New Ink

I wanted to get something to mark my time on Saipan these last four years, so I got this tattoo on Tuesday night. It took about two hours to finish.

My father kicked Alex out of the house when he pierced his ear. I wonder what he'd say to this?

Euro Trench Trash

What is the deal with Europeans wanting to dump things in our ocean? Back in July we heard about the Deep Storage Project in which Danish conceptual "artist" Kristian von Hornsleth announced plans to dump a 5 meter tall "monument" containing hair and blood samples into the Mariana Trench.

Now Alfa Romeo's new marketing campaign has a billboard being dumped into the Trench, the "lowest point on Earth," to showcase how low their prices are. The stunt has been captured in a six minute video on Youtube, meant to draw attention to their cars in advance of January's 2010 European Motor Show in Brussels.

Here is the video:

Alright, first things first. This stunt is a farce. A fake. Made up. Never happened.

Challenger Deep, the point where the Mariana Trench plunges to 11,000 meters below sea level, is 200 miles from Guam, not 21 miles like they say in the video.

Furthermore, the boat used to dump the Alfa Romeo billboard into the ocean does not look like it was outfitted for the 400 mile round trip expedition to Challenger Deep.

I'm not sure if I'd feel comfortable losing site of land in that boat, never mind going to the edge of the United States Exclusive Economic Zone.

The underwater camera supposedly used to capture the billboard at the bottom of the trench is also woefully inadequate for such a stunt. I've seen Japanese tourists with more expensive camera housings than that.

Who are they trying to kid? Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution visited Challenger Deep earlier this year and I remember their boat being a little bigger than a 20-foot dive charter.

They had a better camera, too. Compare the camera setup Alfa Romeo used versus the camera Woods Hole used (the giant yellow thing in the photo).

And one more thing. This is what 7 miles of fishing line looks like. This is the longline fishing reel from the Lady Carolina, the boat I chartered to the Northern Islands. This reel wouldn't have even fit in the boat chartered by Alfa Romeo.

Like I said, this stunt is a farce. A fake. Made up. Never happened.

No harm done, right? Wrong. This marketing campaign reinforces the idea that there is nothing wrong with dumping in the ocean. Earlier this year when I visited the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument I found islands covered in marine debris.

Maug was particularly bad. This is one of the most remote places on Earth, a 44-hour boat ride away from the nearest port. Yet, there it was covered in bottles and derelict fishing gear.

Marine debris kills wildlife and is an eyesore when it washes ashore. It has a huge impact on our way of life, especially our tourism industry. What tourist wants to play on a litter covered beach?

My sentiment doesn't come from being a liberal, tree hugging hippie trying to protect a few turtles from eating plastic bags. I've spent thousands of hours coordinating island cleanups and I am simply tired of cleaning up other people's messes. And it annoys me to no end when people from other places reinforce the idea that there is nothing wrong with throwing their crap in my ocean.

Thank you, Rotary Club

This advertisement will appear in the local newspapers tomorrow. A big thank you to everyone who helped out with the Rotary Club of Saipan's many projects this year.

2009 Godfather's Christmas Party

The owners and staff of Godfather's celebrated Christmas with a night of drinking and eating and more drinking. This annual party is the stuff of legend.

Scott and Ron opened up the bar for free drinks early in the night and treated us to a spread of delicacies including sushi, pancit, lasagna, and roast pig. Not your typical American Christmas dinner.

I was a big fan of the buffet. That's Scott's lasagna I'm putting a dent in. And no, I wasn't kidding about the roast pig.

Jerry and the band entertained us from 9 PM onwards, that is until the girls decided they wanted to sing. This was the only night of the year Scott let Edz sing. Not that she's a bad singer; she has about the same ability as Paula Hamilton.

You see, the typical Godfather's waitress weighs about 85 lbs. Three Jagerbombs and a margarita.....

And that's not Edz. That's Janice. The photos I took with Edz all came out blurry.

My photos of Santa Clause all came out blurry, too.

Oh wait, that's not Santa Clause; that's my good friend Commonwealth Representative Stanley McGinnis Torres!

10 Years Revisited

Under the Pala Pala V

This week’s Under the Pala Pala is a personal reflection on my life over the last 10 years. If that sounds incredibly narcissistic and boring, stop reading now.

I know that people out there will say that the new decade doesn’t begin until 2011, but Under the Pala Pala and the Saipan Blog hereby declare the new decade to begin in 2010. There, wasn’t that simple?

It seems that every TV channel, magazine and website is doing a look back over the last ten years. This is mine. Like I said, this is going to be incredibly self-centered, so you should probably stop reading right now.

