The Lowly Postcard

I am a total sucker for a handwritten letter or thank-you note or even the lowly postcard. From previous posts on my blog, I think you guys know that I tend to spend a lot of time and money at Hallmark. In college I discovered Papyrus, the ritzier version, and I have recently discovered TokyoPenShop.com for all of my fine pen needs....

When I buy postcards, though, I rarely send them. They aren't of the "Aloha from Hawai'i!", "Bula from Fiji!", "Bonjour from Paris!", variety - they are the beautiful pictures of beaches and bures and Eiffel Towers taken with a much better camera lens, by someone who may have had a photography lesson in his life. I save them in a big stack for no apparent reason...it is just clutter. But pretty clutter.

I was recently introduced to a business called CellPhonePostcards.com that takes pictures you have taken yourself (from your own camera?!) and prints it on a postcard and sends it for you - and the first ten are free. I don't know how their business model is successful, but I am running with it. It is kind of funny to think that the postman has seen me in a bikini next to my sandcastle that I helped build in Fiji...but it has got me to send postcards.

I sent my first ten (free ones) out the first day I stumbled across this site. I am now thinking about what to do with all of those other postcards I have collected in my various travels. Maybe make a scrapbook? It would have been great had I had the forethought to send them to myself with the stamp of the country from which they came, then I would have an even better collection, but I didn't. Or I could not have been selfish and actually sent them to people I care about....but postcards do get a bad wrap sometimes. They are kind of like the 'Na-na-na-na-na!' of all correspondence. "Wish you were here!"......sometimes can be misinterpreted as "Wish you were here, chump?" (If you were wondering, I sent the postcards to the guy I vacationed with so he'd have some of the pictures off of my camera, and it wouldn't be like *that*.)

Anyways, I was impressed with the site, and wanted to share. :-) I vow to make a better use of my postcard clutter this year, and also be better with mailing other things like thank-you notes, sympathy cards, birthday cards, and anything else where I can use my new favorite pen. :-)

My First Big Scuba Trip

For those of you who have been following my scuba lesson adventures, I just wanted to give everyone a little update on what I have actually done with my certificate - or "C-card" as it's called. I spent two lovely weeks in the South Pacific - a week in Guam and a week in Palau. Aaaahhh.


Palau today is probably most well known as a place where they filmed the television series "Survivor" twice. While Todd and I were there they were in the middle of filming of a Filipino Survivor and wrapping up French Survivor as well. I can certainly see why, it makes for some amazing and breathtaking background shots, and it is so isolated. Even as tourists, Todd and I were the only ones walking around. We went to a famous Indian restaurant there and were the only ones there. Romantically, he said he reserved the whole place for us. More like he reserved the entire chain of islands for us.




Back during the war years, however, Palau was the site of some major battles, as was most of the South Pacific. The Battle of Peleliu was a tragic story - the US had thought they would secure this little airstrip in a matter of days, but instead the Japanese dug in their heels and the battle went on for more than two months. This would become a trend (Iwo Jima and Okinawa have similar stories). It has become a very controversial battle because of the lack of strategic value - the airstrip was never actually used for the attack on the Philippines as was intended, and the immensely high casualty toll - more than 9500. When considering the number of men actually involved for this little island, the Battle of Peleliu has the highest casualty rate in any battle fought in all of the Pacific Theater. The picture above was taken at the Etpison Museum and shows some of the artifacts that have washed ashore from the battles. I have always been fascinated with these kinds of things (as well I should - I am a Navy brat, and was born in Japan...) and this place is loaded with history. In a related note, Palau has been in the news recently as the possible relocation point of Guantanamo detainees...



Speaking of history, this picture is of a reconstruction of the traditional male meeting house, called a 'bai'. The native Palauans were matriarchal and matrilineal, and were fishermen mostly, for their sheer availability.







For being as small as Palau is, it has its own brewing company. What??? Hell yeah!!! Red Rooster Brewing Company has four options: Amber, Mango Wheat, Dark and Stout. We partook of many at the famous bar Kramer's. And it was good.




Palau is known for its large clam shells, and this is me at a clam farm. We actually later snorkeled out to a place where you can skin dive down and sit into one the size of a lawn chair (those were obviously dead of course). I did see some alive while scuba diving, and they are amazing. Their lips are many different colors all at once - it is amazing to see.


