Signs of Life: Part 39

© 2025 Rex Jaeschke. All rights reserved.

From time to time during my travels, I come across signs that I find interesting for one reason or another. Sometimes, they contain clever writing, are humorous, or remind me of some place or event. Here are some from trips to Wales, Tahiti, and Southern California.

 

’Nuff said!

 

According to Wikipedia, “Llanfairpwllgwyngyll or Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll, often shortened to Llanfairpwll and sometimes to Llanfair PG, is a village and community on the Isle of Anglesey, Wales. … Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch is a lengthened form of the community name, used in some contexts. With 58 characters split into 18 syllables, the small town is purported to have the longest name in Europe and the second longest one-word place name in the world.”

In the early 1990s, my son (pictured with someone he’d met), my wife, and I toured Wales by bus, starting in Bangor, which is just across a bridge from this village.

 

Read about the use of "Arr!" by pirates in popular culture.

 

There I was, in Papé-été on the island of Tahiti, in French Polynesia. Knowing that “ouvert” is French for “open,” I figured this must have to do with the opening hours of the adjacent pharmacy. While many times in my travels I’d seen signs with “Open 24/7” or “24x7,” I’d never come across “7/7.” Apparently, 7/7 is shorthand for “7 jours sur 7,” that is, “7 days out of 7.” Later I saw 7j/7, where j presumably meant “jour” (“day”).

Speaking of Tahiti, I was there for a 3-week vacation, and arrived back in the US on March 11, 2020, two days before the US shutdown all international travel due to COVID! As I’ve said numerous times since, I was very lucky to get home in time; otherwise, I might have been “stranded” in Tahiti for 1–2 years!

 

A restaurant in Tahiti for “Just the Two of Us!”

 

I’d definitely tasted out-of-the-ordinary local dishes in McDonalds around the world, but I wasn’t expecting to be able to order a Texas Burger in Tahiti.

 

This supermarket sign in Tahiti caught my eye, and I wondered if the shopping carts were fitted with slot machines. According to Wikipedia, Groupe Casino is “a French mass-market retail group. … Casino Group is the source of many innovations, such as the first distributor's brand in 1901, the first self-service store in 1948, or even the display of a sell-by date on consumer products in 1959. Casino Group operates across all food and non-food formats: supermarkets, convenience stores, discount stores, and wholesale stores.”

 

It was not at all obvious that Big Mama would fit into her delivery machine. In any event, it was just a seat on an engine; where could the pizza be carried?

 

The signs for the “Gentlemen” and “Ladies” toilets, Tahitian-style!

 

I guessed that this was a long-term parking lot!

 

Who knew that you could chat without an electronic device!

 

Now a lesser person (or perhaps one who was drunk) might think this is a palm tree. But you know it’s a cleverly disguised tropical-island cell-phone tower, right?

 

 

Don’t you just hate it when a redwood tree grows in your parking space!

 

Amen to that!

 

Now here’s a Biblical passage I’d not heard of before.

It was on the door of the shower stall of my AirBnB room near Santa Cruz, California.

According to Wikipedia, “A squeegee is a tool with a flat, smooth rubber blade, used to remove or control the flow of liquid on a flat surface.”