See you Chommoro.!

It's about time... I found a place of my own to call home..and so far...it's turning out to be a little rough to settle and in the words of some fictitious cowboy I just made up in the swamplands of my brain, "I've never met a bronco that didn't want to get broken". I'll leave the silence to you dear readers. Moving forward...


I live in Mongmong now. You've heard of it? Lauren Squires, my ol friend from the AU days and current linguistics prof at U Michigan mentioned that worlds like Mongmong, Gabgab, Lamlam, Toto, and Dandan(need to find this sign) is called reduplication and apparently, it's a big thing here in Guam. From what I have understood, Mongmong means heart or the beating of a heart. Mongmong....mongmong...mongmong. You get the idea...It's also pretty much geographically located smack in the middle of the island...hmmmm

Anyhow, in other good stuff news, Work is getting busy with some cool training modules coming up . I have an AutoCAD training and workshop next week and then in December, I have more facilities training and possibly a trip to San Diego for two weeks doing more training in February! By then I hope I should have my CAC card which will enable me to be a little more serviceable as an employee rather than being stuck in my cube reading training materials and reports and eating bags of cracker nuts. 

Now onto the new place. It's a smallish apartment, about the size of my Greenbelt place.  It's been a bit hectic with the move in. Pretty much nothing has gone according to plan. I noticed the oven was only partially functional. My landlord, Noel, came by with a brand new oven. Figuring the problem was electrical,he proceeded to fiddle with the electric box, the oven in turn shorted out when a breaker blew out. So this new oven he lugged up the stairs, broke within the first 5 minutes of it living here.


There was no hot water for the first several days. Thankfully cold showers are not all that bad over here on our hot and humid days.  The renovations they said hey needed two weeks to do, never happened.  I arrived on Sunday to move into an apartment that had not been painted or cleaned and had ant hills in the bathroom  It was gross. very, very gross. So Noel came by and did the best he could to clean it up. I still need to mop.

I don't want to get all snobby American on my landlords and give em  one of these "hey this is how we do it on the east coast" and get a lawyer like my colleague at work has suggested...but this island definitely runs on Island Time. This is no exaggeration.

So Bobby the roommate arrives tonight from Norfolk, VA at 2am and he will have no bed to sleep on...at least we have the couch...

!!Update!!

Since I last saved this draft. The bed arrived and dare I say it's more comfortable than mine. I extracted Bobby out of the airport around 3am, we made it to K-mart to get a comforter for the bed and Payless car rental to pick up his car. It was a late night and this morning I awoken to the sounds of hammers and contractors working on the unit below. Looks like it's a light sleep kind of day.

Now onto pictures. I've been pretty lax with the camera so here are a few snaps of life from the last few weeks. Here I am in front of some mountain somewhere in the south, representing the only Philadelphia football team worth rooting for (Go Owls).

I think I've mentioned the rain before but I have not had the opportunity to snap a picture of it in action. This is what we get when a typhoon band sweeps across the island. I'd hate to see this with 175 mile and hour winds. I think Echo would blow away to Saipan. It would make a nice, fuel efficient and cute reef.

Granted the stormwater drainage is pretty amazing around here. I don't know if it's a combination of good drainage planning or natural drainage or the hot weather that usually follows a storm.  If this was the east coast, it would be underwater monthly.

Mike gave himself the absurd challenge of fixing up this 1986 blazer. The transmission is busted it looks like a ton of work. As I mentioned to mike, he could probably customize it like this...

I've been meaning to get a good shot of this building for weeks now. I always pass it heading to and from work. I have no idea what it is or who lives there. But its awesome. The beach is right outside the frame of the picture. I'm tempted to stop and knock on the door one of these days.

I have also been meaning to get a shot of the dude who walks his carabao up Rt. 1 with his dogs sitting on top for weeks now but the guy has been pretty elusive. I managed to snap this bigfootesque shot on my way to work  last week. 

So I'm told, his name is John. Don't know about the carabao. more to come on that later. I have a goal of getting him closer on camera and perhaps doing a quick interview...hopefully he won't slice me open with a machete. Irrational fear..I know.

And last...the view from my balcony at sunset. I need some patio furniture. This is perfect for sipp'n and lounge'n.

More to come....