Night Light

On the menu today:

Its a full moon again (2nd this month- blue moon on New Years, woo...) so that means its time for night swimming! Right after helping cook a 5-course New Year's (or Old Year's Night as they cal it here) dinner at the hotel and before heading to the harbor for the midnight fireworks and a night of partying on the beach!

Happy New Year!

The Animal Issue

I was laying in my hammock this afternoon, and like all other afternoons at around 5pm my neighbor walks out of his house and begins rounding up his dozen or so goats that roam around the grass all day under my balcony.


Sometimes the baby goats get into the hotel and graze around there all afternoon- the guests love them, I think they're amazing, but the gardeners go crazy. I don't really blame them, they eat our flowers and baby-palms, but at least they keep the grass short!

On more than one occasion I've looked out of my office window and watched a gardener frantically chase a goat around in a circle. Yea, those moments make my day.

In other news I've now got a pet frog. His name is Herman. He's about the size of my fingernail and hangs out near my Christmas palm. I don't really know where he came from. Here you can see him chilling in his pool (aka, ketchup bowl). He's a good addition to Zadie, my baby gecko, who lives under my lonely planet and is in charge of mosquito control.

'Twas the night before Christmas...

Its my first working Christmas and the first away from my family too, so I've been making Pia sing me Christmas songs and we've decked out our office with- count them- 8 mini Santa Clauses.

Also incessant Christmas radio, lights (and parties) in the streets and the fact I spent all day walking around in a Santa hat makes this pretty much the most Christmassy Christmas I've had in a while.

But my favorite is my living room's supercool Caribbean Christmas tree, growing straight out of a coconut. Beat THAT Charles...

Merry Christmas!

About Nothing

Doing nothing is an art, you know.


There are so many different ways to do it and switching from one way to another is almost as satisfying as switching from doing something to doing nothing. You can lay on your bed, lay on the floor, on the beach, sit on the balcony armchair or in the hammock and watch the world. You can do any of the above with music/a book/a movie/food/a friend or even a combination of these.

You can justify it by getting a tan or learning something. You can require it after a busy day, you can use it to think about your future or your toes.

But its always more glorious if you know there’s something you should be doing instead.

About jobs

So the job market here is a little different than in other places… I interviewed a guy who wanted a job as a kitchen assistant today.

“You give me a joint and I’ll clean the shit out of your kitchen.”

So I hired him*. Our kitchen isn’t much cleaner but there’s funky green stuff in all the soups and the guests sure do leave happy…

Photo from Zobeiry

*Before I get fired: I’m KIDDING.

More hiking!

This time up the south side- we went to the highest point in Bequia, Mt. Peggy and got this amazing view almost of the whole island. Just in front is Admiralty bay with Lower bay beach (1st beach) followed by Princess Margaret beach and town just down after that. Behind us was the airport (to the left) and to the right is Friendship (Home!) and that's pretty much all of Bequia.


It was an easy walk up, but then we decided to walk along the spine of the mountain in the direction of the airport. No path? No problem... Donnaka was armed with his machete and we whacked our way through the bush (and a million spiky things) down to Paget Farm and back home for a relaxing drink on my balcony, and then an afternoon of lazing around and snorkeling on Lower Bay.


Oh, and the snorkeling... not too shabby. About a million different colors of fish plus eels, lobster, sea urchins, tiny see-through jellyfish and even an old shirt.

Sexy Banana

EVERYONE on Bequia has a nickname. If you know someone by their real name, chances are nobody else does. And its not just things like Suzie for Susanne or Nick for Nickolas… oh no. Our bartender is officially called Sexy. I interviewed someone called Banana. Yes, it was hard to keep a straight face.

Our electrician is called Cry cry, and he will be Cry Cry until he dies of old age. Yep, some are lucky and some not so much…

Photo borrowed from carf

To Hope

The other day we decided to escape civilization- we took our hammocks and our packs and hiked to hope beach to spend the night. It was amazing.

Hope is my favorite beach on Bequia. Its not the most beautiful, but it has great crashing waves, the softest sand and the best part is that its completely deserted. There is not one house or person on the beach, just nature. And its so close to town- its maybe a 30 minute walk from the harbor and an hour hike from home.


When we arrived we searched for a good spot to set up and ended up finding a breezy and shaded patch on the beach and we tied our hammocks between 2 trees. We were in such a rush to start doing nothing. And that’s how the afternoon went- swimming, laying on the beach, reading or dozing in the hammock, opening coconuts and just generally basking in the natural relaxedness of it all.

