Here We Come A-Wassailing

There's an old Christmas carol that describes the tradition of people going from house to house singing and giving blessings and greetings, and in turn receiving food or drink. Things are obviously different here in the South Seas, but they have a tradition sort of like that here.

Yesterday morning, I received a phone call from the son of one of our national co-workers. This co-worker works in an entirely different part of the South Seas, but their son attends college here in Southtown. Through a number of circumstances, this young man was given my phone number and instructed to call me if he ever needed anything. (I was not the one who gave him the number, or the instructions, but that is a different story.) At any rate, he called to wish me Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and to inquire as to my schedule for the day. I told him we had plans that afternoon, but they were flexible. He asked if he could come visit to greet me and my family for the holiday. After checking with Mrs. Flyer, I extended an invitation and asked what time to expect him. He told me he was borrowing a bicycle to ride over to my house (about 10 minutes from the campus) and wanted to be sure there would not be any rain, so it would be sometime between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. I suspected that it would be close to noon when he arrived, because he is a college student, after all. Just before he hung up, he mentioned that a friend would be joining him, as well, would that be okay? Sure. The more the merrier, right?!

He showed up right at 11:30, and he and his friend politely ate the traditional snacks and soft drinks one offers to guests at this time of year. Ordinarily, at these holiday visits, one tries to dress up a bit. Our young guest had certainly dressed the part, wearing a t-shirt which sported the slogan: "The Next Best Thing To Nakedness". Now, I know what you are thinking, but relax. It was just an advertisement for Jockey underwear. I'm going to try to find a shirt just like it, so I can dress appropriately when I do my visiting. It's important to understand the customs of your host culture, and emulate them as much as possible.

After an hour or so, our guests casually inquired about holiday traditions back home. This of course led to a discussion of foods consumed at the holidays, and in particular, what we had eaten as part of our celebration here in the South Seas, and if it differed from what we usually had Back Home. Then of course, the next logical thing was for them to comment about how interesting that was, and that they had never had the opportunity to sample the holiday cuisine from Back Home, and how they would sure like to try that. So, naturally at this point, I was expected to mention the fact that we had left-overs from our celebration, and since it was approaching lunchtime anyway, would they like to stay and share what we had?

In this case, the polite response is for one to turn down the offer, and explain that one has already eaten, and that one does not want to impose, but thank you very much. What happens next is dependent upon the sincerity of the offer on the part of the host. If the host was simply being polite, and did not actually intend to share a meal, he may then dismiss his guests gracefully, explaining that they are going to eat as a family, and thank you very much for coming, please stop by again when you can. This is the cultural easy-out for someone to use to kick out guests who have overstayed their welcome. This will be accepted at the time, but is not really well-received in the long run. The far more gracious thing is for the host to insist that he sincerely wants the guest to stay and eat, and may need to do this more than one time in order for the guest to "give in" to the "pressure" to stay and eat.

After some "arm-twisting" these starving students who had arrived just in time for lunch accepted our invitation to stay and eat Back Home-style holiday left-overs. Now, what is eaten here in the South Seas differs a bit from the normal Back Home fare, to the point that most native born residents of the South Seas insist that they cannot feel they have actually eaten a meal unless the main South Seas staple, rice, has been consumed. Unless this takes place, whatever is served is viewed as a "snack", and most will come away feeling short-changed in the deal. So knowing this, Mrs. Flyer put out chicken curry soup with white rice, and left-over cold-cuts and sandwich makings. Our guests tied in, and skipped on the curry and rice, and stuck to the sandwiches. To our surprise, one of our guests exclaimed at the end of the meal, "I didn't believe I would feel full when I saw what you served us, but I really AM full!!"

Now, it's not certain if he was saying that just to be polite, or if he really was surprised how full he felt. Like a lot of things here, we're just never going to know. But hey, in the end, WE were the lucky ones. Here in the South Seas, your status determines whether you are the one who visits others at the holidays, or if you are the one who is visited. So in reality, they were honoring us with their visit. I mean, one of our guests went to the trouble of wearing a shirt with something in our native tongue printed on it, and all!

