Willow's Weekly - Week 29 - An eventful week (for some, at least)

So a new year has officially started. (Our year has 14 weeks, 12 sunny and 2 rainy).

I'm feeling better - not as nauseaous, but a lot more unwieldy. In the meantime, Berthe had her baby. It's a girl, and they named her Kalia. Which makes me anxious about what to name our baby. Bernard would like something traditional, I really don't like the idea, so we're looking voor a compromise. 

Cynthia Bowie told me today that she's moving in with Amiria Rodolph and the other single mothers. It's a bit of a risk, as she really doesn't get along with Bernice. (Small wonder, since Pete Harawira cheated on Bernice with Cynthia when Bernice was pregnant!) I told Bernice it might be nice to have her son grow up with his sibling, but she's not convinced.

The single moms decided to have one room for the kids, and take turns doing the night shift. It makes sense, that way at least three of them will get a good night's sleep before going to work.

I think Esther Ota Ika will be next to have her baby. She's not planning on moving out of her comfortable apartment any time soon, so I hope her neighbours will be able to cope with the noise.

I'm surprised that Esther decided to keep this baby - she has two daughters already, and neither of them live with her. I'm not sure who takes care of them, but Leona does a lot of babysitting, and Dinah is one of the papergirls...

Incidentally, Esther lives in the same building as Sefina Ota Ika, who is Bernard's ex-girlfriend. Until recently she still worked at the fire station, but now that Bernard is married she's decided to finally make a clean break and take a job somewhere else. I heard she's now working for Pasimfic Trading. (Which reminds me, I need to dish some dirt on *that* company later!!)



I'm very relieved she's out of that uniform, and out of Bernard's life.

* * *

Meanwhile this week Ata Schiffer aged up to teenager. He looks like a blond version of his mother, if you ask me. 

And Ata's cousin, Leonard Ngatea, aged up to Young Adult and went to University, to get a degree in business.



He got a job at Palefau Finance, actually on the same level as Moorea, who's worked their for years. Apparently Tane recruited his nephew (and paid for his Uni degree) just so he would have somebody with common sense keep an eye on what Moorea was doing.

Needless to say that Moorea's not happy with this lack of confidence from his father. Also, this clearly shows that Tane, who is a politician and should not be involved in his former business ventures, still calls the shots. I'm not surprised!

* * *

Elswhere in town, Aoatea Wahawaha feels her thirtieth birthday coming. She's been in a relationship with Fokai Ota Ika for years now, and her biological clock seems to have started to tick. So she decided she was ready for the next step.

Fokai and Aoatea now live in Bernard's old hut/shack, on Slum Street. I do hope they'll be happy together. Fokai seems a decent guy, for an Ota Ika. (Geez, I'm beginning to sound like a native!)

* * *

So, about that dirt on The Pasimfic Trading Co. As I mentioned before, they're rumoured to be connected to the Outstanding Citizens Warehouse Co. and various other shady businesses. Their main office is in the basement of the same building where I work.

They have a sort of 'front' as a trading company, and they just opened a new branch in what passes for a harbour on the island:

(It's just a small loading dock, where the ferry lands sometimes, as well as some dodgy trading vessels what generally leave before dawn!)

Henry II runs the front business, at the dock, and he's recently hired a new harbourmaster, Heathcliff Baker. 

I did an interview with him and his wife Svetlana, who also works for Pasimfic Trading, but in our office, not out at the harbour. 

They were nice enough, but I felt there was a lot they weren't telling me. Like, what did Heathcliff do in Starlight Shores, when he was the CEO of the Cement Shoe Factory there? And why the huge step down from there to a mid-level job on a tiny island?

There has to be more to that story.

So far I've dug up some interesting information, and wrote an article about it - but of course it was not published, since the Niua Simoa Chronicle is owned by the royal family. Figures!!

By the way, I know the outfit isn't flattering. I'm dressing for comfort. LOL!!!

* * * 

So, a small note on the Bakers: they are from the bin, but aged down to adults. Becky and Topher are also in the game, I stuck them in Slum Street for now, and Becky joined the music career.

I needed more Sims for certain careers, to stop the game generating countless homeless Sims, or worse, making Sims switch jobs just to give the currently active Sim some co-workers. (Some of my Sims are "currently active" for a Sim-hour or less, so that feature of Story Progression can cause a lot of mess in the career field.) That's the main reason for installing the Bakers.

It doesn't make sense to have a ton of Sims working for Palefau Finance, but I do need more jobs in buisness - so the solution here was to create a separate office of the Pasimfic Trading Co., but this one is business, not criminal.

I had already installed separate business rabbithole doors for the newspaper and the finance company, so now there are three.

I also have three separate science rabbitholes. One is Hakopi's experimental farm, one is part of the hospital, and one is in the water treatment facility. This way I can have Sims in different careers in science and still have different workplaces for them.