This picture makes me laugh, because the size of the vegetation here is like something a dinosaur would eat - it is the place that time forgot.

This picture is from Milky Way Cove. I took this on our kayak tour of the Rock Islands. When we sailed in to this little grotto my breath was taken away. The water is a completely different color than anything I have ever seen in my life, luminescent. Our guide skin dived down to the bottom and got a bucket of the sand so we could rub it all over ourselves - it is said to hold magical properties for the skin. It smelled like phosphorus, so I could see why. We then jumped in and splashed around like children for a while. It is one of my favorite memories!

Onto the scuba diving. Todd and I did three days of diving, two dives a day, for a total of six dives. Each dive was vastly different. I can see why Palau is such a diver's Mecca. The first time I did a back roll off of the dive boat and let the air out of my buoyancy control device (bcd) and started sinking into the deep blue Pacific, I must admit I was scared to death. There is so much to remember! What hose goes where, which button does what, etc. And there were things that we were doing that I had never even heard of before - like reef hooking. So after our descent - to 70 feet! I had only gone down 20 feet in training! - we swim around for a bit and then approach this sheer drop-off that apparently goes down for thousands of feet more. We then clip ourselves to a cord that has a metal hook at the end and then hook that end to the coral and put some air into our bcd so we were a bit more floaty and we just hang out and watch the goings on of this drop-off. This drop off was actually one side of a trench that was something of a superhighway for all kinds of schooling fish - and the sharks who eat them! I saw sharks on my first dive! Oh my god! I was so friggin' excited and hyped up on adrenaline I guess I forgot to be scared. It was so amazing!

The other dives were as varied as the day is long. One we did was called a 'wall' dive which means we descended next to a sheer cliff that goes down thousands of feet and let the current move us slowly by all the different corals: branch, brain, cabbage and the others I don't know the name of. I saw so many tropical fish in such vibrant colors, and sea stars, and eel. I saw sea turtles twice - slowly making his way past me without a care in the world. Another dive we swam up to a sunken ship grown over with all types of coral and teeming with fish. I cannot believe how much there is to see out there.

This is a photo of one of the famous Rock Islands of Palau. You can see how the ocean is slowly eating away at the base to make the iconic mushroom shape. Some of the islands I saw whilst kayaking were so amazingly structured - it looked like they were about to teeter off into the ocean, for the bases had been washed away to almost nothing.

This is the famous "Survivor" beach, where most of the filming took place. We had lunch here the first day during our surface interval between dives. While we were motoring out here I began to recognize the shape of the islands and knew where we were before the dive master even told us. I can't believe I have been to a place so damned remote that Survivor has been filmed there!

All in all, Palau is an amazingly beautiful place. It is so untouched, so virgin. I cannot wait to go back to the South Pacific and explore more of these islands - specifically Yap, which is known for their large money stones and manta ray, and Chuuk (also known as Truk), which is known for the vast quantities of sunken WWII airplanes. I can see that these unspoiled little gems hidden away won't stay that way for long, and I need to see them before they get any more developed. I remember vividly while walking to dinner one night, seeing a local drinking the last bit out of a plastic juice bottle and then throwing it off of the bridge into the ocean. My jaw dropped. And though Todd and I were, as it seemed, two of the few American tourists, the Japanese come there in droves. And I saw them doing some questionable things while snorkeling, such as chumming the fish with bread (a big no-no in a protected environment), and taking away some coral and shells. It makes my heart hurt, but is also very inspiring to me to see all these things soon.

What I am about to say may offend some....but I know I am right. So there.

Okay. I am going to preface this by saying I jut got finished talking to Todd about this, so I am still kind of riled up about it, and my adrenaline is pumping. Stuff like this makes me really angry. Arrgh!!!

