A Coastal Christmas

It's been a pretty surreal experience spending our first Christmas away from parents and family. Rather than recount the events and destinations of the holiday "weekend" I will highlight some of the more colorful moments in a dry-outline format:


I. Eve
Laurie R.'s son Matt came to visit from Dumaguete and we went over to their place for Noche Buena at Chez Raymundo. When I told my family, over speaker phone, that Matt was around my brother shouted "Who's Matt?"
"You used to play video games with him in the Philippines," said my dad.
"I used to play video games with a lot of people," he said.
I don't think anything mirrors the Christmas spirit better than remembering all those people we used to play video games with.

II. Day
At dusk Ernie took a walk into the waves at the Christmas Day beach party. As we all watched him, some wished they had thought to join him, others hoped he wouldn't disappear so we'd have to swim out and get him, and the rest took bets on if he would spill his G&T.


III. Day After
We went to the Mermaid Tavern to use a portion of our very generous gift certificate from Sloan's parents. It was a lot of the same crowd we had seen the two previous nights at Laurie R.'s Eve Party and Ernie's Beach Party, but now we were all sitting around a rectangular table in the middle of a bar listening to the Deep Sea Blues Band do their thing. Matt and sister Laurie joined them for a couple of tunes. The real sister, Maia, was embarrassed from all the attention her mom was getting. Sometimes one family's dynamic is enough for all of us.

Merry Christmas.

Harmon Medical Clinic: Part 2

Parked next to the Harmon Medical Clinic in an alleyway more befitting a gas station or Karaoke bar (both adjacent to the Clinic) is a DeLorean. If you read our previous post I attempted to inform the clinic watch dog that there are only so many of these cars around - 6,500 according to Wikipedia. I guess it's a sign of my age that the sight of this car in complete disrepair in an alleyway on Guam made me kind of sad. It was as though a small piece of my childhood, that desire not only to go Back to the Future, but also to one day own an entirely impractical sports car, was laid to rest under a window box and surrounded in a wreath of dried up coconuts. I wanted to sit in the car for a moment which would have been easy since the windows were missing. Unfortunately, so were the seats.

In better news - Sloan showed no signs of TB in her chest x-ray although she still intends to take the 9 month regiment of antibiotics just in case. In case of what? I guess we are growing up.

Harmon Medical Clinic: Part 1

After Sloan failed two TB skin tests we took a drive over to the Harmon Medical Clinic for a chest x-ray. Apparently this squat, two story, pink, cement building is the place to go for all sorts of medical diagnostics and as you may notice from their elaborate and informative signage: sick notes. I always wondered how to get a sick note. I thought parents could write them. I guess there is a more official venue, maybe for grown-ups, and this place may have the market cornered.


In my abundant free time I drove over to this place to take some pictures of the sign and an abandoned car (see part 2). I was only there, in the parking lot, a few seconds. I had taken three pictures when an older Filipina lady holding a half opened Fed Ex box in one hand came out of the building with her arms out at her sides, palms facing me. In guy talk this gesture usually translates "Hey, you got something to say to me!?" or "Is it about time for a throw down?!" I wanted to give the lady the benefit of the doubt that although she interrupted her mail opening to come outside and address an immediate threat she may not really want to full on beef right there in the clinic parking lot. So I said "Hi."
She repeated the gesture. "What are you doing? You taking pictures of the building?"
Now I was curious. Should I have been taking pictures of the building? I decided the best approach was to tell the truth. By now another nurse, younger, had poked her head out of the building door.
"No, no. I was taking pictures of the car. It's the car from Back to the Future. There are not that many of them in the world."
The young nurse got it. She laughed and went back inside the building. The older nurse had not seen the movie.
"You taking pictures of the building?"
I had to pull out all the stops.
"No, I was taking pictures of the sign. I think it's funny that you advertise sick notes on your sign."
For whatever reason this satisfied the old lady and she went back inside. I should have told her I was taking pictures of the building. I should have told her that Pepto Bismol was not an appropriate color for a medical clinic.
I just got out of there.
Check in for the chest x-ray results in Part 2.

The Lost Thanksgiving Blog

We've been on Guam for two months now and have barely mentioned our most incredible hosts, The Skerritts. They met us, old school international style - waiting just outside the customs area, at the airport. They let us invade their home for two weeks as we finalized our rent and transportation issues, parking our laptops on the kitchen counter and dining room table during the day to scour for jobs and Guam gov. information. They let us borrow their truck (it doesn't screech when you start it and has a working odometer) and receive all sorts of mail at their house. They even let us house sit for an extra two weeks while they went to China to visit Zack, their son. We harassed their dog, Roxy, and they recommended me to a potential cabinet customer with a great view of Tumon. It's like we can do no wrong. After all that they invited us over for thanksgiving when it was us who should have been thanking, profusely. All we did was make pies.

There they are.
That's Mr. Steve Skerritt, hanging out.


That's Mrs. Jan Skerritt on the right. She's listening attentively to the duties for singing the 12 days of Christmas delegated to us by Don, who runs the Army Reserve for Guam. We were 2 turtle doves. She was the partridge in the pear tree.

