Fiji
Solomon Islands
Vanuatu

Samoa
New Zealand

Venise had arranged with the speaker of the Solomon Island parliament, to have us shown around the parliament building, which is located on the brow of a hill, overlooking Honiara and the shorefront. There is nothing particularly notable about the building, except that it is constructed entirely of non-indigenous products. Even the wood used for the decoration of the chamber and the large tables in the meeting rooms were imported. This struck me as being ludicrous, since tropical hardwoods have made such a significant contribution to the Islands's economy. Surely the parliament buildings should be a showplace of national resources and talent.

Well it may be holiday, but only a fool overlooks the opportunity to improve the CV and earn a little bit of cash as well. Fred works for Forum Fisheries Agency, and had mentioned our trip to the FFA's Head of Technology. Sam, who had seen our web pages, decided that he would try and make use of some of my skills, and so I spent the afternoon, reviewing the configuration of an NT server and looking at the way FFA's firewall was setup. The idea is that I configure the setup of various bits and pieces so that they end up with POP3 mail accessible from any Internet connection, a web server setup for use by both the internet and an intranet, a well configured firewall and any other improvements I can think of.

What surprises me is the quality of the IT systems, here we are in possibly the least developed country in the region and the computer systems are better than most of those I have worked with in the UK; HP9000 servers, HP NetServers, HP desktops and Cisco routers. Not only is it all very flash, but it continues to work in a climate that destroys domestic appliances and an electrical supply that sometimes seems to spend more time off, than on. Not just that,but they are about to go live with a system that truly resides in the 21st century; VMS (no sniggering), this VMS is a Vessel Monitoring System that keeps track of all fishing vessels within the 200 mile Econominic Exclusion Zone of every South Pacific nation state. It makes use of GPS, INMARSAT, X.25, knows when vessels are behaving suspiciously and will notify the nearest coast guard/police station of untoward activities taking place near them.