As much as I like the place where I am living now, it’s simply too expensive to be in a 2 bedroom townhouse on my own. I’m going to be moving into a smaller 1 bedroom apartment in a complex called Lakeside. It’s closer to work and it will save me over $700CI a month in rent and utilities. The downside…the island dump is close by so there will likely be some unpleasant smells coming my way when the wind is in my direction. The apartments themselves are quite nice and I’ve heard you can’t smell the dump when inside the apartment (I’ll let you know about that once I move in). I have a month to month lease so if I don’t like the place I can always leave in a month for another place. I’ll be getting the keys this Saturday afternoon and will move my stuff in on Sunday. I haven’t accumulated too much stuff so it should only take one carload to move everything. I’m definitely looking forward to the extra cash to help ease my debts a little faster.
I finally got off my butt and added some pictures of when Ron, Jenn, Braden and Jaime came to visit during Easter. Most of the pictures are from the underwater disposable camera that they brought. The pictures came out pretty good. Enjoy!
This weekend I took the PADI (Professional Association of Dive Instructors) Open Water Dive course at Sunset House. I think it was the perfect weekend to be underwater all day because it’s been one of the hottest weekends since I’ve been here….32C but feels like 38C! And even though I used 45SPF sunblock, I still burned myself head to toe. Even the tops of my fingers are sunburned. Anyways, about the course…
There was 7 people in the course including me. We started at 8:30am on Saturday and had to write 3 quizzes right off the bat. The quizzes covered material that we had to read before coming to the course. The questions were all multiple choice and were pretty easy. It took about 30 minutes to finish the quiz and then we headed to the pool for the skills training.
The instructor showed us how to put all the equipment together and we had to take it apart and put it together a couple times just to get used to it. We put all the equipment on and hopped in the pool. Some of the skills we had to learn was to breathe through the regulator under water, how to clear the mask under water by blowing air through your nose to force air into the mask and water out, switching to another person’s secondary air source in case you run out of air, and how to breathe from a free flowing regulator by “sipping” the air from the stream of air coming out of the regulator. I didn’t like doing that last skill, it just seemed so weird and I thought for sure I’d be sucking in water but it does work.
After doing the skills in the pool all morning, we had lunch and then got to go out for 2 ocean dives in the afternoon. At the beginning of each dive, we had to demonstrate some of the skills we learned in the pool. There was a sandy spot just off shore where we gathered to do the skills. After that, the instructor would lead the dives and we would simply follow him around. The ocean dives were awesome. So many colorful fish and different types of coral to see. There is a statue of a mermaid at the bottom about 40ft down that we swam to. I had some trouble figuring out how to maintain proper buoyancy so I kept floating up higher than everyone else and sometimes close to the surface. I was much better on the second dive.
The next day, we started again at 8:30am and had to write a final exam. It was 50 multiple choice questions and was as easy as the quizzes from the previous day. I got 98% (damn, one question wrong). After the exam, it was off to the pool again for more skills training. This time we learned how to take the mask off under water, put it back on and clear it. We also learned how to take the equipment off while floating at the surface and then putting it all back on. We had to learn to take the weight belt off under water and put it back on, and learned to do an emergency ascent with our “buddy” in an out of air situation. We had lunch after doing the skills training and then did 2 dives in the afternoon.
Just like the previous day we had to demonstrate some of the skills we learned in the pool at the beginning of each dive. During the first dive we were able to see a small sea turtle that was just hanging out at the reef. We also had a fish that was about a foot long that followed us around for most of the dive. It would come right up to us when we stopped and would check us out sometimes coming within inches of us.
Each of the 4 dives we did were about 30-35 minutes long. That doesn’t sound very long but you get to see a lot in that small amount of time. After our last dive, the instructor showed us how to fill out our log books and signed them all, officially making us certified open water divers.
It was a great weekend and I’m sure I will sleep very good tonight…assuming this sunburn doesn’t keep me up!
WARNING: Total culinary nerd post incoming. If you don’t like food, avert your eyes now. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
I went to an Italian cooking class tonight after work. It was at the Dolce Vita restaurant which is tucked into the corner of a strip mall along Seven Mile Beach. I thought it was going to be a class where I could participate and do some of the cooking myself but it was more like being in the audience at a live cooking show.
The Chef was very Italian (broken english and all) and was showing everyone how to cook food from the northern regions of Italy. Before the chef came out we were served bruschetta and Pinot Grigio white wine. He then came out and announced what he was going to cook. The menu was traditional Italian food with many of the dishes using the “castoffs” of the previously prepared dishes. For the appetizer he made something called Vitello Tonnato. He started by boiling a big piece of beef with carrots, onions, and celery so that it not only cooked the beef but also made a stock. Once cooked, the beef was sliced very thin and was served with a blob (technical culinary term) of mayo mixed with tuna, capers and anchovies. It sounds weird, but it was very good.
The next dish was ravioli made by chopping up some of the meat into small chunks, then chopping up the vegetables he cooked with the beef to make a filling. He made fresh pasta and made several different type of filled pasta as a demo. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to sample any of those for some reason which was very disappointing.
