Break's Over...

My 5 day hiatus back to the states has come and gone. Highlights were: (in no particular order)

-Miyako's; ordering wine for the table like it was tap water and then having a heart attack when the bill came. (Thanks especially to Dede and Amber for making reservations and calling everyone.)

Our waitress wanted to kill us I think. Leigh Ann's eyes look weird in this picture, I was told to call special attention to this fact.

-The Moose.

-Drinking a bottle of wine and 12 pack of beers with my brothers and a couple old Crowley friends at their apartment in Lafayette. Also, later in the night, getting in a slurred 2 a.m. discussion about sleep disorders with Tommy. .

-Sleeping 15 hours a day, rather than 4 or 5.

-Dinner with about 30 of my closest family members at the El Dorado's

-spending $400 at Wal-Mart...actually....just the comfort of knowing that if I needed anything, I could go to Wal-Mart.

So for everyone that came by, thanks for all of the encouragement, free drinks, and good times. I would also like to extend special thanks to Wal-mart. Seeya at Christmas.

Here are a couple of pics from my flight back to SXM. The top one is of St. Thomas or Prickly Pear Island (one of the British Virgin Islands), and the second is of a sailboat about to get shat on by a big rainstorm just off the coast of St. Maarten (that tiny white dot is probably a 30 or 40 foot boat). I got spirit-crushing look of disapproval from the flight attendant for this one, being so close to landing.

St. Thomas (I think) about 150 miles west of St. Maarten.

That white speck is a sailboat about to get drenched by an approaching storm.

For anyone back home that's interested in a quick video of what school looks like and what my new living arrangements are, click here.

Miami International, the weirdest place on earth

It starts out nice, big atriums, news stands, well lit. But slowly the hallways get narrower, the carpet is frayed and ripped in places, florescent lights are intermittently flickering on a crusty patch of drywall from a busted pipe. You wonder "Am I going the right way? There is absolutely no one coming this way but me in this dimmly lit hallway, I mean concourse D is like a quarter of the airport and I just passed through a broom closet. This is getting eerie." I felt like any minute I'm going to run into some muppets, or David Bowie.
Finally, having walked almost 20 minutes not having seen anyone in a huge international airport I run into one guy who is walking backwards on one of those Jetson's conveyer belt things. I approached him cautiously, half expecting him to make me answer 3 riddles before being allowed to proceed to concourse D. Instead he realises there's actually someone else in this huge hallway and he mumbles something to the effect of "my...uh...flight....delayed....just waiting"

Then a little later, I look to my side and realise that I'm walking next to James Carville, Louisiana's own "Ragin Cajun," (you may recognize him from the movie "Old School," or "Lord of the Rings")

The conversation went like this:

Me: "Hey, are you that...debate...guy...." (probably came off as rude but I'm tired and my mind went blank with a name at the last minute) (prosopagnosia?)

James Carville: "yep, James Carville"

Me: "oh, cool...."

James Carville: [walks quickly away to act like he's buying a sandwich]

Well I'm finally at gate D34 and I board in 10 minutes. Hasta

Semester 3 has come and gone, it actually FLEW by, it literally seems like last week I was leaving the New Orleans airport for SXM looking up at that weird sculpture resembling an angel of death, hovering over an escalator. Maybe it is a public health campaign to educate people on the health benifits of taking the stairs? Either way its not really something you want to see before you hop on an international flight. You start thinking things like "What's my flight number again? American Airlines flight 2160.....hmm....American Airlines flight 2160....dove....into the Carribbean Sea this morning just off the coast of Florida....does my flight number sound like it could be on CNN? Shit."

All in all this semester was a good one. But I look forward to getting some much needed rest the next couple of days. Last night was especially bad, I woke up at 11 pm last night and never went back to sleep due to:

1. the racket made by enourmous mutant frogs outside of my window last night

2. the 4 redbull a day habit that I've adopted the past week and a half

3. the fear of not passing the neuroscience final, and

4. my sexually ambiguous Dutch neighbors blaring techno music all night.



I've got to tell you, that's not a good combination. Around 4 a.m. I almost snapped, and decided to go to school 4 hours early and study in peace (neuro went just fine btw). I have a 4 hour layover in Miami, where I sit now, sortof bored, regretting I ate half of something that looked like a giant "Combo's" pretzel snack from Sbarro.

All quiet on the Western...err...Southern? front?

Had a few gusts that were mildly impressive, very little rain surprisingly. The pictures below are from school and thats about as bad as it got. I forgot my camera today so I 'borrowed' them from Paul Kyser's blog...

It looks like Dean, now a Cat. 2, will pass to the south of us by some 200 miles, a tropical storm warning is still in effect for St. Maarten, and we will likely see some rain tomorrow morning or afternoon but the really bad stuff will give us a miss. It's projected to go into the gulf and then who knows from there, I'm scheduled to fly back to Louisiana for a week and I hope this thing doesn't follow me.

