The final of the Miss Cook Islands 2019 pageant was held on Saturday night CIST, Sunday night NZDT. The Cook Islands is 23 hours behind New Zealand Daylight Saving Time, and 22 hours NZST.
Often the plane would arrive at Rarotonga Airport just after 12:00am, meaning that we get to relive the whole day again! Of course, coming back, well that's time lost that we gain on our next trip back. That's just one of many reasons to travel back to the Cooks!
I remember the very first time I arrived at Rarotonga. The air hostess opened the door and the warmth and pleasant smell of a tropical paradise wafted in. Sure smelled better than the pesticide sprayed around the cabin before that door got opened!
As yes, just thinking of the pageant lets my mind drift back to a place I miss so very much. My second home, a place I can escape to and just de-stress.
These days, when I get to Rarotonga, all I ask from my friends and in-law family are fresh coconut juice (called "nu") and freshly cooked breadfruit ("kuru"). Yum!
In such a relaxing place, the girls and boys usually stay fit and healthy. Fresh everything surrounds them, from fruit and vegetables in their orchards and their gardens, to fish and shellfish and seaweed caught or collected not far from home, and livestock often husbanded on their own lands.
Subsistence living, my next oldest brother told me once. "Yes Ian, go there to live a subsistence lifestyle", he said to me a few years ago. Here I am living in a stinking city with another 180,000 souls; yes I'd much rather be in paradise! That'll happen, just need another two more years in New Zealand and, hopefully, be off with Mary to her home. Her sister is already on the island, and so is her sister's daughter, beautiful Memory.
Sadly, not the winning crown we'd all hoped for.
Thank you so much for all of you who answered the call and sent out messages of support to her. Touching, oh so touching, to know that a few simple words put to the Steem community would encourage her in such a way; for her to reach out and grab her dream of being a celebrity. I'm crying now as I type this one up. Thank you all, one more time.
If you want to know the winners, below my authorship is the link to the final. My playlist also includes the first show, the stimulus for my earlier post a week ago.
The making of a celebrity from a Memory.
Ian Ballantine
Wellington, New Zealand
October 28, 2019.
Playlist 4:08:56 so this is a long vid recorded from the National Auditorium, Avarua, Rarotonga:
This is her Facebook avatar, so you know which one of the girls is Memory:
