Nora left on Sunday and with her went the mini vacation I had enjoyed for the week. Now I must return to the routine of class and homework. I have roughly 5 weeks left in the semester and in that time I must write three essays, give three presentations, and take three final exams. Needless to say, it is going to be one crazy sprint to the finish. With that in mind, I hope you all understand if my blogging suffers as a result. I will try to write about truly interesting/unique things that happen over the next couple weeks, but regular "status" updates are likely to disappear. I do, however, intend to write a reflection on my time in Barbados once the semesters ends and I have returned home for the holidays. Also, I have some more pictures from my travels with Nora that I will try to post soon.
Ok back to the salt mines I go! See you all when I emerge every now and then for fresh air.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Another Guest Blog - Nora Says Farewell
Hi all,
Stephen requested I do one last blog post before I leave. I’d say I’m flattered, but I think he’s just happy not to have to worry about doing it himself. In any case, here’s a summary of the last 2 days:
There’s not much to say about yesterday. Remember in the last post when Stephen said we “stayed in the apartment in order to conserve energy for going out later tonight”? Well, that going out part didn’t actually happen. I take full responsibility—we were going to check out a party at UWI, which would have been within walking distance and therefore an excellent evening activity, but then I fell asleep at an inexcusably early hour. Oh, well. I’m on vacation and I’m allowed one full day of absolutely nothing if I want it.
Today we were a little more active. We actually made it out of the apartment and all the way to Bridgetown, the island’s capital and largest city. It was an interesting excursion because there were very few tourists around Bridgetown. The city (or at least what we saw) was mostly a series of duty-free shopping malls and aggressive taxi dispatchers, with a few charming historical monuments scattered around. The highlight of our time there was definitely the Parliament Buildings, where one wing now houses the Barbados National Heroes Gallery and the Barbados Museum of Parliament. We learned a lot about Barbados’s political history and about their most treasured historical figures (including a cricket player whose stats all sounded very impressive, although we obviously had no idea what any of them meant).
Tonight we went to dinner at Daphne’s, a great restaurant on the beach not far from the apartment. The meal was excellent (lamb cutlets, lyonnaise potatoes, and asparagus for me; blackened mahi mahi with battered vegetables for Stephen, followed by some delicious tiramisu and crème brulee, respectively. Oh, and salads.) and the ambiance was pretty unbeatable. A lovely way to end my week in Barbados.
I’ve had a wonderful time here, despite the shaky start, and I hope to return before too long. But for now, it’s time for me to pack my bags and fly home. I have to be honest—I hope it’s really cold there.
--Nora
Stephen requested I do one last blog post before I leave. I’d say I’m flattered, but I think he’s just happy not to have to worry about doing it himself. In any case, here’s a summary of the last 2 days:
There’s not much to say about yesterday. Remember in the last post when Stephen said we “stayed in the apartment in order to conserve energy for going out later tonight”? Well, that going out part didn’t actually happen. I take full responsibility—we were going to check out a party at UWI, which would have been within walking distance and therefore an excellent evening activity, but then I fell asleep at an inexcusably early hour. Oh, well. I’m on vacation and I’m allowed one full day of absolutely nothing if I want it.
Today we were a little more active. We actually made it out of the apartment and all the way to Bridgetown, the island’s capital and largest city. It was an interesting excursion because there were very few tourists around Bridgetown. The city (or at least what we saw) was mostly a series of duty-free shopping malls and aggressive taxi dispatchers, with a few charming historical monuments scattered around. The highlight of our time there was definitely the Parliament Buildings, where one wing now houses the Barbados National Heroes Gallery and the Barbados Museum of Parliament. We learned a lot about Barbados’s political history and about their most treasured historical figures (including a cricket player whose stats all sounded very impressive, although we obviously had no idea what any of them meant).
Tonight we went to dinner at Daphne’s, a great restaurant on the beach not far from the apartment. The meal was excellent (lamb cutlets, lyonnaise potatoes, and asparagus for me; blackened mahi mahi with battered vegetables for Stephen, followed by some delicious tiramisu and crème brulee, respectively. Oh, and salads.) and the ambiance was pretty unbeatable. A lovely way to end my week in Barbados.
I’ve had a wonderful time here, despite the shaky start, and I hope to return before too long. But for now, it’s time for me to pack my bags and fly home. I have to be honest—I hope it’s really cold there.
--Nora
Friday, November 5, 2010
Speightstown
Yesterday Nora and I traveled north to visit Speightstown, a place I had yet to go to in my 2+ months living here. Speightstown is the main town in the north of the island and was originally created to give planters in the north a place to offload their sugar for transport to the main port in Bridgetown. Before automobiles and paved roads, the shoddy road system meant that traveling from the Speightstown area to the main port in Bridgetown could take an entire day (sometimes it seems like not much has changed in this regard). Thus planters would smiply load their cargo onto boats in Speightstown which woud then bring it to the main ships in Bridgetown for export to England. This is no longer done today because 1) traveling by car/truck is a lot faster nowadays and 2) because there are only two sugar factories left on the island. Today, Speightstown's main industry is tourism, which Nora and I had a small sample of for the day.
We visited two places during our time in Speightstown. The first was Arlington House Museum, which is a restored 17th century mansion located in the center of town. It is an interactive museum with three floors of exibits on old Speightstown, plantation life, and life on the old Speightstown jetties. It was a nice museum but the content was pretty basic. I could see how tourists would find it informative, but even after living here for only two months I found most of the information rote. Still, I did learn a few things about Speightstown I did not know and many of the interactive exhibits were fun. One example was a scale which first weighed you (allowing me to confirm that I have lost about 10 pounds since being here) and then told you how much you would be worth in the 1700s if you were a bag of sugar instead of a human being. Turns out I'm worth about 70 cents. Nora is an even better deal, costing only 56 cents.
