My new favourite expression

How could I not have heard the term FoMO (Fear of Missing Out)? I know the FoMO concept intimately, having suffered from it my entire life. It explains quite a lot of my behavioural quirks, like wandering around the house while brushing my teeth in case something else more interesting is going on or appearing at breakfast when we have houseguests, half dressed with wet hair, lest I miss a bit of news that my family members with certainly neglect to tell me later.

Being a FoMOist has its upsides. It’s what allows you to chivvy your companions along while walking around strange cities as you search for a restaurant better than the one you are standing in front of, which means occasionally you stumble on a real gem. It’s what gives you the curiosity to try every strange fruit that you come across in the market despite the fact that, up until you tried a mangosteen two days ago, you haven’t tasted a delicious new fruit since you tried a kiwifruit in 1978. It’s what makes you appear adventurous when what you really are is a perennial worrier, wondering if something bigger, better or more interesting is just out of sight around the theoretical corner.

Strange fruit – mangosteen, where have you been all of my life?

However, I suspect many FoMOists are paralysed with indecision because for every positive decision they make, there are the infinite possibilities that they’ve excluded by making that decision. This is typically demonstrated at restaurants, where FoMOists have a difficult time ordering from a large menu (“if I have the Caesar salad, which I love, I won’t be able to try the flambéed frogs’ legs, which might be delicious!”).

Of course, indecision impacts on bigger life events. For example, if you decide to be a fireman, you have passively decided not to be a butcher, a baker or a brain surgeon among other things. Therefore, I suspect most FoMOists let their lives play out, occasionally making some inexplicable (to themselves and to their friends) monumental decision based on nothing more than the fear that there might be something on the other side of that decision than is more exhilarating than where they happen to be standing at the moment of decision-making. That’s my excuse anyway.

Mind you, there was little opportunity for FoMO on mine and Anna’s recent trip to California because our days were absolutely packed with great things. Alex joined us from the UK and we saw every brother, sister, niece, nephew, brother- and sister-in-law on my side of the family. I also managed to see some of my very oldest friends from my early childhood who had the decency to still look young. Alex and Anna experienced their first US 4th of July (not a particularly popular holiday in the UK), we saw the awesome San Jose Earthquakes-LA Galaxy match at Stanford Stadium, picked berries in Santa Ynez, squeezed in three family birthday parties and went to the beach as many times as possible.

While we were stuffing in as much California culture as we could, John was back in Fiji running the Pacific Science Association Conference and looking after the four kittens that were delivered to our living room by a little stray that we’d been feeding. The conference was a success and the kittens well-adjusted enough to place in good homes. And yes, I do tell John he’s a hero at least a couple of times a week.

The kittens were replaced by the same number of toads soon after they were re-homed.

Back in Fiji, our UK next door neighbours came to visit on their round-the-world adventure. They embraced the Fijian experience whole-heartedly (despite it being so chilly that I had to don a fleece several times), going rafting on the Navua River, walking along the sea wall into Suva for a day’s sight-seeing, going off the rope swing at Colo-i-Suva and learning (and using) basic Fijian words. Their boys are going to be spoiled for life as on their second snorkel off of Naigani, we saw a white-tipped shark, a Ridley’s turtle as well as amazing coral cover. Seriously, there will be no point in them visiting the Caribbean now. On their last night here, we went to our usual, The Bad Dog, to toast them bon voyage with colourful cocktails/mocktails with them in their full bula regalia.

It’s times like that I can ignore my FoMO tendencies because I’m sure that if I were able to peek around the theoretical corner, my little piece of the world would be better than anything I might see on the other side.

A weekend of sharks, snakes and bats

We’ve been very lucky to have one of John’s colleagues, Mike, and his MPhil student, David, here since before Alex left. Mike is a post doc that did his PhD with John, so we’ve known him for a long time. He’s slotted into the big brother role quite naturally – he definitely should have had a younger sister.  With them around, we’re still in sightseeing mode, though the list of sights to see around Suva, which was short to begin with, is growing shorter.

Mike demonstrates how to use a cannibal brain fork.

On Sunday, Mike, David and John went on a shark dive. This is where you go out on a boat, don scuba gear with lots of extra weight and drop to the bottom in around 30m of water to see bull sharks being fed tuna heads. The extra weight keeps you from bobbing around in the water column like a tasty morsel. Once you’ve used up your allotted time at that depth, you come up to a shallower water to see black tips, then shallower still to see white tips. Anna isn’t a certified diver and I’m not certified crazy, so we went to the Holiday Inn in Suva and had lunch by the pool before lounging next to it for the afternoon.

Not as attractive as a pina colada by the pool (thanks for the photo, Mike).

Because John had rented a car to go on the shark dive, we had a car for the entirety of Sunday. We’ve pretty much exhausted the tourist attractions close by, so we set off to Wailatua, north on the King’s Road, home of the Snake God Cave. The condition of the roads here are variable. None of the taxis appear to have any suspension left. Neither did the rental car. The road west out of Suva is called the Queen’s Road and is paved at least all the way to Nadi. North is a different story. The King’s Road has sections that are gritted, some that are paved but with enormous potholes, some that are under construction in variable states and one stretch, around 5 miles long quite a way up north that is paved to a standard that any developed country would be pleased with it.

We stopped just out of Suva to get some kava root for a sevusevu for the chief of Wailotua. Kava root is from a pepper plant that is ground and made into a drink that is associated with a strict social ritual. A sevusevu is the presentation of a gift to a village chief, the acceptance of which confers certain privileges or favours to the giver. It is the polite currency for accessing areas of Fiji that are close to villages.

On arrival to the village a group of children ran out to greet us, one of which wiped out on the gravel and gave himself a nasty gash. Fortunately the rental car had both a first aid kit and a roll of toilet paper in its glove box (for the consequences of not have having suspension, I guess) and Mike put a plaster on the boy’s knee. I missed the giving of the sevusevu as I was parking the car.

Chief Bose is the chief of five villages and played for the Auckland Chiefs for three years as a winger. He led the entire tour barefoot. I think that he probably could have done it without the lantern as well. Despite its name, the cave is full of bats, not snakes. There is the brothy, roast chicken smell of bats, particularly in the bigger caverns. The name of the cave refers to a formation of minerals that look like six adjacent snake heads. The floor of the cave was either slick, wet earth or dry crumbly bat droppings, which I had to put my hands in several times to help myself up particularly steep bits.

The Chief was very attentive to me, either because I was John’s wife or because I looked like the most likely to slip and break my ankle. So while I got polite chat about the possibility of holding weddings in the largest cavern, Mike and David got to see where they used to sacrifice people.

Unlike caves that I’ve been to in the US and Europe, this one was very hot and sticky.  Though interesting, I’m not going to go back in a hurry - at least until our UK neighbours the Bevans come for a visit. Richard can bring his bat detector (Richard is a zoologist – most of my UK neighbours do not have bat detectors). Mind you, you don’t need one of those here – the bats are the size of small turkeys.