Showdown on Palm Street, Part Two

So, after our previous run-ins with the owner of the Palm Street House, we really didn't know what to expect once we returned from our trip Back Home.  On a number of occasions, we had had phone conversations with her, and had continued to make offers we felt we could afford, and she continued to turn them down, always saying that she or her husband would come to River City to talk about the contract in person.

Once we were back, we settled into life in River City as we knew it, but began to feel that we really needed to move once the contract was up.  Our theory was that, given the craziness surrounding the negotiations of the lease contract, what the owner was really trying to tell us was that she didn't actually want to re-contract.  Also, we had questions about whether we wanted to continue on in a business arrangement with this lady, who had demonstrated the capability to really be unstable.  So, the longer time went on, and the more phone calls we had with her, the greater our desire to shop around grew.

Finding housing in the South Seas would warrant several blog posts on its own, so for the sake of time, let me just say that we found another house that seemed workable about half a mile away, and we had the money to contract it at the price the owner wanted.  It was on the higher end of the market, price-wise, but the house was basically ready to move in, without further work.  There were a number of things we wanted to have done to the house, (ceiling fans, new water pump, etc) but for the price we were paying, the owner was ready to foot the bill for all that, so that we moved in as soon as possible.  We went and looked at the house on a Sunday, and by Thursday night, we got a call that everything we asked for was done, and we could pick up the keys anytime!

The night we took the keys to the Saint Street House, the owner of the Palm Street House called us and informed us that she would be traveling to River City and wanted to meet the following day to work out the details for our house contract.  With that in mind, I took the day off from work and awaited her call.  Finally that evening, she called and told us she was sick, and would not be able to meet with us that day.  Could we meet the following day?  I told her I had already taken a day off from work, and wouldn't be able to meet until evening time.  So, we agreed on that, and she showed up with a relative in tow, likely for backup.

She opened the conversation with more tales of woe, and made it clear that by not contracting at the price she asked, we had been complicit in making her life terrible.  I replied that we had made a number of fair offers, and had made our position clear, but had never had a clear answer from her.  Moreover, we had been ready to discuss a re-negotiation over a year prior to that, but she had never followed through on setting up a time before the present to discuss the issue, even though she had made plans on more than one occasion.

Then, she rebutted with a recounting of how many misfortunes had befallen her, and how my reluctance to pay the price she wanted had added to her stress.  I went in a different direction and pointed out that we began to feel that we were not able to pay her what she wanted, and she didn't want to just be honest with us about that, and instead had turned down every offer we'd made.  Since we were unable to pay a fair price for her house, and were not in a position to buy it, I suggested that we should maybe begin to search for other housing, and let her deal with the house as she had seen fit.  I should add here, that while we were Back Home, she had had someone who lived in River City post a "For Sale" sign on the fence outside our house. Presumably, it was only for the land, but if the land is sold, the house is generally included in the purchase price, at least here in the South Seas!

She reiterated her story of ongoing suffering, and I reminded her that we had been very confused by her lack of response to our offers, and felt we just needed to move on to another housing situation.  At this she asked:

"Are you thinking of moving out of this house in stead of re-contracting?"

I replied, "Well, it seems like we cannot agree on a suitable price for the market, so we should not put you in a position to lose money.  It might be best if that's the route we go."

"Well, I would consider your previous offer, under the cirucmstances.  I always told you that was acceptable!"

Actually, she had never said anything of the sort, but I countered: "We feel like we should begin to look elsewhere, and allow you to sell or rent the house as you see fit."

"But I've never wanted to sell the house!  I want to rent it to you!"

"Well, we were confused, because you originally asked if we would just buy the house when this whole discussion started a year ago."

"That's never been my desire, I want to rent to you and your family!"

"We were also confused by the fact that you brought potential purchasers by to show the house to them, without telling us first."

"That was not my intent!  Those were friends who just wanted to look at the house!"

"Well, this isn't a tourist attraction, and it made us feel like what you really wanted was to just sell the house."

"No, no, no!  What ever gave you the idea I wanted to sell?"

"Well, the "For Sale"sign that got put up out front kind of led us to believe that you desired to sell the house."

"That's still out there?!?"  To her relative: "Quick, go take that down!  We need to rent this house to this family!"