Laundromut

Our container house does not have a washing machine. The nearest laundromat is approximately 20 minutes away in Agat. When you consider that I am running a lot in hot soupy weather and Drew is volleyballing a lot in hot soupy gyms, it is quickly apparent that we have a problem.

My solution would have been to suck it up and go to the laundromat more often. My husband's solution? A laundry device that, while pleasingly smooth and egg-shaped, requires actual human input to clean my sports bras and running shorts. Some people call this elbow grease. I call this something that is unprintable on a blog read by my parents and parents-in-law.

Some illustrations of the cleaning process:

(1) Spin cycle

(2) Rinse cycle

(3) Dryer

For those who know Drew, it should come as no surprise that he adores our hand-cranked washing "machine." Its self-reliant, its green, it looks cool, etc. There are a few problems, however. First, it requires so much of the aforementioned elbow grease that doing laundry creates more laundry because you get all sweaty. Second, the rinse cycle needs some work. The other day, caught in a sudden downpour during my run, I glanced down and saw soap foaming down my legs.

Still, I am appreciative that Drew wants to hand-crank our way out of trips to the laundromat. If only the same company would invent a rotating dish egg, I would be relieved of all my household responsibilities.

WASPs

Until today we lived in relative harmony with the critters living in and around our home. The hermit crabs and lizards skitter away as we near, the geckos respectfully watch over us as we sleep, the banana spiders spin webs from our doorways to the bushes but stay still as Christmas ornaments; even the two large cockroaches we killed neglected to lay eggs and re-populate our kitchen.


We like to open our windows and sliding glass door in the morning to let the breeze in and give the air-con a break. There are screens but there are gaps between the screens and their housings. I was doing laundry this morning, holding a pot full of wet laundry (Sloan will explain later), when a wasp entered our abode and hovered straight at my face. I fell straight on my ass trying to dodge its path and closed my eyes hoping it wouldn't sting my forehead. Sloan laughed. You see, I hate flying stinging things. I can deal with sharks, snakes, eels, angry dogs, spiders, the dark, but give it wings and venom and I'm done. I hid in the bedroom while Sloan tried to chase it out with her bare hands, in shorts and a sports bra no less. She opened all the doors and tried to coax it out. She discovered their nest above our front doorway. I came out with a spray bottle of Formula 409 and a towel like a matador but ran back to the room and shut the door every time it came near.

I was afraid for my life and Sloan was just mad she couldn't do her work. Anyway, using a combination of slipper, towel, 409 and opening and shutting various doors we finally trapped it between a screen and glass window and killed it. I went to Kmart and bought $12 worth of wasp killing products and we doused its hive in chemicals. I apologize to all you animal lovers out there. And don't tell me there's some home remedy with vinegar and lemonade that would have lulled them to sleep. I want them dead.

And for those of you who thought this was a blog entry on white over-privileged kids living in the boondocks - shame on you.

Fronteir Furnishings

The economical and green housing featured in Dwell, Newsweek, Architectural Digest, whatever, are about as frugal and eco-friendly as buying a new Prius when you have a perfectly good 2004 Civic sitting in the garage. These magazines have the daunting task of featuring something new, some kind of upgrade, when the obvious solution is making do with what you've got. But you can't sell magazines telling people to do nothing, go borrow a library book and drink tap water. I'm not suggesting that our current furnishings are completely guilt-free. We did have to buy a bunch of stuff 'cause we were not about to ship containers of furniture to Guam or drive around for months searching for that perfect garage sale with that perfect dining table. We tried, and then we heard horror stories of couches filled with roach's nests. I am also embarassed that as a furnituremaker I failed to build any of our furniture. But hey, tools cost money - and so does wood. So here's what we ended up with. Suggestions are welcome.

Entertainment center. Yes, those are cinder blocks: $1.29 each at The Depot. That TV/DVD/VCR was free courtesy of Dave Wilson. And yes, the fan is absolutely necessary to the enjoyment of any entertainments.





Couch. That's a $59 queen sized sofa bed - top that Ikea. That glass lamp, which we got at Kwong Hwa furniture superstore, was $20. Its box doubles as a stand and get this, it's got two switches, one for the main light and another that turns on a nightlight inside the glass base. We didn't even know that when we bought it. That one's coming with us.



Office #1/ Dining Table/ Kitchen Counter/ Room Divider. Five piece beech set: $140 on sale at Kwung Hwa. Proving once again that the kitchen is the focal point of any household. Especially when that kitchen gets wireless.



Queen Sized Bed/Potential Sofa #2. Also $59. Yes, it is always that well made.

OK, so our current furniture is not ideal. Our backs will feel much better a year from now. But we're young and maybe a bad back's worth it if we can afford that mill loft in Oakland, especially if Anthony Morrow's still killin' it.

