Posts Tagged travel
Labasa Represent!
Via the Forward Fiji blog comes this great ‘holla back’ from California, USA on some fijian@heart’s car. For those not in the know, Babasiga is the greater Labasa area in Vanua Levu. It’s also a great blog written by Wendy and Peceli which showcases life up north.
Vina’a va’a levu mate! (Not too sure if it’s written this way…)
My run-in with the Law and how not to catch a taxi
Image source: TVNZ
Ok this didn’t happen recently, but rather a few years ago, back when I was a tad bit more into grog then I am now (yes..yes I was ) and we’d stay up late nights on the weekends playing guitar and drinking grog.
On this particular night, we had just finished a jam session at around 3 in the morning. I was tired, grog doped, and in need of willful unconsciousness. After farewelling my fellow band members, I walked (read: staggered, struggled, nearly crawled) to the road to catch a taxi home.
Now picture this. Its the weekend. Casual weekend. I’ve been at a friends place for awhile, and all i had were the clothes i brought on my back from home. Which, suffice to say, made me look like i was on my way to the community garden. I was wearing a singlet, brown and slightly tattered t-shirt. My pants was a 3 quarters hand-me-downs, also brown, and torn at the bottom. I had draped my towel over my shoulders. My hair, which hadn’t seen the sharp edge of a pair of scissors in months, was long enough to make me look like a member of a hard rock band that worships Satan on mondays, wednesdays and fridays, and attends mass on a sunday.
I was a sight. You can just imagine. Now, imagine me, looking the way i did, staggering along the road, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other (left foot forward!….hold…right foot forward!….hold…), and at the same time trying to stop a taxi. In Fiji there is a general rule when it comes to catching taxis. The later the night, the more scary up you look….the less chances there are of catching a taxi. In my case, it was like winning the lottery by dipping a roach in ink and letting it scratch out the numbers itself.
But catch a taxi I did. In fact, by the time i reached the road, the first vehicle to approach me was a taxi. Tonight was my lucky night I waved at the taxi, and he stopped. As I got in, I took a glance at my would be chauffeur. I couldn’t have picked a more worse driver.
This guy was young, tiny, and obviously a first timer in this parts. He was dressed up to go clubbing, and not to drive a taxi at 3 in the morning. He was of small stature, and nervously gripped the wheel as I dropped my body in the backseat…directly behind him. Now, there is another well known rule about taxis in fiji. The person who sits directly behind you if you’re the driver, is the person most likely to rob you if said person looked thuggish enough. Period. And I just happened to chose that exact spot.
“Where to boss?” he nervously quipped.
Of course, I wasn’t paying attention to all these trouble signals. Hell I just wanted to go home. So, after slamming the door, i glared at him through the rear view mirror, and muttered “Nakasi”.
Big mistake number one was getting in the taxi behind mr driver. Big mistake two was acting like I was bad boy from the streets, and worse, looking the part. Big mistake number three, which was entirely my fault, was to give him a bad look. As we were driving along, I kept noticing how the driver was nervously glancing my way throught the rear view mirror. This got really annoying, to the point where the next time he looked, I looked back at him and scowled. Real smart as I was about to find out.
We eventually came to a policepoint. Nothing special about police checkpoints, since they have them all over the place. This was mainly to catch drunken drivers and…well…just drunken drivers. I don’t think wanted criminals would be stupid enough to drive through one of those checkpoints.
As we approached the checkpoint, I noticed the driver glance at me one more time. Inwardly, I groaned. This guy was really starting to piss me – wait…we were stopping. Why were we stopping? The police guys didn’t wave us down…oh oh.
A single policeman approached the taxi. This time I sat up, shook the grogginess from my eyes, and blinked.
“Why are we stopping driver?” I asked.
He didn’t look back at me this time. Something was definitely up.
“What happen?” asked the policeman as he came on the left side of the car, shining the torch inside.
