Wednesday Night's Alright

Location: apartment in Sint Maarten

Hello! Things are going well. I've started settling into life here. I've made friends with the ladies running the local corner store. The boss's name is Lovely and I speak to her in English, Hong is a cashier and I speak to her in a mix of English and terrible Mandarin. Lovely and Hong speak to each other in Cantonese. Lovely has told me that I look like "a handsome young boy" and Hong has told me that I look fifteen. They sell cheap fresh vegetables and have an excellent selection of Oreo's. It's a great place.

A week or two ago, Fly's mother had given me some chai. Unfortunately, we ran out and the Chinese place didn't stock any, so on Wednesday Anna and I decided to go to Carrefour to pick some up. Jean had a medical appointment at 10am in Phillipsburg and offered to drop us off on the way there. At 10:05, he dinghied into Lagoonies, where his car was kept. With him was his friend who was still drunk from the night before and who proceeded to immediately fall through a crack in the dock. They then realized that sometime during the night, they had driven over something that had punctured both left tires. Instead of calling a cab to get to his appointment, Jean decided to buy some spray cans filled with pressurized air, inflate the tires, drive to to a repair shop (except for Jean, we all sat on the right side of the car to minimize weight on the punctured tires), and supposedly get the tires replaced there. Anna and I didn't stick around to find out if he had succeeded; we decided to make the half-hour-walk to Carrefour instead, and bought three different types of chai.

That afternoon, we had our second covid jab, which was celebrated by going to Lagoonies and having fries (the best on the island) and the local beer, which is called Pelikaan and is very good. That evening was yet another Wednesday night party. As usual it was great company and great food. Notable culinary highlights included quinoa salad, chicken curry, prawns, and Anna's lemon drizzle cake.

Thursday I woke up feverish from my covid jab and hungover from the party and spent most of my morning lying down while Jem and Anna went to re-tie one of the boat trampolines. (I now say "jab" instead of "shot" because that's how English people say it. It seems to be one notch lower on the violence scale.) In the afternoon I went to a chandlery (boat parts shop) with Ryan and bought yet another knife. This one's a three-inch serrated diving knife and is very cute. I also would like to mention that like me, Ryan eats his chips (crisps) with chopsticks.

Friday morning I helped Jem re-tie the other trampoline. It turns out that re-tying trampolines on land is actually worse than doing it in the middle of the sea. At sea, we redid only the sides and back of the trampolines, and if we were to fall, we would have gotten a little wet but that's it. On land, we had to re-tie the front of the trampoline. This consisted of threading lines under tension while balancing on a piece of metal half a foot wide (at the front of the boat, there is no hull to sit on) over a one-and-a-half-story drop onto gravel

It turns out that there's a girl who lives in Phillipsburg but is going to McGill next year. Anna and I met up with her one day for shawarma at a place near Soggy Dollar called Little Jerusalem. Little Jerusalem is run by a man called Abraham who has 17 cats and, although he has an entire menu, gets severely offended if you order anything but "The Famous," which, in his defense, tastes very good. We also went to a self-serve frozen yogurt store, similar to one that I went to as a kid. It was a good time. I ate too much.

After the trampolines were re-tied, we were left with a few long bits of line. Since then, I've been making various mats. Anna's favourite is a motif called an ocean plait. Also, Fly taught me how to splice (thread rope through itself) so now I have a few soft shackles (a thing that ties things to other things; all you need to know is that it's very complicated and I'm very proud). 

That evening we went to Marko and Bridget's boat. Jem met Marko five years ago here and while Jem went around the world, Marko stayed here and had a damn good time. He lives on a beautiful ketch (two-masted boat) called Nejma with 3 tv's, high ceilings, beautiful wood paneling, two dinghies (one of which is enormous), Kit Kat the dog, and his partner, Bridget. Bridget grew up in Aruba, worked in NYC for awhile, and used to be a chef who owned a restaurant. She makes amazing kofta. She lived through hurricane Irma; the roof of her apartment had gone, and she and her family were huddled in the bathroom, which is the only room in Caribbean houses that has a proper ceiling (for the fan; the other rooms just have the underside paneling of the roof) until the eye of the storm came and they could run into a gym in the basement of the building. Ironically, her beach house was almost unscathed.

I've been doing some more dinghy sailing-related activities. Monday I sat in a motorboat supervising Karl, Kara, and motor yacht captain Oliver as they sailed Laser Picos. Oliver amusingly fell out of the boat and had to swim after it, but apart from that he took to it like a fish to water. Wednesday I went Pico sailing with Karl and Kara again. It was very blustery, and I got to do a bunch of fancy high-wind maneuvers. Much to my horror, the next day, my muscles were sore. I used to be able to do this for four hours a day every day for eight weeks; now I feel it after an hour and a half on a beginners' boat. I'm getting old.

Tuesday evening, Fly came over and we had a girls' night with Oreo's and nail polish. My nails are now metallic blue. Wednesday night we had the biggest party in the apartment to date, accompanied with the biggest food spread to date as well. Present were absolutely all of our friends that we met through Flora, St Helena, Lagoonies, and everywhere else, from 8 months old to 66 years old and everything in between. In terms of food, there were fried noodles, chicken curry, veggie curry, shakshuka (amazing, highly recommend, use as many onions as possible), mac n cheese, tuna dip more prawns, zucchini cake, cupcakes, brownies, cheesecake, coconut biscuits, and Turkish delights. It was an absolutely excellent night. I love this island.

Yesterday was an errand day. We got some cash, bought some clothes, did some clothes washing, and Anna managed to haggle a very large watermelon down to $6. (She was very proud). In the evening, Jem and Anna discussed the strange contests held in England, including worm charming, cheese rolling greasy pole, where two kids sit on a greased wooden pole and tickle each other until one of them falls, and the Birdman rally, in which people dress up as winged birds, run, jump off a pier, and try to glide for as long as possible. Apparently the record is 160m. 

That's all for now. Exciting things await in the next post, if all goes to plan. Ciao!