What a Night!

Last night was one of the craziest, oddest nights I've had in a long time, so apologies in advance if this post is a bit incoherent.  It started simply enough.  I got picked up at the Esso station (Esso is what Exxon is called down here fyi) across from the graduate school campus at 10:45pm by my Jamaican friend Elvis and one of his friends Richard.  From there we drove to the national cricket stadium, Kensington Oval, because that was where the party was.  But, once were got there we realized that there was almost no one there yet, so we decided it would be better to go someplace else rather than pay $30 bds each to get in to a crappy party.  So we drove into Bridgetown and went to a place called The Boatyard, which was $40 bds to get in with all you could drink bottom shelf liquor, so you really had to drink to get your money's worth!  I stuck to plain old Mount Gay on the rocks because all the mixed drinks are just too sweet.

Anyway, we're there just hanging out for about half an hour when we decide it's time to check out the dance floor.  What we found was an odd sight indeed.  There were 15-20 white guys and girls dancing and everyone else just kind of standing back and watching.  Curious, we decided to watch as well.  We quickly realized why no one else was on the dance floor: the white folks were crazy drunk British sailors.  How did we figure this out?  Simple.  I got literally pulled into a conversation with one of the blokes.  It all started with one of them dragging me out to the dance floor to show them how I dance.  I decided to mimic one of the sailor's dancing styles out of jest (imagine an angry drunk chicken running around and you'll get the idea) and was rewarded with a simple question: "Where are you from?"  When I said New York City it clearly sparked something in this guy's head because he started going on and on about how American football is for pansies and how he could jump into any football game and be a successful quarterback.  This is in comparison to English Rugby, which is a real man's sport because you don't wear pads and the ball is pain to throw/carry.  I then asked him what is he doing in Barbados and he said "Royal Navy," which sparked another rant but this time about how the American Navy sucks.  According to this fella it goes like this: Royal Navy on top, followed by the Canadian Navy, and then the American navy waaaaaaaaaaaaaay down in a distant third.  "You guys feel like your god's gift to the world," "You think you're so fucking special," were his complaints.  Naturally I wanted to point out that 100 years ago the same thing could have been said of the Royal Navy and that he was just upset that we rule the waves now instead of Britain, but I decided against it because the last thing you want to do is piss off a drunk sailor!  So I let him rant for a bit more (he continued to go on about how he would fight everyone in this bar one on one and win - another good sign) but he was really getting on my nerves because he was grabbing the back of my head in order to pull me in close so he could YELL into my ear.  Finally I just said "Hey look at that girl over there, look at the way she is dancing," waited for him to look and say "Oye, she's nice, lets go have a closer look" and then proceeded to get away from there as fast as possible.

We stayed at the bar for another hour and a half or so and then decided to leave.  On the way home however, we decided to stop in at Kensington Oval again to see if it had gotten better (it is 2:45am at this point).  It was pretty crowded when we got there so we decided to go in for a bit.  This brings me to my proudest moment of the night: getting in for way less than it was supposed to cost us.  Originally the price was $30 per person.  Since the party ended at 4am I talked the guy at the door down to $20 for both me and Elvis.  Quite a steal if I must say so myself!  It was nice to put all the years of watching my grandfather haggle into practice and having it pay off.  Thanks grandpa for all those informal lessons over the years!

The party turned out to be inside the club room at the Oval, but it was still open to the air and you could see the fields, which was neat.  We stayed there for about 45 minutes and then decided we'd had enough loud music for the night.  But of course the adventure didn't end there.  On the drive home (don't worry, Richard was sober) we came across an accident that must have happened less than 2 minutes before we drove past it.  Elvis made Richard stop the car because he wanted to get a closer look.  So he and I hopped out and walked over to the scene.  Thankfully it wasn't that bad of an accident.  From what I could tell, one car was making a right turn off the freeway when the other car struck it head on.  The driver of the car making a turn clearly had a concussion and the driver and passenger in the other car were OK except for one bloody nose.  We stayed there until the police and ambulance showed up, which took over 20 minutes!  What if someone had been really hurt?  It was frustrating to say the least.

Thankfully that was the end of the night.  Richard kindly dropped me off outside my apartment where I proceed to take a quick shower and head to bed.  I had been planning to go snorkeling today, and it is a good day for it, but I bailed on the trip because I'm just so beat from last night!  I would probably drown if I went into the water right now!  So I'm just at home, following the pansy football games on ESPN.com and trying to stomach the idea of doing homework.  One side note before I go: it was really awesome to be at foreign parties where over half the music played was American pop/rap.  This is not because American pop/rap is particularly good.  Rather it was amazing to see so many non-American people singing along and getting excited at a Katy Perry song, for example.  It was just the most spectacular display of how important exporting your culture is in the battle for global influence.  Ok that's enough out of me for now.  Cya all later.