“Hey boso”, pleaded the driver, while shooting a nervous look back at me, “Can you sit with me as I take this falla?”
“Why”, the policeman replied, “where you taking him?”
“Nakasi.”
While this was going on, it still didn’t ring in my thick skull that I was being held in criminal regard, and that if I didn’t play it right, I could be sleeping on the floor for the night in some police cell.
At this moment, the policeman swung his torch to the back where I was sitting.
“Oi,” he yelled, the gruffness in his voice definitely not portraying the polite police banter i was so used to seeing in the movies.
The torch was shining directly into my eyes, and the effect was quite intimidating. I raised my hand to block out the light, but it turned out that was the wrong thing to do.
“OI!” he yelled again, this time with more effect, “put your hands down!”
Immediately my hands dropped, and I squinted in the harsh light, feeling very very small indeed.
There was a pause as the policeman scrutinzed me. I felt like I was already on the lineup of suspects, the harsh white light, the lines behind the wall, the card I had to hold up which had my identity on it, the voice tests, the -
“Hey, you that falla who always visit your friend near the police post?”
I have a friend who stays near a police post. Every time I pass by, I wave at the officers who know me by face. Usually they’re are sitting down around a bowl of grog, enjoying the slow evening and yarning away.
Apparently, this policeman was one of the guys posted at that particular area, and had recognized me as a regular visitor to my friends place.
“Trues up! You that falla who always visit your friend near our post eh?” The policeman pointed the torch down and continued with a big smile, “oooh driver this falla set falla saraga. He no problem boy. Just go just go. Falla set.” With that he waved the driver on and gave me a thumbs up.
I sighed with relief at my close (not my first mind you) brush with the authorities. Then it hit me. The bloody driver thought i was going to rob him!
Me? Gentle soul me? Dear Mister blogger who wouldn’t kill a fly (though I did have a habit of catching them when I was small and burning their wings off…hmmm…), let alone even consider attempted robbery. Good lord! The nerve! I couldn’t even throw a punch to hit a person, let alone knock them out enough to run off with something. I mean, the last time I ever punched someone was way back in class 6, and that was over some argument about skipping in line. I’m a good boy! I swear!
…
I had to check with the driver just to make sure.
I tapped the driver on the shoulder as we settled into the drive.
“Driver, do I look like the kind of person who would rob you?”
And without skipping a beat, he looked me straight in the eye and smiled nervously.
“Yes”.
Dammit.
The Art of Street Selling
source: www.casebook.org
Picture this:
It’s a perfectly good day to be out and about in the city. Your watch has just registered a little after 1pm, and the pavements are packed with office people out of their work zones and heading towards the nearest lunch restaurant. With your mind focused on your destination, you make your way through the hustle and bustle of the crowd, perhaps oblivious to everything but what’s infront of you, only taking note to worm your way around the incoming tide of bodies when -
“Brother, buy a laptop.”
If you heard that sentence, nearly whispered, never shouted, and managed to both process and understand the implications of what was said in a split second, then congratulations, you’re a robot. For the rest of us non-logical thinkers, the oft casually intoned sentence offers up a business opportunity that is, at first appearences, simple, but carries with it significantly darker overtones.
It gets me everytime. The sentence is said, nay, murmured, my mind slowly registers someone speaking to me, yet my feet are still carrying me forward, oblivious to the offer. It’s usually after a few steps then does it occur to me that hey, I think that guy that I passed back there was trying to sell me a laptop. A few more steps, I slow down, and turn my head to look at mr laptop seller.
These guys are street smart, you have to hand it to them.
For one thing, they dress unremarkably. Not too flashy, not too scruffy, nothing that gives them away as a salesman of ‘opportunity’. You can find them always with a friend, and casual talk is exchanged between the two, often with a joke slipped in for good effect. To the unknowing eye, they could be just waiting for a friend before heading off for a tasty meal at the suva market. What betrays them however is their occassional focus of attention on certain types of people who regularly pass them. Young teenagers who dress well, businessmen hurrying to an appointment, casually dressed uni students who may have an interest in portable music players, these are the type of people who hold the seller’s interest most intimately.
