And sometimes you get a break. Cyclone Jim, which would be a great nickname for a baseball player, started out in the Coral Sea near Australia and now is swinging east. Already the surges from it are hitting Fiji, causing very heavy rain and flooding along the western coast, including Nadi, where I was staying a week ago just minutes from the beach. My guess would be that the area I was staying in has been evacuated. It is not expected to hit Fiji, though. They're expecting it to hook south a bit (away from Tuvalu and Fiji, where I am and will be for the next couple of weeks) and really hit New Caledonia, a French colony, and southern Vanuatu, where I spent that day in Port Vila a couple of weeks back.

This is, in case anyone was wondering, the thick of the cyclone season in the South Pacific.