Islands
p. 41 · Read in the full issue
From the
Press
From PNG Post-Courier Dear Lifeline, I have two problems which are causing me worry in my life. I’ve been married for almost one year now, and although my wife and I have frequent intercourse every weekend, when she is ovulating, she has not become pregnant. I am disappointed in her, and no longer get satisfaction from our sex fife. I am also concerned about my alcohol problem. I spend up to K6O a week buying beer, and am often drunk. How can I overcome this problem? Double Worries.
From The Fiji Times At least one Fiji hotel manager thinks room rates here are too high. Martin Livingston, who will run the Skylodge at Nadi.. . compares us with Hawaii and says Fiji is no bargain. In Hawaii $F 16 a day will buy you a room with colour television and movies in the room, in a hotel with four or five bars, a wide variety of entertainments, and all sorts of services you can’t get in Fiji such as an instant valet service, he says. In Fiji for a good hotel with some facilities, although far from matching those in Hawaii, you’ll generally have to pay $2O upward (often more like $3O). . .
From a letter in Atoll Pioneer, Gilbert Islands Let us now focus on the dress rule in the Otintai Hotel. The insistence upon the presence of shoes and long trousers is totally discriminatory and unjustifiable as it tends to deny the right to equally participate in social and cultural life, and I just can’t comprehend a Gilbertese being discriminated against in his own land...
From The Samoa Times, Apia The scene at the inter-island wharf at Salelologa Monday was ‘a mad house’. Crowds got out of control trying to get on board the Limulimutau and drivers of two vehicles which collided got into a fight and created hell for everybody. ‘lt was lucky that a vehicle hadn’t plunged over the side of the ramp leading onto the boat. Scores of people would have been killed,’ Mr Mike Kneubuhl, a Samoan businessman from California, told the Samoa Times. ..
From The Coconut Telegraph, Savusavu, Fiji In a recent radio broadcast, a representative of the Consumer Council of Fiji said ‘Nobody fools an informed consumer’. True enough but the big question is ‘How does a consumer become informed?’ The Fiji consumer needs four pairs of eyes (including an X-ray pair) and an extra sense to warn him when he is being deceived if he is to avoid the many traps and pitfalls which await him day after day in all areas of consumer buying of goods and services..
From a Micronesian News Service report on the final meeting of the Congress of Micronesia, which has re-formed as the Interim Congress of the Federated States of Micronesia Congressman Daro Weital cited the Bible in remarks concerning the dissolution of the Congress of Micronesia. Said he: ‘As the book of Ecclesiastes tells us, there is a time for everything.’ The following is his amendment to the holy book to fit the Micronesian situation. ‘There is a time to sow, and a time to reap; there is a time for free feeding programmes, and a time not to have free feeding programmes; (and in terms of this Congress)
there is a time for unity, and there is a time for selfishness; there is a time for nonsense, and a time for good sense; and there is a time to live, and a time to die.. .In our case, there is a time for this Congress to die, but there is also a time to be born, and this Congress will be born again.’
How to moke sure your letter is published as demonstrated by letter-writer Peter Eru in the PNG Post-Courier Thank you for the space you are going to allow me for my views on the political happenings in our country . . .
From the Fiji Times Princess Margaret’s ‘official’ visit to Fiji cost SF3S 350, even though she did not make it. By the time she cancelled the visit, because of illness, arrangements to welcome her had been taken too far to avoid the cost... Costs included $2500 for a buffet lunch, $5OOO for a youth rally, $5200 for an Island night, $5500 for film and press arrangements, $2700 for security and $ 1000
for protocol.
From Savali, Apia
The annual Apia Yard Sale was on.. . nearly a ton of well-oiled flesh in 14 lots on parade. There were 40 feet of breasts, 24 feet of waists and 42 feet of hips. The Miss Samoa contest, the ‘social highlight of the year’. Others would call it a straight mammary glands and gluteus maximus spectacle (there is another way of
saying that)...
From the Tonga Chronicle Diarrhoea is so widespread in developing countries of the Western Pacific that each child under five years of age can get this intestinal infection frequently, often three or four times a year. In these developing countries, the frequency rates of the diarrhoeal diseases are 100 times more than those in the
economically-advanced countries.
From Atoll Pioneer, Gilbert Islands Christmas Island has some of the most spectacular colonies of seabirds in the world. Despite H-bomb tests which blinded and killed millions from nuclear ‘flash’ in the sixties the birds have come back under the protection of the government wildlife officer. No longer do the colonies of nesting species suffer from ‘egging’ and other disturbances as they did in the past. In fact they are so tame that one can walk among them without upsetting them. Man and nature are in harmony on this, the largest coral atoll in the world.. .
From the Tonga Chronicle Pacific Islanders visiting relatives in New Zealand are being increasingly used by drug traders to smuggle narcotics through Auckland international airport. .. As the Islands are not seen as likely sources for drug shipments and Customs manpower limits the number of visitors who can be checked Islanders tend to have easy passage through Customs. Knowing this, local drug dealers have hired Islanders to import narcotics originally
bought in Asia.. .
From the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier Port Moresby is certainly a tough town. So tough in fact that the latest University of Papua New Guinea newsletter carries this warning under the heading ‘Back Road Unsafe’: ‘ln view of the number of incidents involving cars being stopped and occupants assaulted, staff, students and other persons are asked not to use the back road leading to the housing estate after nightfall’...
From The Samoa Times, Apia After selling her Apian Way hotel to the Nauruan government for a reported SWS2BO 000 Mrs Mary Croudace has suddenly found herself with plenty of time to visit her children and grandchildren overseas. T am planning to visit the United States soon to visit my aiga but my heart will always be in Samoa. I do not want to live anywhere else but in Samoa,’ Mrs Croudace told the Samoa Times in an interview...