kicking goals for newtown fc

This week has been a particularly good one.

For the first time, I feel that I actually have something to do at work. Not quite make-Tonga-a-better-place things to do. More at-least-it-stops-me-playing-solitaire things to do. Which I am more than happy with, I would like to believe I am not naïve enough to think that I, as a volunteer in town for 12-months, really am going to make too much of a difference to Tonga. Maybe this is an acknowledgement of my laziness as much as it is a commentary on the role of the volunteer.

Either way this week I have been busy and it looks as though I will stay that way, but still with some time for solitaire. I have also confirmed that there will be work for me to go on with beyond the ‘Eua project and an urban planning project I am involved in. I will be working more closely with Minister's staff and have better access to learn what actually goes on here. It should mean I can find enough to do at last.

If nothing else, the Tongan national development plan is released next week. I haven’t had much to do with its preparation so I can sit down in the latter part of next week and read it through for the first time.

Also, this week, I managed to join my local soccer club. Or should that be local soccer team. I am not really sure, it all just kind of happened.

Having been filling 8:30 to 4:30 of each day with not a great deal at work, I was pretty keen to find something to do in the evenings. Cooking dinner, reading books, watching DVDs and drinks at the Billfish, had been only somewhat filling in my evenings so I thought I would join in with a group of Tongans who play soccer each evening in a park near my work.

It has taken me awhile to work out what time they play and get along at that time, but this week I managed to go twice. At the start of the second night, they announced we have a game on Saturday (tomorrow). So tomorrow I will line up for the Kolofo’ou (kolo is town and fo’ou new, so Newtown) Football Club in some tournament. Should be fun, though I think they have an idea of playing me as the goalkeeper which could be rather shambolic as the team certainly doesn’t play with any structure. Let’s hope the opposition is just as bad.

I thought that seeing this weeks entry is a little short I would write rather randomly about anything to do with Tonga. I have chosen to talk about cars in Tonga.
This was prompted by my sighting a battered up old Toyota Corolla whilst riding home the other day. As a kid, I had a matchbox version of this same car. Another kid at school gave it to me when I was at Franklin Public School, so in 1983. This matchbox car was still floating around in my dad’s garage the last time I lived at home, in 1999. You can imagine the amount of abuse this little toy would have received over those sixteen years. I was never gentle with my toy cars and this one would have survived a dozen or so moves, been bashed about in toy boxes etc on top of all the damage that a kid can inflict on a piece of diecast metal. Anyway, the point is that the Toyota Corolla I was following the other day looked exactly the same as my matchbox version circa 1999. Most of the paint was gone, the doors were barely hanging on and whilst there was a windscreen that was about all of the glass. Now, this is reasonably typical of many cars in Tonga. There are some fancy new ones, mostly big 4WDs, but many of the cars are old and judging by the rego stickers have enjoyed previous lives in Japan (or China) and New Zealand before arriving in the Pacific. Already dilapidated on arrival, the cars deteriorate further in a hurry thanks to not-so-meticulous care of the Tongans and the abundant sea air. There is a good chance that this is why drivers stay under the 40 km/h speed limit, to make sure their cars don’t fall apart.

On that note, read my new word of the week.