The second place we visited was the Gallery of Caribbean Art, which features and sells paintings, pottery, and photographs by Caribbean artists. We saw lots of really cool pieces of art and both agreed that if we were excentic billionaires we would have taken home a couple paintings each. The exhibit on display was "Bygone Barbados" and it was interesting to see what Barbados was like generations ago, as depicted through the eyes of older generation artists. One common theme was the use of vibrant colors, such as a bright orange sky or deep red shutters on a chattel house.
We left Speightstown around 2:45pm because the place we had wanted to go to lunch had run out of food by that point. Improvising, we decided to head south to Mullin's Beach, where we proceeded to have a nice lunch of fried flying fish sandwiches, french fries, and diet cokes while looking out over the Caribbean sea. The sandwiches were delicious (first time I've had fried flying fish) and dining next to the water was a nice treat. Unfortunately after luch we were only able to spend a couple minutes on the beach since I had to get home to prepare for my 5pm class.
The best part of going to class was getting to come home at 8:30 and find that Nora had already made dinner! She cooked up some shrimp scampi over gnocchi with cauliflower on the side. It was very tasty. I wish I could find such delicious treats waiting for me every time I came home from class.
Today we slept late and stayed in the apartment in order to conserve energy for going out later tonight. We are planning to go to Oistins for the fish fry and then perhaps St. Lawrence Gap for some nightlife. I'll let you all know how that goes in another post.
We visited two places during our time in Speightstown. The first was Arlington House Museum, which is a restored 17th century mansion located in the center of town. It is an interactive museum with three floors of exibits on old Speightstown, plantation life, and life on the old Speightstown jetties. It was a nice museum but the content was pretty basic. I could see how tourists would find it informative, but even after living here for only two months I found most of the information rote. Still, I did learn a few things about Speightstown I did not know and many of the interactive exhibits were fun. One example was a scale which first weighed you (allowing me to confirm that I have lost about 10 pounds since being here) and then told you how much you would be worth in the 1700s if you were a bag of sugar instead of a human being. Turns out I'm worth about 70 cents. Nora is an even better deal, costing only 56 cents.
The second place we visited was the Gallery of Caribbean Art, which features and sells paintings, pottery, and photographs by Caribbean artists. We saw lots of really cool pieces of art and both agreed that if we were excentic billionaires we would have taken home a couple paintings each. The exhibit on display was "Bygone Barbados" and it was interesting to see what Barbados was like generations ago, as depicted through the eyes of older generation artists. One common theme was the use of vibrant colors, such as a bright orange sky or deep red shutters on a chattel house.
We left Speightstown around 2:45pm because the place we had wanted to go to lunch had run out of food by that point. Improvising, we decided to head south to Mullin's Beach, where we proceeded to have a nice lunch of fried flying fish sandwiches, french fries, and diet cokes while looking out over the Caribbean sea. The sandwiches were delicious (first time I've had fried flying fish) and dining next to the water was a nice treat. Unfortunately after luch we were only able to spend a couple minutes on the beach since I had to get home to prepare for my 5pm class.
The best part of going to class was getting to come home at 8:30 and find that Nora had already made dinner! She cooked up some shrimp scampi over gnocchi with cauliflower on the side. It was very tasty. I wish I could find such delicious treats waiting for me every time I came home from class.
Today we slept late and stayed in the apartment in order to conserve energy for going out later tonight. We are planning to go to Oistins for the fish fry and then perhaps St. Lawrence Gap for some nightlife. I'll let you all know how that goes in another post.
St. Nicholas Abbey
On Tuesday Nora and I went to St. Nicholas Abbey, which is a restored 17th century plantation house that now produces an exquisite rum and gives visitors a window into what life was like in early colonial Barbados. Equally informing were our cab drives to and from the Abbey; our driver Orville was also an excellent tour guide. He taught me and Nora all about sugar cane, termites, housing developments in Barbados, as well as some of the island's political history. From now on, whenever I need a cab I am going to call Orville! Anyway, here are some photos of the Abbey:
The first two photos are of the stately dining room and the "Gentleman's Chair" in the living room. The chair was considered the apex of sitting technology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As you can see it has all sorts of attachments and hidden features that make reclining, reading, drinking/eating, etc more comfortable. It was basically the Lay-Z-Boy of the times.
The next two photos are of the giant 350 year old tree in the back courtyard. It's absolutely massive and upon closer inspection one realizes why it has survived for so long: it has GIANT spikey things for defense against curious animals and treehuggers alike.
Also in the back courtyard was the loo/privy/bathroom/place where people did their business. There can be no doubt that this is one area where modern technology has considerably improved quality of life! Just imagine having to use this facility in the heat of the Caribbean. No wonder the planter class was constantly getting drunk off rum.
Connected to the back courtyard was the building where vistitors can get their complimentary rum punch and rum tasting. The rum punch was the first good rum punch I've had in Barbados - not too sweet, plenty of rum, and very cold. Even better was the straight up rum, which is so smooth it's really more like a brandy or cognac. According to the son of the owner, their rum is "smooth enough for the ladies but strong enough for the men." I was smitten enough to buy a bottle, hoping that it will make the rest of the semester go by a little more smoothly. Also, next time a hurricane hits Barbados I know that I'll have a clean drinking source available in case the water goes off.
