Strange Pants

Without so much as a ‘by your leave’ Fiji’s government has decided to implement daylight savings … on 3 weeks notice!

Whatever the justification for daylight savings, short notice is generally a “Very Bad Idea”® particularly when there are computer systems involved.

This post on TripAdvisor hints at some of the confusion this change is causing.

All time-sensitive travel events and tickets with any international connection booked for December 2009 to April 2010, before the daylight savings were announced, now carry invalid information.

@sanjuroku suggests that the best way to manage this confusion is to ignore the changes and proceed as usual on Fiji Standard Time.

@avonsys suggests switching to New Zealand Time for a while.

If these float your boat, then so be it. If you, like me, are a bit OC about this sort of thing, then you can roll up your sleeves and rewire your system.

I addressed the Windows junkies on Twitter
Update: Microsoft has just released a hotfix to allow for Fiji Daylight Savings: KB977748

I now offer up the following guide to manually editing time zone rules for Fiji’s tiny Ubuntu (and Debian) community.

Fire up a terminal and make yourself a safe place to play

$ mkdir /tmp/tzdata
$ cd /tmp/tzdata

Now let’s get the official time zone data (and if necessary, the tools to work with it)

$ apt-get install dpkg-dev (if you don’t already have this)
$ apt-get source tzdata

Let’s find the data that references Fiji

$ cd tzdata-2009r
$ nano australasia (or use vi or emacs or whatever puts text-editing hair on your chest)

Look for the Fiji section (around line 250) and add these 2 rules below the existing rules.

Rule	Fiji	2009	only	-	Nov	lastSun	2:00	1:00	S
Rule	Fiji	2010	only	-	Apr	lastSun	3:00	0	-

These boil down as follows:

1. For the timezone ‘Fiji’, on the last Sunday of November (in 2009 only), adjust the time to save 1 hour and change the time code to FJST.
2. For the timezone ‘Fiji’, on the last Sunday of April (in 2010 only), revert the time so there is no difference from normal Fiji Time, and revert the time code to FJT.

Save the file and exit your text editor.

Now we compile our new rules, and tell the system to start using them.

$ sudo /usr/sbin/zic australasia
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Select Pacific then Fiji

Now let’s make sure the new time rules are showing up:

$ zdump -v /etc/localtime | egrep ’2009|2010’

Should look something like this:

/etc/localtime  Sat Nov 28 13:59:59 2009 UTC = Sun Nov 29 01:59:59 2009 FJT isdst=0 gmtoff=43200
/etc/localtime  Sat Nov 28 14:00:00 2009 UTC = Sun Nov 29 03:00:00 2009 FJST isdst=1 gmtoff=46800
/etc/localtime  Sat Apr 24 13:59:59 2010 UTC = Sun Apr 25 02:59:59 2010 FJST isdst=1 gmtoff=46800
/etc/localtime  Sat Apr 24 14:00:00 2010 UTC = Sun Apr 25 02:00:00 2010 FJT isdst=0 gmtoff=43200

Now we’re good for this year. Let’s hope “the powers that be” give us all a little more warning next time.

Hat tip to http://wiki.debian.org/TimeZoneChanges

Filed by Jachin Sheehy under Living-in-Fiji Software
Comment [397]

The good people at AvonSys have repackaged the OpenOffice Fijian language spelling dictionary as a spelling check add-on for Firefox/Mozilla

Fijian spell check in action on the Fijian version of Wikipedia (click for larger version)

The Fijian language pack for Firefox has also been updated since I last wrote about it

All we need now is a few good Fijian websites to fly the FJ-fj language flag … or you could contribute to the Fijian version of Wikipedia

While we’re talking languages, the Fijian version of Wikipedia has a link to the Fiji Hindi version Someone seems to take an active interest in updating it: it’s got a lot more content than the Fijian version.

Filed by Jachin Sheehy under Living-in-Fiji Software
Comment

When the Fiji Times launched a redesign of their flagship newspapers a few months ago, I don’t think they were contemplating the sort of strong use of white space evident in today’s (Sunday, April 12, 2009) Sunday Times.

I guess this has been building since the powers that be decided to vet the news pursuant to the freshly minted Public Emergency Regulations 2009, which provide for the “control of broadcast and publications”. Pictured here are pages 2 and 3 of the Fiji Times.

That’s a whole lot of ‘control’, and not much ‘publication’. And below is the editorial page (page 6).

The national sense of humour seems to have suffered somewhat.

