The Spectator

Last week the IOC Executive Board took a vote on which 2 sports out of 7 finalists to recommend to all the IOC members to include as Olympic sports from 2016. I’m still a bit confused as to the process of eliminating or adding sports to the Olympics - it seems to be quite fluid, but that’s another blog post.

I like the idea that the Olympics showcases the worlds best in whatever the sport - when Olympic Gold is the highest achievement in the sport - or at least comparable.

I think getting rid of baseball after 2008 was a good idea - the fact the Americans, whose local competition is named the “World Series” can’t even qualify for the Olympics (as was the case in 2004) says something about the Olympic competition being a bit of a joke. It’s like having Aussie Rules as an Olympic sport, and the Australians field such a weak team they don’t event qualify.

On the other hand, the elimination of softball as “the girls version of baseball” was just plain unfair - there is no “World Series” of softball (actually there is - but judging by their website, it’s hardly world class - they even have to differentiate themselves from little league softball).

Both Softball and Baseball were among the 7 sports vying to get back on the programme from 2016 until last week - both failed. So did karate (which I’m a bit indifferent about - there is already Judo and Taekwondo in the Games, and buggered if I know the difference between them all, although I would have guessed karate was more popular than taekwondo), roller sports (meh - stick with the X Games) and squash (hardly a good spectator sport).

The two which did get the vote from the Executive were Rugby Union 7s and Golf. Had you asked me 6 months ago what I thought of Rugby as an Olympic sport, I wouldn’t have been very supportive, but 6 months in Fiji, I’ve discovered more about Rugby 7s and that it is a lot more widespread than I ever knew. The fact the IRB are also willing to work it so the Olympics are the top competition for the sport (although I think it would have naturally become it), only adds to its appeal.

Golf on the other hand… stupid. I put it in the same Olympic Sport category as tennis.

Who won gold in the men’s tennis singles last year? Don’t know? Can’t blame you - you’re far more likely to remember who won Wimbledon, or the French Open, or the Australian or the US Open (although as per the tennis trend in recent years, you only really have to take a guess out of two players - it was Nadal; Federer won gold in the doubles but failed to medal in the singles). The Olympics - despite drawing all the best tennis players, is not the pinnacle. Rather than train for four years with your eye on going to the Olympics, the players have to squeeze the Games into their US Open preparations in the Olympic years (Federer went on to win the US Open the month after Beijing - perhaps he was better prepared not winning the singles Gold). Beijing even had to move the dates of the 2008 Olympics from September to August (a much hotter month) so it wouldn’t clash with the US Open. Stupid.

Now add golf to the mix - a sport with a whole lot of international competitions worth a lot of money, and a few HUGE competitions to potentially clash with the Olympics every four years - why bother? They should have gone with softball - it would have done more for evening up the male/female divide too.

On the subject of gender equity at the Olympics - there have been two incidents of note recently - one good - the introduction of 3 weight classes for women’s boxing from 2012 (and if you object to that, there’s a good article here) and one bad - the rejection of a women’s ski jump event by the IOC. The latter is a really interesting case, 15 female ski jumpers ended up taking the Vancouver Olympic Committee to court to attempt to force the inclusion of the event in next year’s Vancouver Winter Olympics on grounds of it being against Canada’s anti-discrimination laws. It was found by the BC Supreme Court that the omission of the event was indeed discriminatory - but VANOC was not the decision maker and the court had no power over the IOC. You can read a good summary of the case here.

But the main question of gender equity in the Olympics with me remains with beach volleyball - why on earth are the male beach volleyballer players allowed to wear singlets when the women have to wear a skimpy bikini!? I won’t go into the impact of uniform regulations on women’s participation in sports - beach volleyball is clearly a sex-sells sport, so make the men wear swimmers too!

I was recently accused by a cousin of being a “media flirt” - I appreciated the restraint in her language.

It was not long ago that I was described in a feature article in a national paper as “lacking the physical attributes of an Olympiad.” Whilst I could argue that it is true - I don’t know what physical attributes would be fitting of an Olympiad, if any - I instead became the ordinary reasonable audience and assumed the writer thought Olympiad was a fancy word for Olympian - in which case it would still be true, but a little bit cutting. I can’t decide if it is better or worse that he made this assumption having never met me or asked me about any sporting ability or lack thereof.

I assume the article was not intended to be negative, but most have agreed to some degree that I came across as a bit of a loser who can’t get accepted as an Olympic Volunteer (I won’t let the truth get in the way of a good story by mentioning I have never applied to be one). It was a bit of a disappointing result for me, the PR officer trying to push a feature on the Olympics for our Olympic Day event… but I still have it posted up next to my desk at work.