Overall the Abbey was quite beautiful. The old stone buildings blended in nicely with the surrounding foliage .
All in all it was a very fun day and I hope to revist the Abbey in order to take advantage of their half off refill policy before I leave Barbados. Finally, I have to thank Nora for coming to visit me and providing the impetus for going to see the Abbey. I probably would have delayed going for a long time otherwise.
The first two photos are of the stately dining room and the "Gentleman's Chair" in the living room. The chair was considered the apex of sitting technology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As you can see it has all sorts of attachments and hidden features that make reclining, reading, drinking/eating, etc more comfortable. It was basically the Lay-Z-Boy of the times.
Also in the back courtyard was the loo/privy/bathroom/place where people did their business. There can be no doubt that this is one area where modern technology has considerably improved quality of life! Just imagine having to use this facility in the heat of the Caribbean. No wonder the planter class was constantly getting drunk off rum.
Connected to the back courtyard was the building where vistitors can get their complimentary rum punch and rum tasting. The rum punch was the first good rum punch I've had in Barbados - not too sweet, plenty of rum, and very cold. Even better was the straight up rum, which is so smooth it's really more like a brandy or cognac. According to the son of the owner, their rum is "smooth enough for the ladies but strong enough for the men." I was smitten enough to buy a bottle, hoping that it will make the rest of the semester go by a little more smoothly. Also, next time a hurricane hits Barbados I know that I'll have a clean drinking source available in case the water goes off.
Overall the Abbey was quite beautiful. The old stone buildings blended in nicely with the surrounding foliage .
All in all it was a very fun day and I hope to revist the Abbey in order to take advantage of their half off refill policy before I leave Barbados. Finally, I have to thank Nora for coming to visit me and providing the impetus for going to see the Abbey. I probably would have delayed going for a long time otherwise.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
A visitor's perspective: Nora's guest appearance
Hi, loyal readers.
Stephen has accepted my offer/request to guest-blog here at Bajan Solo during my stay in Barbados. I’ve been here for 3 days now and I have a lot to report. I know Stephen has already addressed some of this, so please forgive any redundancies.
I arrived on Sunday afternoon in the wake of Tropical Storm Tomas, which threatened to cancel my flight entirely and was responsible for the cancellations of several flights to the Caribbean that day. Thus, despite our 2-hour delay, I was understandably relieved to be making this trip at all. My spirits were dampened considerably when I stepped into the humid, disorganized mess outside the Barbados airport, only to discover that I was on my own to get to Stephen’s apartment. I abandoned my fears of looking like a clueless tourist (inevitable) and went about desperately asking informed-looking people how the hell I could get a taxi. One man asked where I was going and then barely gave me time to answer before throwing my suitcase in the back of a van and ordering me to get in. I asked the driver if he knew Crusher Site Road and he nodded and said yes, but as we drove through Prospect, it became clear that he wasn’t being completely honest. After a few conversations with pedestrians and a few phone calls with my host (who eventually had to come flag us down on the main road), I was finally dropped at my destination.
Stephen kept insisting that his place is actually very nice when everything works, and now that everything does work I am happy to report he’s right, but that first day I had no choice but to take his word for it. Fortunately, Monday night saw the return of electricity, gas, and real food.
Even with 21st century conveniences, life in Barbados is not what I expected—I was expecting more sidewalks and fewer chickens. Clearly, Stephen’s Barbados is not a tourist’s Barbados. Anyone who assumes he is spending a year drinking rum on a beach only to be rewarded with a master’s degree is sorely mistaken.
Speaking of rum, yesterday we toured St. Nicholas Abbey and saw the historic mansion and rum distillery located there. The grounds were beautiful, the rum was delicious, and the staff was great. In short, a highly recommended destination. Our cab driver, Orville, even took us up to the top of the very picturesque Cherry Tree Hill, a natural passageway connecting the east and west coasts of the island. The views were spectacular, if a little foggy, and Orville was an excellent guide (Stephen and I now boast an impressive knowledge of sugar cane!).
Today, since nearly everything is closed out of respect for the late Prime Minister’s funeral, we went to two nearby beaches. The first was too rocky and the tide was too high to sit on the sand, so we strolled through a swanky hotel lobby and used their beach. Don’t worry—there are no private beaches here, so what we did was kosher. Anyway, the water was perfect and we swam and bobbed around for a while until some stormy-looking clouds moved in.
We’re taking it easy tonight, partly because getting anywhere is always such an ordeal. Tomorrow we plan to check out Speightstown, one of the island’s larger towns with a few attractions, including an old house/museum and an art gallery. Speightstown’s tourism website also claims it’s common to spot turtles there, but I’m skeptical.
That’s all for now. Thanks for patiently indulging me, readers. This blog will now return to its regularly scheduled Stephen.
--Nora
Stephen has accepted my offer/request to guest-blog here at Bajan Solo during my stay in Barbados. I’ve been here for 3 days now and I have a lot to report. I know Stephen has already addressed some of this, so please forgive any redundancies.