Okay. Deep breath. Well, I just worked a direct flight from Houston to Honolulu where I was door greeter on the 767-200. This mainly means that I stand by the main entrance to the plane and tell people where to go to get to their seats in an orderly fashion during boarding. Well, at the very end of boarding this woman comes on with two kids - one boy who looks to be about 4 years old and an infant daughter along with all the accoutrements that said children might need on a nearly 8 hour flight. This is a little atypical because they should have been pre-boarded (came on first) because they obviously are going to take a long time to get settled in. She is traveling alone with her two children but had enlisted another passenger to drag her ginormous carseat for her boy down the jetway understandably. So I take a look at her seat, notice that she only bought two seats for the three passengers (another issue - something that I think is enormously unsafe but whatever....that's for another day). She has 18E and F. So I make it known to her that she absolutely must put the carseat in 18E so as not to block 18D's potential escape route in an emergency. I did my job, she went down the aisle to her seat. She did exactly the opposite of what I said. Of course. She installed her carseat at the aisle seat at 18F to block everyone in, and stall egress in the event of an emergency evacuation. I didn't actually see this, I was still up at the front of the plane, but another flight attendant, Ron, did catch it and told her that she must move the carseat.

Apparently she ignored his request. When he came back to check on her she hadn't done it and said she wasn't going to, and asked for his name. Jesus! Whenever this happens alarms go off in a flight attendants head, because airline management has a tendancy to believe any sort of ridiculous story that a passenger tells over their own trained professional employees; so, smart guy, Ron got our lead flight attendant, Shahid involved, who also got a ground agent involved. Long story short, I somehow got volunteered to hold her really sticky infant during boarding while the carseat got moved. If you know me, you know that I was born without the mommy gene. So, really, this lady is already not one of my favorite passengers. Didn't listen when I clearly directed her to do a simple task, making me be a babysitter, and already taking names to throw fellow crew members under the bus.

So, at the very beginning of the flight it is my position to sell headsets in the main cabin. So I have a little tray of them. The lady's 4 year old was out of control. I mean like Seed of Chucky style. Yelling at the top of his lungs "MILK!!!!!" Kicking, throwing some sort of graham cracker on the floor. She asks me if there is milk on the plane, to which I say "Yes, it is on the barcart, which is being set up at the moment. We are still climbing, it'll be about 10 minutes and we'll be out with a beverage and meal service." I was selling headsets at the time, remember. To which this bitch said, "well, if you want him yelling like this for ten minutes then fine," and rolled her eyes at me. What the fuck? It's not my responsibility to control and/or discipline your brat or to provide Chucky with his every demand. You, as a parent, should be prepared. So I continued walking through the cabin selling headsets. Water off a duck's back.

Just to let you all know, there isn't much milk on our flights. We have probably 24 pints in the main cabin. 12 pints are fat free. 6 pints for each of whole and fat free for each aisle; and 2 on each beverage cart are designated for our "creamer" for coffee and tea. Chucky drank all our milk. And then pointed to the ones on the cart for the creamers and screamed for those and cried like a bansie when we refused to give them to him. I am not shitting you.

So I go on break with Ron. Nice crew rest. We have a few giggles about the bitch with the milk. When we come up early, Debbie tells us that Lisa talked to Chucky's mom when she gave him the little airplane kid's wings. Okay. First - WTF! This lady has already threatened to write up one of your co-workers and you're codling them. My advice is to only deal with them when it is absolutely necessary - like during beverage services. Anything else is rewarding bad behavior. So already I was a little ticked off with my fellow flight attendants. I could tell Ron was too. So apparently Chucky's mom told Chucky to put the wings on his forehead. "Go ahead, stick 'em to your forehead!" This woman is an idiot.

So then Debbie goes into this sob story about how Chucky's dad is in Iraq and blah, blah, blah. About how she feels so bad for this woman, she's so lost. At that point I couldn't take it anymore, I snapped at Debbie, adrenaline pumping. This is what I said paraphrasing because I was fed up with Debbie, Chucky, his mom and all the bitches like her "You know what? That is bullshit! So what her husband's in Iraq? That has no effect on me, whatsoever. I came from a military family. That bitch needs to pull it together! Her husband needs to know that his family is a strong one and doesn't need to rely on the sympathy of others to get by. She needs to step up to the plate and be a parent to those kids! She knew what she was getting into when she married into the military. Her husband is off fighting a war and what is she doing? She sure as HELL isn't keeping the home fires burning! She is a complete mess!"

Debbie just sat there for a moment with her mouth gaping open and then said "Girl, you are in the wrong business."

I honestly think I am right on this one.

Oh, and as an added bonus, when we landed in Honolulu, the seats they were seated in were complete disaster zones. I mean food ground into them, wrappers on the floor, cups, ice, shit everywhere. I wish I would have thought to take a picture. Damn it.