I had a mild case of reverse culture shock at 615 this morning while walking through Babylon. The destination? Techno-drum-and-bass-exercise-bike class @ the gym. For the 45 pulsating minutes of the class, I couldn’t stop making comparisons between Vanuatu and Fitness First. It started with differences, but then I also noticed some similarities.
Differences:
- People are friendly in Vanuatu.
- Fitness First is more ordered than Vanuatu: all the treadmills, bikes and crazy spacewalkers face the TV screens; all the bikes in the cycle studio face the instructor; and all the weights face the mirror.
- The small physiotherapy practice at Fitness First is better resourced than the best hospital in Vanuatu.
- It took 9 days to lose 4 kilos in Vanuatu. It takes about 9 weeks to do the same in Fitness First.
- Fitness First is all about me. Vanuatu is all about serving others (see pic above).
- The check in process at Fitness First is more stringent than the airport in Port Vila.
- Fitness First is littered with advertisements for various products. As far as I could tell, Digicel dominate ALL the advertising space in Vanuatu.
Similarities:
- You need to drinks lots of water in both places.
- I had a cold shower in both places.
- We all pay homage to someone or something. (Check who you pay homage to: part 1, part 2, part 3)
- Pastor Brown stood at the door to shake hands with all his parishioners in the Presbyterian Church we went to on Sunday morning. So did the Fitness First Spiritual Leader (class instructor) on our way out of the studio!
Can you think of any more?
having worked at FF i cannot think of any other similarities, but i can think of lots of differences. But i cannot speak much because i haven’t been to vanuatu.
I suppose one i can definitely comment on is that they both are not what they seem at first. Vanuatu looks poor and defeated, but there are great riches in the people and the care they have for others. FF looks like a nice place and somewhere that rich people would go, but these people are shallow and after a while you see through the cheap paint and cheap tricks to know they are just money hungry.
But i dont want to complain about FF……
So i take it you loved Vanuatu. I was really challenged by your last post about Vanuatu and TV + Internet.
hey dan – good call on the first appearances.
yes – vanuatu was gold! i feel i could write 50 blog posts!!
u doing any summer work at FF??
I look forward to the 50 posts ;p
I haven’t worked for FF for 5 years, last time i visited the gym i worked at it was very sad… They changed the whole gym. The paint, the light, the equipment,…. It was darker and just felt less like a gym and more like a night club! Anyway i dont want to complain about a gym i have nothing to do with any more.
Sounds like Vanuatu is like Fiji. I loved Fiji very simple, laid back and caring.
i probably won’t write 50 posts… but who knows!!!
the bike class at ff erina is very much like a nightclub – which is cool – because it means that they have the UV black lights on!!!
how Christian is fiji? percentage??
The Bike classes are awesome.
Fiji is aparently 58.3% Christian (http://www.joshuaproject.net/countries.php?rog3=FJ) which seemed about right from the conversations Aimee and I had with some of the locals.
sweet. thanks for the link to the josh project site! looks gr8