I arrived on Sunday afternoon in the wake of Tropical Storm Tomas, which threatened to cancel my flight entirely and was responsible for the cancellations of several flights to the Caribbean that day. Thus, despite our 2-hour delay, I was understandably relieved to be making this trip at all. My spirits were dampened considerably when I stepped into the humid, disorganized mess outside the Barbados airport, only to discover that I was on my own to get to Stephen’s apartment. I abandoned my fears of looking like a clueless tourist (inevitable) and went about desperately asking informed-looking people how the hell I could get a taxi. One man asked where I was going and then barely gave me time to answer before throwing my suitcase in the back of a van and ordering me to get in. I asked the driver if he knew Crusher Site Road and he nodded and said yes, but as we drove through Prospect, it became clear that he wasn’t being completely honest. After a few conversations with pedestrians and a few phone calls with my host (who eventually had to come flag us down on the main road), I was finally dropped at my destination.
Stephen kept insisting that his place is actually very nice when everything works, and now that everything does work I am happy to report he’s right, but that first day I had no choice but to take his word for it. Fortunately, Monday night saw the return of electricity, gas, and real food.
Even with 21st century conveniences, life in Barbados is not what I expected—I was expecting more sidewalks and fewer chickens. Clearly, Stephen’s Barbados is not a tourist’s Barbados. Anyone who assumes he is spending a year drinking rum on a beach only to be rewarded with a master’s degree is sorely mistaken.
Speaking of rum, yesterday we toured St. Nicholas Abbey and saw the historic mansion and rum distillery located there. The grounds were beautiful, the rum was delicious, and the staff was great. In short, a highly recommended destination. Our cab driver, Orville, even took us up to the top of the very picturesque Cherry Tree Hill, a natural passageway connecting the east and west coasts of the island. The views were spectacular, if a little foggy, and Orville was an excellent guide (Stephen and I now boast an impressive knowledge of sugar cane!).
Today, since nearly everything is closed out of respect for the late Prime Minister’s funeral, we went to two nearby beaches. The first was too rocky and the tide was too high to sit on the sand, so we strolled through a swanky hotel lobby and used their beach. Don’t worry—there are no private beaches here, so what we did was kosher. Anyway, the water was perfect and we swam and bobbed around for a while until some stormy-looking clouds moved in.
We’re taking it easy tonight, partly because getting anywhere is always such an ordeal. Tomorrow we plan to check out Speightstown, one of the island’s larger towns with a few attractions, including an old house/museum and an art gallery. Speightstown’s tourism website also claims it’s common to spot turtles there, but I’m skeptical.
That’s all for now. Thanks for patiently indulging me, readers. This blog will now return to its regularly scheduled Stephen.
--Nora
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Swimming Pictures
As promised, here are some photos from my swimming expedition on last Sunday. The beach we went to was right near my apartment and is called Batt's Rock or Paradise Beach. Either name works apparently. Anyway, its a really long, deep beach that is hidden from the main road. You have to walk along a somewhat sketchy path to get there, but its worth it. Lots of families go to this beach on Sundays for a picnic and swim, which is why there are benches all over the place. The Four Seasons was building a massive resort along the beach but construction stopped a year ago due to the financial crisis. Rumor has it that construction will start again around December/January, so I am going to try fitting in a couple more visits before the beach gets ruined by the construction noise and dirt. Here are some photos of the beach:
The first half of the beach is lined with trees, which makes for some really nice shady picnic spots. Only problem is that the trees produce a poisonous fruit that is deadly when eaten and burns the skin when its juice (or rainwater coming into contact with its juice) touches your skin. Still, on a nice dry, sunny day it makes for a very nice shady stretch of beach.
The second half of the beach doesn not have trees, so it is wide open to the sun. Cruise ships and tankers dock off into the distance near the Bridgetown port.
Since we went late in the day we were there for a really nice sunset. Nothing beats a nice beach + sunset!
Here's some photos of the friends I went with. The first photo is of Elvis, my friend from Jamaica who is studying Internatinal Trade Policy and is seen here playing with the poisonous fruit (he's a real joker). The second photo is of Brooke, who is from upstate NY (near Lake Placid) and is studying sustainable tourism. She wants to grow her and her boyfriend's B&B business, so she is down here to learn some tricks of the trade. She is the one who guided us to the beach.
Finally, here are some photos of the Four Seasons construction. As you can see from the above photos the site runs down the entire length of the beach. It is truly massive. While I can understand why they wanted to place a resort on such a nice beach I am worried that doing so will ruin the family-friendly nature of the site.
So that was my swimming experience last Sunday. Today Nora and I ventured out to St. Nicholas Abbey where we toured the beautiful grounds and sampled some of their amazing rum. I took a bunch of photos which I will post soon, so stay tuned!
Tomorrow is the state funeral of the recently deceased Prime Minister David Thompson, so everything is being shut down. As such there isn't a whole lot for Nora and me to do. Right now the plan is to spend a day at the beach. Despite the beauty of Batt's Rock, I think we are going to go try another beach nearby called Fitts. A former Fulbrighter has recommended the beach to me many times so its about time I go try it out!
The first half of the beach is lined with trees, which makes for some really nice shady picnic spots. Only problem is that the trees produce a poisonous fruit that is deadly when eaten and burns the skin when its juice (or rainwater coming into contact with its juice) touches your skin. Still, on a nice dry, sunny day it makes for a very nice shady stretch of beach.
Tomorrow is the state funeral of the recently deceased Prime Minister David Thompson, so everything is being shut down. As such there isn't a whole lot for Nora and me to do. Right now the plan is to spend a day at the beach. Despite the beauty of Batt's Rock, I think we are going to go try another beach nearby called Fitts. A former Fulbrighter has recommended the beach to me many times so its about time I go try it out!
