An American in SXM

Rocks in a tree

2009-11-10T12:03:00.000-04:00

(One day last week, after I left Dinghy Dock)

How did they get up there? How are they balancing so well?

Is it art?

Morning View

2009-11-09T17:22:00.000-04:00

Today has been a gray day, but the dreariness of the day was mitigated for me by the beautiful light from this morning.

November 11 = Food

2009-11-08T14:02:00.001-04:00

While looking at this flyer it does anyway, check this out:

Um, i will try one of everything. Except maybe the pig foot souse. What is that anyway?

edited to add: Thanks Ron!

Back to Kon Tiki

2009-11-07T13:44:00.006-04:00

We went to Kon Tiki at Orient for lunch - it had been a while and it was so nice to go back.

Now that's a tuna roll.

Ah, cigarette machines... these were my favorite things when I was 17.

Its Friday, day 6 of NaBloPoMo

2009-11-06T19:25:00.000-04:00

That is National Blog Posting Month to you, and I am off to a rocky start, with a questionable video post as one day's entry, the skeeviness of that move slightly mitigated by a last minute attempt to write something, anything.. Ah well, there are a few weeks to improve with.

I am looking forward to the weekend and I hope you are all faced with a couple of fulfilling days. I have a few satisfying projects planned. One of these is cleaning a bowlful of coins - we stuck spare change in jars for a while, then they were somehow left under a sink in a closed cabinet and turned green, rendering them too nasty to carry around. Evidently soaking them in diluted vinegar is a way to cleanse them of their filthy sheen. If you see someone at Fresh Market paying for dog food with acidic smelling quarters and guilder coins you will know it is me.

You may wonder why I call this a satisfying project. The sad truth is that I only enjoy cleaning things if they are very dirty. I hate doing dishes but give me tarnished silver to polish and I will have a great time.

I also hope to enjoy the sunshine and wander about the island a bit this weekend as well, if for no other reason that I need to come up with blog posts for the next few days!

Have a nice weekend!

Yup. Yuck.

2009-11-05T23:47:00.000-04:00

One day I moved my laundry basket and I found:

It was lying on the floor and it was about the length of the top half of my index finger. I couldn't figure out what it was doing in my house. Since when is my laundry room a happy transformation location?

I picked it up and it **wriggled** - oh! It still grosses me out to think about it.

I wasn't sure what to do with it. The paranoid part of my brain thought perhaps it was an incubation pod for a hated centipede - with enough planted pods hatching all at one time those centipedes would certainly overwhelm my defenses. What a plan.

In the end, however, I was strangely soothed by the curled proboscis on this sucker.

Centipedes do not have those.

So, I dumped the thing into a plant pot and checked it once in a while to see what was happening. It sat in there for 2 weeks or so with no change and I was worried.

One morning I checked it and found the - what do I call it? - alien pod had burst open at its top. Looking around, I saw this guy on the wall:

The moth hung out on my wall for most of the day. I figured the wings needed to dry and so left it alone. It did drip a pink moth wing juice down the wall however. Thanks. Eventually it left through the sliding door.

From my internet researches, I think this was a Rustic Sphinx Moth. Not too threatening, nothing to worry about except for the pink moth juice.

Or so I thought until I found this green monster making his way across the living room floor:

Caterpillar crosswalk?

12 minutes left...

2009-11-05T00:01:00.002-04:00

That is, 12 minutes until the day is officially over and my chance to write something for NaBloPoMo is finished. I apologize for my tardy entry, I am just too fascinated by Top Chef to be of any use. We've been watching Season 6, and chanced to see the first episode of the first season - what a huge difference! Some of the contestants in the earlier contest had never been in a professional kitchen.

So anyway, I have finally unearthed my copy of the History of Sint Maarten and Saint Martin by Dr. J. Hartog (published in 1981). I am looking for information about the history of St. Maarten's Day, which is celebrated On November 11th. This year is the 50th anniversary and there are supposed to be events. I have read about a domino competition and a boat race and a party at Tantra. That is all I have found so far. I'll add more when I find it!

eta: OK I hit publish at 12:01. Phooey.

Very Impressed By the Technique

2009-11-04T22:13:00.000-04:00

Windmills Over Guana Bay

2009-11-03T22:59:00.000-04:00

Awesome!