"I appreciate what you are saying, but we've come to the conclusion that we cannot pay you what the house is worth, and we cannot buy the house, so we feel that we just need to look around at other houses."

"Have you started to look around at other houses?"

"Actually, yes, we have."

"Have you FOUND a house you are interested in?"

"Actually, yes, we did."

"Do you want to make a contract with that owner, instead of ME?"

"Yes, that is what we are thinking we will do."

"Did you ALREADY make a contract with that owner?"

"Yes. Yes we did, and we will be out of the house at the end of the month."

At this point, she flew off the handle, and went on and on about how awful I had been, and how I had deceived her all along, and that no one had ever treated her the way I had.  I am sure that was true, but the fact remained that we were at a crossroads with the owner of the Palm Street House, and would be moving on at the end of the month.  In a way, once the yelling was over, I felt relieved.  At least now we knew what would happen with our housing, and the decisions had been made an communicated.  All that remained was for us to actually move...

Showdown on Palm Street, Part One

So, I guess the next logical piece of the puzzle would be the story of how we came to leave Palm Street.  To begin with, there's some background information that would be good to relay concerning leasing a house in the South Seas:

Leasing a house is generally for a term of 1 year or more, but rarely more than 3 or 5 years at the most.  Also, the full term of the lease is paid in full up front, unless some other arrangement is worked out.  But, the renewal of the contract is viewed as a source of revenue for the owner, so whatever money will be invested in the house is usually sourced from the contract renewal.  So, the owner wants to get the most money possible, and spend the least amount possible on the house at renewal time in order to pocket the biggest profit. 

For several years, the house we had lived in had been occupied by Foreign Guests living in the South Seas.  At first an NGO had contracted with the owner for its associates to use.  Then, that NGO closed down its River City branch and gave someone from our NGO a chance to negotiate a contract directly with the owner.  That individual came to the point where they were going to be heading Back Home about the time we sought to move to River City, so we worked out an agreement with them to take over the house contract.  The owner was agreeable to this, and things continued quite well for some time.  Each time a lease is negotiated, there is always going to be some increase in what is being paid for the lease, so as we looked to the future contract renewal, we expected some increase in what was going to be asked for the lease.  What we didn't expect, was all the drama that came along with that.

The owner of our house (a retired government employee) lived in another part of The South Seas, and so we didn't hear from her often.  One day, (about a year before the lease was up) she showed up on our (her) doorstep and informed us that her son was planning to study abroad and she needed money NOW for the tuition payments.  I didn't feel that we were getting the straight story on this, but it was clear she needed or wanted money for something and the story was that it was for tuition. 

I asked if she would like to re-negotiate the contract, which would have resulted in her having to either return the money already paid to her, or to consider it as part of the new contract, thus reducing the actual amount of cash in her hands at the end of the day.  This wasn't really what she wanted.  She wanted us to drop a particular amount into her bank account right away in consideration for a future extension on the contract.  I told her at that time that while we would like to do that, we didn't have the funds to pay her the amount she was asking for but could pay a lower amount.  Did she want to consider taking that for a shorter extension on the contract (which was still binding for a further year, by the way).  This didn't please her one bit, but she was polite about it. She wasn't in a position to terminate the contract, as she didn't have the funds to return a pro-rated balance to us, and she couldn't force us to renew the contract early, so for the time being we were at an impasse if she didn't want what we offered.  So she played the next logical card in her deck:  she informed us as she left that she might be forced to sell the house at the end of our contract, and so departed leaving us wondering what would happen at the end of the year.  At that time, we were planning to head Back Home and then return a couple of months prior to the end of the contract.  As we were occupied with preparing for that trip, we filed away what the owner had shared, and hoped for the best once renewal time came. 

About a month after her visit, the owner of our house called us in tears.  Allegedly her son had already traveled outside of the South Seas and was trying to make it into his schooling but had run out of money, which was the exact situation she was trying to head off by asking for the amount she had before to renew the contract early.  Would we see fit to please pay her the money she had asked for originally so that she could send it to him? 