The past 96 Hours
The past four days have been some of the craziest for me in a long time. Basically a category 1 hurricane hit Barbados, no one was prepared for it, and I lost power for close to 63 hours and water for about 6 hours. Here's the story in detail:
It started as a typical Friday afternoon. I woke up late and immediately headed out to the supermarket to do my weekly grocery shopping. I bought my stuff and while in line even convinced the store shuttle to wait for me before leaving. On the ride home (this is around 5pm) the driver was listening to the radio which interrupted a song to announce that tropical storm Tomas was headed toward Barbados and would begin hitting the island in the next hour or so. Of course this was the first I had heard of the storm but I figured that since 1) I had just purchased food I should be OK to stay indoors for a day or so and 2) that since it was just a tropical storm it wouldn't cause that many problems, so there was nothing to worry about. It turns out few people (including the meteorological service, police, etc) knew the storm was coming more than a couple hours before it hit. Talk about poor planning!
At first the storm didn't seem that bad. It was mostly just raid and some light to moderate wind. Furthermore, I was able to leave my windows open without water coming in, which is the best test of a storm's strength that I have devised here. Over time though the storm worsened. Starting around 9pm I began loosing internet service every 30 minutes or so. Then around midnight the power went out for the first time. I ran around lighting candles but the period of darkness was cut short after 15 minutes when the power returned. It stayed on until a bit after 3am when it went off again for what turned out to be the next 63 hours. By this time the wind was really howling and the rain was coming down in sheets. I could hear the sheetmetal fencing and roofing of my neighbors' homes getting pulled willy-nilly in the wind. I was worried that the wind would rip them loose and fling them around, potentially crashing into my building, but thankfully that did not happen. Oddly enough, water was still not pouring in through the windows, so I left them open. This quickly changed however.
Once again I started running around lighting candles. I had squirreled away a small stockpile of 32 tealight candles which were really cheap but because of their small size only last around 4 hours. This was OK for this first night since the power went out at such a late time but would eventually prove to be a problem on Saturday and Sunday. After sorting some things out I decided I should just go to bed. By this time it was 7am, so I shut the door to my bedroom and tried to ignore the raging fury outside. Since no water had been pouring in through the windows, I stupidly LEFT THEM OPEN. Thus, when I closed the door to my bedroom, the wind started shaking it around really loudly. Eventually I decided I couldn't sleep with that noise so I got up to open the door. The sight that greeted me was unpleasant, to say the least. In that short span I had tried to fall asleep, the wind had brought water into my apartment in mass quantities, spreading it all over my dining room table (including on my laptops, books, papers, etc) and all over the floor. By this point the only dry towel I had left was a small hand towel, which was woefully inadequate for the job of cleaning up this mess. I quickly shut the windows and cleaned off the laptops for fear they would short circuit. I then dried off the books and moved them into my bedroom. After this I tried reusing towels that I had used to clean up flooding in my bedroom but they mostly just displaced the water rather than absorbed it. Lacking any alternatives to this I decided to leave the problem until tomorrow and head back to sleep. So finally around 8am I passed out in my bed.
I woke up at 4pm and after realizing I still had no power decided to make the most of the remaining daylight. I started by trying to clean the apartment for Nora's arrival the following day. This was a disaster since with no way to do laundry I couldn't put fresh sheets on the bed or get fresh towels. I also couldn't clean the kitchen since things were getting displaced due to the fact that the fridge was off. I was also limited by the fact that the natural light was extremely limited to begin with since the storm was still raging and the sky was overcast. Thus I couldn't see well enough to really clean the bathroom/shower. Basically the apartment was a mess.
I decided to give up and embrace the chaos and coming darkness. I lit the remaining candles I had, lay down on the couch, and alternated between reading by my giant maglight and playing my nintendo DS. For dinner I had barbecue potato chips and a variety of wonderful cereal bars. In between my reading/video game sessions I ran around the apartment scrapping the last bits of wax from burnt out candles and depositing them into still-burning ones. I was dangerously close to being out of candles and I needed to maximize the amount of fuel (in this case wax) that I could access. I passed roughly 4 hours doing this then called it a night. Since it was too dark to take a shower and I felt super gross I decided to just sleep on the couch rather than bring my filthy body into my relatively clean bed. With the storm still raging outside I eventually passed out on the living room couch.
I woke up at 8am to the wonderful sound of a receding storm. Tomas, which had been upgraded to a category 1 hurricane, was finally leaving Barbados! However, I also woke up to the realization that at some point during the night I lost water. At that moment I found myself without power and water, in a disaster of an apartment, with my girlfriend due to arrive in roughly 7 hours. To say I was a bit panicked and frustrated is an understatement. I quickly ate breakfast (more cereal bars and potato chips) and then decided I needed access to the internet to get local news, contact my parents, and figure out what to do with Nora. I left the apartment and walked over to the graduate school campus. During the walk over I came across a bunch of fallen power lines, uprooted trees, and lots of debris scattered everywhere. The graduate school campus was in good condition but it was locked when I got there (it is supposed to be open 24/7). With my anger/frustration reaching a boiling point I immediately started yelling "SON OF A BITCH" over and over. The security guard must have heard me because he came over, asked me if I was a grad student, and let me in. I thanked him profusely and immediately headed down to the computer station to begin sorting things out.