Things in the Road

I didn't take any pictures this week. Many things happened and perhaps as a result of the surge in activity I was less concerned with documenting it. I wrote about it though. Specifically, some things that happened on Thursday, November 13th, which wasn't a Friday but was a full moon. Here are five stories, based on true events, though I have taken liberties with things actually said and thought.
_____________________________

This morning, a rhythmic thumping we first thought was our truck, a faulty bearing maybe. A helicopter, large and dark green, hovering over the trees. It crossed the roadway and despite its size reminded me of a Pueo, an owl, coasting over Oahu's H-3 late one night a decade or so ago. Rumors of what the white owl portents - neither good or bad, just a warning to be aware of things to come. We stay on the south shore, far from Anderson military base, but it has found us. It skims the ocean, its fan blades sending out mushy ripples like milk pouring into a cup of tea.

***
This morning, on the hills of Inarajan, rising and falling like a sea serpent's back, a pair of horses. Deep brown and proud, they were lost but held their heads high. They made moves to cross the street until a car, horn blasting threw their confidence. I told Sloan to hurry, don't give them time to wander on to the road where they might trample us. At least it felt that way they were so large. Out here in the country, with stray dogs conferencing around spilled fiesta plates, tin-roofed houses with miniature tin roofed houses for fighting cocks, the tall, head high grasses blocking the view of anything just past the road, it is difficult to know where these horses came from. They may have broken free, I seem to remember their ribs showing slightly, but what do I know about horses? They were so large that even in our truck whose rumblings and tickings seem to get louder each day, we could hear the heavy thud of their steps on the grass.

***
A pit bull has been dead on the side of the road for a week. We are surprised its owner hasn't come to pick it up because usually these types of dogs are chained, guarding houses. It is not unusual to see dogs lying crushed on the road but usually they are mixed breeds, indistinguishable mutts. After three days the dogs body was bloated and stiff, its skin turned a dark gray. After five its body had torn somewhere and its soupy insides spilled onto the breakdown lane. Sloan made a point of rolling up her window and swerving if she was driving when we went past. It is really too bad because it looked like a good strong dog, not like the usual riff-raff we see lying in the road.

***

At the intersection of Rt. 4 and Rt. 10 we wait to make a left turn at a light with a left turn signal. In front of us is a recent model gray Toyota, bulbous the way modern cars are, like a bunch of grapes. The light turns green and it inches forward in no hurry to make the turn, a carriage ride in the park. A smaller car, light blue, approaches from the left. It is not moving fast, just cruising along. We think, because if its leisurely speed it is aware, that it will stop. It keeps moving, at fifteen maybe twenty miles an hour as the Toyota in front of us suffers into the turn. The small car hits it squarely in the rear, around the gas tank access. It only makes a small sound, like a phone book falling on the floor. The small car keeps moving as though it just went through a deep pothole. We can not make out the expressions of the couple in the front seats. It continues its pace North on Rt. 4. The bulbous car now turns slower than before, it pulls into a gas station, stops near the air/water machine. We too keep moving slowly. Having not seen the license plate on the smaller car, we don't think we can help.

***

In the news this evening, a missing fisherman. A few nights ago, around eight, a man named George knocked on our door. He had coffee colored skin, stocky, and was struggling to get into a wet-suit as he talked to me. Sloan hid in the bathroom. He wanted to show respect, he said, wanted to know if he could park in front of our house, if he could fish at the reef.
"Sure, sure," I said.
"We only wanted to show respect, you know," he said.
"Of course," I said. "No Problem."
"The guy who lived here before, John, he let us fish before. We only wanted to make sure it was ok with you."
"Fine. No worries. Good luck."
A few minutes later three men with scuba tanks and spears walked past our windows, a dim fluorescent lamp swinging from one of their arms.
The news tonight, four or five days later, was the missing fisherman. The military had sent out helicopters to scan the shorelines. His two friends had made it back. They could not find their friend. I don't think it was George. It was quite a while ago George came to our door and they could not have been fishing that long. I didn't finish the article I was reading. I didn't want to know the details and besides, it was hot and Sloan claims this slows you down, makes you tired, a sticky uncomfortable tired.

Callog (Car + Collage + Blog)

Alright, so I pilfered the title from my sister's phlog (photo + blog) as well as the entire format for my blog. The truth is out. Check it out 'cause the pictures are sick and the stories are much more gramatically correct and interesting.

I've been spending too much time writing stuffs that are a chore to read over so take a moment to witness the collage of our truck's ailments.

The steering column held together with electrical tape. You can't see it here but the odometer's stuck at 92,858.


The duct tape where someone jimmied the lock and split open the door. This is the lock that works. The other side opens whenever it feels like it.


The rust holes straight through the bumper. Sometimes when we drive over a particularly vicious pothole I swear I hear something snapping.

Trenches in the dashboard. That's the left door speaker there. No matter, the digital display on the radio is illegible, it looks like Klingon.

Here's a three-fer. Cinder blocks to weigh down the back so it doesn't fishtail on the slippery coral road to the marine lab. Cooler so that our groceries don't melt and for extra rain-protected storage. Windshield wiper fluid - though there's a hole in the fluid tank and it all leaks out within an hour.

We're taking guesses as to how much we got it for. Also suggestions for names besides The Hindenburg.

Sloan Brings Home the Bacon

I couldn't get pictures of Sloan at the actual event for two reasons. One of them is not that I didn't get up at 3:40 in the AM to drive to the Pacific Islands Club (PIC) in Tumon.