We still didn't have the money, and still weren't in a position to renew the contract early.  We went round and round with her on the phone, and finally reiterated our position, and repeated our original offer, which still wasn't satisfactory to her.  Getting off the phone with her that night was a relief, but I knew it was far from over...

Let's jump into the Wayback Machine for a bit:

As I was pleased and surprised to find that this blog of mine is still alive and kicking, I thought I'd post something once more.  So, that makes the streak TWO days in a row! 

I know that there's no way I can catch up on everything that took place since I was last posting, and that has never really been the intent of this, anyway.  But, in the words of Inigo Montoya, "There's no time to 'splain, let me sum up:"

We lived in River City (previously called South Town) from the end of 2007 to the Summer of 2013.  During that time, we lived in three different houses, and were quite busy with the work that we were doing, in addition to keeping up with family and marriage, as well as general sanity and well-being.  We left the South Seas twice for several months to return Back Home and spend time with people who helped make what we were doing possible, get more training, and try to rest up.  The first departure took place in November of 2009, with our family returning to River City in August of 2010.  Most of the writing I did took place from 2008 up until 2010, with only four posts from 2011.  Life got pretty crazy then, and I abandoned the cathartic process of blogging. 

I might point out that our time in River City is easily divided into (if not chapters) subheadings based on the houses in which we lived.  The bulk of the stories I have shared so far took place while we were living on Palm Street in River City.  Once we returned to River City after our first trip Back Home in 2009-2010, we only lived on Palm Street for a short time before the lease was up on our house, and we moved a short distance to Saint Street.  We lived there for a year, and about the time that lease ran out, a co-worker left The South Seas and wanted to be bought out of their lease, which we did.  That was a house on Bloom Street, and was by far our favorite house in River City, if not the entire history of the Flyer Family. 

We continued on in River City till the Summer of 2013.  At that point, my responsibilities (and our location) were changing and we returned Back Home once again, to travel and meet with our supporters, and get more training, and again try to rest up.  As we prepared to depart from River City in June 2013, we were shutting down there, selling off what possessions and furniture that would not eventually be shipped to our new location, and closing out the River City chapter of our lives.

That River City Chapter was a very challenging time for us as a family, with balancing the demands of work, struggles with the culture, and a number of other things that blessed us and opposed us.  In many ways moving out of River City was a very good thing and a good change for us as a family.  We are now living in a place that henceforth shall be called Hammer Town and is further east from where we were in River City. 

Now that some time has passed, I look back on our River City days and realize that while many stories from Palm Street have already been recorded here, I haven't really done justice to the Saint Street and Bloom Street portions of that Chapter.  So, going forth I'd like to remedy that as well as share about what our adventures have and will be here in Hammer Town, and wherever else we may wind up. 

I think that does it; obviously I can't get it all down in one post, but in time the good (and bad) will be spelled out here for you.  Hope you can hang in there with me!

Hmm.... This thing's still on!

Wow.  Strictly out of morbid curiosity, I thought I'd punch in the url to my old blog, and sure enough, it has managed to stay out here in cyberspace.  So, since no one at Blogger has seen fit to purge this sucker yet, I am toying with the idea of starting to write again from time to time.  I won't commit to a full-blown comeback (that's already happened and come to nothing at least twice on here), but it could be fun to get on here and jot some stuff down from time to time.  There's way too much water under the bridge for me to ever do justice to a re-cap during the hiatus, and most likely it will be a long time again before anything is consistently posted. But there's a few good stories worth writing down, and so we'll see what happens.  It interests me to see if I will keep up, and even more so if anyone notices. Is anyone even blogging anymore?   

Not banned yet,

The South Seas Flyer.

Have it YOUR way at....

Mrs. Flyer and I were out in town today, and thought there was something strangely familiar about this place. We wanted to stop in and try it, but unfortunately, it was lunch time, and like many swanky dining establishments in the South Seas, Burger Yang is only open in the evenings. Oh, well. Maybe another time. Probably have to get a babysitter, though.

Wait, I'm confused....

Does that mean that this is a wheelchair-accessible restroom, or that this restroom is out of order? Good thing that little wheelchair picture is there, because it's a little vague to me.... Mrs. Flyer and I went out for dinner with the Little Flyers, and after we saw this, we went home scratching our heads.