So how is Europe this time of year? :P

(Our shoe-flag)

Well, thanks to the wind this time we didn’t get massacred by mosquitoes, but it did make it impossible for us to start our dinner fire, meaning we were relegated to eating cold sausages, beans and half-cooked potatoes. Also it got really cold during the night, and even though I followed Douglas Adams’ wise advice about towels it was still chilly enough to be uncomfortable (yep, these Caribbean winters are harsh), not to mention the torrential rains at 5 am giving us a nice wake-up call.


But it was still awesome, and the next morning we got to see the most amazing sunrise right before packing up, hiking back home in more pelting rain, showering, and heading off to work.

About Steel Pan

Is it a pan? Is it a drum?

Yes. And I love them.

Pan (or steel) drums are as Caribbean as… umm… I don’t really know where they originated, but Wikipedia probably does. But they’re THE Caribbean instrument. It sounds like a mix between the piano, a xylophone and a drum. Originally hammered out of old oil barrels (and in Bequia they’re still like that) these pans have an amazing sound.

(photo courtesy of Loulou who has many holga and polaroids worth drooling over)

So I started taking lessons about a month ago, with a guy called Elvis, the only pan-drummer on the island. He’s good. He teaches all the kids in the school and plays in a couple of bars during the week. I have my lessons in THE Bequia high school, which is an experience in itself, with concrete classrooms adorned with scattered half-broken desks and chairs overlooking the town, with a great view of the harbor in the background.

I thought since I already played drums it wouldn’t be so hard to pick these up… umm… yea… See on drums you just hit the thing and you’re good. On pianos you have the notes in a row, so you logically go from Do to Re then Mi… well it looks like the creators of the Steel pan were either evil geniuses or completely stoned. I’m gonna go for the latter. The notes are scattered in a circle in a completely random order and instead of using just one notation system we’ve gotta use them all- so instead of playing only Do-Re-Mi sometimes it magically shifts to C-D-E or 1-2-3. Yea.


So every time I have lessons I get extremely frustrated and my brain starts to hurt, but I’m actually making progress and last time I learnt my first song! Ok, so its silent night… but still.

Now my mom’s scared I’ll start growing dreads, quit the hotel business and set up my street-side steel pan and jam my days away. Aah, that would be the life.

A Number of Distinct Moments in Time

#1. lettuce shopping. I go to find king, this old guy that hangs out at THE bus stop every day. He takes me to his house on top of Level, it pours torrential rain as we reach. He wants to wait until the rain subsides before searching for the lettuce. We talk a bit and then sit there and wait in the mule, air and rain pouring all around us, in serene and pensive mood. Its quiet and fresh. As the rain starts to end he takes me back through the grass to his lettuce beds- a little corner of his land plot with a ramshackle construct of raised dirt- where 30 lettuce heads lay. I watch him slowly pry the heads from the moist dirt and scrape off the roots, clean each head, wash it in water and bag it all in the constant drizzle and quiet up on this hill in the middle of nowhere. It was so peaceful and natural and different from any kind of life I have previously seen or experienced.

21632

Most places have house numbers, street names and zip codes; Bequia has trees.

























Not just any trees... oh no. Here nobody has house numbers and since there's only 3 roads on the island street names aren't really necessary either. So how do people know where things are? Well, they just know. If you wanna meet someone in town, its usually under the almond tree. Yup, THE almond tree.

And if you really need to give a number, the telephone poles have these little yellow and black numbers on them, so you just find the closest pole to your house and that's your number.

Hooray for fruit trees!

I learned 2 important things today:

1. How to cultivate almonds, and
2. That coconuts are porous

Next step is to dry, smash and caramelize the almonds. Mmmm. But its such a pain to peel the almonds! And apparently they take forever to dry, then you've gotta smash open the shells, and THEN you get this tiny nut that you eat in 3 seconds.

I still don't know what I'm gonna do with my coconut knowledge, but I'm sure one day it'll come in handy...

Revenge of the expiring office supplies

Ever wonder who lives inside your printer's ink cartridge?



Its Jim (pronounced Yim), the moderately-distressed spongeface!

In about a week or so I'll find out what's inside the color cartridges too!

Half of Everywhere

I love Bequia, its the perfect size for everything.



A few weeks ago I did an amazing hike around most of Bequia. Starting at 6am from Friendship Bay I walked to the harbor, then up to Spring, Industry, Park, up to Bequia Head and the first landing spot on the island, then back down along the beaches, up to Mt. Pleasant and down to Hope Beach (My favorite in Bequia, completely deserted beautiful beach) then around to Ravine bay to the blowhole and up back to Friendship.