Browsing the news told me that many Barbadians had not only lost power and water because of the storm but had also lost their roofs (sheet metal roofing is extremely common here) and many of their possessions. This quickly put my situation in perspective as I realized how lucky I was to have an intact home. Still, with Nora arriving and me not having an power/water, my parents suggested that I think about a hotel for the week. This sounded like a great idea, but the problem was that most of the hotels in the area either didn't have power or were all booked up because of the scheduling nightmare that the storm had caused on their arrival/departures. With no hope of securing a hotel I decided around 11:45am to go catch a bus to the airport so as to pick up Nora. I got to the bus stop around 11:50 and proceeded to wait for 30 minutes during which time not a single bus (no government buses, no rasta buses, no white buses) came. Normally you don't have to wait more than 5 minutes before some kind of bus comes. Obviously the bus service wasn't working (a fact later confirmed via radio and newspaper) so I decided to walk to the local supermarket to collect some supplies for another night of now power and now, no water. I felt bad about not being able to pick up Nora at the airport, as the Barbadian terminal isn't the most organized experience (just like the entire country), but I had told her the night before via text message that I might not be able to make it, so she knew to hop in a cab if she didn't find me waiting for her. On the walk to the supermarket I came across even more destruction. I saw a utility pole ripped in half, lots of uprooted trees (many lying on top of utility lines), and many fallen power lines. The general chaos led me to believe that it was going to take a long time for the power company to get power back to my neighborhood. I was determined to prepare for a week without power.
At the supermarket I loaded up on candles, matches, and non-perishable foods like pasta and more potato chips. Since my stove is gas and not electric my plan was to light it with a match and cook the perishable items in the freezer that night so as to use them before they went bad (this was my Dad's suggestion). I tried doing this immediately after Nora arrived at my place (well actually I had to flag down the lost cab driver on the main road then lead him to my place, but same difference) so as to take advantage of the remaining natural light and it started out well. However the gas quickly sputtered out. I figured the gas tank must be out so I went outside to switch over the line to the second tank (the idea being that when one tank runs out you start using the second tank and have the first tank replaced, then rinse and repeat). This tank was out of gas as well, and I got REALLY PISSED. Clearly the person who was living here before me had failed to replace the first tank when it ran out, so now I was stuck without any gas. (Thankfully water service had been resorted earlier that afternoon, so I was just without power and gas, rather than power, water, and gas). The person who lived in this apartment before me generally sucked - she was apparently overweight which caused her to rip off the toilet seat from the toilet many times. So many times in fact that the landlady stopped replacing them so I am stuck using a loosely attached seat. Ugh, there are so many examples of crap like this being left over from this previous person. I want to find her and destroy whatever place she is living in now as revenge.
Anyway, without any gas to cook with I had to throw out all the food that was in my freezer, as it wasn't going to last another day without power. There's nothing like throwing out $50 worth of food to cap off an otherwise wonderful day. Instead of cooking a nice meal, I had to settle for, and Nora got to experience, a dinner of cereal bars and potato chips! Welcome to paradise Nora! Luckily my netbook still had close to full power so we were able to watch a couple of episodes of the Simpsons off my portable hard drive to pass the time. We were both exhausted so we called it an early night and were in bed by 9pm.
One of the drawbacks of storms in the tropics is that they tend to make the weather more hot and muggy. This was the case with Tomas, so trying to sleep in my non air-conditioned bedroom was fitful. Eventually we gave up trying to go back to sleep around 9am, had a breakfast of potato chips and muffins, and headed off to the grocery store to buy even more candles and see if the local hotels had received power yet. The hotels still didn't have power, so we started planning for another night in my dark apartment. To compensate, we stopped at a local restaurant (Just Grillin') for a fresh, warm meal. I had the grilled flying fish while Nora had the barbecue chicken sandwich. Both were very good and hit the spot that potato chips, cereal bars, and packaged muffins hadn't been able to fill over the past couple days. After this we dropped the candles and other groceries off at my apartment and walked over to the grad center to take advantage of its working internet to try finding an available hotel and to let the landlady know that the apartment was out of gas. After 3+ hours of looking and placing phone calls I finally found a place that wasn't outrageously expensive, had power/water/internet, and was nearby. Since the hotel couldn't take us until tomorrow I decided it made sense to grab dinner, bring it back to the apartment, and see if anything had changed since we had last been there at 1pm.
We went to a local joint and picked up some food to bring back to the apartment (an absolute ton of food for a grand total of $16). On our walk back to my place the landlady's husband drove past us in his car and stopped to tell us that not only did he just put in new gas tanks but that electrical power was going to be back on for the entire neighborhood within in an hour. The Barbados Light & Power guy sitting in the front passenger seat confirmed this (no idea why he was in the car but was too happy to care) and pointed to the work truck down the road that was fixing some fallen power lines.
Nora and I then proceeded to eat our dinners while watching some episodes of the Simpsons on my netbook, which had a full battery from being charged at the grad school earlier today. An hour later the power came on and the entire neighborhood started cheering. It was like when the Yankees win the world series and you can hear all the drunks going nuts in Manhattan.
We're both really happy that power is back and that we don't have to stay at the hotel. We've spent the rest of the night cleaning up, doing laundry, and making plans for tomorrow. Our plan is to go to St. Nicholas Abbey (http://www.stnicholasabbey.com/) in the morning for a nice tour and some delicious rum and then stop at the Supercentre on the way back to pick up new frozen foods/vegetables to use for dinner. I'll try to remember to bring my camera for photos of the abbey. It is supposed to be a beautiful building situated on really nice grounds.
So thats the story of my last 96 hours. It's been pretty crazy but thankfully everything is back to normal. It definitely put some things into perspective for me regarding dependency, privilege, and planing. Sorry for the long-winded story but I wanted to write it all down while it was still relatively fresh in my head!
