Day 12

Got my act together today and found Stella Maris* Church in St. George's together with Laurie. It's a small parish with lots of boisterous kids and rather egregious singing, but it was Mass and I was happy to be there. The rest of the town was closed, even at 10 a.m. when we got out, so my plans for getting Chinese food for lunch were thwarted. We only get packed lunches on weekends (sandwiches), and those are getting boring fast.

Books:
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor

*Question: is there a difference between Maris Stella and Stella Maris? Shouldn't it be the latter seeing as it's supposed to be "Star of the Sea" as opposed to "Sea Star"? Or does it not matter?

Phew...that was a lot of writing.

And in this gift shop on the Western tip of the island I made friends with the cashier, who is Jamaican. "Lots of research going on in Jamaica," she insisted after finding out I was with the Biological Station, "you should go there. Genetic experiments with cows. We have lots of cows."


"My family has a long history of marryin' Chinese fellows," she told me. "Some of my best friends when I was young were Chinese. I remember going to one of the weddin's once, where they have the rice and all the courses...you know de ones I talkin' about."

I admitted that I did.

"And I try some of the food, and one of my friends warned me, she says that you better not eat that. And I ask her why, and she bring me round the back -- I used to work in the veterinary clinic -- and hangin' there are all the heads of all these bull terriers that I been lookin' after every day. So I asked her why all these heads were hangin' here, did somethin' happen to them? and my friend said no...that's what your eatin'."

I told her that I'd never eat dog.

"Well, it was someone's wedding so it would be rude not to eat. And anyway, it was quite tasty."

And then she told me about one of the Indian women she knew (her mother was Indian), and about how when her husband died they made a big pyre for him, and she decided to commit suttee because she could not bear to be alone. Threw herself right into the fire in front of a policeman and a huge crowd and no one stopped her and she was engulfed in flames with her dead husband and both their souls went into the next world together.


Oh, and the rest of the dockyard experience was fun as well - we saw the maritime museum and a pottery place, and hideously overpriced local crafts and a cakery and dolphins and got rained on a lot.

Over breakfast this morning, Tom told us about all the famous people who have residences in Bermuda. Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones - "I saw him in the supermarket one day buying tinned goods. Tinned goods! It's nice to know that really he's just an ordinary bloke" Bloomberg, mayor of New York. Ross Perot, who has a cigarette boat and an aquatic trampoline. "Great fun that trampoline," said Tom, "we were poking around at his house once and he let us use it. Great guy, Ross Perot."

Day 11

The ferocious winds from the north-west continue to hit us hard. It takes about twice as long to walk to the BBSR from the main road than it should because of being blown in the other direction.

Despite the adverse conditions, 4 of us decided to check out the nightlife in Hamilton last night. Tom (who works in the BBSR) told us that Flanagan's and Blue Juice were worth checking out, and to stay clear of a seedy joint on the corner called The Beach. Fair enough.

Arrived in town to find barriers and teeming throngs of spectators for International Race Weekend - race as in sprinting/marathons and not as in social divider. The fact that it was inhumanly cold outside (and pouring with rain) didn't seem to dampen anyone's enthusiasm for the events (Bermudians are a slightly eccentric bunch). Nipped into Flanagan's (which conveniently enough had a balcony directly overlooking the finishing post) and settled in to get sloshed. A couple of drinks later, Miranda and Kelly had become fast friends with two expatriate guys (from Ottawa) who had come to cheer on their colleague, Derek (and to boo someone else who, in some complicated soap-opera tangle, had become their nemesis in the past few months). Both were working in accounting. Both were, as it turns out, quite obscenely wealthy (Bermuda, by the way, has the second highest per capita non-adjusted GNP in the world). They bought the girls a round of drinks. They bought the girls another round of drinks. We talked about the Biological Station, and weather, and Buffalo, New York, and marathon running. I bought myself a drink because no one seemed very interested in buying me one. The large green umbrellas on the balcony did not keep the lashing rain off very well. Derek came in second. Someone won the women's one-mile race in 5 minutes and 10 seconds. I bemoaned the fact that guys generally do not get bought drinks.

Tore ourselves away from the expatriates at close on 9 o'clock to explore the rest of the street. Found Blue Juice: empty except for two gay guys sitting at a table among a lot of empty martini glasses and assorted other debris. Left. Found The Beach, and, forbidden fruit being the sweetest, decided to go in. In the continued spirit of Bumming Stuff Off People Who Don't Know Any Better, Kelly finagled a cigarette off a local, and a light off the bartender. Bought ourselves a round of drinks. Reggae music. General sketchiness. Bought ourselves another round of drinks, decided we were bored, and left.