1. I got suckered in to working at a water distribution table for the half marathon by my volleyball team.
2. The race officials messed up the results (they thought Sloan was a man) and she didn't get called up to the stage to accept her prize which were, in order of excellent-ness:

• An engraved medal
• An engraved pewter Tiffany Revere Bowl in a big turquoise Tiffany box.
• $500 money-cash.

All this just for winning a 5k! She said it felt good. Who knew it could be so easy.

I can't say I've been supportive enough to watch all of Sloan's races, but this one ranks up there with the best of them. It sure beats sitting on some granite rock in Jamaica Park when it's 60 degrees and raining. I got to stand on the side of the road and hand out twice used sponges to sweaty people. I got to hear Womanizer at least three times blasting on Christian's Acura car stereo. I got to see the last of three choreographed dance showcases (One Tahitian, one Hawaiian, one Chamorro). I got to eat two Egg McMuffins, a doughnut, a hot dog and down a canned coffee drink from Japan.* Best of all, I got to be there when Sloan cleaned house.**

*The other food & beverage options at the PIC after party included: doughnut holes, mini muffins, ice cream, yakisoba, energy drinks, and Miller light. For real.

**I realize this is all about me even though Sloan did the running. I asked her to put a few words down regarding her own race experience but she squished her face at me. If you want to hear it in her own words - send a persuasive comment.

Dong Won

How beautiful is that! Like butterflies at the natural history museum or a marching band at half time. This, if you don't read Korean, is a Dong Won gift pack, given to us, as a gift, from Sloan's good friend and niece of the Dong Won empire. Not only are the items in the Dong Won gift pack aesthetically arranged in their own pockets in the gift box, that gift box comes in the dark blue fabric gift case with easy carry handle. In the Dong Won gift pack are a dozen cans of dolphin safe tuna in light oil and four cans of luncheon meat (I assume it's like SPAM though I haven't tried it because I can't bring myself to disturb the feng shui of the gift pack. It could be better than SPAM in which case there will be a sequel blog with even more exclamation points).

Suffice it to say, I'm a sucker for presentation and Dong Won has taken items usually stacked in menacing towers at the ends of aisles in grocery stores, ready to be desiccated come WWIII or a giant tsunami, and actually made it look appealing. Now if only they could do this for Crisco or toilet paper (so I don't have to be all embarrassed carrying that 24 roll pack like a donkey out of K-mart).

Stay tuned for the recipes.
Love in Life.
Word.

Elect Papayas

It's hard to get fully invested in all this election coverage when I'm sitting all alone in our Merizo house. I'm trying. I've got my desktop radio on, streaming from the internet because I can't get any stations in this metal container. I'm refreshing various websites as the vote counts come in. I'm reading the analysis of the exit polls. Maybe this is what all those families felt like in the forties huddled around their radios listening to coverage of a war far far away.


That being said, I can hear the ocean and see the tide coming in. I'm a little worried about the papaya tree outside our back window. It's got a good dozen pint-sized green papayas on it but they haven't gotten any bigger in the last month. One, still only baby fist sized turned orange and promptly shriveled. I think it's the massive vine choking the tree's trunk. These are my concerns down here in Merizo.

Oh, and look at that. Obama's taken Ohio. NPR's already calling the election, practically. Nice.

Girls in Trucks

Not to be confused with Girls on Trucks, which may be one of those shrink-wrapped magazines on the top rack at 7eleven.

I need to make an at the very least controversial assertion that we, husbands, may not fully appreciate the coolness capacity of our wives until we have watched them drive a rickety, rusted out, power steering and air conditioning-less pickup in a humid and pothole filled country. Ideally in a tank top with Jackie-O sunglasses. It's a pretty bad-ass sight to behold, like watching your mother eat balut. I'll go ahead and extend this observation to girlfriend-boyfriends, girlfriend-girlfriend, and mother-child relationships.

As sexist as that might sound I also want to point out that a book came out recently also called Girls in Trucks which, from what I gather from the Amazon book review, is all about women who are living life on their own in New York, apparently the testing ground for living life on one's own. If anyone's actually read the book please feel free to correct my usage or advise me on it's merits or defects.


This isn't to say that women can't drive trucks - more that trucks lend themselves to the kind of decay and disrepair that some women and many modern men for that matter would normally opt out of. Somehow you stop thinking about all the previous owners back-sweat that may have soaked into the fabric seating after you've contributed a few pints of your own. In this new age of GPS navigation, climate zones, bumper video cameras and engines that turn off at stop lights, it's nice to know that we can get by with four wheels and a windshield. Well, you know what I mean.

Head Pain

I've been getting headaches. Not terrible ones, lingerers that squat on my temples waiting for a reason to spring. Now that I've become a pain-killing-pill-popper like House I am encouraged to trace the epidemiological roots of these headaches which are undoubtedly linked to either of the two most significant recent changes in my life: marriage or Guam. Here are the possibilities (if I had a dry-erase board I would be using it here).