Anyway, last week I was more than happy to play the part of “media flirt” with The Advocate - the trusted local paper of NW Tasmania - which sung my praises in a sporting context, courtesy of an obviously generous press release from my awesome golf club, Seabrook. Even if it implies that I’m not going to turn pro anytime soon (or make the Olympics if Golf gets chosen in October for inclusion), and definitely won’t have been read by the same audience as the last article, I will now shamelessly promote the results of that flirtation!

It’s also interesting to compare the writing standards of a national newspaper in Fiji to a small rural paper in Tassie… No comment.

We’ve all done it a hundred times - it’s the annoying fire drill. Even at school when it meant 20 minutes out of class chatting with friends on the oval, I still found fire drills annoying - the having to get up, make my way outside in whatever the weather of the day was and line up to get your name ticked off.

This week I discovered what has been missing from fire drills - realism and excitement!

We were warned at work on Monday that there was going to be a fire drill on Tuesday. Oh joy.

On Tuesday morning we saw a “fire warden” safety hat and vest get delivered to our office manager (and I did think, perhaps she should always have it, and not just on the drill days). I had forgotten about it by the time the fire alarm awoke me from my work daze in the afternoon.

I duly got up, grabbed my phone which was next to me and walked outside to the marshalling area under instruction from our “warden” (who was dressed like Bob the Builder).

With the circus which ensued, I can’t blame passers by from stopping to take a look. I think it must have been a drill more for the emergency services than it was for us.

It was the most realistic fire drill I had ever seen - all that was missing was the smoke.

We had sirens, fire engines, firemen, ambulances, fire hoses, traffic cones to block off the street, stretchers, (pretend) trapped people inside, genuinely complacent people inside ignoring the alarm, and a TV News crew!!

A short time later our accountant who was in town during the drill was on her way back to the office in a taxi only to be told by the driver “we can’t go there, there’s a big fire and a traffic jam!”

Here are my photos (taken again with my trusty phone camera) of the drama unfolding…

There are a few things I have been asked repeatedly about Fiji and what I’m doing over here, so perhaps they will be of interest to a wider audience…

Q. Is Fiji bidding for the Olympics!?

A. No - Fiji has an Olympic Committee to do the administration for sending Team Fiji to the Olympics - just as every other country which participates in the Olympics has an Olympic Committee.

Q. How many Olympians does Fiji have?

A. At the Beijing Olympics, there were 6 - a full list of Fiji’s Olympians can be found here

Q. How does the Fiji political situation affect you?

A. From a day to day point of view, the Fiji political situation doesn’t affect me - obviously it has ramifications for the country which would affect trade and the economy which affects me somehow, but I don’t notice and the locals don’t seem too unhappy with the status quo - the streets are safe, unlike previous coups I’m told.

Q. What is your typical work day?

A. I roll out of bed into my work uniform (a tailored shirt with a Fiji Olympic print) and Sara and I either call a taxi to take us the 2km to our air conditioned office (the taxi costs FJD$2 split between the two of us, but the 5 second phone call to order it costs 50c), or more recently we have started walking which takes 20mins door to door. Walking is interesting - absolutely everyone we pass on the streets says hello or good morning (in English or Fijian) with a smile on their face - including Commodore Bainimarama’s guards (he lives 100m from our house)

Work hours are 9am-6pm, with a break for morning tea (a Fiji must) and usually a communal lunch of take away curry or Chinese or a pie or sandwich or whatever the lunch collector feels like (the office is a couple of kms out of town), and rarely costs more than FJD$5 (AUD$3).

Q. Where and who do you live with?

A. I live in a 4 bedroom government house which is allocated to the AYAD programme (which I am obviously over here with). The government houses are all pretty much the same, with some slight variations in layout between the 3 bedroom and 4 bedroom houses. They are quite boxy and concretey and don’t look all that flash (almost prison-like actually) but they do the trick and are quite comfortable. We don’t pay rent, but we pay our utilities. The government houses also have an adjoining self contained section, occupied by a local who lives there rent free and uses the house utilities - Linney is our house lady, and in exchange for her board she disposes of our rubbish (ie. burns it - collections are infrequent), and provides a presence at the house for added security during the day. She also cleans our house weekly, which provides a small income for her.

I live with 3 other AYAD volunteers - Sara (who I also work with), Lars and Sean. We are collectively known as “The Stoddarts” or “The Sports House” due to us all working in sporting fields and our house being located on Stoddart Road.

Q. What do you do in your spare time?

A. I have just started learning French (again) on Monday evenings. On Tuesdays and Thursdays there is tennis night - for FJD$2 you can play for 2 hours with other who turn up on really nice courts built for the 2003 South Pacific Games. On Wednesday afternoons a bunch of expats play ultimate frisbee down at Albert Park, the main park in Suva where everyone converges every afternoon to find a bit of space and play rugby, soccer or cricket - a bit of a minefield at times with balls going everywhere.