Who could have predicted in 1999 that in 2009 we’d have a black president of the United States of America? It is amusing to think of what life was like ten years ago. The economy was booming because of the dot com bubble. Too bad it burst. I didn’t have a cell phone in 1999; I didn’t get one until 2001. There was no wireless Internet back then, either. That meant you couldn’t take your laptop down to the local restaurant or coffee shop and use it to check your email. In fact, I didn’t get my first laptop until 2003. There were no such things as blogs or social networking websites; the main thing I used the Internet for was to send emails and download music off Napster.

The last 10 years coincided with my twenties and looking back there isn’t too much I would want to change about my life. Sure I’ve had my ups and downs financially and in my career. I’ve also had failures and successes in love and friendships, but life is about taking the good with the bad, right?

I started this decade at my stepmother’s mother’s house in Garapan. I was 21, five months away from graduating from the University of Richmond, and spending my first Christmas on Saipan since 1981. I was younger than the adults and older than all the kids at the party, so it was an awkward night. I remember not being too concerned about the Y2K bug although I remember there being a blackout during the night. The two were predictably unrelated.

I had no concrete plans for the future back then. I knew I wanted to go back to Florida after college and work at Disney, with medical school or graduate school a possibility down the line, but the last ten years turned out so different from what I expected, even if I never really expected anything.

I never thought about a career in the environment until I took a Tropical Ecology course during my last semester at Richmond during Spring 2000. We spent a week in the Peruvian Amazon as a part of that course and it, along with a summer I spent in Costa Rica in 2002, completely changed my life.

I’ve always loved the outdoors. I’ve got plenty of stories on my blog of fishing and hiking with my Dad and brothers on Saipan as a child (and with friends as an adult), but I also spent a lot of time outdoors when I lived with my mother in the mainland. When we were very little we used to pick blueberries on a hill behind Grandpa J’s house in Ashburnham (I can remember finding frog eggs almost every time we came to a swampy area along the trail) and when we moved to Florida we would canoe down the Wekiva River on weekends (always keeping a very accurate accounting of the number of alligators we saw).

It was that Tropical Ecology course that led me to go back to school. I wanted to do something in the environment field and at the time I didn’t think I’d be able to get into grad school, so I went for a second bachelor’s degree at the college where my mother worked.. I’m so glad I did what I did. The two and half years I spent at Rollins College were very productive and set me on course for my career in the environment.

I really love the work I’ve found and I don’t think I’d want to do anything else. Like a professional athlete who says he gets to wake up every morning and do what he loves, my work is something that I would do for free if I didn’t have to worry about paying bills. In fact, the most rewarding, successful “work” I’ve done on Saipan hasn’t been work; it was done as a volunteer.

My biggest success this decade was the role I played in the creation of the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, which may eventually end up being the greatest success of my lifetime. During the first meeting I had with Jay Nelson of Pew Environment Group in January 2007, I suggested that the islands to the far north protected in our constitution would be suitable for a monument and that since it was so near, it could be called the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument. That area and that name were ultimately used and all we had to do in the intervening two years was hammer out the details and get the governor, both houses of the legislature, the Chamber of Commerce, environmental groups, and a majority of the people living here on board.

The success I’ve had with Beautify CNMI has been a different kind of success, one of personal growth more than accomplishment. For four years I’ve managed to keep that coalition together and I have learned a lot about dealing with diverse people from diverse backgrounds. We’ve survived arguments, criticism, jealousy, and certain persons trying to sink the organization and along the way picked up a few national and regional awards as well as plenty of local recognition.

To keep it going, I just kept it going, if that makes any sense. I sent out the weekly updates and made sure we did something almost every weekend. I may not have participated in every cleanup, but I made sure those that were volunteering had supplies of bags and gloves; I may not have planted every tree, but I knew where to obtain saplings and tools; and I may have not adopted a single boonie dog (Oreo and Snowhite don’t count), but I helped raise money and visited classrooms to talk about proper pet care.

Beautify CNMI literally moved mountains, mountains of trash. I don’t know how or why I became so hyper-involved in somebody else’s idea, but I did. I had a strong desire to help these islands when I came back after so many years and I guess that is just how that desire manifested itself.

Being a college student in the mainland and an environmentalist in Micronesia has allowed me to do a fair bit of traveling over the last 10 years. In Peru I learned first hand the natural wonders of the Amazon as I watched mixed species flocks of birds take flight from a tree top canopy walkway and searched out poison dart frogs in the middle of the night.