1. Hard Water: Guam tap water is heavy on the minerals. There is a cut copper pipe specimen sitting on the desk of the biology teacher I was subbing for showing calcium deposits that have nearly closed off the hole. I imagine that could be going on in the capillaries in my brain.

2. Sunglasses: Besides the overwhelming amount of sunshine, many of Guam's roads are made of coral, which is light grey like concrete and reflects the rampant sunshine exponentially, forcing me to wear sunglasses most of the day (and also because I like to look cool). I do not often wear sunglasses because something in my face disagrees with them: they pinch a nerve or block a vessel or pressure a point. Whatever the cause: sunglasses = headaches. But should they continue after I've removed them?

3. Dress Codes: Guam's private schools are all Catholic and have dress codes for students and teachers. I wear a tie to work, most of which Sloan thinks are ugly as sin, and they cause unaccustomed to pressure on my neck that my five years of woodworking failed to prepare me for.


6. Deliveries: This is more of a metaphorical headache and I think the busted box closely approximates the feeling of my head. We had a number of packages shipped to us around October 12th, Priority. Three of seven, or so, have arrived in the span of 2 weeks, all in various states of ill treatment. They look like they've been opened with a rolling pin, punched, or juggled Ace Ventura style. Apparently now things can't be shipped from Maryland to Guam due to some "security threat," quite possibly some guy at the USPS Guam office with a rolling pin. We are still waiting for 3.

7. Cheap Beer: Because UOG is bad at paperwork and I currently only have intermittent job options, we are on budget lockdown or a spending freeze. I imagine other young peoples hoping to buy a house or having kids or attending school are in a similar doldrums. We are cutting back, limiting excess, being vigilant. Now, because we're on Guam and Budwiser is a major sponsor of basically every sporting and entertainment event, an influential community organizer and co-founder of the "I Recycle Program" (a grassroots initiative to recycle mostly their own cans), I couldn't give up beer entirely. Lucky for me, there are a few cheaper beer alternatives available and while I don't want to offend anyone's personal preferences let me just say that the headaches are hardly worth the extra pocket change.

5. Marriage: Actually, that one's going pretty good.

Feel free to comment on other possible causes, homeopathic remedies, or to donate to the Merizo Tasty Beer Fund.

Prop A

Every election has a Prop A. In Hawaii it's mass transit, nationally it's the economy, or the Iraq war, or Sarah Palin, anyway, on Guam there's this thing called Prop A. From what I understand, Proposition A: The Responsible Gaming Act, is a proposal to allow Guam Greyhound, a dog racing facility, not a pee pee smelling cross-island bus, to open a casino. When they build this casino they also have to build a convention center, hire 500 people (90% Guam residents), pay a bunch of taxes and dole out various sums of money to various social charities. My favorite part is that the casino will not, in theory, be open to Guam residents. Although this too is unacceptable (see above ad). Casino guests will have to show proof that they are leaving the island, I assume with all their gambling & alcohol addictions as well as pent up gambling rage and bankruptcies, within 30 days. (See: Article)


I try not to take sides on this particular issue when my teammates discuss the merits for or against Prop A at volleyball tournaments, however, it is hard not to see a little bit of humor in the various tactics of the dueling constituents. On the against side we have the Keep Guam Good coalition and what appear to be Catholic locals (again see advertisement) inherently opposed to gambling but trying to present it as a problem of corporate distrust and loopholey legislation because they can't just go and say it's against their religion. On the for side are the government and businesses who feel it is the only way to improve the tourism economy and are willing to unleash the horrors of worldly temptation, but only to visitors. Maybe it's not that funny. It's actually quite a bit serious, especially when folks start drawing lines in the sand on an island whose small girth makes it all too easy to draw a line across (it).

Dollar Dollar Bill Y'all

And I do mean dollar bill.

This was our first week of work. Sloan started at the Marine Lab on Tuesday. It took a few days to acclimate to the sea air but she now has keys, a project to work on and a desk coming. Supposedly folks spend a good amount of time each day watching the waves break over the reef flat at the beach just down the hill.


They do a lot of field research at the Marine Lab. Actually, they do a lot of interesting work on coral disease and Sloan is working on sea sponges, specifically their potential to produce disease fighting bacteria (in layman's terms). I think they should study Chamois because they're more absorbent. I pray I will be able to understand her presentations this time around.

The reason I haven't posted in a while is because I've been very busy tutoring algebra. Two hours a week, total. I blew my first week's salary (on speculation) on "teacher wear," aka khakis. On Tuesday I had one student. On Thursday I had two. It is a very small school and a very quiet classroom with two shy eighth grade girls. Next class I need to bring in some background music just to break the tension. Algebra is intense.

Next week I will be substituting for an all-in-one science teacher who is going to Japan for an international science fair. I will be covering her Chemistry, Biology, Honors Biology, AP Biology and AP Environmental classes. I have a stack of textbooks that weighs more than an eighth grade girl and a little bit of honing up to do.

China Bike

If you thought you were cool, think again. This is a wedding gift from Sloan's former track coach and friend, Carl Cruz. Thank you Carl. It's a folding, rechargeable, electric bike from China and possibly the coolest thing ever. It has a light, a bell, a basket harness in back and goes 40km on one charge (I don't know how far that is in American). According to Carl, the entire Dutch team had these at the Athens Olympics to get around town.

