Davis Pictures

True.

My friend the local welder has come up with an ingenious way to shield his eyes from the harmful UV welding spark—he simply performs all his welding with his eyes closed.  “I can tell what I’m doing from memory and heat” he says. 

When my dad was here, he warned him, “you should use a welding visor.”  To which my friend replied with great conviction “I always do.”  (Which was not exactly true.)

True.

Our neighbor had a chicken which emerged from its egg a day later than the rest of the brood, and was promptly abandoned by the mother.  So Lami adopted a chick, named it Tsesa, and fed it daily by swatting flies for it to eat.  The chick quickly imprinted on the flyswatter as its adoptive mother.  Sadly, despite being a plucky little bird it succumbed to a flesh-eating virus which ate it from the outside in.  (Gruesome, but true.)

True.

In an event resembling the famous William Tell story where a father with a cross-bow shoots an apple off his son’s head without harming the child, Davis, using nothing but his yellow-belt Judo skills, karate-chopped a live scorpion off of Jen’s head before she could be stung straight in the skull!

Yup.  It was pretty crazy.  We were in the office, and either it dropped off the ceiling or it got on her head shawl, but suddenly there was a scorpion on her head.  So I yelled, “Don’t move” and with fists of lightning… brushed it off.  We reimagined the event and thought about turning it into a motion picture “based on a true story” with Jen as the helpless damsel, Tovah and Lami as aspiring ninjas under the tutelage of their unkempt father.  The script and costumes were amazing, but Jen’s agent wanted more than we could afford, so it never went into production…  (that last part may not be true.)

We did take that picture of the scorpion before Jen dispatched with her flip-flop (of lightning.)

True.

Our island life features the optimum imports—French Canadian pure maple syrup, Portuguese pepperoni, and Tunisian Harrisa spice (conveniently packaged in toothpaste tubes.) 

So, normally the selection is pretty limited—rice, flour, and sugar are imported staples along with stuff from the fields and a few things that come from France (mayonnaise, chocolate cornflakes, tapioca) and stuff from Arabia (dates, fake Coke, sardines.)

But every once in a while something new turns up…  And that’s truly exciting.

True.

Davis has upgraded his phone!  In an age where many people settle for a cut-rate i-phone or Galaxy, the clear answer is found in markets across the Islands:  The “O-KING” which features 14 working buttons, and an antenna.  D-batteries are not included.

Ok, so it’s true that I upgraded my phone…. But tempted as I was, I did not go for the O-king.  I instead went for a phone that boasts as extra features a calculator and flashlight.  The best part is that it cost $20 and the battery lasts up to two weeks.  It’s the opposite of a status symbol, whereas the O-King is exactly that. 

I’m disappointed by my picture here.  It doesn’t show the true size of the phone (especially the width.)  It does not include D-batteries, although the packaging leads you to believe that they would fit.