I had the hardest time trying to figure out an introduction to this article. Trying to describe what exactly is a taki without taking into consideration its scope and influence on the people of Fiji is risky, least of all un-patriotic. I tried all sorts of introductions, most of which failed straight away such as “Taki is as Fijian as the mosquitoes on your leg and the kani on your arms.” ; “You will always find things in Fiji – Smiles, coconut trees and a taki.” Rather then expose my substantially under developed ability to pad out introductions, I will instead start off simple.

The good old taki.

Taki, a phrase uttered many a time in Fiji, is Fijian for “serve the drink!”, and is usually associated with drinking grog. It can however be applied to any other drinking situation where the drink is being shared in a group, just like grog. Besides grog, the taki principle is applied to drinking alcohol in a group, either at home around a carton or two, or at the clubs, with a jug. While beer is the more common form of drink to be used in a taki situation, it’s not uncommon to taki other drinks as well such as coke and rum etc. As long as the drink is alcoholic in nature, the taki method serves its purpose well.

If you are a local, chances are you are already familiar with doing the taki, either through grog, or beer, or usually both, and so this article would be old news. However, if you are new to the drinking scene, or were a goody two shoes till you got coerced into drinking by sneaky friends, then fear not, the taki system isn’t all that difficult to get into.

The Stuff

To initiate a taki session, you’ll need:

Taki Master: Mind you, there may be other words used to describe such a position, but for all intents and purposes, ‘taki master’ or in its shortened form for this article, ‘TM’ is the person who is responsible for the taki.

Alcohol: Of course. Beer, Rum/cola mix, homebrew. However you call it, if it has enough of a kick to make you bring on the good times, then by all means taki it. Alcohol could either be served straight from the bottle, or from a jug as commonly seen in the nightclubs.

Taki glass: A typical taki glass should not be too big that filling it 3/4 up with beer would result in a half empty bottle, and not too small that you can fit 3 of it in a shot glass. Glass is preferred, as plastic cheapens the thrill. Of course personal preference could say otherwise, but glass is usually the norm.

Washback cup: It happens. You serve a glass, when it comes back, there’s a tiny bit left over that you’re not likely to share with anyone else (unless you hate everyone else. More on that later…). A washback cup is used after every taki where you pour the reminder into, then continue with the round. Sure you could simply empty it onto the floor (which I do now and then) but a washback cup is so much more…classy.

The Taki

The Taki Master (TM) is appointed either by a self vote (‘Mai I taki’) or a group vote (‘Vacava you taki?’). After the alcohol has been acquired, it is now a simple task of serving it out to your group of friends. To taki, pour about half a glass of beer and hand it out. When the glass comes back, empty the washback into the washback cup, fill the glass again and pass it out. Rise and repeat until the whole group has had their fill.

The order in which you circulate the drinks is entirely up to you. However, to ensure that nobody has been missed (though more often then not you’d be notified by a cry of ‘Oi! You missed me!’) a circular order is recommended, starting off with the person next to you, and ending with you.

After the round has been finished, there’s a waiting time, usually to let the served alcohol do its thing. The initiation of the next round depends on who calls for it, either by a thirsty member of the party, or the TM themselves. Starting the next serve is done by simply saying ‘TAKI’.

Bear in mind:

• When you are doing the taki, note that you decide the speed to which the group as a whole gets drunk. While various other factors may somewhat skew the end result (an alcoholic in the group for example), the general idea in taki is for everyone to get with the drinks together. Therefore the two speeds of taki are: a ‘slow’ taki is when there is a long waiting time in between rounds, and a ‘fast’ taki being the exact opposite, with little or sometimes no breaks in between takis, a tactic adopted either at the beginning of the session, or whenever you just want everyone to get fucked as soon as possible.
• As the TM, respect is in order for your fellow drinking buddies. If someone asks to be excused from the  taki rounds by either not drinking or simply preferring to drink their own drink, let them be. The same goes for requests for either a lesser amount of drink or missing the current round. Common sense yes, but a tact which is easily forgotten during the more drunken stages of taki.
• Full glass takis are usually frowned upon, and are generally reserved for the person who came late to the party or for that special someone who loses at whatever drinking game you were playing.
• The bigger the group, the faster the taki needs to be. Because it takes awhile for everyone to get their taki, in a big group, the waiting time for each person’s taki is increased exponentially, so a smaller break between each taki round ensures speedier delivery.

The modern pirate arr

Welcome to the land of all that isn’t original or bought from the bargin bin! Piracy is a way of life here in paradise, it permeates every aspect of our entertainment needs, from video games to the standard of slow evenings at home – dvds. Countless entrepreneurs hawk pirate dvds anywhere and everywhere, from the quickest corner set up in town, to the most seemingly legit of businesses i.e. Comsol. Actually, I take that back. Comsol as a company is legit. As for their now defunct (well, publicly anyways) dvd section, I have my doubts. While Comsol wasn’t the only pirate dvd seller in Fiji, they were the most prolific, and at times, worthy of rockstar status, thanks in part to their features on the national news due to bootlegging local content, which always gets the media and police attention.