I read an article in The Daily Herald which I think was written by the person who built these, but I cannot find it online. Anyway, I just wanted to applaud this, I think it is excellent. I want to visit on a windy day to see how loud they are.

Second day of NaBloPoMo

2009-11-02T18:41:00.000-04:00

Hello all!

I was going to do a wonderful post with tons of pictures, perhaps about a restaurant or a windmill man or a particular book. I find have less time than I thought. Big Surprise! I ended up doing tons of work on the computer today and feel very productive. Just not bloggishly productive.

Now I am making bolognese sauce and have to run to make the pasta dough, so the epic blog post is not going to happen. I keep refusing to buy dry pasta because it is easy to make and therefore why buy packaging I will just have to throw out when I have flour and eggs and water at home. So, I end up not eating pasta.

The other night I did pull out the pasta rolling machine however, and made beet raviolis. They were very good! And very pretty, though super hassly.

That is about all I have to say at the moment. SXM blogger Barbara is also doing NaBloPoMo, go check out her post (and consider signing the petition!)

NaBloPoMo and Memories

2009-11-01T17:58:00.001-04:00

It is National Blog Posting Month again, during which one endeavours to post something every day - this can be a writing exercise, a means of penance or a sign of the beginnings of dementia. I tried this 2 years ago, and it is harder than it seems at first. Now I will try again!

On to a different subject. It is butterfly season here - people keep mentioning them. There are so many little white and yellow ones that they seem to coat the bushes and roadsides. It happens every year and reminds me of the time when we first moved in to our house.

Our house was a vacation rental for a while, until Hurricane Luis came along and ravaged it, tearing away the roof and various other pieces. When we moved in, we found the guest book that some vacationers had written in. I have always loved looking at it, as it reminds me of the excitement of being here for the first time. One writer mentioned all the butterflies and I thought it was just a romantic gesture - I didn't see scads of butterflies around. Later on in the year, however, they infested our yard like living confetti and I finally understood.

The first guestbook entry, from 1991.

I have no idea what this means but I like it.

This is the last guestbook entry, from June 1995.

Various Views

2009-10-31T10:59:00.000-04:00

We've been having a beautiful run of days recently.

Cloud shadows on the water October 23rd.

A flying squadron of Pelicans October 24th.

Cruise ship in at St. Barth's October 26th.

Moonrise October 30th.

Shiny October 31st.

Goats, Google and Cricket

2009-10-22T08:12:00.035-04:00

October 15th was Blog Action Day and the topic this year was climate change. Bloggers from all over the place wrote about the environment, including SXM bloggers Barbara and Gigi.

The Official Google Blog also did a post, which was a tour of the "green" features of their global headquarters. I got a kick out of one of their environment-saving ideas, which was to clear a field of weeds and brush using a herd of goats!

They had to pay someone to get the goats over there but here in St. Maarten the goats tend to just turn up. I noticed some goats doing their part for the environment a week or two ago at the cricket field next to Cost-U-Less.

Goats are pretty cute when they are small, notice the ears flopping as they run.

I suppose they were helping to prepare the field for last week's cricket match.

Either that or playing Twister.

Healthy smoothies for dinner

2009-10-21T17:29:00.002-04:00

Yum.

Sushi Itto in Port de Plaisance

2009-10-21T13:07:00.000-04:00

When I heard there was a new restaurant planned for Port de Plaisance I was happy. Sushi and parking! Wow! How can you go wrong?

I was finally able to go check it out a few weeks ago. I had looked it up online and found that Sushi Itto is actually a chain of restaurants, with locations in the USA and Spain, and many in Central America. As far as I know they are the only place in St. Maarten with teppanyaki tables, the ones with the chef cooking in front of you, clacking his knives together and making a pile of onions steam like a volcano.

The restaurant was fairly busy when we went there, though there was only one group at the teppanyaki tables (I think there are 4 total). We ordered a plate of nice tasting yakisoba and some spicy tuna rolls. I was surprised at the low price of the tuna rolls - $7.50. Other places that I have ordered these are on the French side and tend to cost 16 euros or more, a massive price difference.

