A numbers game

Starting soon in Koblerville then spreading around the island, numbers will be assigned by our mayor to our houses. I’m not too keen on the idea but I’m sure it’s “progress”’ of some kind to bear a label tattooed on our abodes so the computers can keep better track of the herd.

In a perverse sort of way I like explaining to people that we don’t have house numbers here. We all go to the post office to get our mail. We describe our location by ‘turn left past the XO Market, as the road bears left, my house is the orange and white one under the huge mango tree (now where the huge mango tree used to be before Yutu came to visit). If the dog doesn’t bite you, it’s not my house.’ No-numbers gives us a laidback, island- style sort of cachet. I like it this way.

Years ago a commission assigned street names to most of our streets. You know the ones, the ones most of us don’t use because the street signs long since blew away in the first typhoon that came along. Sometimes the signs are still there or have been replaced but, obstinately, we don’t use the “new” name of the street anyway. Middle Road or Pale Arnold? Cross Island Road or the Back Road or Isa Drive? Marpi Road or Chalan Pale Arnold? You know what I’m talking about. I’m sure there is method to the madness of the naming rubric used but we may need to duplicate the exact mindset they were in at the time to be able to crack the code. Plants over here, countries over there, occasionally something that actually has some historical meaning in the neighborhood context (those were obviously oversights on the naming editor’s part). According to the article, some 250 streets remain unnamed. I am surprised we have 250 streets total. Some of these must be driveways. The rest are maybe two track dirt roads through the jungle. It appears they will allow property owners and others to name their own streets.

Anyway, once we have numbers emblazoned on our garage door I guess it won’t be long before the final degradation of putting the street signs back up will be funded and we will join the rest of the civilized world in that big flat plan map in the sky that knows where everybody is.

Sure, there are positive things that will come of this. A friend pointed out to me that emergency vehicles can more easily find your house. Yeah, maybe. In a medical emergency my house is the one with the tall idiot standing in the front lawn screaming “this way” “in here” “quick” because the dog ate my son’s homework and it’s now hung up in his intestines. Something about the spiral-bound winding of the notebook didn’t suit his digestion. I say if the ambulance driver doesn’t know where the XO Market is, he won’t be finding my house, street sign, number on the door or not.

One possible positive is that instead of 10,000 people going to the post office every day, 50 guys from the post office come outside in the sunshine and deliver our mail right to our door. Now that’s convenience. Plus it’s good for hardware store sales as every house on the island scurries about finding a box, and a post, and a shovel and some concrete so that ubiquitous monument to modern civilization, the mailbox, can be enshrined beside our driveway next to the street.

Problem is, in a PR news article the other day, the post office was reaching out valiantly trying to find ways to improve their customer service to the community, but nowhere in the article did the PO mention any plans to actually drive around in little USPS jeeps and deliver the mail. That would be the most important and best way to improve customer service, and it would add a few local jobs. To be fair, another news article indicated that the Saipan Mayor’s Office (in charge of the numbering and naming scheme) was reaching out to the PO so they could break the numbering and naming code and be able to find our individual houses. (Image of postal clerk with a green eyeshade hunched over a WWII code machine saying ahaaa). Sadly, in a late breaking quote from the local postmaster, “There are currently no plans for new services at the Saipan post office.” There is a reason they call it “going postal.”

If given the opportunity to choose, I’m naming my driveway Ming Place, after the Emperor. (If that makes no sense to you, try googling Flash Gordon).

Skymark
Nov. 29th, the launch of direct daily flights from Narita to Saipan, is just around the corner. See if there is something you can do personally to help welcome the first flights and if there is something you can do to help spruce up our island paradise for all our incoming visitors to enjoy, no matter where they come from. A coat of paint, a banner of welcome. Join a roadside waving. Even a smile and a greeting will be noticed and appreciated by our visitors.
Thanks for reading Sour Grapes! Next week we’ll look at the exciting new Heritage Trail.

“When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer ‘present’ or ‘not guilty.’”
—Theodore Roosevelt

“In this world one must have a name; it prevents confusion, even when it does not establish identity. Some, though, are known by numbers, which also seem inadequate distinctions.”
—Ambrose Bierce, The Moonlit Road and Other Ghost and Horror Stories

“It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.”
—G. K. Chesterton