For those of you wondering how we got to this state of affairs:

• On Thursday, 9th April 2009, Fiji’s Court of Appeal ruled that the interim government was unlawfully appointed and that the appropriate course of action would be for the President to appoint an independent care-taker Prime Minister to take the steps necessary to bring Fiji to an election
• Appearing to accept the court decision, Bainimarama vacated his position as interim Prime Minister of Fiji that evening
• The next morning (Good Friday – 10th April 2009) the President, Ratu Josefa Iloilo held a press conference at which he read a prepared statement in which he claimed to revoke the 1997 Constitution and declared himself Fiji’s Head-of-State under a ‘new legal order’
• This extraordinary departure from the previous day’s court ruling was variously greeted with approval (Aiyaz Sayed-Khaium, Swani Maharaj, Shaista Shameem, Ropate Sivo) and dismay (Rev. Akuila Yabaki, various regional neighbours, Graham Leung, and Peceli Kinivuwai)
• Public Emergency Regulations came into effect and police and Ministry of Information officials moved into news rooms around Fiji to monitor content.
• Iloilo wasted no time appointing a new government, reappointing in Bainimarama as Prime Minister and swearing him in at 10am on Saturday 11th April. His entire interim cabinet were then reappointed and sworn in at 3pm on the same day.
• Fiji One news airs it’s major news bulletin at 6pm, prefaced by a notice that the content had been censored. The news reader refered to 2 stories that could not be broadcast.
• Bainimarama addresses Fiji in a televised speech, proclaiming a fresh start for Fiji, vowing to remove the politics from governance and promising elections before September 2014
• Soon after 8pm an email message was sent to members of SotiaCentral.com, a popular Fiji-based social networking site, stating:
  “The new Fiji Interim Government has issued regulations requiring publishers to first submit all content to Government officials for clearance before publishing it. Because you, not we, generate this content, we are unable to comply. Accordingly, sotiacentral.com has been taken down until further notice.”
  The site currently displays a notice to the effect that it has been taken offline by the owner.
• The 12 April edition of the Sunday Times hits the streets with large section of pages 2 and 3, and parts of page 6 removed and replaced with a notice: “This story could not be published due to Government regulations.”
• David Robie claims on his blog, Café Pacific, that the Fiji Times’ editorial management met with Major Neumi Leweni from the Ministry of Information, who told them that the Fiji Times would be shut down if they printed blanks again.
• Fiji TV does not broadcast any part of their usual news programs. A brief notice to that effect was displayed at 6pm.
• Fiji Times publishes it 13 April edition; notable for a complete absence of any coverage of the government. Their web site did not carry any news updates during the day.
• Communications Fiji Limited (CFL) station, Legend FM (heard at 5pm, could have been broadcast earlier) declares their inability to broadcast some stories due to the enforcement of the Public Emergency Regulations 2009.
• CFL stations and website run an interview with Major Leweni in which he states that they object to ‘negative’ reporting but refuses to clarify the parameters of said negativity.
• In the same interview, Major Leweni advises that a planned meeting of the Media Council would be pointless.
• Fiji TV airs a full, 1 hour news bulletin.
• 14th April: Shailendra Singh, writing for Pacific Media Centre, notes that journalist Sean Dorney from the ABC, along with Sia Aston and Matt Smith from New Zealand channel TV3, have been deported.

*Updated (13 April):* Added several new developments to the chronology.
*Updated (14 April):* Added link to Public Emergency Regulations. Added several new developments to the chronology.

Filed by Jachin Sheehy under Living-in-Fiji
Comment

Having previously written about products and companies misappropriating the name ‘Fiji’, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to add a new infringer to the list.

This fetching mode of transportation is the Roketa MC-04 Fiji 150CC Moped.

Roketa didn’t just stop at nicking Fiji’s name either: Aruba, Bahama[sic], Maui, Bali, Carpi, Sicily, Catalina and Jamaica are all doing double duty as moped names.

The company is based in Nanjing, China, with US distributors in California and Texas so any disputes about names may bounce around a bit before finding the right jurisdiction.

On the positive side, at least Roketa is selling an eco-friendly ‘Fiji’. A 150cc engine means you can run on the smell of an oily rag … there are lawn mowers out there with bigger engines.

Filed by Jachin Sheehy under Living-in-Fiji Interesting-Finds
Comment [1]

As part of recent family cost-cutting measures, we got rid of our water dispenser and bought a water filter to make the best of the Suva’s tap water.

The results have been educational.

Here is the ceramic dome in the first stage of the filter at the beginning of the week. Tap water has to seep through the micro-pores in this dome before it gets to the various other stages of the filter.

And here it is after a hard week filtering Suva’s sparkling, treated tap water:

That’s a thick layer of silt people!

Now I’m all for developing resistance to the local bugs by way of a little exposure … but that’s a lot of silt to be gulping down with your daily hydration.

This is the rather basic 14 litre filter I got from Carpenter’s Hardware for about $50.

What about you? Sticking to the tap water? Got a filter? Or do you drink only the purest mineralised water bottled at a natural aquifer fed by dew drops from virgin rainforest?

Update: (15 March) Others have noticed! Seona Smiles column in the Sunday Times this week is dedicated to the art of feeding the filter. Go read it. She has better writing; I have better pictures.

Filed by Jachin Sheehy under Living-in-Fiji
Comment [4]