9 hours, many liters of water and 95 photos later me and Donnaka were laying on my balcony resting our feet getting ready for the final walk over diamond to Lower Bay, then Princess Margaret beach where I watched the sunset, exhausted but content. Here's some photos from that walk.

About Politics

I went to my first political rally ever a few weeks ago, didn't really know what to expect.

The current government in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) who is seen as more socialist, have been trying to make the country a new constitution. But first a little history- SVG was handed its independence from the British just 30 years ago, and with it a constitution to govern by- but this constitution still ties them into the commonwealth, has the queen as their head of state and requires some high British something court to preside over its justice system. So understandably these guys want more autonomy.



Well here everyone has an opinion on the new constitution, and you'll get as many reasons why to vote yes or no as there are people on these islands. Bequia is traditionally against the current party in power, and this rally I went to was by the current party in power... so the turnout was small, and many of the people who stood in the shadows (of the almond tree, of course) were just there to yell naughty things at these guys. It was really interesting to hear the yes argument- they wanna give more power to the opposition and more autonomy to the country. But there's also some things that stood out, like making hanging legal again (great modern way to control violence and crowded prisons), outlawing gay couples, eating babies (KIDDING!)...



Many people say they aren't ready to get full autonomy, they're still too young of a country. I think they'll be ready when they remove the silliness from the proposed constitution.

The vote was yesterday. The No got the majority, and for now nothing is changing. For the better. I'm sure they'll have a few more attempts to pass it, and hopefully they'll realize their mistakes. And hopefully in not too long they'll have ironed out the crap and they'll pass themselves a good enough constitution to take off the training wheels. But it is admirable that they're trying to change things at least.

Dance the way I feel

The greatest band name on earth:

Ou est le swimming pool

Check them out: http://www.myspace.com/ouestleswimmingpool

About Sun

 

I saw the sunrise today! And now I’m in line with my ‘watch the sunrise at least once in every place you go’ motto. I saw the sunset too. It was nicer. Like fire floating on water.

Its Official - I live in Paradise

Guess where I'm headed after work todaaaay....

About Face

I’m learning so much here every day, not about the technical aspects of running a hotel- I still can’t mix a cocktail to save my life – but about how to deal with and manage people. Yes, it’s the most challenging thing about this job, but also the most rewarding. 

I’ve learned how to pick my battles and how to fight them. How you can never compliment too much. How to encourage people and how to solve problems. How to make people solve their own problems. How not to be bullshitted. How to stand your ground. How to take initiative and lead by example. How not to do things. How to be straightforward. How to try to be fair. How you can’t be all things. 

I’m learning so much and processing so much, and I feel so comfortable in this skin- even though I don’t always know what I’m doing or how to do things, I know how to find out what the right way is. I’ve found that if you think about it, there’s usually a relatively straightforward solution to anything. The rest is just putting the pieces together to get to it. And that can take time, but its not impossible.

And today- for the first time in a long time, everyone was doing, and everything was working properly… and I felt this satisfaction which is hard to describe.

And then the lawn mower broke and the new bar wasn’t cleaned and the beach chairs were left out at night and the wine orders weren’t done and the timesheets weren’t filled out properly and the iron stopped working… but that’s tomorrow’s problem. I’m just happy that today worked out well  :)

Beautiful

As I sit on my terrace at night and stare out into the darkness, occasionally being jabbed by a hungry mosquito I can hear the waves crashing on the beach. What a beautiful and natural sound. Its so rhythmic and soothing. I’ve always wanted to live on the beach exactly for this reason- to hear the ocean in its continuous stirring. There’s something comforting about its regularity, like a ticking clock. That smell of sea-salt churned up in the air, the freshness of a sea breeze. Beautiful.

Bequia is...

...my new home for a while.

I was lucky enough to get a job managing half of a small hotel on this Caribbean island. Yes, Bequia is an island, not an obscure tennis ball brand or a cocktail umbrella manufacturer. Its a pretty tiny island, in a pretty tiny (and very young) country called St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I think its amazing to be able to watch this place growing into its own and seeing how they deal with social issues having such little expertise and resources. But that's for another post.

This is mostly to keep in touch with friends and family and also a place to vent myself. Even though it's the reason I've come here I'm not gonna write much about my job on this blog. At least I'm gonna try not to. It does take up most of my time (and my brain), so a few posts might slip in but I wanna use this blog to explore other projects and parts of my life here.