Comsol as a pirate dvd shop (they actually sell heaps of other stuff as well such as computers and homeware) had an unusual naming convention when it comes to the quality of their dvds. This naming policy is prevalent amongst other dvd sellers, and seems to be almost standard fare. Basically, pirate dvds are classed into 3 categories: Original, Cinema Copy (or its short form as CC) and Clear Cinema Copy (CCC). Quality varies widely between these 3 sections, and in this post, to celebrate the crapiness that we’ve all had to put up with for the past few hundred eons, Failed Paradise is going to explore the wonderful world of oft misleadingly titled pirate dvds, examining various versions and seeing how much of a difference cinema copies actually are to the real deal.

Each category is going to be tested and given a score out of five on several criterias including: picture clarity, sound quality, and lastly how close to an actual dvd original it is. While it would be nice to compare the pirate movie to its original original counterpart, obtaining an original original for a movie thats say still in the cinema is next to impossible, so we’ll just go by general quality. Arrrightey let’s get down to fighting.

Cinema Copy

Denoted by the two letters CC, cinema copied dvds are the bane of pirate quality versions. As its name suggests, the copy of the movie was made guerilla style with a hand held camera brought into a cinema and used to film the screened film. This is the first and oldest form of piracy, and doesn’t seem to be in decline, although these days movie houses are upping the ante with regular patrols, night vision goggles, bag checks and high security. Cinema copies are almost always of movies that are just released, having had its premier filmed/stolen somewhere else and distributed before you can say “Holy Handheldcam batman!”

Movie: The Haunting in Connecticut

Image Quality: Fact. You can tell straight away if what you’re watching is a cinema copy, and that’s right at the beginning when the titles show. First off, the camera swings wildly as it attempts to get a good frame of the projector. Also, almost always, the text gets cropped as shown in this example:

Cropped movie is cropped

The camcorder, by virtue of piracy law, must always move up and down to try and get a good picture and fail. Badly. Like, on a boat in the middle of the Perfect Storm badly, all the while struggling to focus on the picture. Speaking of  focus, pirate cameras are your average hand held camcorders, with auto-focus turned on. And because auto-focus can only work if there’s a picture, at times when everything goes dark then comes back, it takes a short while to focus. And therein lies the most annoying factor. That and unstable cameras. And people walking across the view. And crowd noise.

Yeah.

But the camera’s failure to focus is the most annoying.

Here’s an example in the movie where the main character is spazzing out on the bed with the mother trying to hold him down/comfort him. The light flickers on and off, and each time it comes on, there’s a spooky guy approaching the camera. Except that you can’t really make out said spooky character when lame handicam takes a bit to focus…and then the lights go out again:

Before the lights go out

After the lights come back on

This happens, I kid you not, about six times. Usually (I use the term ‘usually’ with much familiarity, since I was basically brought up on pirate movies >.>) the handicam loses focus now and then, but the scene wasn’t that all too important i.e. during dialouge scenes etc. However, in this movie, the whole moment was built on freaky undead guy approaching the main character/you only when the lights would come back on. Having the auto-focus spazz out in this crucial part basically spoilt the whole ‘scare’ factor for me.

Score: 2/5

If the image quality were any worse, it would strain your eyes to the point of near blindness. Not to mention the insane amount of trying to figure out what’s on the screen when it blurs out.

Sound Quality: Take a handicam with a built in mike. Stick it in a cinema. Play the movie, and listen to how the camera struggles to take in the audio richness that you inadvariadly miss out on. The dialogue at times (and usually at crucial moments) struggles to keep up if there are sound effects galore. Or loud music. Or sound effects and loud music. Also, if the crowd is very verbal i.e. many lols, many cheers, you’d better hope you paid attention in lip reading class.

Score: 2/5

If this movie was shot in a bus that was driving through the Andes mountains during an earthquake with volcanoes sprouting in the distance and dinosaurs beating on the roof of the bus, I’d have given it a 1. For effort.

Overall: 1/5

Cinema copies are good for two things only: if you want to watch movies that have just opened in the cinema but are too cheap to pay for the real thing, and for torturing prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Or in hell. Bottom line: Watch CC’s at your own peril.

Oh and on another note, don’t bother asking the seller if a cinema copy is good. It’s not like they’ll tell the truth and risk failing the monthly sales quota.

Next: The Clear Cinema Copy!

When the words “Local Music” is mentioned, what springs to mind? Cheery, smiley fijians standing on white sandy beaches, smiles beaming away, ukaleles in tow, harmonious tunes echoing in the pacific breeze? Calm stringed melodies singing of times of old, when times were simple and the grog flowed like the stream next to the house?

