weather

/'wεðə/ n. 1 the state of the atmosphere, mainly with respect to its effects upon life and human activities. As distinguished from climate, weather consists of the short-term (minutes to months) variations of the atmosphere. Popularly, weather is thought of in terms of temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloudiness, brightness, visibility, and wind. 2 the short term state of the atmosphere at a specific time and place, including the temperature, humidity, cloud coverage and fall of precipitation, wind, etc.

Every weekday morning, I catch the bus to work. (I was walking for a while, as some of you may know. Catching the bus isn’t much of a short cut, but it is less strenuous. Also, people kept commenting that I was losing weight, so I decided to stop walking so much. I still do walk at least part of the way home, because the buses are not that frequent — apparently I live in a “rich” area where everyone can afford taxis … or their own 4WD.) The bus travels down along Queen Elizabeth Drive, which is also known as “the sea wall”, and most of the time, it’s a pretty decent drive.

The weather here in Suva is extremely changeable. The general pattern seems to be about four days of hot sunshine, and then four days of cooler, cloudy weather with some rain thrown in for good measure. Which usually means that it’s pretty humid when it’s hot, the puddles just start to dry up, and then get filled again by the sudden downpour (consequently, there’s a never-ending supply of stagnant water around, and apparently this is the ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes carrying Dengue fever). About a fortnight ago, it was so humid at night that all I had on my bed was one sheet. But it’s cooled down again a bit now, so I’ve pulled out my fleecy blanket again.

So anyway, the sea wall, with its backdrop of the hills of Suva, makes a very pretty canvas to observe the tides and changing weather. Most of the time it’s fine and sunny. Sometimes, early in the morning, the people on the other side of the harbour light fires and all the smoke creates a multilayered effect (this reminds me of my trip to Thailand earlier in the year, where I saw a similar kind of thing: the mountains surrounding Chiang Mai in the early hours of the morning are stunning). Some weeks ago, the morning bus trip into town was miserable. It was raining hard, the wind was blowing, and the waves were spilling over onto the footpath. You could hardly see the mountains in the distance, and it was so cold I had three layers on. Three! In tropical Fiji! Can you believe it?

Yesterday, I woke up to the sound of rain, even though it was bright and sunny outside my window. I wanted to take my camera to work with me, because that afternoon there was a rugby match between the Fiji Deaf Rugby team, and a visiting team from New Zealand. (By the way, the Kiwis were thrashed … sixty-something to seven … and the seven points were only because apparently some of the Fijians swapped teams towards the end of the game to give the poor guys a hand! I was barracking for the Fijians …) It was lucky I did have my camera with me. This is one of the most perfect rainbows I have seen. I was awestruck by the way it touched the water, and I love the different colours of the clouds reflected in the harbour.

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

— Genesis 9:12-16 (NIV)

In other news, just last night I got to shake hands with Waiseli Serevi … probably Fiji’s most famous celebrity. He’s a rugby player, and was invited as the “chief guest” to a fundraising dinner for a rural village youth group. All in all, he seems like a very humble, sincere man. His speech was entirely in Fijian, but, through a rather convoluted turn of events, I was able to understand what he said … Here’s how it happened: I was at a table with Tina, one of the teachers from my school. She had been involved in organising the night, and had invited us along. There were a couple of Deaf staff members from the school and the hostel at our table as well. As Serevi was delivering his speech, Tina was interpreting from Fijian into FJSL (Fijian Sign Language). I was able to pick up the gist of what she was signing, then interpret it into English. I whispered it to Janet (who was sitting next to me), and she in turn whispered it to Kathryn (who was sitting next to her). So how’s that?! We never actually asked Kathryn what she thought Serevi was talking about, so who knows how effective the whole procedure was …


I hope everyone’s well. I’d love to hear from you if you get a chance to send me an e-mail. By the way, have I broken some kind of record for the most number of parentheses used in one blog posting today?!

Cheers,
Andy