It rains a lot in Suva, which doesn’t deter a lot of people from playing sports, but it does make for a very muddy Albert Park - the first photo is of the park at 5pm a few weeks ago before most of the sports had arrived. It’s very picturesque with the old colonial building (which is in desperate need of restoration), and the palm trees being defined by the incredible sunsets over the water - this picture is from a rainy day and doesn’t do the scene much justice, but you can see the state of the grounds! The second picture is from a few months back after a cricket session (which starts up again soon, as does a business softball league). The sunset was great, but I only had my phone to take a photo, which again doesn’t do it justice.

I’m playing a little bit of golf too - occasionally in the morning before work and one corporate tournament. This week I’m taking a couple of days off work and playing in the Fiji Amateur Women’s Championship* - a 3 day stroke comp which should test my consistency or lack thereof.

*If you didn’t hear it earlier - I ended up winning this tournament!

It’s not all sport though - there are always dinners around the place - either at restaurants (most of which you can eat pretty well with a drink or two for FJD$12 to $20) or the other AYAD houses and of course no lifestyle would be balanced without the odd trip to the pub followed by karaoke and silly dancing.

At home we watch a lot of movies and TV on our laptops - dvds are widely available for $2**, and everyone brought over multiple TV series to catch up on. Our TV at home doesn’t really get reception, so is never watched. I blutacked a crayon drawing I did of an underwater scene to the TV about 3 weeks ago. It’s still there.

**The ‘government’ has decided to crack down on piracy and is putting a lot of pressure on the DVD sellers to close down (or at least become less accessible and probably just less visible). My favourite DVD shop closed after writing this post.

Q. What do you eat?

A. A lot of curries - about 45% of the population of Fiji is of Indian descent - known as the Indo-Fijians, and they do good curry which are a bit different from traditional Indian curries. The typical Fijian food (as opposed to Indo-Fijian) is fish, roasted chicken, Dalo and Cassava (local starchy vegetables) and coconut and coconut milk - which is used in lots of things. There is also a large Chinese population and subsequently a lot of Chinese restaurants. When we eat at home we often eat pasta, which you don’t come by in the restaurants much - there is not one Italian restaurant in Suva! We’ve also mastered the art of making roti (Indian flat bread), and will eat it with almost anything - the most recent discovery was using it as a really good pizza base.

Q. Can you get all your western stuff over there?

A. Yep - at a price. The supermarkets are quite similar to Australian supermarkets in terms of the produce available. Anything imported is expensive - more so after the Fiji Dollar was devalued by 20% in April.

There can also be issues with consistency of supply - what is in the supermarket one week often won’t be there the next. When it’s an imported good it’s because they’re waiting for a new shipment, with the local goods it supply chain management issues.

For example it took us a month before we found fresh milk and affordable yoghurt - there’s a local dairy which produces it, but often it just won’t be available. Most people buy UHT milk - which has the added bonus of coming in low fat and skim versions; the fresh stuff is full cream only.

That’s all the quesions I can think of - let me know if you’ve got another one!

Yes, I know I’ve been a slack blogger. It’s been pointed out to me a bit lately too.

There are a few reasons for it, but mostly it comes down to laziness. Having said that – here are my other excuses:

Slow and/or unreliable internet connections

At home, our wireless modem receives one or sometimes two bars of signal - when perched on a ledge above a door in the lounge room. Often the signal cuts out, sometimes there are so many people using the internet I’d be faster to handwrite my blog, draw my photos with crayons and mail it to those of you who persevere with coming back despite the lack of updates. At work the internet isn’t much better – we also have a very low usage limit for a business with about 10 daily internet users (smaller than mum and dad have at home in Sydney, with 2 intermittent internet users), and when we reach it, productivity lowers considerably for the remainder of the month, with email affected also.

Impatience leading to lack of timeliness

I have written a few blog posts, only to have the crap internet interrupt its posting, I get fed up, do something else then when I finally go back to it, find it’s no longer timely to post what I’ve written.

Censorship

I’m not really supposed to write in the public domain about the political situation over here, as I’m funded by the Australian Government. This often makes a thought-of subject a lot less interesting. The media is another topic I would like to write about, but that could have the potential to disrupt my working relationships, so I try to refrain.

An active social life

Coupled with a lot of  TV shows and movies available to watch when at home!

Facebook and email

They make me think you people are already in the know about what I’m up to, and due to the aforementioned reason of censorship, I sometimes struggle to think of other content.

Having said this, I’m going to try to make a concerted effort to do better, despite my excuses. This may involve having people request a password to read certain posts, but at least that will show I’m not being completely slack.