Ended up back in Flanagan's where the expatriates, who obviously thought Kelly was hot, or were very drunk, or both, bought us all another round of drinks. Finally experiencing the benefit of being the only guy amidst a gaggle of girls in a bar, I played along with the game and chatted with Andrew (one of the expats) about his *wonderful* experiences working in Bermuda. "The great thing about being in a place like this," he said, gesturing around the room, "is that you get people from all over the world. Canada. Britain. America. South Africa (where he was originally from). Singapore" [laughs]. "And you discover," he continued, "that in the end, deep down everyone's the same." "I'll drink to that," I said, and he bought us all another round of drinks. Three cheers for bottomless wallets.

Kelly and Miranda, who had by now made friends with everyone in the bar, including the DJ, had started the dance party. The music was lousy, but after being bought another round of drinks, no one really cared. "Want another beer?" Andrew asked me. "Water's fine, thanks," I said. He came back with a Corona which he pressed into my hand. "Thanks so much," I said. Beer is $4.50 a bottle in Flanagan's. It's no wonder the bloody GNP of the country is so high. Miranda started dancing on top of the speakers. I decided that I wanted to leave. No one else did, so I caught the last bus back myself. After the fact, felt terribly guilty about leaving the girls alone, but the bar wasn't sketchy and the guys weren't sketchy (sort of) and really, in that kind of a situation, rationality takes a back seat to really, really wanting to sleep.


(In the end, the expatriate guys gave the girls $50 for the $40 cab ride home, which meant the girls made a net profit on the evening. Pays to go out! God bless all the generous rich people of this world.)

And then of course, there was lab in the morning, where I discover that I still can't really do good bio illustrations, but have since learned how to fake that I can. Drawing things in class, as Mamie points out, really brings one back to being in grade school, even if the drawings are of choanocytes and being done in the name of serious scientific endeavor.

Day 10

Telephone conversation with Dr. Angus MacDonald:
hello...hello...can i speak to j______ please...speaking...angus macdonald here...nice to talk to you at last...enjoying bermuda?...yes, but it's a little cold...not as bad as minnesota i bet...high of degrees...etc. small talk...no face-to-face interviews, thus this conversation...invitation extended to all those accepted in march...look around the campus, meet the people, feel for the program etc...kind of research we do...schizophrenia...collaborative efforts with cognitive neuroscientists, genetics labs, twin studies etc....physiological markers of psychopathology...why did you apply to a clinical program seeing as your focus in duke was research...fumble...hedge...want to give something tangible to society...where i envisage myself working...so is it the methodology that drives you or the interest in clinical work...fumble...oh, definitely fMRI is my passion...forefront of scientific discovery...where all the most exciting findings are being made...so much more to learn...etc...coupling of my interests...not a whole lot of opportunity to work with patients at Duke...('disordered individuals'? why did i call them that...note to self: learn how to talk)...funding...full funding even for international students...blah blah blah...you have much potential as a scholar...call me again if you want to chat/ask about anything...blah dee blah...have a good semester...exciting decisions in the next few months...bye...bye.

$0.58 a minute * 25 minutes = quite a lot of money put out by Minnesota for that one call.

Day 9

Our first field trip was slated for today, but 60 kph hour winds off shore unfortunately put paid to those plans. The alternate trip to the more sheltered Concrete Bay also fell through when the storm landed ashore; as a matter of fact, as I type this, the computer lab is slowly flooding with water, and the palm trees outside sound like they are in danger of being blown entirely away. Much as I hate to fixate on the weather, that's what has dictated the activities of this course so far. Because of our confinement, we have likened ourselves to a retirement community, and the metaphor grows increasingly apt.

Marine Invertebrate Zoology is turning out to be quite a lot to handle. The course proceeds at twice the pace that a normal course would at Duke (since we're only here half a semester), and every other word in our notes is something that I don't have in my scientific vocabulary. Do I really care if this microscopic organism is an pseudo-coelomate deuterostome? I suppose, though, that hard years of taking the 'O' and 'A' levels have trained me to be able to acquire an interest in anything if I try hard enough; also, I do have a long history of fooling myself, so what's one more semester?

In other news, Miranda and Kelly have got themselves hooked on this Cindy Crawford workout video, a video which reportedly has zero value as for one seeking to improve aerobic fitness because the camera is always trained on either (a) Cindy's ass, or (b) Cindy's boobs. The Chinese takeaway sells fried rice for $10.50. Bermuda has more televisions on the island than people, yet the newest television in the BBSR is older than than all of us. George Bush is an idiot. CBS is a money-grubbing network, but I know I'm going to tune in anyway. That is all.

