Life on Saipan is good. I've been back for three days and have been making the rounds, dropping off wedding invitations and taking in the sites. We're still working out the wedding invitations. We're getting married on a boat and we have 80 spots. We're still chasing down RSVPs.
Also, during Saturday's tour of Marpi, Edz and I made it official. That's Bird Island in the background, one of the more picturesque places on the island.
Edz literally jumped for joy. Woo hoo.
I jumped for joy, too, but not nearly as cute. And contrary to certain opinions,
that photo in my last post is not photoshopped, nor did I jump off the picnic table.
I've had the chance to catch up with some friends. The Kaipat Family Singers are now the choir at St. Jude's Catholic Church, and after service on Sunday, Cinta and Gus came out for breakfast. Gus' photo was of focus, so Cinta gets posted. Nice photo, ne?
And I've had the chance to get wet. I bought about $800 of underwater photo equipment before this trip, which I got to try out earlier this morning with Dive Master extraordinaire Harry Blalock of the one-of-a-kind
Axe Murderer Tours.
One of my photo equipment purchases was an Ikelite blue-water filter. These two photos show the results of with and without. A good purchase, says me.
Laulau Bay's resident baitball of bigeye scad has grown to gargantuan proportions. Getting the whole swarm into a single frame proved difficult, and getting the settings right was hard, but I think these shots turned out alright.
The pink tint is from the filter. I was interacting with the fish between 30-45 feet of depth, and they were anywhere from 2 feet to 30 feet away from me.
Now I'm colorblind, so I don't get colors exactly right, but like Goldilocks, I found the photos came out best if the fish were close, but not too close. Or maybe that's Daedalus and Icarus. Whatever.
We've still got some invitations to give out and RSVPs to chase down, and we hope to go to Managaha and Forbidden Island. Even so, I feel the time slipping away. Five days and counting until the wedding...
