Wednesday 8^th May

All quiet on the western front. In the Mai Life office at least. Solo and Save are in one of the outer islands on assignment and Tony and Teddy are on leave – to hopefully achieve some physical and mental rehabilitation. We had a wonderful visitor to the office this morning, Pacific HIV/AIDS campaigner Maire Bopp. The guys filmed a message from her that will be broadcast on 18 May in Lautoka during the Candlelight Memorial 2008, to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS. Mai Life and Mai TV will be supporting that. Maire returns to Tahiti tomorrow.  I’ve just realized that we are a few days away from that haunting date – 14 May, this year being the 21^st anniversary of the 1987 coup. A few days after, we will commemorate another haunting date – 19 May, this year being the 8^th anniversary of the 2000 coup. Kenneth Zinck has just walked into the office and is trying to instigate a grog session. For the moment I am resisting. Who knows, but I would like to give my body at least a day to try to repair itself. The news of the day is the raising of the tax threshold to $15,000, and for us, rather sadly learning of the passing away of Sister Agnes Kenny, of the Sisters of Cluny. We did a feature on the Sisters of Cluny and their dedicated and committed service to the country over the last 120 years, in our April 2008 edition. Sister Agnes who was quoted in the article first arrived in Fiji in 1949. Imagine that – 60 years of service to the country. Our publisher Judith Ragg was one of her students at St Josephs Secondary School. Our condolences to the Sisters over the loss.  “Lose the grog” Kenneth is calling out. “Hey, I’ve got a story for you guys to cover.” I ignore his cunning attempt to start a session. Jone is rather quiet, he is working on a juicy investigative piece. Germaine is singing away to Janis Joplin and reminding me to give her MaiLife.com’s first blog entry.   

Well here it is.

Stanley Simpson

Editor

  Monday, June 09, 2008   What a weekend! The Mai Life team carted down to the burning West in Lautoka to watch the Flying Fijians. And fly they did, 34-17 against Samoa. Its Monday and back to reality. From tomorrow the lives of these fine young men and woman in the Mai Life crew will be forever transformed as extensive work for our sister TV station Mai TV prepares for launch on June 16. Mai Life crew will be involved in both mediums as we try to bring to you all a new experience. Kenneth Zinck, who also travelled with us to Nadi has just walked in trying to instigate another grog session to chat about the weekend. After weeks of trying we will finally get this website off the ground today. "hey vacava na one year session, my house?' Kenneth blurts out persistently trying as we ignore his attempt for one taki session. Mai Life has just turned one, soon we will have to celebrate, 13 issues later so far and now the number one selling product on the Fiji market. Teddy is still getting over the wonderful company of the Flying Fijians in Nadi over the weekend, while Dee is happily humming about something. Solo as usual is recovering from the weekend grog attack especially after Fiji beat Samoa. Tony for the first time is quietly punching in numbers into his computer, his distribution report for the month is due, while Gemma is her usual bubbly self singing away under her microphones. Stanley is still trying to work our his "how the hell am I gonna do this" schedule as he is set to present the Simpson at 7 on a daily basis and also run the magazine. But be prepared as the Mai brand now hits Fiji on three mediums; magazine, TV and off course through this website. But we will pull through! We know no other way, that is Mai Life.