Day 8

Resolution: Learn how to play croquet.

Day 7

It continues to amuse me greatly that the buses that ply the main road outside the BBSR do not have numbers - buses at the pink stops head towards Hamilton and those at the blue stops head towards St. George's. They also drive down the skinny roads like doomsday is approaching, missing most oncoming vehicles by mere inches. The trips I make into town are thus at considerable risk of life and limb, today's only just compensated for by a thick slice of lemon meringue pie and a rather good cup of coffee.


Meanwhile, in a continuation of the graduate school applications saga that I have missed talking about for a while, Dr. Angus MacDonald of the U of Minnesota has e-mailed me to I show a lot of "promise" and that he wants to chat with me. Just as I feared! I sent him a rather sheepish reply telling him that I am not in the States, and asking him to advise me on what to do next. No doubt he will have me call him (at considerable expense); either that or I will have to face the insurmountable difficulty of persuading the lady at the reception desk to patch the call through to a phone I can use, and of course the permutations of Things That Can Go Wrong with that arrangement are endless.

Sigh.

Books:
The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy

Day 6

The sun made a brief cameo appearance during lunchtime today, sending us all slinkng like pudding-bellied tabbies out to the front porch. Finished my Amis, which I enjoyed thoroughly (where has he been all my life?) and tore through Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire which I've been wanting to read/see for a while. Otherwise, time here continues to be a blacmange: homogenous, viscous, yet sweet. Everything here is langorous: it's not just that nothing happens, but no one expects anything to happen. A couple of days ago, I got to see one of the few turtles (120 years old) that actually came originally from the Galapagos Islands (the one, incidentally, in that famous picture with Shirley Temple riding on its back) - and his existence typifies, no, exemplifies the Bermudian way of life.

Classes-wise, I'm quite chuffed with the fact that all our instructors are British, since it means that for once, all my classmates are the ones who are fish out of water. We deal in kilometers, celsius, pavements and the letter 'zed' now, and I stand triumphantly spanning two continents, translator for those unschooled in the use of "real" English. There is a certain pride one feels in being a citizen of the world, but it has only really come to the surface here, at a place that has both British and American influence, but really is entirely unlike either.

What I need now, I think, is a Michener or a Clavell or some other similarly sprawling epic tale.

Books:
Visiting Mrs. Nabokov - Martin Amis

Day 5

The pride and joy of the BBSR, the Passin' Wind, turns out to be little more than a glorified hole in the wall with TV, foosball, a dartboard and a Buddha which looks like it has seen better days. Its one saving grace was that (last night anyway), they were offering free Foster's from a crate that was apparently donated to them/stolen/washed up ashore. Aside from us American/international riffraff, there were three British guys in their 30s playing neverending games of euchre on the bartop. I suppose they've been lacking a 4th for a while, because it wasn't long after they saw me eyeing the cards that one of them asked if I "play Spades, wee man." I confessed that I did, and they told me that they would cut me in. The euchre went on a bit too long, though, and I decided that I was tired and left. It seems that there were inquiries later on in the night as to whether I'm "good with cards" and a "gambling man": do I give off some Vegas vibe or something because of my long bridge-playing history?

Day 4

On food:
The woman serving the food in the evenings has clearly decided that I'm a "growing lad" or something, and I consistenly have to forcibly restrain her from piling ontp my plate about twice the amount I can actually eat. Tonight's meal was veal or eggplant parmigiana. When I asked for the vegetarian option, though, I ended up with both kinds of cutlet on top of enough spaghetti to feed a small Italian village. She will have to be told. Firmly.

On water:
Kelly: So, just out of curiosity, is the drinking water purified?
(We have been told previously that all the fresh water we have is collected on site, from rainwater that runs down from the roof)
Chris: Actually, no. Well, there's this wire mesh thing downstairs that filters off all the large chunks.
Kelly: That's it? Is it clean? Surely there's birdshit and stuff on the roof.
Chris: Yeah, and the birds walk around up there a lot too.
Kelly: Don't people fall sick?
Chris: Not often. I guess sometimes a rat or a cat gets down there and dies and the entire lab comes down with something...that's when we know to check the tanks.