I hope my next couple of posts are more positive!
It started as a typical Friday afternoon. I woke up late and immediately headed out to the supermarket to do my weekly grocery shopping. I bought my stuff and while in line even convinced the store shuttle to wait for me before leaving. On the ride home (this is around 5pm) the driver was listening to the radio which interrupted a song to announce that tropical storm Tomas was headed toward Barbados and would begin hitting the island in the next hour or so. Of course this was the first I had heard of the storm but I figured that since 1) I had just purchased food I should be OK to stay indoors for a day or so and 2) that since it was just a tropical storm it wouldn't cause that many problems, so there was nothing to worry about. It turns out few people (including the meteorological service, police, etc) knew the storm was coming more than a couple hours before it hit. Talk about poor planning!
At first the storm didn't seem that bad. It was mostly just raid and some light to moderate wind. Furthermore, I was able to leave my windows open without water coming in, which is the best test of a storm's strength that I have devised here. Over time though the storm worsened. Starting around 9pm I began loosing internet service every 30 minutes or so. Then around midnight the power went out for the first time. I ran around lighting candles but the period of darkness was cut short after 15 minutes when the power returned. It stayed on until a bit after 3am when it went off again for what turned out to be the next 63 hours. By this time the wind was really howling and the rain was coming down in sheets. I could hear the sheetmetal fencing and roofing of my neighbors' homes getting pulled willy-nilly in the wind. I was worried that the wind would rip them loose and fling them around, potentially crashing into my building, but thankfully that did not happen. Oddly enough, water was still not pouring in through the windows, so I left them open. This quickly changed however.
Once again I started running around lighting candles. I had squirreled away a small stockpile of 32 tealight candles which were really cheap but because of their small size only last around 4 hours. This was OK for this first night since the power went out at such a late time but would eventually prove to be a problem on Saturday and Sunday. After sorting some things out I decided I should just go to bed. By this time it was 7am, so I shut the door to my bedroom and tried to ignore the raging fury outside. Since no water had been pouring in through the windows, I stupidly LEFT THEM OPEN. Thus, when I closed the door to my bedroom, the wind started shaking it around really loudly. Eventually I decided I couldn't sleep with that noise so I got up to open the door. The sight that greeted me was unpleasant, to say the least. In that short span I had tried to fall asleep, the wind had brought water into my apartment in mass quantities, spreading it all over my dining room table (including on my laptops, books, papers, etc) and all over the floor. By this point the only dry towel I had left was a small hand towel, which was woefully inadequate for the job of cleaning up this mess. I quickly shut the windows and cleaned off the laptops for fear they would short circuit. I then dried off the books and moved them into my bedroom. After this I tried reusing towels that I had used to clean up flooding in my bedroom but they mostly just displaced the water rather than absorbed it. Lacking any alternatives to this I decided to leave the problem until tomorrow and head back to sleep. So finally around 8am I passed out in my bed.
I woke up at 4pm and after realizing I still had no power decided to make the most of the remaining daylight. I started by trying to clean the apartment for Nora's arrival the following day. This was a disaster since with no way to do laundry I couldn't put fresh sheets on the bed or get fresh towels. I also couldn't clean the kitchen since things were getting displaced due to the fact that the fridge was off. I was also limited by the fact that the natural light was extremely limited to begin with since the storm was still raging and the sky was overcast. Thus I couldn't see well enough to really clean the bathroom/shower. Basically the apartment was a mess.
I decided to give up and embrace the chaos and coming darkness. I lit the remaining candles I had, lay down on the couch, and alternated between reading by my giant maglight and playing my nintendo DS. For dinner I had barbecue potato chips and a variety of wonderful cereal bars. In between my reading/video game sessions I ran around the apartment scrapping the last bits of wax from burnt out candles and depositing them into still-burning ones. I was dangerously close to being out of candles and I needed to maximize the amount of fuel (in this case wax) that I could access. I passed roughly 4 hours doing this then called it a night. Since it was too dark to take a shower and I felt super gross I decided to just sleep on the couch rather than bring my filthy body into my relatively clean bed. With the storm still raging outside I eventually passed out on the living room couch.
I woke up at 8am to the wonderful sound of a receding storm. Tomas, which had been upgraded to a category 1 hurricane, was finally leaving Barbados! However, I also woke up to the realization that at some point during the night I lost water. At that moment I found myself without power and water, in a disaster of an apartment, with my girlfriend due to arrive in roughly 7 hours. To say I was a bit panicked and frustrated is an understatement. I quickly ate breakfast (more cereal bars and potato chips) and then decided I needed access to the internet to get local news, contact my parents, and figure out what to do with Nora. I left the apartment and walked over to the graduate school campus. During the walk over I came across a bunch of fallen power lines, uprooted trees, and lots of debris scattered everywhere. The graduate school campus was in good condition but it was locked when I got there (it is supposed to be open 24/7). With my anger/frustration reaching a boiling point I immediately started yelling "SON OF A BITCH" over and over. The security guard must have heard me because he came over, asked me if I was a grad student, and let me in. I thanked him profusely and immediately headed down to the computer station to begin sorting things out.