I seem to be making a habit of leaving a country of residence in the week of high drama. Whilst I was technically still in Fiji for this coup (can you call it a coup if it is the same guy taking over again?), I was ignorantly finding Nemos among the brightly coloured coral of Waya Island for the Easter long weekend.

Mobile coverage, internet and newspapers were replaced with snorkels, beachside sunsets and large quantities of alcohol (the limited photos of the getaway are stuck in my USB-cordless camera for now).

My weekend was cut short to get on a plane to Brisbane, where I am now, working before a weekend and wedding part two in Tasmania. It was here, a few thousand kilometres away, that I heard the extent of events since the outcome of the big court case which was handed down an hour before I left Suva.

But unlike my last well timed getaway – the London tube bombings in 2005 – I feel like I might be more knowledgeable of the events by not being in town, but again my sense of curiosity would like to be there. At least it’s probable that it will still be happening next week when I get back (fingers crossed).

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t support censorship of any media, but this could have an upside of making my job a lot easier with the papers made into oversized sports sections…

It has been a hectic last few weeks. I only made it through 6 days of a 10 day in-country orientation before I had to take a wintery sojourn to the USA for Hunter and Sarah’s wedding. After a whirlwind (and very fun) trip to LA-Vegas-Utah-Vegas-Nashville, I’m back in Suva as of 3 days ago, and have now started work at FASANOC.

Having forgotten/not read the “your safety in Fiji” documents we were taken through/given to read as homework at the orientation, we were confronted with a tsunami warning this morning.

There is an “emergency tree” in place for all us volunteers to disseminate critical information. Luckily for panic stations in my household this morning, the tree didn’t quite work and we received the “we’re not evacuating” call before we received the “we are evacuating” one. Nevertheless, we thought we should pack an emergency bag (information still in the mind from orientation) just in case anything changed during the day. Questions such as “do I need my swimmers?” were asked – it was a tsunami after all!

Our colleagues at FASANOC (I’m working with another AYAD – Sara) laughed at us when we rocked up for work with our emergency bags – a bit late, having taken far too long to decide what we need had it been a real emergency. Apparently the coastal school kids were all sent home for the day as a safety precaution – and proceeded to walk home along the sea wall, so no one took the warning too seriously, which is a bit of a worry should a tsunami eventuate.

This weekend is a long weekend in Fiji, but I won’t be getting a chance to duck away with my emergency bag (complete with swimmers… and goggles) – there’s a Fiji Team Assembly ahead of the Pacific Mini Games tomorrow, and meetings on Sunday morning.

They are also feeding me too much, so I’m going to join as many social sports as I can next week – thankfully there are a lot around.

I had not heard great things about Suva before I came here, so my expectations were pretty low. Having not got out to any of the real tourist destinations yet (ie the islands), I probably didn’t have the same point of comparison, but I think that was to my initial advantage. I was very pleasantly surprised by how green Suva is - I think I was expecting grey and a lot of concrete. The people are all very friendly (although we have to be super cautious in regards to theft and keeping doors locked and valuables out of sight), and the food - particularly the curry - is delicious.

The first few days spent in Suva were spent finding our way around, choosing a place to live, kitting it out and learning a bit more about Fiji and “Fiji Time” - among other useful, but largely forgotten things since coming back from the US.

Below are a couple of photos - again taken with my phone - of where I’m living (taken the day we attempted to clean the place). It’s a government-owned house which is of the standard of not-too-bad, but run down student accommodation, and the rent is free - the house is designated to the AYAD programme. It’s in a nice neighbourhood, and just around the corner from Commodore Bainimarama - also known as the “interim Prime Minister.”

My room - as it appeared when I moved in

Lars and Sara hard at work in the lounge room

Sunset from our lounge - not done justice with my phone camera

Sean, Sara, Lars and I (all clothed, despite appearances!)

Nadi was the first stop for orientation - it’s where the international airport is (about 4 or 5 hours drive from Suva), and since we arrived on a Friday, we spent a couple of nights there getting acquainted with and learning the subtle differences between Fiji Bitter and Fiji Gold.

I have been really slack in taking photos, but on this particular walk down to the beach for sunset, I thought I should get out the old camera phone and capture the light and the lush green colours of Fiji.

Maybe not, but I’ll do my best.

I’m heading to Fiji at the end of February for my next adventure. Despite having the word “Olympic” in my job description, Captain Straya will be staying home.

I’ll be replacing the Captain’s uniform with my serious cap to spend the year as the Media and Communications Officer for the Fiji Association of Sports and National Olympic Committee (FASANOC).

I’m quite excited, as it’s the first time I’ve headed off on an overseas adventure with an itinerary which intends to further my career. However, in an ironic twist, it quite probably was the previous overseas (Olympic) adventures which had not been intended to further my career that qualified me for the job.

I may have to take the Captain out for a drink to say thanks.