The red wine has now made an appearance, a Pinot Noir Principato. Next, the chef made a risotto using the stock from the boiled beef and veggies. He cooked the rice with the stock and some onions and added butter and parmesan cheese at the end. He also made a rolled piece of chicken stuffed with ham and fresh mozzarella cheese covered in tomato sauce (called Rolatine di Pollo) to go with the risotto. The risotto was amazing, I could have eaten the entire pot!
As an aside, the restaurant’s pizza chef came out of the kitchen to talk to the chef for a minute. The chef then went on a tangent about the origins of pizza and how it was originally made in Napoli. He then told the pizza chef to whip up a pizza for us so that we could all try an original Napoli pizza. When it came out it was only sauce, cheese and basil on a thin crust but it was the best pizza I have ever had. Incredible!
Finally, for dessert he made a Bunet, which was a dessert made with crushed almond cookies, cocoa, milk and caramelized sugar. A very nice end to the meal.
I went to the class by myself and felt like a bit of a loser sitting by myself at a table but after a couple glasses of wine, I didn’t care anymore. Plus, my table was closest to the kitchen so I always got food first. The night cost $50CI but it was totally worth it. I don’t know when the next class is but will definitely go again.
Ron, Jenn, Braden and Jaime came for a visit during the Easter weekend. It was really great to see them especially since I was not able to come home for Uncle Dick’s funeral…it was good to have family here during that time.
I had to work the first day they were here so I came home for lunch and then drove them to the public beach for the afternoon. That night we went to Prime restaurant for a total all you can eat meatfest. Everyone enjoyed the food but I think a few of us ate too much (I know I did…I had a meat hangover the next day).
On Friday we went to Rum Point and did the glass bottom boat tour that goes out to Stingray City. All of us went in the water to pet the stingrays and both Ron and Jaime got to hold one of the stingrays at the top of the water. Jenn was a little reserved about touching the stingrays but she said that she enjoyed it. We then moved to another spot to do some snorkeling. Unfortunately, Ron was having a tough time with his mask filling up with water which killed his experience a bit. Although, one of the things that killed my experience was when I was coming back onto the boat, the Captain dumped a bucket of dirty fish water right beside me. I jumped out of the water pretty fast!
On the way back to Rum Point we were sitting at the front of the boat. We had just dried ourselves off from snorkeling and the Captain told us that we may get a little wet from “the spray”. “The spray” my ass….there were waves coming over the bow. Ron got the brunt of it but we were all pretty soaked when we finally got to the dock. We sat in the sun and had a drink and some food before heading back home.
Like most mornings we got up on Saturday and hung around the pool for a few hours. Ron/Jenn had bought Braden a neat torpedo thing for the pool. You can throw it underwater and it will glide through the water. Ron, Braden and I had a 3 way game of catch going underwater…we played for over an hour. The bottom of the pool is a rough concrete and we all scraped our knees and toes on the bottom while playing. I am still putting band aids on my knee because it hasn’t healed over yet and it’s been over a week.
After lunch we went into George Town so they could do some souvenir shopping. After walking around to the various shops we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for a drink. They were the only restaurant on the island that had Labatt’s Blue and we wanted to have a Blue in Uncle Dick’s honour. Of course, once we got there the waitress told us that they no longer serve Blue so we had a Heineken instead. We walked around a bit more and then headed back home after doing some grocery shopping and hit the liquor store. Everything is closed on Sundays so we wanted to stock up.
On Sunday I had planned to take everyone to the Turtle Farm up in West Bay. I called to make sure that they were open and only got an answering machine. After checking the web site, we found out that it was closed on Sundays. DAMN! We ended up just hanging around the pool and made a turkey dinner for Easter. My neighbours were all out by the pool as well and did a big Easter egg hunt for all the kids in the complex.
On Monday we finally made it to the Turtle farm. We watched the full grown turtles in the main pond and then checked out the baby turtles in the smaller tanks. We walked through the bird aviary and then went down a nature trail that led to an underground cave. The cave was fenced off so we couldn’t go in and to explorer it. We went back to the bar for a drink and then walked back to the main pond to watch the turtles being fed. We left the turtle farm and went across the road to Dolphin Discovery, a park where you can swim with the dolphins. We didn’t actually swim with the dolphins but we watched a bunch other people swimming with them. It looked pretty cool, some people would hold onto the dolphins fin while it swam away and others could lie on a small surf board and the dolphin would push their feet to surf across the water. We only watched for about 10 minutes and then left to go to Hell. Hell is in the heart of West Bay and it’s a patch of land that is all volcanic rock. The rocks are all jagged and there were a few blue iguanas sunning themselves on top of them. After taking a few pictures and visiting the gift shop we headed back home for their last night on the island. We just made dinner and hung out at home for the night.
I brought them all to the airport around 10am on Tuesday and that concluded their trip to Grand Cayman. I had a great time and I’m pretty sure they did too.