Saipan Update

Well I guess its been a while since I posted, I just get busy with not posting I just forget that I have a website. Well last I checked I posted about my Summer vacation so there is a lot to cover. I will try to be as concise as possible.

I got back to the island and was put straight back to work, there was lots to do but it was one of those situations of “where do I start” So I am ashamed to admit that not as much got done as could have. But nevertheless, things did get done. iPads were a big one that got figured out We had a big issue with students downloading images and changing settings and doing things that they are not supposed to. Well thanks to the locked down nature of Apple devices and the software they create to make things even more locked down, students can’t do anything we don’t want them to anymore. You should have seen the look on the kids faces the first time I locked an iPad on him when he was supposed to be doing something else. Kid: “Mr. Jon!!! My iPad locked! What happened” Me: “Well you were not doing what you were supposed to be doing.” Kid: Wait you can see that?!?” Yes, unnamed child, I see all know all and will stop all non-school activities during my class.

Which brings me to the next change, I am a teacher this year! I’m sure most of you reading this already knew that because of “The Facebook” (original name looks it up) I am not sure how I feel about it. At first, I was really enjoying it. But now I am not so sure, I am teaching a Tech class, two periods with about 20 kids in each section, some days the kids are really engaged, and it is really encouraging, a few of the kids are too cool for school and try to do other things during class or get distracted. Which is discouraging but it is what it is, I guess that the way it is with teaching. Right now, I am teaching typing and the kids are having the hardest time properly keeping their fingers on the keyboard and instead adopting the chicken pecking method. I remember in elementary school my teacher took the keys off the keyboard and rearranged them, so we couldn’t do that. We had no choice but to memorize. That coupled with the desire to chat with the cute girl on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger for those of you too young to remember a time before Facebook and every kid under 12 having a cell phone) made me a very good typist, however smartphones have kind of done away with traditional typing. I would implement the key switch method, but I can’t with iPad Bluetooth keyboards. All in all, it’s simple but really cuts into my taking extra long lunches (shoot does the new principal read this?) I mean I never take long lunches, in fact I skip lunch to do more work! :D

Which brings me to the next new thing, we have a new principal at the Saipan School, it can be hard starting a new job, but he jumped right in and is fitting in and doing a great job! Some of you may have seen some of my pictures I have been posting, He likes to go exploring so I have taken the liberty of showing him a few of the places I have discovered on the island, but he finds plenty on his own as well.

Time for a little rant. The power company here (which is kind of their own thing but also a part of the government) wanted to start charging our school housing area business prices for water, which would be significantly higher, to avoid this we used my name to say I am the homeowner to avoid the business prices, they needed someone who lived on the property to put it in the name of an individual. Anyway, after this happened I got a letter in the mail saying we are violating the safety codes. The letter stated that we had “exposed main wires” out of our meter box. And if we didn’t fix it they would cut our power in 30 days. There were no exposed wires but there were small rust holes forming in the box. I do not know how wire 7 inches inside a box with a small hole in it equals exposed but here on Saipan apparently it does. I talked with the lady at the power company and after finding out the hole was the issue, I asked if I could patch the hole or get some new sheet metal and repair the parts that were damaged. However, no matter what I said she said I had to replace the whole box, because of “safety issue” So I asked if there were any fines or fees for this and she said “Oh no! This is safety issue, no fee” “except when we shut off the power for you to replace the box there is a 25-dollar fee for that.” THERE IT IS!!! Our power goes off a few times a month and you never charge us for that, I kindly replied. Then I told her that I would rather work the wires live than pay them that fine. She looked a little shocked that anyone would risk that rather than pay their very “reasonable fine” Here is what is strange about this, I inspected everything when I arrived on Saipan over a year ago, Things may not have been as bad but were very close to the same condition they are now, not much has changed, But Now right after a new name gets put on the bill is when its suddenly “an issue” I don’t think so. Unfortunately, the government will win this round and we will have to pay the fine, so they can shut off our power. A part of me says get all the parts wait for them to shut if off at the end of the 30 days, fix it and then call them to turn it back on, but I suspect they will have some sort of turn on fee for that as well. What is crazy about this is, this location is on Saipan, they send me a letter, certified mail, paid $6.70 to mail it to me and it took a week, 7 days, to get from the post office counter 20 feet behind that to my PO Box. A whole week and almost 7 dollars! But I guess that’s more of a comment on the Post office than the power company.

A few weeks ago, we had a typhoon hit the island. It was bad enough to where the whole island shut down for two days, but I didn’t think it was that bad, so I went to driving around seeing the storm as it hit the island. Honestly, we did not get hit that bad. One thing I noticed while driving around is the school, the SDA clinic and our SDA school housing when I visited all those places the wind was not nearly as bad as it was other places around this island, almost as if some invisible force was protecting those places, cynics, can say what they will but I drove all over and got out and walked around, those places were not getting hit nearly as hard as the rest of the island. All in all, it was a fun experience, and next big storm you can bet I will be out there chasing it down.

Little advertising moment, I just got myself a new knife, the Spyderco Manix 2 Lightweight. I love this knife, it has a great grip, extremely lightweight, very sharp, made with high quality steel, and best of all made in the good old USA. Anyone looking for a great EDC (every day carry) knife could not go wrong with this. And for every Manix sold using the code “JON”, Spyderco will send me some free money, at least I assume that’s how advertising works.

Last Sabbath, I preached and thanks to some good friends John and Sarai, it was filmed, and you can watch it here. https://www.jonriddle.org/2018/10/blog-post.html

Anyway, those are just a few of the things that have been happening here, hope you all have a great weekend and a Happy Sabbath.