Polynesia according to the Hamlins

This photo demanded to be at the top of the blog despite my efforts.  Thanks to my resident surgeon for this handiwork.  Note the excellent tissue apposition and evidence of minimal tissue handling.  Good job Belinda.

Hi everyone

The Hamlin family are proud residents of a breezy house in Samoa and we have photos to prove it.  She’s been a hard couple of weeks but we’re starting to see past the crazy hard bits and in to some sweet satisfaction.  Well hints of it anyway.

After years of searching the world, we have a yard littered with car parts. Kids are stoked of course.

The outbound plane was delayed in Auckland due to some malfunctioning “there is a fire in the engine right now” button.  Either that or it wasn’t the button malfunctioning at all, it was dark after all.  No one was seriously injured and Air NZ gave us a $15 voucher to spend at any shop upstairs.  Apart from Burger King, the only other live option was a bar.  Presumably Air NZ is comfortable with passengers getting some dutch courage in them before embarking on one of their flights.

In hind sight we should have given the bar vouchers to the kids.  The in-flight entertainment screens were malfunctioning (just on our row) but they taunted us by displaying all the great kids movies that would freeze milliseconds in.  Funny how what was a luxury has now become a standard expectation, especially for kids who fly a bit.  Cheers to the nice staff who moved us during the stop-over in Tonga.  I’m pretty sure the other passengers where pleased too.

We made it in about 2am and got a taxi van into Apia (about an hours drive).  The kids took just short of 2 seconds to fall into a deep sleep when we gave them a hotel bed.  Our welcoming party of Karin and her Samoan husband were warm and seem to have a good balance of being informative, but leaving us with some space to figure most things out.

There had been a couple of concerning emails about our permanent accommodation.  Turns out that its been “empty” for the past 9 years which I take as meaning that its been a site for transients and squatters.  Karin was really unhappy with it a month ago but my work colleagues have been spending a bunch of time slapping paint around, making some wooden furniture and the like.  I think its going to be a good place to live, just might take a bit to get used to. 

For starters there are very few proper walls in the house.  There are instead large open gaps with glass louvers everywhere.  Arriving to a house with no curtains and no walls is kinda weird, even weirder than camping.  We picked up some curtains (ordered a few weeks ago) several days after arriving which has reduced the feeling of living in the wilderness somewhat.

We were itching to get one of these from day one.   They cost about NZ$2 for a sack (we got one) but turns out they're too old to be good drinking ones.  oh well.

We’d be amiss not to mention the creepy crawlies.  Due to a combination of a (officially) abandoned house and an unkempt yard, we have collected bags of cockroaches and a total of 13 nasty biting centipedes – the type the locals have nightmares about.  Thanks to a very nasty chemical (and even approved and legal!) numbers of nasties are sharply decreasing.  Luckily the number of dead barking geckos (the good guys who even eat cockroaches) has only reached two at the time of writing.

No scale on the photo sorry, but they're huge.

The corner of ours, and the pacific ocean.

Internet is really pricey (as is food interestingly) but one day we'll hook up and have internet at home.  This message sent C/- MAF.  Thanks guys.

PS I'll try to figure out the colouring of the blog title one day.  If its bugging you, it says Polynesia according to the Hamlins