Death and resurrection of a hard drive

Apologies for one month's absence, but it has been a rather hectic month. I got down from Mt. Rotui on the afternoon of November 1 to receive an e-mail announcing that applications for a major NSF grant (the DDIG, for those of you also in biology grad school) were actually not due on November 16, as stated on the NSF website, but the next day for review by the Special Projects Office at Berkeley. I sent around a lot of frantic e-mails, and they gave me special dispensation until Monday to submit a draft, which I could edit later. I spent all weekend discovering exactly how much work goes into a regular NSF grant, and writing an 8-page research proposal, and then on Sunday night, right after I had uploaded everything onto the Internet, my computer died. It came back to life on Monday, and then on Tuesday, it died for good before I could back everything up. Wednesday I went into the office of the Dell rep in Papeete (who knew me well from the dead printer I had brought them earlier) and left them my computer. The next day they called to say the data was not recoverable. I told them to install a new hard drive and call me back. They never did. The next week I went over to Papeete to get my computer, and spent several days trying to reinstall everything and rewrite my NSF proposal, which I finished, but which is the worst grant proposal I have ever written.

In the meantime, the station had its annual Halloween party. The party is something of a legend around here; several years back students in the Berkeley class apparently invited hundreds of total strangers, and people were driving over from Tahiti, and total mayhem ensued. Halloween was banned for a few years. Word on the street was that local people were once again planning on attending, so Halloween was discretely shifted from October 31 to November 2, and there was a mild gathering attended by students and a few local guys. I dressed up as anuhe, or Dicranopteris linearis, a widespread fern here. I won't bother trying to explain, but if you do fieldwork in the Pacific, you will understand.

I sent my hard drive back to the United States with one of the students when the class ended a week ago, and my brother was apparently able to recover everything within a few hours of getting his hands on it. Apparently it's in good enough condition that I can turn it into an external hard drive. Anyway, I think Dell needs a new repair person in Tahiti. Kudos to Elaine for taking it back to the States, to Dad for picking it up, and to Daniel for rescuing all my data.

After the class left, Erica and I spent the following week driving one of the station Land Rovers around Tahiti (about which more later). Now I'm back, and the station is very very quiet, at least until the next class arrives in January. I went and raided what was left over in the dorm kitchen, so now up in my bungalow I have more tea and couscous and sweet chili sauce than I know what to do with.

It is finally mango season, although with yesterday's wind many of the ripe mangoes fell off the tree near the lab and split open. In Champion (an upscale French supermarket chain) tiny artificial Christmas trees are for sale and French carols are playing. I know it's traditional in Australia to go to the beach on Christmas Day, but being from the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, I'm finding it a little hard to believe that Christmas is approaching!