Let's Get Down To Brass Tacks...How Much For The Ape?

So vivid, all the way, through and through. I realize that I haven't posted a pic of my "front" yard, so here's one with a huge mofo rainbow in the frame.

Earlier this week I received a call from the man who recruited me to teach at Northern Marianas College. Apparently there's been a higher demand than they had anticipated for the class I will be teaching (The Dynamics of Substance Abuse), so the college has added a second section. The end result of this: I'll be doing the professor thing Monday through Thursday night. It's not like I'll be missing anything during the week from 5:00 to 6:25PM anyway. Oh, right...

At least I can catch the sunset during the week. Regardless, I am officially an adjunct professor at a Community College, so my "work as little as possible to maintain a lifestyle that hovers above the poverty level" scheme has gone into its next phase. I start on Tuesday, and I think I have 25 students in each section. Giddy up.

Saipan is getting the tail end of whatever is hitting Australia, and this is apparently not uncommon. Apparently winter here consists of a second, much lighter rainy season. This isn't the same ridiculous "I hope I can make it through the night with two cigarettes, an apple, a half dozen Werther's candies (What's up International Falls), and a spotty internet connection. It's essentially five minute rain showers that hit every two hours...much easier to deal with than 20 inches of snow.

Insane car-related moment of the week: I spotted a guy driving a Corolla down the street with a spoiler. On top of his trunk/rear windshield: A white cardboard refrigerator box, which was resting on the spoiler. "Looks good to me, that box isn't going anywhere". I really need to start taking my camera with me whenever I drive.

As a return favor for the Nut Rolls I brought in, a student of mine procured some Saipan Coconut Candy. Toward the end of class on Friday she produced a cup made from a sheet of loose-leaf paper that contained what appeared to be sawdust.

Student: "Here mister, this is Saipan candy"

Me: "Ok, there's no way that's candy"

Eight Students: "MISTER! That is candy! It's good!"

Me: "Well...you eat it first"

A few students took amounts varying from a pinch to a half handful and ate it in front of me.

Student: "See mister, it's good! You should try"

I grabbed a pinch of the stuff and popped it in my mouth. God-Awful. It was like someone took the coconut out of an Almond Joy and added season salt to it. It was all I could do to choke it down and let out a muffled "Mmmmm...good stuff". If these kids think that Coconut Sawdust Candy is a suitable trade for Nut Rolls they are sadly mistaken. Whatever. When in Rome, I guess.

I'm still battling Saipan SARS or whatever it is that's been forcing me to wake up at 3:00AM each night and cough my brains out. It seems as though half of the island is sick right now...I definitely didn't think of that when I decided to come out here. If there's something going around in a place this small, sooner or later it will catch up to you. I'm willing to add my name to any class-action suit against the makers of Emergen-C...that stuff does nothing to help you. Maybe we should stop lying to ourselves regarding colds and the flu. If the Surgeon General came on TV tomorrow and announced "We've done as much research as we can possibly do on this and here's what we have: Try to get a flu shot and maintain a healthy lifestyle. You might still get sick, and if you do, you'll be messed up for a week or two. It doesn't really matter what you do at that point, the damage has been done. You can drink plenty of fluids, sleep, rest, eat right, whatever. None of it works, so just deal with the fact that being sick sucks and get over it", we'd be better off for it.

(climbs off of soapbox)

If cable internet in The States is Uncle Jesse, my internet connection is Screech. Please be patient if you're trying to get ahold of me on Skype. Hopefully we will have high-speed DSL in the apartment building very soon, so that should speed things up quite a bit. It's simply amazing to me how a slow internet connection can RUIN YOUR SHIT considering that, you know, there was no internet a couple of decades ago.

BONUS ROUND!

-Last Call on the Steelers Bandwagon. We've been boarding since September...better later than never. Also, Green Bay seems like a frisky team. If they meet in the Super Bowl you'll have every sports-related talking head slobbering about how it's the "Blue Collar Bowl" and how the residents of both cities are salt-of-the-earth people who shovel their way five miles to work where they bust their ass for 12 hours before shoveling the five miles home. Write it down.

-If anyone has a copy of MS Office for Mac and could send it out my way they will be repaid with Filipino foodstuffs beyond their wildest imagination.

-I brought my car to a mechanic for the first time. A small Filipino man named Manny (all Filipino mechanics on Saipan are named Manny...it's like they have a law or something) replaced a shoddy tire, a CV boot, and tinkered with a few other things. Total cost (parts +labor): $110. Ah, cheap labor...nothing better.

-Andy's girlfriend Molly is leaving on Tuesday to fly back to Duluth. I feel horrible for her, as leaving here and plopping down in MN during a cold snap in January is an unenviable fate. It's kinda like having a dream in which you win the lottery, only to wake up to a phone call from a creditor.

Until the next one...