The price was explained when the rolls arrived. (sorry, I took this picture after we'd eaten most of them, I think there were 6 pieces total.)

Instead if there being actual visible tuna pieces, the cucumber was the main player of the rolls. Since I love the combination of rice and soy sauce and wasabi and all that stuff, I still enjoy this kind of roll, however I find it more like supermarket sushi than restaurant sushi.

I did enjoy watching the show over at the teppanyaki tables. We could not really see what kind of food was being offered but the diners at the table looked entertained in any case. At the prices shown on the menu it needs to be very good in order to be successful.

There is a new structure being built on top of the restaurant - I don't know if this for a separate venue or an addition to Sushi Itto.

All in all it was a pleasant enough dining experience, but the most exciting part was being able to park easily.

St. Maarten Cricket

2009-10-19T14:28:00.001-04:00

Yesterday we went to watch the St. Maarten Cricket team play in the final of the 7th annual Nagico Cricket Tournament. This was the first time that St. Maarten's team had made it to the final, and they were scheduled to play the Antigua and Barbuda team, who had won it 6 times before. The match was played at the Caribe Lumber Ballpark, which is behind the Cost-U-Less parking lot. Unfortunately St. Maarten did not win, but I think it was a close thing and it was enjoyable to watch.

I have never watched cricket played before and have absolutely no clue of how it is done or what the rules are. I was lucky in that we got to listen to knowledgeable explanations as we watched.

There were a fair amount of spectators there, and it seemed to be getting busier as the afternoon progressed. There were also the requisite drink and food vendors - a mix of established vendors and some do-it-yourself types. There was even a girl dressed in Heineken colors handing out branded handtowels.

The drinks menu shows Red Bull is a popular mixer (shudder):

I also saw plenty of professional looking camera gear covering the event.

Some St. Maarten team members:

Antigua's batters turn up:

Here are the things I think I know. I know the two from Antigua are batters, and they are there to prevent the bowlers (who I want to call pitchers) from hitting the stake with the ball. The batters are equipped with rather large cricket bats to prevent this. To me this makes the batter's jobs rather easier than the ~~pitcher's~~ bowler's. Somehow points are scored. I am unable to understand the point terminology - for instance the home team St Maarten scored 227 for eight off 50 overs and Antigua and Barbuda replied with 231 for four off 44.4 overs - I get the 227 to 231 part but don't get the rest.***

Anyway, I have now reached the end of my explanatory capabilities as regards cricket. I was most interested in watching the bowlers. Everyone seemed to have a different style, some running, some adding a very tall leap before hurling the ball. Here are some random photos of the game:

***edited to add: It has now been explained to me that the score was not close; Antigua still had plenty of batters but once their score passed the St. Maarten team's score, the game was over.

Weekend Fashions from Scratchy

2009-10-18T12:17:00.000-04:00

Our dog Scratchy is just as fashion forward as anyone else (remember when he got a nose ring?), and he is getting fairly annoyed that ocular ornamentation seems to be something only offered to humans. Don't know what I am talking about? Anime eyes and crystal eye jewelry are some examples.

Scratchy added some eye jewelry of his own while getting ready for this weekend - here are the pictures:

It is a very subtle effect.

Here is a closer look:

A view from the side shows the true beauty of it:

Not bad, right? I think he has a future in canine design.

I have to learn a new dialing system???

2009-10-16T06:22:00.000-04:00

So, I read in Jeff Berger's recent newsletter from October 13th that soon SXM will no longer be using the country code 599, and will instead be assigned an entirely different prefix, 721.

I went looking on the internet and found a PDF file from NANPA, the North American Numbering Plan Administration. Here is a link (it asks you to download a PDF file.)

This annoys me. The current system makes perfect sense to me. 599 is the country code for the Netherlands Antilles, and the next number, 5, is what all St. Maarten phone numbers start with. Saba numbers start with 6. After the country code. I suppose this is something that is happening as SXM secedes from the N.A.? Hmph.

Are you posting about the environment, AGAIN?

2009-10-15T17:18:00.002-04:00

Today is Blog Action Day and the topic this year is climate change.

Yesterday, Barbara posted about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The wikipedia description:

"The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also described as the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex, is a gyre of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean...estimated to be twice the size of Texas."

