Pohnpei, FSM – October 23, 2009 -  It’s 6:45 on Friday evening, October 23, deadline day at The Kaselehlie Press and I am hungry.  It’s time to walk up to Joy Hotel and have dinner.  I glance at the power meter which reads an insufficient amount to make it through the rest of the weekend at the newspaper office where I’m sure that I will be for most of that time.

“No worries,” I say out loud though I am completely alone in the office.  “I’ll stop by PUC on my way to dinner and buy some cash power.  It’s only 6:45 in the evening and they’ll be open until 8:00 at least.  Plenty of time,” I say to the room, and merrily walk out the door check in hand.

I have known for at least a couple of weeks that October 24 is United Nations Day and that it would be celebrated as a legal holiday in the FSM on Friday, October 23 this year. 

There are a great number of things I don’t know.  Anyone with any sense will tell you that is true, especially my biggest critics.  For instance, I didn’t know until I “Googled it” that the United Nations was established in October of 1945, or that the FSM was admitted to the UN on November 3, 1993 though I did know it was at least ten years ago.  I didn’t know that as of today, only 22 of 192 member nations are up to date with all of the UN dues that they owe.  I did know that the United States was one of the countries that is delinquent but I didn’t know that the FSM was also amongst those 170 countries that are delinquent in some measure at least.

I didn’t know that only Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Canada, Congo, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, New Zealand, Niger, the Philippines, Singapore, Italy, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and Tajikistan are the only countries that had paid their UN bills in full as of this date.

I didn’t know that the place where the FSM Congress meets must have been designed by an architect who got his or her inspiration from the place where UN representatives meet in New York.  There are definite similarities between the two.

I didn’t get the impression today that I was alone in what I didn’t know.  In return for my greetings I did get a few, “Please, don’t talk to me, drop dead, I’m walking you weird mehnwai” reactions today but not a single soul wished me a happy UN Day and frankly it never occurred to me to wish someone else a happy UN Day either.

Here’s another thing I didn’t know.  I didn’t know that Pohnpei Utilities Corporation, which requires that all but a very few of us must pay for our power consumption in advance of our use of that power, would be closed at 6:48 on THIS particular evening.  I wasn’t expecting it; not at all—though I should have if I’d been thinking!

I wasn’t expecting it any more that I expected a tsunami to wipe the entire island off the face of the earth a couple of weeks ago when there was a warning that I only found out about three hours after it was issued and then only because I saw a press release about it on freakin’ Google!!

I was simply astonished to see this evening that the maroon painted plywood doors at PUC, whose purpose it is to protect the glass swinging doors inside from the damaging intents of ne’er do wells or malcontents, were closed and padlocked.

Those doors do serve another purpose.  They are also used as a posting place for any number of printed fliers that are put up but never, ever taken down.  Since the doors were closed I couldn’t see any of the fliers but I could, even in the dark, see red.

What ever did happen to those days when PUC was closed for cash power sales or had curtailed service days only on MAJOR holidays that their employees understood? 

If you happen to miss PUC’s regular (or irregular, as the case may be) sales hours you can buy a five dollar card for cash power at many local stores if they haven’t sold out of the beasties by the time you get there.  The stores usually have sold out of them when you most need them because EVERYONE needs them when PUC is closed.  Word of advice, when PUC closes early don’t go to the stores late!

For the five dollar card, on which is printed “easypowOr” for a good reason I will probably never understand, you’ll only have to pay $5.50.  At current rates the card will net you 15 units of cash power which in itself is interesting because 15 times 10 is 150 rather than the 149.6 units you will get if you buy $50 worth of cash power at a time instead of 10 individual $5 cash power purchases at PUC.  I understand, it’s a phenomenon caused by rounding.

Once you have the “easypowOr” card in your hand you then have the opportunity to sit next to your phone obsessively dialing the phone number listed on the card which will almost certainly be busy.

There are instructions on the card for a text message option but that would only work if you happened to have an SMS capable cell phone with you.  Being the incredibly smart person that I am, I left my cell phone at home this morning so I didn’t get to try it.  I wanted to try that option especially since the instructions for texting, though imperfectly worded, are much more complete than those for the “calling service.”

I spent almost 20 minutes trying to get the land-line number to ring instead of giving me that annoying, “I’m dealing with someone else right now who is just as frustrated as you are, wait your freakin turn, jerk,” buzz.

Now don’t get me wrong here.  Once I got through on the line the recorded operators were congenial even if their instructions were contradictory which, by the way, they were. 

The first recorded operator told me that at any time during the process of responding to their probing questions I could press the pound (#) key to go back to the previous step.

The next operator (who by the way seems not to know that there is an “H” in the number “three”) yelled at me and said that I must enter my meter number followed by the “hash key.”

“Listen lady,” I wanted to scream but did not, “I have, when I was young and foolish, smoked hash.  I have eaten corned beef hash.  When I was a computer science major I even wrote code to perform a hash function.  But there is NO hash key on my telephone.  What the *&!@#$ are you talking about?”

I had to get on the Internet and use the Google search again.  What I found out is that in addition to all of those other things that hash can mean, some people who live “down under,” and a few other people in the world as well call the “number” key, or as the first operator called it, the “pound” key, a hash key.  It’s the one just to the right of “0” on the telephone keypad.  This one…“#”!

Of course!  So the less friendly sounding of the two recorded operators tells me that I need to enter my meter number and that makes sense.  I did wonder how they would give me the right cash power number without the meter number but the card said nothing about it.  It did say you needed it for the text instructions but I figured it was some kind of anomaly based on the fact that I was using a land line instead of texting PUC on a cell phone.

I was hesitant to hang up on my hard won telephone connection with PUC but it couldn’t be avoided.  The needed meter number was on the meter box outside. 

I hoisted myself up from my desk chair mumbling something under my breath about how in the world those operators were going to know the difference between a pound key that would take me back one step and the hash key that would tell them that I was done entering my freakin’ meter number.  And the 20 MORE minutes I was going to have to spend trying to get them on the phone and why I ever bought two cards when PUC would certainly be open the next day.  I grumbled about there being no good time to EVER quit smoking and polished it off with a good healthy dose of “what the heck is UN Day anyway?”

Well, I hope you all had a wonderful UN Day.  Maybe by next year the list of UN Member Nations who are completely current with their UN dues payments will include the Federated States of Micronesia.  I’m reasonably certain that it won’t include the United States.  Maybe next year we’ll all know what it is and we can have a big UN Day barbecue together!  Won’t that be fun?  I’ll bring the cash power.

Bill Jaynes
Managing Editor