Our Travels

I was at the mall with my 3 year old son today. He was doing really well until he saw Toys R Us. I explained that we're having a look and not buying him anything. He said ok and we went to the bike section where he proceeded to try out the bikes and the cars and anything he could ride on. It was time to leave and he didn't want to leave. I literally had to half carry him out of there kicking and screaming at me to put him down as he was not a baby. We got to the door and I spotted other friends so to distract him I said look there's your friend Ruth. We went over to say hi and he sort of ran back into Toys R Us. I saw him run back inside so I assumed(big mistake) he was in the bike section again. I quickly said goodbye and went back to find him only to find him nowhere in the shop. I called out his name and he didn't reply as he usually did. Now I'm running around the shop trying to find him then it occurred to me that he must have left the shop so I run out of the...

Hubby went to play golf a few days ago. When I got home I found he and his golf buddy brooding in the lounge. "Hmmm", I dared ask "I take it, it wasn't a great day on the green today? Who won? How did you guys play today?" Me sounding all interested. One said it was an okay day and the other said they played badly. However that's not far from the normal reply though lately they were upbeat after a game, so I still didn't get why they were brooding today! I knew they were playing with a new golfer so I asked "Oh did Frank beat you guys today? Did he turn out to be really good!", "oh no no nothing like that, he's definitely new, and like us, he's working on his swing."  By then I had enough of the riddles "So why are you both looking depressed as heck?" "Oh we played with Jack...Bahaha. Mystery solved: Jack IS a Pro Golfer, one of two mates that run the golf shop. So I laughed and laughed and laughed some more....

So we were honoured with a visit from the Shamal crew this past week-end. The Admiral and the Commander have reached Sicily on their catamaran, have docked it there for the winter and are on their way home to New Zealand for Christmas. They caught a boat to Malta and flew to Dubai to see their daughter then hopped over here to catch up with all their friends in Muscat and are on their way back to Dubai to continue home to see their family for the holidays. These two survived the pirate ridden Gulf of Aden, sailed the Red Sea and went through the Suez Canal through to the Greek Islands and finally docking their boat in Sicily. They've stopped in many places along the way to sight see and their stories are always colourful and interesting about the people they meet along the way. They're very inspirational and such lovely people. If you want to read about their adventures go to  Shamal Adventures . 

By Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson REVIEW:  "You know why women don't want to be Orators, because they don't want to show their breasts in public." These were the words of Samoan High Chief Tagaloa, squinting through his leathery brown skin framed by a light trim of  siga  (white hair) as he spoke to Saili, the main actor in the movie The Orator . When this was said, my 8-year-old nephew Barry Uelese Sapatu nudged me in Magik Cinema in Apia and said: "But aunty, Grandma is an orator, and she doesn't show her breasts in public, or does she?" Naturally the answer was "no" but as my mother Vaasiliifiti Moelagi can attest, it's no easy task being a female Orator, let alone a very short one. That much was clear in the film by Tusi Tamasese.I watched the film, not as a journalist, but as a daughter of an Orator, as a girl from Savaii and as a fiercely proud Samoan. Those three factors meant I went into the film, highly sceptical of this New Z...

11/11/11 I just had to blog today because of this special date. That's a whole lot of 1s in a date. Today we went to Shatti Beach where lots of people go for strolls, BBQ and not necessarily swim. A friend with a son same age as my boy met us there. We had lunch there then our two boys rode their bikes around, played in the sand while us two mums laid on the mat under the shade until the two boys made their way to the water(to my horror). I was hoping they wouldn't swim but yeah kids and beach of course that's inevitable. They played in the water for a bit and then another friend joined us. The sun came out today after almost a week of dreary and rainy weather here so a lot of people made their way outdoors to enjoy the beautiful day(Friday too)! We stayed there until after 5pm which was perfect timing to come home, feed the little one and put him straight to bed totally knackered from his big day.  Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult I started reading this book last night ...

Christmas soon I'm really looking forward to Christmas now! I've decided to stay back and celebrate Christmas in our own home to give my son the full Christmas experience of putting up and decorating a tree and so on. I'm looking forward to the Christmas decorations and hype in the shops. It gets better and better every year here in this great Muslim country we live in. When we landed here 7 years ago Christmas time was almost depressing due to the lack of atmosphere. Today it's Christmas in the malls and even better are the malls in Dubai where they go all out! I'm secretly hoping to sneak a trip to Austria before Christmas...now THAT is REAL Christmas! Timu We had a bbq last night and a few friends came over, which was fun as usual. Woke up with a bit of a headache but not too bad thank goodness. There was a lot of food though and today we enjoyed the left overs from it. Today I parked myself on the couch and watched my recorded shows all day! Like how us...

Day 3: Up early and headed to Maria Delle Grazie where the original Last Supper painting by Leonardo DaVinci is to be found. Unfortunately you have to pre-book to see the painting and as our trip was a bit last minute we were unlucky with the tickets. So I thought we'd still go there and hope for the best. Luckily where we stayed was not far from all this and it amounted to about a 5 minute ride on the train every morning. And once there we could walk everywhere and the streets are so pretty that it's pleasant and fun. We took Tau's stroller of course so we didn't have to carry him though he enjoyed sitting on his dad's shoulders than the stroller half the time. We got to the Grazie and sure enough it's fully booked and we're obviously not the first to think that there may have been cancellations as they had a big sign on the desk to say that there were no cancellations! DaVinci Codes However we weren't to be disappointed as in a smaller chapel they h...

Day 1 We landed really early in the morning but hotel check in was 3pm. We walked around Venezia ate at cafes and had machiato and cappuccino. We walked to a nearby park where Tau played in the playground and rode on a merry-go-round which he didn't want to get out of. It was fun walking all over the place until around 10am we were really tired and went to check the hotel Sheraton again. To our delight we were allowed to check in early. We went had a good days nap and then went to the Duomo to look around and enjoyed the sights and food. We found the famous Luini bakery but it was closed. After dinner we went to the  Cioccolati Itali  gelato shop and had an ice cream each. It was yummy with raw chocolate. The shop's so popular there were queues of people to buy ice cream in October! Day 2: We were up early so we got dressed and strolled to Ottolina cafe on the way to the metro to have our Italian breakfast of croissant and latte machiatto baby chino for Tau before we headed...