In Costa Rica I talked to farmers and local leaders about sustainable development and how to create jobs without destroying natural resources. I explored the tropical dry forest, got lost in a cloud forest, and got really wet and muddy in a tropical lowland forest.

I visited China and England on school trips, too. I drank beer in a pub and caught about a dozen shows in the West End. And about a year into my relationship with her, I fought with my girlfriend Emily all across China after buying and incessantly wearing a brown cowboy hat in a Beijing mall. Oh yeah, I went to Mexico and Grand Cayman, too.

Midway through the decade I made the decision to move to Japan with Emily, the story of which is so famously chronicled on my blog, jetapplicant.blogspot.com. Our time in Japan only lasted a few months after which we moved to Saipan.

From my home base of Saipan I traveled to Hawaii, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Marshall Islands, Chuuk, Pohnpei, Tinian, Rota and Guam for work and all of the Northern Islands, Florida, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos for pleasure.

There were some disappointments this last decade, too. I was fired from two jobs, both at restaurants. The first time hit me hard, the second time I had another job within two weeks. Some of my disappointments were opportunity costs. I wish I had spent more time in Japan, but if I had done that I would have spent less in Saipan.

The death of my father was the single event that had the greatest impact on my life this decade. There are still times, like when I hiked down to Old Man by the Sea last weekend, when I visit a place and think, “the last time I was here I was with Dad.” One of my uncles told me that my father was a real disappointment. Most people who knew my father probably have no idea what my uncle was talking about, but I do. I’ll leave it at that. All I can do now is to learn from his mistakes.

Saipan in the last ten years has seen a steady decline in quality of life and abundance of natural resources, which is probably the most disappointing thing of all. The government hasn’t paid into the retirement fund in four years, the life and health insurance policy for government workers was canceled this week, and the governor is threatening to cut everyone’s paycheck by 20%.

I don’t think things are going to get any better in the next decade either, which is one of the reasons I’ve chosen to leave. Had I been elected mayor I would have taken the low salary, dealt with the life and health insurance issues, non-payment of retirement, and the political back stabbing and done my best to provide community services and programs to the people here. Unfortunately, I did not win. I am not independently wealthy, don’t have any educational opportunities here and I don’t see much opportunity for meaningful environmental work while Fitial is governor, so I am moving to where the opportunities lie with a government more receptive to sustainable development.

Looking forward, in the next decade I plan to earn my Ph.D, buy a house and start a family. I also plan to visit Africa, Australia, and Antarctica, completing my goal to step foot on all seven continents.

Under the Pala Pala is the weekly commentary of Angelo O’Connor Villagomez. To subscribe via email visit www.AngeloVillagomez.com.

Dear Zaldy

Hi Zaldy,

Just wanted to comment on the submerged lands article by Gemma in today's paper:

"If the bill is enacted into law, the commonwealth will have the option of exercising full control over the submerged lands surrounding the northernmost islands of Maug, Uracas and Asuncion, or decide to enter with a co-management system with the federal government as embodied in the presidential proclamation that created the marine monument or sanctuary in the area."

Nowhere in the Jan 6 proclamation does the word "co-management" appear. While the Friends of the Marianas Trench Monument asked for and lobbied for co-management, similar to how Hawaii and American Samoa co-manage with the federal government their national marine sanctuaries, co-management was removed from the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument proclamation during Governor Fitial's "negotiations" of a "reasonable" monument. Also removed during the "negotiations" was our proposal to have a monument managed by NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries Program, making the likelihood of a visitors center and a boat much less likely.

The Friends of the Marianas Trench Monument earlier this year asked Representative Sablan to include "co-management" in his submerged lands bill, but he chose not to entertain our request. We also asked him to add language transferring jurisdiction from US Fish & Wildlife to NMSP so that we could get a visitors center and a boat. That request was not entertained, either.

In his defense, however, Kilili at least met with us and had his staff meet with us several times before finally telling us no. I wish we could say the same for our sitting governor, who has denied us the opportunity to plead our case at every juncture, preferring to sick his attack dogs on us over listening to us.

The stance of the Friends remains the same as it was in October 2008 when we published our Vision letter. The three miles should remain a part of the monument, but under the jurisdiction of the CNMI and co-managed along with the entire monument with NMSP. Kilili's bill would not accomplish this and would most likely cut three gaping donut holes in the most biologically and geologically diverse area of the monument.

Angelo

Island Formal

The Rotary Club of Saipan Christmas party was last night. Eden and I bought matching outfits from Sea Shell Pink in Puerto Rico (that's a village in Saipan).

Sure, we look like Korean newlyweds, but when in Florida will I have the opportunity to wear this shirt and still be considered wearing something "formal?"