If you were just visiting our shores at the local hotel then, yes.

However, a cursory glance at localmusicinfiji.com will reveal a totally different picture.

Times are a’changin’, and amongst many young musicians today, its definitely all about the hip rap hop.

With the advent of westernisation, cheap computers and coupled with the ease at which the internet has made itself available to many families today (ah the good old days of dial-up…or maybe not), anyone and everyone with a musical bone or a lyrical leaning towards rap can make themselves heard. Several rappers have already made a name for themselves, such as Sammy G, Mr Grin, and Red Child, to name but a few.

The distribution channels for local grown music has improved with the help of the internet via bebo groups, reverbnation profiles etc, but the traditional means still remain, either through radio, a music video (if you’ve a video production company at your disposal), and even through public performances:

Not to be outdone by the advent of hip hop, krumping is also making headwaves with its subsequent introduction and growth.

It would be interesting to see just how far this genre of music and dance would develop, and with plenty of raw talent and the internet as their oyster, we should be in for alot of surprises in the coming years.

Tiko vei iko: You’ve got it! /sarcasm

Stephanie: I know for a fact that Fiji was going to win, I’ve studied their tactics and consider it sound.

Clarence: Trues up, expert tiko vei iko =_=

Smiley kid ca saraga

Remember when you were a kid?

The good ol’ days when you didn’t give two cents about what other people thought of the hole in your shirt, when cartoons in the afternoon were the most looked forward to hours aside from school lunch hour and visits to the shop with 10 whole cents, when you were convinced that your current group of friends were going to be with you forever, when you absolutely knew your class teacher was either the bestest best teacher ever, or was most certainly the cruelest demon ever to walk the earth unchallenged by demon hunting heroes that you gleaned off from the comics that you swiped off your neighbour?

I recently had a run-in with nostalgia a few days ago, when, during a lunch session with a few of my workmates, I happen to come across a popular, I’m not quite sure how to describe this, but for the moment I’ll settle for ‘silly kids poem’.

The chance conversation centred around who was going where, when someone said, “Where you gang all going?”

“Suva,” was the reply.

At that moment, most probably without thinking, my fijian workmate, his eyes lit with that familiar glow of Deja Vu, launched into a tirade of sentences that started one after the other, each sentence continuing on the previous statement with a question, and weaved its way through a jumble of nonsense that culminated in the arrival to the very word that set off the whole verbal fiasco. Suva.

For the sake of keeping nostalgia alive, and for future reference, here is the poem in its entirety. This poem works as a back and forth between two people, and almost always starts off with the conversation having had the word “Suva” mentioned. Note that while this is the version that I heard and am familiar with, you may have a slightly different version in your head, or maybe not.

To start off, someone has to start with the opener:

Fire vei? (Where are you going?)

Suva

Suva cava? (cava – what?)

Suva City

City cava?

Sitiveni (english name for steven)

Veni cava?

Venikau (pencil? Not too sure on this word)

Kau cava?

Kau Ba

Ba cava?

Barewa (uro)

Rewa cava?

Rewa Daily

Daily cava?

Daily Post

Post cava?

Post Fiji

Fiji cava?

Fiji Times

Times cava?

Times 2

2 cava?

2  SUVA!

If you were a child of the 70s, 80s or even 90s, tell me you didn’t just read that and not feel a pang of nostalgia creep up to the corner of your eyes. If not, it’s never too late to start learning it

A New paint job. With less wheels.

If you’re reading this after you’ve been redirected from the ol’ .blogspot.com addy, then welcome! We’ve transfered over from blogspot to a brand spanking new domain (only $20FJ a year! Bonus!), a new wordpress blog hosting machine, all with the fresh smell of brand new paint Over the next few days there’ll be a few hiccups, curious new themes and all round strangeness happenings here. Stay with us. We’re getting the hang of things as we settle down in our new home, and will soon be churning out the same silly, strange, funny posts that you’ve all come to associate with the monster that is Failed Paradise. So update your bookmarks, re-subscribe your RSS Feeders, and enjoy the new layer of paint. Just don’t watch it dry.

Blast From The Past is a weekly (or somewhere around that timeframe, as I claim ‘Fiji Time’ as my defendent) post of scans from a 1969 Fiji Times paper which also doubled as a 100 year anniversary issue look back at 1869. Every week one page scan will be posted, allowing you to have a read of issues, politics and topics that was the Fiji of the past.

Most of you may be aware of one of the oldest photography studios in Fiji (it was opened in 1904), Caines Jannif Limited, located opposite Suva Central in town. But what I wasn’t aware of was another photography company that operated back in pre-independence days, and seemed to be the major photo studio of its era. Of course, I say seemed to since buying a full page advert is as expensive as it was back then as it is now. If your company can afford a full page ad, then its safe to say that you’re a big player in company circles