Taking in the Games (Written 8/28/07)

After taking Monday off to continue enjoying the rest of my school holidays, I decided that it was time for me to go watch some games today. When I headed into town, there was a visible difference in the amount of people and cars in Apia – it kind of felt like a small town which just became a mid-sized city over the course of a couple of days. There are two main areas where the games are taking place – Apia Park (which is a stadium) and the Faleata Sports Area (which houses various sporting venues such as swimming, basketball, beach volleyball, etc). Now, in the paper they have been advertising special bus routes for the games over the past 2 weeks (including a week and a half leading up to the games). So since these routes were printed in the same area that stated the tickets for the various games and were printed in the newspaper, one would assume that these special buses were meant for the general public to use in order to make it easier for them to get to the games. Unfortunately, that sort of logic doesn't work here sometimes – but we'll get to that in a second.

My original plan was to go to the Faleata Sports area and watch Judo and maybe catch a little swimming, but then I found out that today was the last day of Touch Rugby for the individual men's and women's team – which meant it was the final games for Fila and Zonder's team (they are both competing in the mixed rugby team, but I wanted to catch them with their original teams). So I decided to just go to Apia Park and watch them compete. Fila and Zonder's team did really well when I saw them and after playing 3 games in one day – both teams made it to the finals, where they were guaranteed either a silver or gold medal. I was only able to stay for Fila's match against the Cook Islands, but unfortunately Samoa lost so Fila received a silver medal. Even though its not the gold they envisioned, just to be rewarded for her 8 months of preparation has to be a major accomplishment. After I left, I found out that Zonder (the Men's Touch rugby team) also won a silver medal – so both of my friends are now SPG medalists. Now that's cool!

Janita, a NZ friend of Sara and I, has been working for the SPG for the past year and offered to give us a ride into town – which we gladly accepted. On the ride into town, the question was asked about how are people suppose to get up to the Faleata area (since 20 of the 70+ buses on Upolu are being used on these special routes for the games) and I stated 'Oh, you just use one of those special buses located at Apia Park'. Janita then corrected me and stated that those buses were only for the SPG volunteers and athletes – if you're just a common man you have to find your own way up there. Which means either taking a bus (and finding out which bus goes up to Faleata – there are no regular bus schedules in Samoa) or taking a cab (which is $7WST one way). I was shocked because to me it doesn't make any sense to advertise bus routes in the paper that only certain people can use. So that's yet another obstacle in going to see the games – they were suppose to make this easier, not harder (it's harder because with the SPG using about 20 or so buses, there are fewer buses available for regular people to use which causes a longer wait for the buses that are still in service). So hopefully I'll get up to the Faleata complex, but probably not as often as I would have liked – the pains of not having a car!

Anyway, after finding out about the buses I went into town and went to ClickNet to help Eugene for the night. I had offered to help run his shop for a couple of nights over the next 2 weeks so that he could take a break and spend some time with his family (for the past 3 weeks, he has been at the shop from 8am to 10pm and going home very tired). Fortunately, since I had been involved since the creation of the internet café, I knew a few of the major points that needed to be made so it was a full crash course. At around 6pm, he finally left and once again I was placed into a situation that I probably not have encountered in the states – running an internet café. For about an hour or so, the place was pretty quiet and I thought it was going to be a slow night. But around 6pm, a group of Mormons came into the café to use the computers – so basically the place got super busy all at one time. These were Mormon missionaries who were helping with the games, so they were all wearing the same uniform – but you could still tell they were Mormons. The weirdest part was once they sat down, they were all using the same webmail client – which was not hotmail, gmail or yahoo – but some special Mormon webmail client. You learn something new everyday. After that group came in, the place was just busy for about the next 2.5 hours with people coming in and out at regular intervals. When I helped out at ClickNet on Monday a few of the other internet cafes in the area were still open at 4:30pm – which is the traditional closing time in Samoa – but today (Tuesday) there was only one other place open besides us and everyone was coming to ClickNet. And of course the main perk for me was to be able to have access to true broadband internet for over 3 hours – not quite like one of those SPG badges that get you access to the venues and food – but it will do. As I was sitting there watching the customers and making sure that everything was going okay, it took me back to my retail days at Kroger (a grocery store that's popular in the SouthEast portion of the states). This time instead of being a lackey, I was the boss and it felt just as hectic as being the HOD of computer studies – everything runs through you and you have to make sure everything is okay. It wasn't to much pressure but it was an interesting feeling. We literally had customers in the shop up until closing time (and like a business run in the states, we only kicked them out of the café at 10pm – not 9:50pm so that we could clean up and get out of the place at 10pm). Eugene came back to the store in order to give us a ride home but when he saw the cash from the night (he cleaned out the register before he left to go home at 6pm, so there wasn't much in there when he left – but there was a lot when he came back) he noted that it was a good night, which was definitely an improvement over Monday night when we literally had to turn people away because SamoaTel was having problems with their internet connection.

So I won't be helping on Wednesday night because of my bible study, but I'll be back in action on Thursday night. Now it's a question of will I be making the same effort to go see these games up at the Faleata area over the next few days – we'll see. L8r.