The city of Hamilton, about 5 miles southwest of St. George, is a lot like Palo Alto, although chances are this will mean nothing to readers who have seen neither. The bulk of the place is spread along 3 parallel streets and a waterfront. The only concession to the American fast food joint is (mercifully) a KFC (very popular with the local school kids), and McD's is nowhere in sight. Praise the Lord God Almighty. Marks and Sparks has pride of place, although there are fewer British shops and goods than I thought there would be - no Holland's pies in the supermarket, although there is the English selection of Cadbury's candy bars (Blokie's: not for the ladies!), bakewell tarts, and a proliferation of salt and vinegar potato crisps. As usual, though, the Americans are the ones who seem to have had their way for most of the brand-name G+S stores. Eating places are mostly unreasonably expensive, and feature less seafood than I thought they would. Though I'm dying to try the fabled Bermudan rockfish, $23.95++ for a portion at the pub we went to seemed a little too exorbitant for my first week here, and I settled for a tepid pasta instead. Rum swizzle is also on the must try list, since it is to Bermuda what the Singapore Sling is to, um, Singapore.

(Winter) books:
Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson
The Following Story - Cees Notebloom
South of the Border, West of the Sun - Haruki Murakami
After the Quake - Haruki Murakami

Day 3
It is a well-known literary motif that to name something is, to some degree, to take possession of that thing, to claim it as ones own: casuarina, wahoo, chordata, pappadum, magazine, sargasso.

It is actually rather comforting to be able to write here. I wonder why. Even one-way communication into the void of cyberspace appears to be better than solipsistic silence.

Did not mention this earlier: all 6 coursemates are girls. Mamie, Ann, Laurie, Clay, Kelly and Miranda. Fun bunch in general, although male companionship would have been appreciated.

Introductory lectures in the morning, then a free afternoon spent exploring Horseshoe Bay and surrounding areas. The shores here are quite literally wind-swept, and the paths sometimes treacherous. We went into and around several of the 17th/18th c. forts built to defend Bermuda in colonial times, now dark, crumbling, and full of broken beer bottles and graffitti crying out for the legalization of ganja. A quiet late afternoon, before euchre in the evening while the rooms grew steadily colder. There isn't any heating (or air-conditioning) here, and the portable heater that was doled out to me gave up the ghost almost as soon as I turned it on. Will say it again: do not understand how this place is such an icebox. Weekend forecast: gale-force winds.

Food:
Mango chutney

Changed time zone to GMT (-4:00)

Day 2

Woke up at 4 in the morning because of howling winds and inexplicable cold, but somehow managed to get back to sleep. Jet lag moderate. Missing things intensely when I stop to think about them, so trying not to.

Perused eclectic collection of trashy novels and "recreational items" in the commons room before breakfast. Known authors include: Ayn Rand, Jeffrey Deaver, John Grisham. Unknown authors include: lots. "Recreational items" include: old Springbok Star Wars puzzle with half pieces missing, old VHS tapes of HBO series I've never heard of, "Sequence", the board game, a 2-year old daschund, and a black-and-white stray cat.

Books:
The Stone Diaries - Carol Shields

Georgetown, Bermuda

A time ago, before all of this happened, Shaun and I were together in OBS (Outward Bound School) trying to get through a 5-day 4-night camp. About midway through the experience, he told me that he was experiencing something very odd; he told me that it felt like his soul had departed his body, leaving behind his flesh as an empty vessel. While we were going through BMT together, he reported feeling the same thing at the times when the strain was the greatest, when he felt he really could not take it any more.

Going through 48 hours of traveling to get here was exactly like that, and I have this to say about it: Never Again. 2 hours in Changi + 13 hours to Frankfurt + 3 hours layover in Germany + 8 hours to JFK + 7 hours layover in New York (+ delays) + 2 hours to RDU + 7 hours of helter-skelter scrambling to get everything packed + 2 hours to Philadelphia + 10 minutes to hurtle across the airport to make my connection + 2 hours to Bermuda is Too Much Traveling. Too. Much. Traveling.

Towards the end, I literally felt like the Living Dead.

It exhausts me just to think about it.

Anyway, for better or for worse, I'm here in the Bermuda Biological Research Station, warm, clean, nursing myself back to life. I missed the orientation this morning, but the gist of it was filled in for me. Managed to accomplish a trip to St. George (20 minutes walk away) to procure a bus pass together with 3 of my 6 companions this semester. It's windy and rather chilly out, but the weather is expected to warm up by the weekend. Even so, the seaside views are gorgeous, and being indoors just because of a little rain seems quite a waste.

What have I seen so far? The houses are pastel-colored, the roads have no pavements, the people are absent. Prices are jacked up, time is slowed down. No one walks, yet only one car is allowed per household. I had the good fortune of landing a single room, number 314, pi, to match the irrational nature of my decision to come here, leaving behind what is certain and loved for the murky possibility of potential enjoyment.

Well: upstairs to rest, and to see what tomorrow might bring.