I went with my wife and a couple of work colleagues to a beach west of Honiara in the Solomon Islands on Christmas. Pictured above is us together with the two children of one of my colleagues. As a fairly unremarkable beach outing, only the children actually played in the water and the adults merely dipped their toes. Of particular note is that the two children have been bugging me to get some games for them but since their father’s laptop only has a Centrino processor and integrated video my choices were limited. So I decided to give them my old copy of Starcraft, which I bought many years ago in Gabon, Africa. This seemed to appeal to them after I taught them some basics. The elder one was somewhat dumbfounded though when I remarked that when the game originally came out, he was only 1 year old. I spent some time in the afternoon helping them beat a Starcraft level.

Also present at the beach were a group of landowners that we do business with and their families. They’d brought along fish and bananas to cook. My wife remininsced about how back in high school a group of us had trouble even starting a fire after an hour of fiddling with it. These people certainly were experienced hands at it, with the menfolk chopping branches for firewood and arranging stones to make a fire while the women cleaned the fish and cooking tools. They had a nice roaring fire going in no time at all.

Here’s a close up photo of them cooking the fish. Doesn’t look particularly appetizing in my opinion and we didn’t actually stay at the beach long enough to have a chance to taste the fish. We did taste some of the bananas they roasted and I thought they were mostly tasteless, though a little bit salty.

Here’s the old Land Cruiser that we went to the beach in. Posted here of course because of the company’s prized “8888” license plates on it. Overall not a terribly interesting Christmas, but about the best that can be expected from living in the Solomon Islands. As always, the children probably enjoyed the day the most, between frolicking in the sea, collecting corals and sea shells and watching me play Starcraft. I spoiled the game for them by telling them that Kerrigan becomes a zerg later and they were all goggle-eyed. Ah, to be a child again.