Well, I decided to play around on my off day and did another island cruise like the one I did a few months back. Pretty much the same thing as last time; just drove South till I ran out of road.

I ended up pulling over by JFK High school though. JFK is a school that’s been shut down for the past two years.

It’s pretty obvious that the former faculty and student body isn’t pleased by this.

I actually wandered on into the campus to snoop around and found it… untouched… trashed… abandoned…

While I was lurking around, another truck entered and pulled up. A guy popped out and introduced himself as one of the former teachers and as one of the people organizing the protests for the school. I asked him to fill me in on why things were like they were, and he spun me quite an interesting conspiracy theory. He said that the school was shut down and abandoned due to concerns over its structural integrity. Well, that’s the official story at least (as he put it). I’d dare to agree with him as from my observations the school looked more than appropriately built, and it seemed fine enough during the years my aunt went to school there.

He said the reason there’s a lot of unrest was because it’s been near two years and OBVIOUSLY no one’s fixing whatever’s supposedly wrong with it. From there one becomes concerned over the school’s value. Or rather, its land. The school grounds are HUGE. And on top of that, in the back where the track and soccer field is, is a MAGNIFICENT scenic overlook of Tumon Bay.

That land is worth A LOT of money. Aww but there is a school there, if only there wasn’t… Sounds like someone has a lot to gain if, oh say, the school had to be shut down and government officials decided that it would be too expensive to renovate the building. Think of all the money we could pull in if we… sold the land to an interested party? The dude I met dropped a choice name, in fact. Wal-Mart. Yeaaaaah. Funny thing is that the school is actually across the street from the only K-Mart I’ve seen in the past 8 years.

From there it becomes a fucked up issue. On one hand, putting a wal-mart there will continue to overcrowd surrounding LESSER schools, ruin student morale, and give them a half-assed education, but at the same time, the Walmart will do what the Kmart did when it came to Guam; lower costs of living on the island. The prices of goods and groceries were driven way the hell down when they were forced to compete with K-Mart. K-Mart is amazingly powerful on Guam, but if Wal-mart popped over, the two powers would murder each other and let the islanders feast on the gore.

But fuck that noise, this school is gorgeous. The idea of depriving the students of it is bull shit. Oh well, tell me who I need to vote out of office. Anyway, we shook hands again, bid each other goodbye and both went on our respective ways. Before we parted though, he told me about a protest on the 23rd where they would light up the school to remind the community that it’s still there and that, yes, people still care. He invited me to show up and take pictures, and well, I don’t think I’d mind putting the Rebel to use.

Continuing on my cruise led me to visit most of the same places I went before. I actually went out on the dock barge thing. Wow, that shit’s actually floating. I was like shiii, how deep is this water? Concrete isn’t supposed to float, mang!

I eventually pulled over for a bit to have lunch. A big bottle of King Car and a hot dog i bought at a gas station. I sat on some rocks overlooking a bay near Inarajan and thought, “yes, I’m actually having lunch here. I actually live on a tropical island. Fucking sweet.”

From there I continued driving and eventually found the cemetery my grandfather is buried in. I previously had no idea how to get there, so it was cool to find it. Guam is ridiculously small. It turns out I looped the island and his cemetery was actually just eye distance (though it IS on top of a mountain) from Agana. I’ll be in Agana again tomorrow, hopefully though. There’s gonna be a drift event there tomorrow (FEATURING A STOCK GENESIS TURBO COUPE courtesy of CarsPlus). I’d been debating borrowing a handycam from work or shooting just photo, but I think I’ll settle for just photo. The handycam’s are a massive step down from our 5 and 7j’s (since we only use them for backups), so I think it’d be better to just stick with what I’ve got a hook on, plus I won’t have to go through as much red tape. I definitely need to put away some money to buy a prosumer cam of my own one day though.

Anyway, there’s a nice big post done for once. Hopefully I can make them more frequent, and hopefully in as good a mood as this one or better. lol Oh, speaking of the handycams, here’s a vid I took with one in the office when I wanted to test it out along with my firewire port. Gawd, Kanna’s adorable. lol Also I’ve apparently damned myself to coining the phrase “Books and Pussy” as a result of a drunken thank you speech I made when I received gift certificates to a book store and a card featuring singing cats at the Christmas Party last weekend. Well, this is gonna be awkward for the next few weeks.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 19th, 2009 at 6:43 pm and is filed under Another Blog, Links, Photography, Tourism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.