Sloan is helping Carl train a high school track phenom so the two of us met the two of them at the GW Track at 5:30pm Wednesday. It's a beautiful spot on a small plateau with light breezes and a view of the University of Guam Field House which looks like a big cement opihi napping in the grass. The track, like bunches of other things on Guam, is not very well maintained. For some reason a 25 meter section of a straightaway is cemented over. Actually, the reason we were at the track at 5:30 was because another high school, JFK, was so poorly maintained (rusting rebar, mold and crumbling cement isn't that healthy for kids) that it was shut down forcing GW to hold double sessions to accommodate all the new students. The early shift goes to school from 7-11:55am, the late shift from 12:30-5:45pm. Our track star got out of class 15 minutes early.


Carl showed up late and brought his big, long, salt and pepper dog named - pepper - and this bike. "It's no good for the open road," he kept saying. "But it's perfect for urbane areas: China, Berkeley, Tumon. If you guys lived in Tumon it would be perfect."

It is already perfect. I love it. The first time he offered the bike I wasn't there. For some reason Sloan claimed:
1. We don't have the space.
2. No one bikes on Guam.
3. We have to ship it when we leave. Etc.


Good thing I was there the second time he offered it. I did some laps around the track without pedaling. We clocked it at 5mph. It's now sitting in the garage with 2 extra tire tubes, 1 extra tire and a Mandarin instruction manual. Maybe Jasper can translate. Check out the website: www.junji-power.com.

"Whatever you do," Carl said, "don't give it away. I'll be real mad if you give it away." Are you kidding me? This thing's worth more than our truck and it has a spare tire.

Crabs in a Bowl

As we, chin deep in the economic downturn, gurgle the wake of the housing crisis, I want to reflect a minute on the lifelong plight of the hermit crab. In the very first blog post I mentioned the plethora (see: The Three Amigos) of hermit crabs on our beach in Merizo and in the photo you can see some of the variety of shells available to the crabs living on this beach. As I learned from Wikipedia, their survival and growth depends not only on the abundance of gastropod shells in the area but also on the predators who will eat gastropods and then leave the shells intact. That's a pretty formidable pecking order. I imagine it's like relying on the abundance of defaulting home owners, crooked mortgage lenders and a community that won't loot the house once it's empty just to gain access to a decent house, not to mention the impending competition with other hermit crabs. Leave it to decapods to teach us a timely life lesson. And speaking of valuable life lessons, which is in no way related to the crab rant:

Happy Birthday Sir Ace Siegrist.

Milk in a Box

For those who have traveled outside of the mainland US this won't be anything new. For those who haven't, I won't bore you with the specifics of ultra-pasturized milk. You can check out this website for that: http://itotd.com/articles/220/milk-in-a-box/. The fact of the matter is, dairy products are expensive on Guam. Beer is cheap, milk & ice cream expensive - $7.99 for a half gallon of Dreyers. I know where all our petty cash is going.

I don't think there are any cows on Guam. I haven't seen any. There are carabao, which are like ninja cows. Cows are goofy looking, some have spots, they have names like Bessie or Ferdinand. Carabao have giant horns like the devil in that Tom Cruise movie Legend and are charcoal grey in color. These guys have the corner office (see picture). If they're giving milk they're not selling it at the local Cost-U-Less. Japanese tourists are throwing back $50 shots of it in the underground izakaya bars.

So we're sticking with boxed milk. It isn't nearly as bad as I remember back in the PI where I demanded it be microwaved to vaporize the manky aftertaste - like someone threw in a couple ground up Tums tablets. Apparently there have been developments in pasturization science and truth be told in coffee or over cereal I can't tell the difference. And I'll have you know, before I became intolerant, I sampled many full glassess of fresh squeezed goodness. Cheers to you milk in a box.

Pig in a Bag

Now this is fantastic. Some stomachs might turn at the sight of a plastic bag filled with frozen cubes of pork but for me this is a dream come true. I don't dream very big. Not only is this *family bag* of meat enough for a dozen meals, it comes in a robust plastic bag with a drawstring closure, all wrapped with a bun at the top like a fruit basket.


As you can read on the price label this is meat packaged specifically for pork adobo. Now this didn't come from a butcher or specialty store by any means. I wouldn't even call the place a grocery store. Let's tag it a convenience store - with bags of meat. I assume it's either shoulder or rump meat, but who knows? And who cares? If you didn't grow up Filipino or on the islands I'll have you know this is a simple and delicious dish - the pinoy mac and cheese. Here's the recipe (originally from the Palmore family vault). If you have any variations let me know:

Adobo

4 pounds of meat (pork or chicken)
2 bay leaves
3/4 cup soy sauce
3/4 cup white vinegar
3/4 cup water (better yet, a can of good beer)
1 tablespoon garlic powder, or 5 big cloves of fresh garlic, smashed and chopped
1 tablespoon sugar
1 large onion, sliced
Pepper to taste (start with about 1/2 teaspoon)

Simmer the meat in a 5 qt pot with all the ingredients except the onion for 1 1/2 - 2 hours for pork (chicken only 30 -45 minutes) or until the meat is super tender. I like to add a little ginger and Tabasco. Stir occasionally.