Wow, I was thinking, that is huge, why haven't I seen pictures of that? I imagined a vast floating patch of trash similar to pictures like this one from a river in Morgantown, West Virginia:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidg/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

It turns out I would have know that if I had read the Wikipedia entry closely:

"Despite its size and density, the patch is not visible from satellite photography because it consists of very, very small pieces, almost invisible to the naked eye [2] and most of its contents are suspended beneath the surface of the ocean."

I was expecting visually compelling swathes of trash floating on the ocean surface. What a documentary crew (part 1, part 2, and part 3) found after trawling through the area is that the water is a plastic soup, with lots of small particles floating around.

Here is a good overview of the situation from Good Morning America:

Some important points:

- some samples show six times more plastic than plankton
- small fish and birds are eating small plastic bits ("As the plastic flotsam photodegrades into smaller and smaller pieces, it concentrates in the upper water column. As it disintegrates, the plastic ultimately becomes small enough to be ingested by aquatic organisms which reside near the ocean's surface. Plastic waste thus enters the food chain through its intense concentration in the neuston."-from Wikipedia)
- so far there is no good solution for cleaning it up - the best we can do is to stop dumping plastic in the ocean
- less than 5% of all plastic is recycled globally.

Here is the point I am taking away from reading about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The world needs to stop using plastic. No big deal, right?

Jeez, the thought of it is incredibly overwhelming. So many of the things I buy come in plastic containers. I mean, you know - toothpaste, for instance. How do you get that stuff to your house if it is not in a plastic tube? In the olden days they did it somehow... right?

Also, have you been to a hospital recently? Every single thing they use is a single use disposable thing made of or wrapped in plastic. And when I am in the hospital that is probably how I want it to be, but imagine how much waste that must generate.

So how do we do it? I am going to redouble my own efforts to avoid plastic. Here are some things I have done so far:

- I have reusable shopping bags that I carry in my bag and use at the grocery store, hardware store etc.

- I do not use plastic wrap or foil (though there is some in my house that my boyfriend bought when I was away). For food storage I save glass jars and have reusable plastic containers which I will replace with glass when they are no longer functional. For pan liners I use silicone mats or grease the pan well and hope.

- we get our drinking water in the refillable 5 gallon jugs so that we do not buy bottled water. I do dearly love fizzy water and have been trying to avoid buying it. I am thinking of getting a fizzy water maker.

- I avoid all single use products, like plastic forks and plates, disposable razors, pre-moistened wipes, etc.

Now I have to figure out ways to reduce my plastic usage even more. I think my challenge for myself will be to avoid buying anything that is packaged in plastic for one month, to see how difficult it is and to figure out what some replacements are.

I'd love to hear thoughts on this from anyone reading this.

If you are interested in learning more about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography recently sent an expedition called Seaplex to study it. They have a bunch of photos here, you can follow them on Twitter here and their site has some great videos.

Puerta Del Sol Plaza

2009-10-13T13:30:00.002-04:00

Remember when I wrote about the "new gastronomic area" in Simpson Bay? We stopped by there the other day to check it out.

So far, it is a nice looking building with not enough parking. There may be some parking spaces in the back of the building but are those public? How do you get there?

Oh, I see. The parking in back is shown on their handy diagrams, but still, I think they need more:

Of the businesses listed, it looked as if only Mooi (restaurant) and Alliance Yacht were open. Patagonia (another restaurant) is supposedly going in along the street next to Carita, but I could not see any signs of it.

View from the third floor:

We stopped in to Mooi for a drink. There are seats on the ground floor street side, as well as inside and on the second floor outside. They have a temporary menu right now and seem to be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We drove by the other night and the tables visible from the street were full. I am sure we'll try eating there fairly soon. Anyone been there yet?

(Click on the photos to see them on my Flickr account, see a large version by clicking "all sizes")

Next Earthquake

2009-10-06T00:00:00.000-04:00

Wow! Today we had an earthquake. The last one (I think) was in May. It freaks me out a bit that these were relatively close together. Before this year, I think I am able to remember 3 or 4 SXM earthquakes, which were much smaller. Oh that's not true. There was one in November 2007 that was large.

