Various Extras

Location: Montreal, Canada

I'm almost done my quarantine! It's been quite an isolating two weeks, but it was worth it. I'm enjoying the snow from my window. Also, it turns out that adapting to a cold climate after two months in a hot one is much easier than adapting to a hot climate after a lifetime in a cold one. Who would have known?

While patiently waiting to be able to go outside again, I thought that I might pass the time in a semi-useful way and write something to keep my brain from disintegrating. I have a few micro-stories from the first part of my trip:

During my initial Grenada quarantine, I had written about how fast the covid test results came compared to how long the delay was to get me tested. To recap, my negative result came back on October 18 at 4:30 pm, whereas I had expected it to only come back the day after. What I hadn't mentioned was that at 11:30 on that day, I had gotten an email from the hotel manager asking me if staff could come in the early afternoon to clean my room (while I was in it) as a new batch of guests would be arriving soon and a small family would need my room. I felt like this was an attempt to politely but illegally kick me out. I sent them back an email saying that I couldn't exactly break quarantine protocols, to which they effectively hit me with an "ok boomer." My results arrived later in the afternoon so there were no further problems, but it was quite a disturbing exchange.

At Flora's party at Le Phare Bleu (the south end of Grenada), one of the people that I talked to was a megayacht deckhand whose main characteristics were that he could drink a crate of beer in one go, and that one of his earrings was replaced with a small shackle (see below picture). It looked cool, but I'm not sure what it said about him as a person.

In Carriacou, in the first resto-bar that we went to, we conversed with a Venetian lady and her American friend. The latter lived in Saint Croix, US Virgin Islands. Dear Americans, I ask you, why do you pronounce "Croix" as "Croy"? This is a French word. The letters "oi" are pronounced "wa," like in "oiseau." I thought that the French had helped you during the Revolutionary War. Why are you butchering their language? You've ruined it so much, you might as well go ahead and pronounce the "x" as well, and say "Saint Croyks." Smh

On our vaguely sketchy taxi tour around Carriacou, we stopped at a boat-building site admired the fishing boats in the rain. After a bit, we saw a small sign on one of the surrounding trees: "Please do not stand under these trees when it is raining as the water from the trees may cause blistering." We looked up. We were under that tree. 

For our last night in Carriacou, we went to a French resto-bar called Frogs. There, we were entertained by a boogie-jazz group who starred an old couple who sang while the man played piano and the lady played a very salt-corroded saxophone whose mouthpiece squeaked occasionally. Towards the end of the evening, a slightly inebriated young man sat down at our table and introduced himself to me as "a nice guy, looking for a beautiful woman." Jem and I left shortly afterwards, but not before Nice Guy leaned in to kiss me on the cheek, somehow missed, and planted a horribly slobbery kiss on my left ear.

Moving on to St. Vincent. At some point during our visit to Damian's house, Damian went to the fridge to get Jem a beer. Before opening it, he took something tan-coloured and vaguely round with a bottle opener on top and handed it to me, saying, "here, hold this." When I asked what the thing in my hand was, Damian replied, "kangaroo balls." He did not elaborate.

After St. Vincent I got tired of editing the length of my posts (oops) so I don't think that I excluded any more interesting details. I'll write again if I remember anything else. Happy new year!