following on the heels of the VA Tech mayhem, of course … I’m suddenly happy as a clam in white wine.

A boy … he looks about 12, doesn’t he? … hacked a guy’s head off. It wasn’t even a case of a clean swipe — ta da!: lopped off and rolling. Nope. It took time and effort to finally separate the man’s head completely from the rest of him, and this kid was in no particular hurry to pull it off … so to speak.

So, I’ll take the unhurried, under-motivated, and noncommittal that comes with the Seychellois. I’ll find amusing the fact that most here are far too sloth-like to bother with violence, and way too squeamish to do much more than stomp on a baby hedgehog. (This I’ve seen, but won’t related the incident here. Too brutal.)

Yeah. I’ll stay where I am.

Beheading boy

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Trade Places?

Posted in Island life, Seychelles on April 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Kansas is sounding good to me this week. Utah or Nebraska or Iowa … anywhere land-locked with a reliable electricity supply and Internet connections that run continuously for a few hours at a time.

The lack of both here had me ready to pack up, lock, stock and snorkel gear, and run away to somewhere, anywhere, no matter how boring or flat. I’d had it up to my none-too-patient-under-any-circumstance eyebrows with an island work ethic … now there’s an oxymoron! … that allows for outright lies to substitute for customer service and finds any inclination to hurry a distinct minus.

“Hang loose” may be the theme song for the arm wattle that flaps when I wave these days, but as a mindset it’s beyond my scope. I’m a problem-solver, not a sit-back-and-waiter, so when things go wrong, I want answers and I want them NOW.

What could a week like this one inspire in me, then, but a powerful urge to flee? I’m introspective and self-critical enough to notice that I simply may not be hardwired to survive the slow pace of Seychelles incompetence and slovenly performance. Perhaps, after eleven years on this island I’ve had enough, reached my breaking point and need to look at moving back into the real world … the world that works and works fast, puts up with little that doesn’t meet perfection, that demands the best, the fastest, the sleekest.

Ummmmmmm.

But, then again …

There’s the gun thing.

No such thing as school shootings here. (The crazies tend to drink themselves into early graves to which they go alone.) The very concept is so foreign that I’m being asked to explain how such a tragedy could possibly happen … me! as if I have an inside track to the mind of psycho America.

I left the US BOJ (Before OJ), so have missed what must be the strangest period in the country’s history and have no clue, no clue at all, how or why a VA Tech could happen.

You know? Now that I think about it, I guess I’ll get the candles out, put pen to paper occasionally, and stay put. Not Kansas

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Blogging from Blog Island: What the hell am I thinking?

Posted in Family, Seychelles on April 17, 2007| 1 Comment »

With a commitment of a minimum of 86 posts per month at my blog job for Adoption.com … each at between 300 and 500 words … I must be out of my mind to make myself another empty rectangle that needs filling on a regular basis, but even with all the blather I impart there I find myself feeling stifled and longing for an outlet.

It could be that keeping to topic is beginning to drive me ’round the bend … discipline makes me cranky … or perhaps it’s working for an organization I know to be of a conservative leaning, meaning I can’t very well pull out the stops, throw in the colorful language I’m fond of or get down and dirty in the oh-so-many ways I long to on topics ranging from the adoption-related to politics of both the countries I hold passports for, or mouth-off in general on whatever on any given day constitutes the pissed-off-able.

Maybe it’s island fever prompting me to extend one more bit beyond the time allowed in a day, setting myself up to begrudge each trip to the beach and miss the azure 86ºF waters that are often the only saving grace offered up amongst the frustrations a dearth of necessary items raise almost daily (toilet paper, onions …), the bane of island life.

Hell if I know, but I’m here, and knowing me I’ll be staying and yapping away in this blank rectangle for months to come.

By way of intro: I’m Sandra. I live on the island of Mahé in the country of Seychelles, a postage stamp of a bit of land in the Indian Ocean about 1000 miles off the coast of East Africa. I share my piece of paradise with my husband, Mark, and our two kids, Sam and Cj.

Our family tree has widely spread roots, with me starting out in the US, Mark coming into the world in England and the kids Cambodian-born. None of us are where we began life this time around, but we’re settled here for the foreseeable future where I’ll be blogging away from Blog Island in the pauses between everything else.

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