Vikash Gounder

When returning from LA to Nadi on 8th, the Air Pacific route seems to be taken up by United Airlines. Review on the United Airlines especially on long flights.

• The Boeing 747 was really old and no inseat tv set.
• catering service is really crap
• especially some of the germans who were vegie’s ended up with either Beef Pasta or no meal
• and breakfast came with pork n beef which 90% of the travelers were non-pork and non-beef eaters

I think majority of the German tourists were really pissed coz of the crap catering and so much turbulence. Another major price change in baggage especially with UA flights, i remember when flying from Sacramento, LAX to Nadi n i was carrying jst 1 camping luggage bag, i was charged US$15 and this time round i was allowed 2 bags free and remaining US$25. I hope not to do anymore long distance flying with United Airlines anymore, i prefer Air Pacific over United Airlines.

On Saturday’s and Sunday Vanuatu is pretty much dead, we managed to checkout the City, which has some nice Duty Free shops. This was the first time i tried Vietnamese Food, i had Chicken & Prawn with Rice and salad. The sauce was really nice. Vanuatu is really really expensive to live in. Food prices range from VT1500 to VT3000. Most of the food has French, Italian influence. we hope we can wrab up our work @ Emalus Campus today and tomorrow do some training and Wednesday shopping and Thursday bon voyage back to Fiji.

More Pictures later

We reached Port Vila around 10pm on 25th and Vanuatu is 1hr behined Fiji. It is very hot hia and humidity is very high. Managed to get some decent sleep and we walked to the Emalus Campus from Le Meridien, which seemed like a very tiring walk. We managed to setup the Emalus Campus server and everything seems to be working fine, apart from some minor problems.

Last night we went out to Hotel Millenia Samoa for dinner, Sia also accompanied us for dinner. I had Pan-fried Masi Masi with mashed potato and steamed veggies. We had few Vailima’s and later on guys from IRETA also joined us for few drinks. I had lovely time. Around 11pm we came to the hotel and had few drinks.

We arrived on the campus late, around 10am. To our surprise, the internet was working so perfect, we managed to finish whatever remaining was left to be done and we also managed to do a live test of the system with 15 students. Everything worked to our satisfaction. I also did a presentation to the management of Alafua campus regarding how to maintain their website and how the Student Online Services works, it went okay.

Later in the evening, i took the guys out for dinner at Treasure Garden Restaurant, they had a great time. Than we went to TJ’s Sport Bar and from there to the Bad Billy’s nightclub (one of the hottest club’s in Samoa). We left after the club closed and walked down to the Hotel. Streets are very safe in Samoa in comparison to Fiji Streets.

Our fifth day in Samoa started really well. Breakfast was same old same old. To our surprise when we came to the Campus, the n/w connectivity was still down. Sanjeet managed to call guys in Laucala Campus and put some sense into them. After 1hr, n/w connectivity become stable.

We also got invited to the Alafua Campus x-mas party, we started with Vailima and we got vegetation food, which included Fish and seafood salad to our surprise, but it was nice. After 2 bottles of Vailima, we got back to our work.

Sia dropped us to the Hotel and after 30mins picked us again to take us for Dinner @  Melina’s. We had Pan-fried masi masi with vegetables, mashed potatoes and to wash down Vailima. Some guys from IRETA joined us for few drinks and later dropped us to the Hotel.

Last night Mac and i had dinner at Seaview Restaurant, we had Kaki Fried Oyster as Entree, Chicken Teriyaki and Sweet & Sour Pork, Sanjeet went to another Restaurant since he was veggie. So mac and i had a nice dinner, after we managed to finish 3/4 bottle of Jack Daniels. Slept like a baby with my Steam Engine kicking in every now and than… LOL…

Our fourth day started really well, we woke up early, had showers, got ready, had our breakfast (for breakfast we had tuna, biscuits and coffee, breakfast is really bad in the hotel). Our transport from the Alafua Campus came and picked us up and things on the App were working until midday. After midday, everything started screwing up, USPNet went down and till the end of the day nothing was working out for us. So we packed up and left.

Sia came and picked us up to take us for few drinks. We ended up in the Club which used to be called Lighthouse (nice hangout place). They have now converted it to a Lounge type bar, we had 2 each Vailima and Sashimi (really fresh and in large quantity). Sia also showed us some nice restaurants, and he also took us to some other bars. We came back to the Hotel around 10:30pm, we had our dinner from the hotel, it was really awful. We had some canned lamb, biscuits and than we had some Vodka with orange juice.

Today is the first day we came to the Alafua Campus and it was good to see that our server and switch was there for us to work on. Before coming to Samoa, we made sure that the customs has pasted “FRAGILE” sticker all over the server and switch boxes. The server box was a site to notice, it seemed like a elephant has just done a rampage on the server. Lucky for us, nothing was damaged.

After briefing the Campus Manager, Head of School of Agriculture and a cup of coffee, we took the server to install in the server room, to our disbelief the server is a mess. We’ll we managed to find a space to mount the server and attach to a switch.

We have managed to get the solsalafua.usp.ac.fj working now, but we are not able to authenticate against Active Directory in Laucala campus, Fiji. So we are waiting for the last 3 hours for our network guy in fiji to open up some ports for us. Hopefully it happens soon, before Mac (Vijesh) spices us with Hindi music.

Finally we gt the app working in Alafua Campus. Weepppieeeee

I woke up after Mac (Vijesh) knocked on my door, after shower we had breakfast, which was very nice, we had toast, eggs and coffee. After chatting with Shiney (Sanjeet) and Mac (Vijesh), Sia gave us a call and we wanted to pick us up and take us to show us Hotel Kitano, since one of his mates was offering a cheaper rate. He came and picked us up around 2pm,

We arrived in Samoa around 12:50am Samoa time, and it is Saturday early morning, so we have gained a day over hia. It is pretty hot hia compared to Fiji. Foreign passport holders line took a lot of time. Finally when we came to pick out luggage, our CISCO Switch was nowhere to be seen, so we filed for Lost Baggage and went to the Customs. We were the last ones to the Customs, and guess what “Our Server got confiscated”, due to improper documentation from our side and no documentation was provided from Alafua Campus. So William (Alafua Campus staff) was there to help us out and we left the server with the customs for Sia to clear it from them.

The drive from Falelolo Airport to Henni’s Motel took 45mins and everything was booked and ready for us. Sanjeet, Vijesh and I had individual rooms with 2 single beds, air-con, straight we went to bed. More later in the week.

Just landed in Sydney airport and got return flight to fiji around 11:05am Aussie time. Am really jet-legged and tired. I really found this great hotspot near Gate 8-10, which connects around 11Mbps and downloads really fast.