When they’ve marked a potential buyer, they make sure they line themselves up when their target is heading towards them. Always on the side of the crowd, they never present themselves as a street hawker, and it is this pretence that keeps them (sometimes) invisible from the appropriate authorities. When said target walks pass them, their sales bid is casually spoken, as if they were yarning with an old acquintence.
“Hey brother, want to buy a phone?”
source: www.cartoonstock.com
Why all this effort into looking as inconspicuous as possible? Most probably, it’s because the product on offer didn’t reach the street seller’s hands via a registered distributor 
Stolen goods have two markets. The thief’s personal interest, and other people’s personal interest. Since said product is on the market, it’s obvious that other people’s interest takes precedence over the thief’s own, and hopefully will fetch a handy dollar, if they can make a sale as quickly and as drama-less as possible. Technically, while any product can be made ‘available’ to the public, the smaller and easily concealed ones are on display. Watches, iPods/mp3 players and mobile phones remain the most popular, with laptops a close third.
There was a story a few years ago that I can’t seem to find the link online, but it involved a street seller conning some poor victim out of his money by selling a laptop case filled with soap (or stones, can’t recall which one). The conman had convinced his target that the laptop case did indeed contain a laptop inside. How the case was never opened before the transaction was completed, we shall never know…
I haven’t quite had the chance to purchase anything from these so called street sellers, since (a) I have a fine mobile phone and wrist watch thank you very much and (b) whenever I turned around to check out what exactly was on offer, the results usually were a tad bit disappointing. Of course, buying stolen goods is a big no no, but it can’t hurt to check it out. I’ve yet to meet the infamous conman who is selling the laptop ‘soap’ case, (I’m guessing he’s probably in the Bahamas somewhere, enjoying the good life by now) but I remain optimistic.
Who knows? I might just strike another luck…
Dealing with Countries 1st Line of Defense a.k.a. Embassies
Who wants to go overseas when you have everything you could ever need right here? Who needs fine wine when we can make the most serious head tripping home brew that’ll guarantee your not safety? Who wants to travel in limousine style when we’ve got private cars that’ll spring up to serve your every need whenever a bus strike happens?
However, in the far-fetched scenario that you do indeed need to leave said paradise shores, then getting your passport and countless papers are in order. And the place to go should you want access to your destination country are the Embassies.
Long heralded by 1st world countries as the best deterrent to mass migration, embassies are, as the title says, the first line of defense against anyone and everyone interested in crossing their hallowed entry points. Government bureaucracy, inept staffing, long queues and snobby nosed secretaries all conspired to make the stamp on your passport worth its weight in blood. Now, thanks in part to 9/11, border control has taken on a whole new meaning.
Of course, when all else fails, there’s always the internet yes?
Mayvelous May has taken the arduous, near herculean task of reviewing a few of the major embassies here in Suva, including the British, American, Australian and even French embassies.
At the beginning of each embassy review she gives the name of the embassy, as well as a summary of what to expect once you step in through the doors (French Embassy – Very quiet). A few paragraphs of policies, procedures and at times, frustration should give you a fair idea of how everything goes down in said embassy.
At the end of the embassy review, she’s placed the contact details, as well as how easy it is to get in contact with them, a very handy feature indeed (Phone Support: The number mentioned on the website is useless, once called, tells you to call another number. Extremely RUDE and snappy response).
After reading the whole article, the first prize to the most difficult, hard to get to, hard to go through embassy comes as no surprise whatsoever. Of course, you may have had a different experience with said reviewed embassies. Who knows. So, if you’d like a head start through enemy terrain, then look no further then May’s “Embassies: Knowing how anal your local one is”.
Ok. That was a bad title. So sue me.
PS: May, use review stars! Everyone loves review stars 
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