Browsing the news told me that many Barbadians had not only lost power and water because of the storm but had also lost their roofs (sheet metal roofing is extremely common here) and many of their possessions. This quickly put my situation in perspective as I realized how lucky I was to have an intact home. Still, with Nora arriving and me not having an power/water, my parents suggested that I think about a hotel for the week. This sounded like a great idea, but the problem was that most of the hotels in the area either didn't have power or were all booked up because of the scheduling nightmare that the storm had caused on their arrival/departures. With no hope of securing a hotel I decided around 11:45am to go catch a bus to the airport so as to pick up Nora. I got to the bus stop around 11:50 and proceeded to wait for 30 minutes during which time not a single bus (no government buses, no rasta buses, no white buses) came. Normally you don't have to wait more than 5 minutes before some kind of bus comes. Obviously the bus service wasn't working (a fact later confirmed via radio and newspaper) so I decided to walk to the local supermarket to collect some supplies for another night of now power and now, no water. I felt bad about not being able to pick up Nora at the airport, as the Barbadian terminal isn't the most organized experience (just like the entire country), but I had told her the night before via text message that I might not be able to make it, so she knew to hop in a cab if she didn't find me waiting for her. On the walk to the supermarket I came across even more destruction. I saw a utility pole ripped in half, lots of uprooted trees (many lying on top of utility lines), and many fallen power lines. The general chaos led me to believe that it was going to take a long time for the power company to get power back to my neighborhood. I was determined to prepare for a week without power.
At the supermarket I loaded up on candles, matches, and non-perishable foods like pasta and more potato chips. Since my stove is gas and not electric my plan was to light it with a match and cook the perishable items in the freezer that night so as to use them before they went bad (this was my Dad's suggestion). I tried doing this immediately after Nora arrived at my place (well actually I had to flag down the lost cab driver on the main road then lead him to my place, but same difference) so as to take advantage of the remaining natural light and it started out well. However the gas quickly sputtered out. I figured the gas tank must be out so I went outside to switch over the line to the second tank (the idea being that when one tank runs out you start using the second tank and have the first tank replaced, then rinse and repeat). This tank was out of gas as well, and I got REALLY PISSED. Clearly the person who was living here before me had failed to replace the first tank when it ran out, so now I was stuck without any gas. (Thankfully water service had been resorted earlier that afternoon, so I was just without power and gas, rather than power, water, and gas). The person who lived in this apartment before me generally sucked - she was apparently overweight which caused her to rip off the toilet seat from the toilet many times. So many times in fact that the landlady stopped replacing them so I am stuck using a loosely attached seat. Ugh, there are so many examples of crap like this being left over from this previous person. I want to find her and destroy whatever place she is living in now as revenge.
Anyway, without any gas to cook with I had to throw out all the food that was in my freezer, as it wasn't going to last another day without power. There's nothing like throwing out $50 worth of food to cap off an otherwise wonderful day. Instead of cooking a nice meal, I had to settle for, and Nora got to experience, a dinner of cereal bars and potato chips! Welcome to paradise Nora! Luckily my netbook still had close to full power so we were able to watch a couple of episodes of the Simpsons off my portable hard drive to pass the time. We were both exhausted so we called it an early night and were in bed by 9pm.
One of the drawbacks of storms in the tropics is that they tend to make the weather more hot and muggy. This was the case with Tomas, so trying to sleep in my non air-conditioned bedroom was fitful. Eventually we gave up trying to go back to sleep around 9am, had a breakfast of potato chips and muffins, and headed off to the grocery store to buy even more candles and see if the local hotels had received power yet. The hotels still didn't have power, so we started planning for another night in my dark apartment. To compensate, we stopped at a local restaurant (Just Grillin') for a fresh, warm meal. I had the grilled flying fish while Nora had the barbecue chicken sandwich. Both were very good and hit the spot that potato chips, cereal bars, and packaged muffins hadn't been able to fill over the past couple days. After this we dropped the candles and other groceries off at my apartment and walked over to the grad center to take advantage of its working internet to try finding an available hotel and to let the landlady know that the apartment was out of gas. After 3+ hours of looking and placing phone calls I finally found a place that wasn't outrageously expensive, had power/water/internet, and was nearby. Since the hotel couldn't take us until tomorrow I decided it made sense to grab dinner, bring it back to the apartment, and see if anything had changed since we had last been there at 1pm.
We went to a local joint and picked up some food to bring back to the apartment (an absolute ton of food for a grand total of $16). On our walk back to my place the landlady's husband drove past us in his car and stopped to tell us that not only did he just put in new gas tanks but that electrical power was going to be back on for the entire neighborhood within in an hour. The Barbados Light & Power guy sitting in the front passenger seat confirmed this (no idea why he was in the car but was too happy to care) and pointed to the work truck down the road that was fixing some fallen power lines.
Nora and I then proceeded to eat our dinners while watching some episodes of the Simpsons on my netbook, which had a full battery from being charged at the grad school earlier today. An hour later the power came on and the entire neighborhood started cheering. It was like when the Yankees win the world series and you can hear all the drunks going nuts in Manhattan.
We're both really happy that power is back and that we don't have to stay at the hotel. We've spent the rest of the night cleaning up, doing laundry, and making plans for tomorrow. Our plan is to go to St. Nicholas Abbey (http://www.stnicholasabbey.com/) in the morning for a nice tour and some delicious rum and then stop at the Supercentre on the way back to pick up new frozen foods/vegetables to use for dinner. I'll try to remember to bring my camera for photos of the abbey. It is supposed to be a beautiful building situated on really nice grounds.
So thats the story of my last 96 hours. It's been pretty crazy but thankfully everything is back to normal. It definitely put some things into perspective for me regarding dependency, privilege, and planing. Sorry for the long-winded story but I wanted to write it all down while it was still relatively fresh in my head!
I hope my next couple of posts are more positive!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)