Hello again from the Sugar City

Helen: Yesterday was Diwali. In Edinburgh, where it's almost conversation-worthy when you see someone who's not white they're so few and far between, Diwali is an excuse for a big outdoor party - they build a huge bonfire and burn two enormous effigies of Hindu gods. There's lots of loud Bhangra music and dancing and curry flows all night. At the medical school my mother teaches at in London, the Hindu students prepare an all-singing-all-dancing extravaganza for months before the big day. So, I think we should be forgiven for thinking that, in a city of 45,000 people, half of whom (at least) are Indian, Diwali should have been a big deal. It wasn't. It really wasn't!! Apparently people decorate their homes with lights (and there is a competition to out do your neighbours like there is in the UK with Xmas lights) but that's in the residential areas. In town, shopkeepers had put nightlights outside their doors, with orange flower blumes, and they had chalked drawings/stencilled patterns in coloured flour on the pavements (presumably for good luck). But that was it. So, C and I sat in the cockpit of Yamana with our beer, listening to Bhangra watching the fireworks erupt around the city (reminded us of watching the fireworks from Calton Hill on Nov 5). I think it's interesting that people seem to make the biggest fuss about their cultural identity when they are the minority (Edinburgh and London) and not when their the majority as they are here (it's the same in the Borders in the UK - they sound much more Scottish in the Borders than they do in Inverness - probably because they are closer to the English and want to emphasise their differences?) People are strange.

Other things to tell you (you'll have to endure bullet format I'm afraid as everyone else is champing at the bit to get to lunch):

- we went to the cinema on Monday after all - we plumped for a spoof called Disaster Movie instead of the horror flick (I just can't cope - they give me nightmares for months) or the Bollywood film (C just downright refused). Don't go and see it. For the love of God, don't go and see it. It was so unimaginably bad that we actually left half way through. We have never left the cinema before the end of a film before, despite talking about it often. This time we did and it felt good :). We've taken two long bus journeys recently too (back and forth from Suva/Lautoka) and been treated to in-bus 'entertainment' both times - where do all these awful films come from? I just didn't realise they were out there. I thought it cost millions and millions to make a film. How can there be so many bad ones out there? Who pays for them? Who buys them? C also thinks the same about the music here - it is drivel - it really is - it's all soft R&B rubbish. But then, I pointed out to him that if you spent a few months in the UK and only hung out in places where they played popular radio (shops, hotels etc...) you might think that all British people liked Will Young and Britney Spears...

- we went to the dodgiest tattooist ever in Suva - it was dark, creepy. Oooohhhh horrid. God knows what we would have ended up with if we had got a tattoo! Probably some nasty disease... (Interestingly, tattooing doesn't seem to be a very big thing here - it's huge in French Polynesia and Samoa, but not really here - girls used to get their upper thighs tattooed as a rite of passage to woman hood, but, you guessed it, this got banned when the missionaries arrived and it never really got reintroduced like it did in Polynesia)

- we finally managed to find (after much effort) a copy of Time magazine in Suva - so now we're all up to date with Obama vs McCain... Fingers crossed. Also found an old copy of American Scientific which C thought would be interesting, but after a couple of hours reading it he was seething that it was all 'soft science' and worse than none at all!! There's no pleasing some people...

OK that's all. Did a massive shop today (at the spectacular market) and now all stocked up with tins and fresh veggies for the big passage. Apparently the weather looks good for leaving tomorrow, so if you don't hear from us for a while we're probably out there sailing!

Bye for now
Lots of love
H&Cxxx

PS. I realised yesterday that it's just over a year since I left work (Oct 26th). Can't decide if that seems like a short time or a long time away....
PPS Lautoka is the Sugar City - they are famous for their sugar cane here - its piled high by the side of the road, and gets shipped into town on a minature railway. V cute.