Add the sliced onion the last five minutes.

Serve over rice.


This is the first entry of my three part series on "something in a something." Justin Timberlake has agreed to sing the jingle. Check in for the next installment.

House Party or One Degree of Drew

We took a right turn off route 10, just after a Wendy's, a left on a rocky dirt road that ran behind Untalan Middle School and another right up a second, more dirtier, dirt road. We climbed a small hill, neared the end of the road and parked in front of the house that didn't look abandoned. Dogs were barking from somewhere. Three or four skinny cats lounging on a rusted out Toyota truck perked up and stared at us wide eyed as we discussed whether we were at the right place at the right time. I reread the directions in my notebook. Sloan always teases my notebook. It has a black and white sticker of Kim Basinger on it and a lot of important notes in it: like playlists for long drives and drawings of stuff. "It seems right," I said, showing her my diagram of the houses at the end of the street Laurie had described over the phone. "Did she mention dogs?"

Two giddy white mutts traded off barks from behind a chain link fence on the side of the house. The cats stared. I shut the truck door deliberately loud and Laurie came to the window in a tank top, her hair still wet from the shower. We were on time, in other words, a good hour and a half too early.

She let us in and the dogs ran laps in the back yard. I got a canned beer and we pushed our way through the dogs to get out to the back patio. One had a bloody neck from the ticks they had pulled off that afternoon.

We met Simon, cheerful with short dreadlocks, who was barbecuing in the yard. Simon is Maia's boyfriend. Maia is Laurie's daughter. We sat down on plastic lawn chairs under a corrugated tin roof surrounded by hanging wooden ornaments and honeysuckle bushes. It started raining hard and things got complicated.

But first, some background. Laurie is an old friend of my dad, from Dumaguete. She knew me when I was little, down around her knees. She moved to Guam with Maia, who's about my sister's age, to work at the University of Guam Marine Lab in '96.

Maia came out of the house with an umbrella to join Simon in the yard. Mark arrived with a small ceramic bowl of hummus. I didn't think I had ever met Mark before. Why should I have, we're on Guam. He was fit, had a chiseled face and fat-less arms, and was of indeterminable age. My first guess was rock climber and/or vegan and/or one of those macrobiotic types. What is it they eat? Limpets? No, that's not right. Anyway, I was wrong on all accounts. Mark was a devout carnivore and not just a rock climber, he was an ultra-outdoorsman, and I had met him before - on Maui, of course. He was the preserve manager at Haleakala when I was doing an internship with The Nature Conservancy, again in '96.

"'96? That might have been the year I got all three suv's stuck in the mud," he said. "I got the first one stuck and then I marched right over, took the wheel and got the second one stuck, followed by the third. I was the preserve manager, I was the only one who could to it, you know, drive them through the mud. Was that your year?"

I honestly couldn't remember but it was a good story so now it is my year - the year the trucks got stuck. Peter showed up next, with a six pack of Asahi Blue. This is some kind of new Asahi, it could be a light beer, it could be organic or something, it's hard to say because the can's covered in Japanese. Peter is going to be Sloan's new boss so I better not say anything incriminating about him. Peter's German, or from Germany, and a hot shot at the University of Guam Marine Lab. He gets most of his funding from the federal government which, believe it or not, is far more reliable than funding from the University.

The rain was smacking on the patio roof and so we yelled at each other, ate hummus and cut away at a wedge of fontina cheese. Maia and Simon had moved the barbecue indoors to an electric grill and the house was filling with smoke. Delicious tear-inducing meat smoke. Maia and her mom discussed who could give the better stink eye. Maia could deliver a pretty rank stink eye. I informed them of a new trend in stink eye evolution: the fade away stink eye. This is where you linger in the vicinity of your opponent, but half obscured behind a wall or piece of furniture. When you manage to catch the eye of your adversary you engage the stink eye and "fade away" behind the obscuring agent. It is a nearly perfect and indefensible attack, enveloping your nemesis in a clammy funk as though they had just seen a ghost or driven past a sulfur mine (one of Mark's favorite smells).

The food was ready. We waded through the smoky living room and filled our plates with rice, sausages, barbecue chicken, corn and salad. In Simon and Mark's case, just chicken and sausage.

Over the buffet table Simon asked me, "Roy is your uncle? He was my advisor, in college. He was my favorite teacher."
"He is a smart guy. He would always meet us at the airport," I said. "He was the only relative (on my mom's side) who would visit us in Hawaii."
"He would give us sheets of folded up butcher block paper for exams and told us to show your work. He was my favorite teacher," he said again.
"I haven't talked to him in a long while," I said, and it made me a little sad to say because even though we saw heaps of relatives and family at our wedding there were still tons we didn't see.

Laurie put a CD on the stereo that we could barely hear. She came outside with a grin. "Do you know who this is?"
"I can't hear it," I said.
"It's your father."

