Right.

There’s no denying that Fiji Water has the Hollywood crowd, with famous actors such as Junior James T Kirk and Brad Pitt seen out in public with the bottle close by. The Music Industry too is no slacker. Bottled water and public performance go hand in hand and in a strange way, sort of makes sense. Singing, especially in concerts with either the glaring mid-day sun on your face, or the bright, insect-attracting floodlights giving you accidental tan, is a tiring, sweaty job. So hydration is top on the list of necessary life items, besides pizza and the drug dealer’s speed dial button.

If you want to see what these singing celebrities order during their tours/performances, look no further, The Smoking Gun has a comprehensive list of famous singers and their list of travel demands a.k.a. Tour Riders. And one of the interesting things is how popular Fiji Water is amongst the bottled water request line up. Some of the more famous performers who’ve requested Fiji Water include:

Ok not Kelly Clarkson in particular, who prefers Dasani Water, but her rock band, who ask for a whooping 24 bottles of Fiji Water. In a rather unusual show of un-rockmanship, her list of needs is rather…small. Like, post 2008 world economy crash small. Which is quite funny, since her record sales show a different tale.

What I said about Kelly Clarkson? I take it back. Either Mandy Moore’s trying to compete with Kelly on the ‘who’s on the hobo diet?’ competition, or the printer ran out of ink when it got past item 7. Thank goodness 8 bottles of Fiji Water was at the top.

Granted the list said Fiji Water or Volci but still. As an aside, I was glad that some other singer/group aside from the current list of girl pop stars was on the list. And it was one of my favourite rock bands to boot! Now I can rock out to their tunes, knowing that they rock out with Fiji Water. As an added bonus, their tour rider write up is pretty hilarious, and is up there with the Iggy Pop one.

My personal favourite, Mary’s Tour Rider states most emphatically that her room must have “…10 1.5 litre bottles of FIJI water (absolutely, positively must be FIJI).” Like…absolutely. Or else there’ll be a whole lotta drama.

2008 was many things to many people, but to this blog, some things never change, especially in Fiji. Sure, we’ve got dark times ahead with our somewhat soured relationship with New Zealand, but then again, when were we ever good friends with them to begin with? The way I saw it, we were always enemies, since Rugby brings out the worst in their devoted followers Also, the world economy took a hit, and soon we’ll be all feeling the familiar pinch of tight pockets and careful budgeting.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom you know. In terms of the much under appreciated sport of rugby league, the Fiji Bati fired up the hearts and minds of fijians everywhere when they made a surprising run at the Rugby League World Cup in Australia, showcasing a quality of rugby that echoed the awesome performance of the Rugby Union World Cup 2007. Fiji also took a step towards Hollywood popularity when they designated the pacific as “Bulawood“. Oh. And we got another hurricane.

And throughout all the posts (or the lack thereof), you’ve always commented, letting us know just what you think of whatever was posted, agreements, disagreements, flames, trolls, the work. Here are the top 5 posts of the year by feedback:

It was all about 2007 apparently. The mandatory lookback at our humble beginnings, our noobish attempts at blogging, the unwittingly popular posts about crazy air hostesses, 2007 was a year that heralded a new local blog into the somewhat sparsely populated blogging scene (save for the contraversial, army hating regulars). It happened. And there was no turning back.

OMG a dilemma! It was the weekend of weekends, with a showdown between two events that locals were preparing to follow and adhere to. Earth Hour, the initiative to save the world from its eco-gulping inhabitants, was going to be started around the same time as our beloved Hong Kong 7s matches, and a pros and cons list had to be drawn up to decide who was the ultimate winner. Of course, a cursory glance at the game times revealed that Fiji’s matches were roughly 2 hours ahead of Earth Hour. So in the end, both parties won. Rare.

Fiji has only just being exposed to the West and all its ways in the past few centuries, and seems to haven taken most of the influence in its stride. Franchise in all its glory has not been left behind, and has taken residence with an almost enviable ease. However, a few have since hiccuped and closed shop, due to either near impossible competition (all hail Comsol the mighty dvd distributor of pirate dvds), bad business decisions, or just plain bad luck.

Heh. Best photo of 2008 in my humble opinion, which is mostly overrated, and never paid any attention, but I digress. Vodafone and Digicel, both warring business houses in the field of easy phones and bright splashy full page advertising, go out of their way to grab the consumer’s easily lost attention, though Digicel went one step further, and brought in chubby R&B crooner Sean Kingston on their opening day. Of course, never one to lose sight of any opportunity, Vodafone staff somehow managed a photo with the star when he landed, with the digicel staff nowhere to be found. Lols ensured.

In a very pote kind of way as well. World famous magician and all round slick haired Harry Houdini visited our shores back in 1910 and upon seeing some locals perform a diving trick, bested them at their own game. I can just picture it. The local divers, after being made to look like fools, scratch the back of their heads, grin, and swear silently before going off to town to shoot a few games of billiard and curse at all tourists in general. At least that is what I’d do. Early 1900′s or not.

With that behind us, I’m certainly looking forward to what surprises 2009 has in store for us all. Stay safe this festive season.

Digicel, the upcoming gargentuous thorn-in-the-side to mega-corp Vodafone, is due to officially open its doors next week Wednesday, 1st of October here in Fiji, bringing to an end the years long monopoly Vodafone had on the local mobile phone industry.

While this may sound like good news to some, the more interesting tid bit of info was which musical artist they’d bring to entertain/disuade the locals during opening day. More marketing then friendly peace offerings to the competition before beginning cut throat business, Digicel is known for impressive, near festival quality opening shows in the countries it opens in.

Tonga got Shaggy.

A free concert, massive promotions, the works.

As impressive as it sounds, I was more interested in who Digicel would bring to Fiji for their mega opening ceremony. Since a repeat of Shaggy’s performance here wouldn’t be original, let alone fair to the friendly tongans (malo to ya’ll tongan readers – yes all 2 of you (: ), any musician was fair game.

After some asking around, a fair bit of bribing and buddy building relationships over booze and grog, rumours have began to surface over who exactly Digicel is bringing to our much hallowed shores for the night’s entertainment. Bear in mind this isn’t official until actually officially announced by Digicel themselves, but a spin on the rumour mill will add a bit of fun to the mix.