May have dodged a bullet...

Well, as of 11 a.m. this morning they adjusted the storm track going a bit to the south of st. maarten. Which is good, in a way....However even if the storm doesn't hit us it will disrupt air travel for many people, curtailing an already short break.

The administration, always timely in their decisions, met this morning to decide what to do about finals being held this saturday and sunday. Their plan? Wait until the last minute and have finals in the dark if need be....We recieved an email from the dean which spelled it out in not so clear terms. Someone was kind enough to summate the school wide email and comment. I think they did it better than I know how so I'll quote it:


"The administration just sent out an email to all the students... can anyone help me decipher its contents?


"You should prepare for exams as you normally would. There is also a possibility of power outages even if the storm does not hit St. Maarten because of rough seas and closure of the power plant."


Slightly confused... are we expected to take an exam in the dark? I suppose the broken generator may only be a rumor.


"It is highly recommended that you have a battery operated alarm clock so there is no chance of sleeping through your final exam. "


In other words, consider yourself warned. Thanks.


"I understand that this may be the first time many students have been exposed to a possible hurricane, so if you are experiencing increased anxiety, please see Dr. S or Dr. T.If our anxiety is related to being on an island where a hurricane might hit or else fail our exams"


how will talking to anyone help?


"If you have family members whose safety you are concerned about, you should schedule their departure as soon as possible. "


So you're implying that it's possible to be worried enough to evacuate our family members, but not ourselves. Why does this sound like a lawsuit waiting to happen?


"Flights off the island will become more limited as the weekend approaches. Good luck on your final exams and we will let you know Friday at 10:00 A.M. what will happen this weekend. "


Ok.. let me try to understand this one.. flights will be more limited as the weekend approaches, yet they will not let us know what to do until the weekend approaches?"

Me:
Man, finals....ugh, two comprehensives, two others, a stack of notes up to my knees....Really, I don't think it could get any worse....Well, at least I get to fly home on Sunday!





God:



Me:
Shit....



Ok, on a more serious note. The storm is still far out at sea and much could happen between now and then. In the rare chance that the storm does hit, the school is amazingly well equipped for a major catastrophe in that it is elevated, has its own desalination plant for water, and huge genorators that supply the whole campus. That's the good news.



The bad news is that I really don't know if I trust the administration to make the call at the right time to let us go if it becomes obvious the storm is going to hit SXM. Even if the call is made 36 or 48 hours prior to a major storm I would anticipate massive crowding at the airport, and ultimately not enough flights to accomodate everyone. This of course may result in some having to stay behind. The problem with this is, that when an official hurricane warning is issued (Louisianians, back me up on this) there is a mad rush and within 4 hours there is NO bottled water, NO batteries, NO candles, NO canned goods (unless you eat vienna sausages, ughhh). And that's in the U.S. with good supply chains. It could take a week or more to get significant shipments in with damaged ports. You can anticipate the electricity being out for a minimum of 4 days in the U.S. with even a Cat. 1 storm. They can't keep ATM's running, the water on, and the electricity buzzing for 10 consecutive days here in GOOD weather. I don't even want to think what would happen in the event of a storm. So if you're one of these people that thinks "Oh, I'll just evacuate if it is definetly coming here." Remember, in the most powerful country in the world, in the most Hurricane prepared state, whith billions of dollars in federal disaster relief money....it took 4 days to get water to the superdome.



I don't want people to ASSUME the storm is coming directly for us, it is by no means a certainty and its not the time to freak out or make bold decisions. There are a few benign things I would suggest doing as soon as possible just in case, however...



1. fill your car with gas
2. stock up on water, canned goods, batteries, candles and matches, hand sanitizer is a good buy too
3. take some cash out of the ATM
4. get an international phone card or two, its likely only landlines will work



Good luck on Finals.

Some I've taken recently, click images to enlarge:

"I have a friend who is an artist, and he has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. If you hold up a flower and say 'Look how beautiful it is' and I'll agree, I think [it is too]. And you can look in his eyes and see how honest he is, 'But you as a scientist always take this all apart and it becomes this dull thing.' And I think that he is kinda, nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and me too. I believe, though I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, that I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complex actions inside which ALSO have a beauty. I mean, its not just beauty at THIS dimension, this one centimeter; there's also beauty at a smaller diminsion. The inner structure, also the processes, the fact that colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollenate it...is interesting to me. It means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also occur in lower forms? WHY is it aesthetic? All sorts of interesting questions that the science knowledge only ADDS to... the excitement, mystery, and awe of a flower. It only adds, I don't understand how it subtracts."
--R.P. Feynman, Nobel physics laureate