Kind of a Darth Vader moment, if Darth Vader was more like James Taylor or CSN or Y, and hadn't just sliced my hand off with a laser sword. It was a CD from a tape that he and Tito Junix had made for Laurie on her 19th birthday. You could hear her laughing and singing along in the back of the tape. My dad and Tito Junix used to play in the bars and clubs around Dumaguete, maybe other places too. I've lost track of the stories. They had an act that admittedly I barely understood because I don't know more than a lick of Filipino but according to Laurie, and I believe her wholeheartedly, it was awesome. They translated traditional Filipino songs into other dialects to sound ridiculous, they mock broadcasted from Radio DUMB, they played guitar throughout and sang wacky and but remarkably endearing songs like precursors to Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement. The tape that Laurie was given for her birthday was the only known recording of their show until a couple of years ago when Junix and my dad were reunited with the tape and promptly turned it into a CD. Ta da.

One thing about getting older and steadily boxing up and storing away adventures and experiences, so much so that I can barely remember the things I did a year ago, I realize that my parents lived many lives too, a lot of them before I was born. And sometimes it takes hearing it from their friends before it really sinks in. So thank you Laurie, for dinner and making me even more proud of where I came from.

Bile Bay

When Sloan first introduced the bay we would be living on she pronounced it, as would I, the way it's spelled - "bile" - as in the bitter pea green soup that lives in your gallbladder. The bay was a landing site for the Japanese troops in World War II (1941) and forty six Chamorros were brutally slaughtered by grenade, bayonette and saber in the town of Merizo (see Guampedia entry). So I wasn't too happy with the name-sake implications of the bay we would be viewing our sunsets over.

Fortunately, a chance meeting with an old family friend of Sloan's at the University of Guam quelled my fears. This friend, who we will call Dr.D to protect his pleasant insulation here on Guam, is a master of verbal wordplay and my new hero. He manages to insert quips like "arsenic laced comments" and a devout knowledge of astrology into everyday conversation. I can't remember some of the more flavorful details of our discussion but I imagine it was a little like talking to Charles Dickens, if he was alive and a scientist. Anyway, this is how it went down:

"We're living in Merizo, on Bile Bay," said Sloan.
"You mean Billy Bay?" said Dr.D, his head tilted and eyebrows raised.
"Yes, Billy Bay," said Sloan.

Whew, sunsets saved. And as you should be able to tell from the pictures, they're gonna be pretty great.

Container House

In the ever-changing dialog of responsible building methods, the Container Home - a house built using steel shipping containers (the kind you see on the back of big-rig trucks or stacked on shipping barges) - falls somewhere in the middle of sustainability spectrum. On one hand, steel is not a renewable resource and the containers are usually doused in a fair amount of chemical insecticides, on the other, they are easy to ship, ultra-strong and can be recycled/ reused products. See: SFGate Article.

Now, tucked away in the beach-front tropical jungle of Merizo Guam, yes it's possible, we have our very own Container Home. It's propped up on cinder blocks, got metal walls, and an air conditioner on each side - I guess like a candle burning at both ends. I've lived in small basement apartments the last 3 years and forced Sloan to join me for the last one so, all-considered, this is a pretty big step up.

We spent the afternoon mopping the linoleum floors, scrubbing the bathroom and wiping out the huge full-size fridge, a monolith in the small apartment. The realtor mentioned this as a selling point. Merizo is about as isolated as you can get on Guam (only 30 miles long and 5-10 miles wide), a good 40 minutes from the nearest stocked grocery store. He recommended filling the thing with frozen meats, you know, just in case the power goes out and the roads flood. Word.

The Other Frontier

Last month a short article, hidden in the homepage carnival of the New York Times online, spoke of Alaska, specifically how it is presented as the homeland of Sarah Palin, as the "last true frontier." Alaska's distance, "its mammoth size, its severe climate, its many unpopulated miles," contribute to the perception that the state is the American testing-ground for ideologies, the human spirit, and isolated governance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/weekinreview/14roberts.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Guam is way further West than Alaska. Though it is smaller, more densely populated, and has a relatively consistent climate (humid), I want to make the case for Guam as another incarnation of the American frontier (it is a territory), and for myself as a casual observer/collector of some of the stories that rise from the steaming post-rain asphalt.

Today, our first full day on the island, Sloan and I followed a speedy white BMW, our very own white rabbit (hopefully not melamine tainted), along route 4, through Talofofo and Inarajan, to our new house in Merizo, on the southern shore. To extend the metaphor, it did feel a bit like falling down a hole: rushing past gems, fossils, artifacts embedded in the earth in the way of concrete block homes, tidepools, village post offices and erroded rock formations. I can only hope that over the next year I will be able to slowly climb back out again and document each curiosity in greater detail. (Follow our path in purple).

In the BMW was our realtor, Mat, a very earnest and honest man with a full beard and ponytail. Armed with a cell phone holstered to his belt, he showed us around the property commenting on the price points of ocean-facing windows and grey-tinted paints versus true whites. I was distracted by the walking stones in the front yard - hermit crabs - and wondered whether I would ever be able to travel with their apparent ease and economy.