Today was the first time that I actually figured out that I was experiencing an earthquake during the event itself. It didn't translate into anything useful, I sat dumbfounded at my computer and looked at the doorway, wondering if I should be standing underneath it. The next thing I did was log onto Twitter, in order to record something informative, timely and witty about the whole thing. I wrote: "earthquake! holy moly!" Good, right?

I read other updates on Twitter and Facebook, most of which were more articulate than my own and then went to babble down the telephone to my boyfriend, who thought it had been a truck. I watched updates on the computer some more and then the power went out and I checked Twitter desperately while my backup battery bleeped, attempted to call the GEBE emergency line and realized it'd be more efficient for GEBE to just get a Twitter or Facebook account, jeez. The last trickle of battery backup died away and I walked outside and saw it was a nice day. Huh. Who knew?

Random Photo Dump

2009-10-05T02:27:00.002-04:00

I know I know. What can I say, I like books! When I first moved to St. Maarten, I panicked, thinking I'd run out of things to read. I stockpiled. 90% of the stuff I brought with me = books.

Now I am trying to organize them - these are on the steps for alphabetical sorting - and get rid of books I don't like (I am looking at you, Dan Brown) or need (QuickBooks 5 for Dummies) but I end up sitting on the floor looking at an old favorite. It is wonderful. I love books. Have you seen the photos of Neil Gaiman's library?

(P.S. Anyone know how to get very old adhesive off of tile floor?)

My recent thoughts are all revolving around recycling things, eating locally, learning to use every scrap in the kitchen, consuming less in order to throw away less, all that environmental junk. One day, this somehow translated into the idea that I should buy root vegetables at the market and learn about them, and eat fiber, and use the husks for, I don't know, a natural brillo pad and.. gah. To make a long story short... I bought more beets. It made sense at the time. Since it turns out I am not a big fan of borscht, I ended up holding on to the beets for too long and then desperately searching the internet for something to make with them that I would want to eat.

It turns out that some people make cake with beets, no really, I am not lying and so I decided to make beet cupcakes. These were in the spirit of carrot cupcakes, I even chucked the last carrot I had into the mix as well. It was all pretty fun. I made a mess.

Yes, I was going for a gory-amputee-style photo there but beet juice isn't too realistic that way. Oh well, juvenile impulse cancelled.

The batter was very... bright!

The cupcakes were just brown when they were cooked, nothing alarming.

The cupcakes weren't bad, especially once the cream cheese frosting was added. They did taste sort of health foody though. Ah well!

I also tried out this root vegetable, perhaps called malanga??

It was extremely starchy, and I didn't end up making anything resoundingly good with it.

OK, what else do we have in the way of random photos...

This month I have refereed some tug-of-wars - we have no problem recycling old socks or tennis balls in this house.

Daisy and Scratchy will endlessly fight for control of this sock-toy, til they wind themselves down. On this occasionally they ended up tiredly huffing at each other, too tired to even growl.

Random scenic photo:

I have finally learned how to season my cast iron skillet:

(Scratchy's legs are in that position from having ecstatically lost control of them, meat grease has that effect on him).

Stuck!

2009-09-29T12:05:00.000-04:00

Hello world! Ha.

I have not been interested in posting anything for a while now, though I keep thinking of it. I have a few ideas but they are work intensive. Instead I have been rearranging the book shelves, and looking longingly at IKEA bookshelves online, oo I have such good ideas for those!

Low season is... slooow. The weather is gorgeous and very very hot. My dogs refuse to go outside til the sun goes down.

I wish I could vent here about some bad behavior going around in a group of people in my life, but that's not smart is it, in a blog? Nope. You should hear me venting in my head though.

I am sure I will find something to blog about soon. See ya.

From a Sunny Day Last Week

2009-09-04T13:06:00.003-04:00

Today is full of wind and rain, so I thought I'd post some pictures from last week, when I went to Karakter on Simpson Bay Beach for the first time.

Good morning

2009-09-03T09:01:00.003-04:00

It is a bit grey out this morning and windy, but I am happy for it. Yesterday I kept checking the clouds and waves thinking something visually interesting would happen, or that there would be a big change. There was no large change, but I did get a few pictures of a rainbow.

It stayed only for a moment, then split into two before disappearing.