Funnyquote Friday

As you may know, I've been heading up the Chess instruction at the Smart Moves Strategy Board Game Summer Camp at the University of the West Indies open campus this past week.  This morning I return for day 5 with the 20+ 10-12 year old kids from the greater Basseterre, and pray that I don't lose my voice from all of the talking, whispering, and shouting that I've done over the last five days.  And despite the kids' anticipated rambunctiousness, I've found that, on average,

• 50% of the students really love the game of Chess, get excited about learning something new, and look forward to Chess class every day
• 25% look on it as more than a game: the allure of the deeper meanings in Chess and the desire to become a stronger player is in their eyes
• and 25% are more or less ambivalent, content to come to class and play with the others, but not particularly enthralled about the advent of Chess as a hobby

A funny practical offshoot of dealing everyday with all three groups of students (usually in the same class) is that they all relate to me differently.  The top-performing 25% hang on my every word, and often seek out my attention for things that only loosely require it.  Furthermore, when a student from this subgroup happens to be a girl, (recall, this is the 10-12 year old range) they are oftentimes unabashedly seeking my attention more fervently than is, perhaps, appropriate.  Take, for example, when one girl took notice of my hair, and at one point reached out, uninvited, and grasped my (now relatively long) goatee, saying "I like your hair and all –

"But this... this has to go."

It's been a very rewarding week for me, as you might expect, and equally exhausting.  Even as I write this in anticipation of the day's events, I can't fathom yet another 8 hours with the students.  That said, I have been duly blessed by their cooperation and buy-in to my Chess teachings, particularly the ones that have taken off on their own and seek to challenge themselves further.  I look forward to trying out a possible mini-tournament, every hour on the hour for the four students at a time that I am hosting in the Chess classroom.  I'll let the readers know how that goes with my post next week.

Well, it must be hurricane season again, because we're already starting to get alerts for possible hazardous storm systems coming up from the Atlantic.  The first big one that is approaching is predicted to pass South of us, though as we know oftentimes the storms tend to gravitate North when they approach the chain of Lesser Antilles.  Still, as I was telling others, I would welcome the excitement of a little mini-hurricane: it would be the first one I've experienced since living in my own apartment.  But I don't want to jinx myself either, of course.

Chess Camp, Day 1

I will go hoarse by the week's end, I'd be willing to bet a month's Volunteer Living Allowance.

Today I taught all the rules of chess five times to five small groups of kids ages 10-12.  It really is the perfect age to learn chess: one is mature enough to sit quietly to learn and study the game (or at the very least feign interest), smart enough to capture all the rules in under an hour, and yet young enough to just have fun moving the pieces in unsophisticated fashions around the board.  And the fun for me comes from the one student in each group that shows a genuine interest in the dynamics of the game and the intellectual appeal.  It's especially rewarding to me to be handed the opportunity to, once in my life, pass down the knowledge and experience of something that means so much to me.  On average, in each group of four students, one student was especially interested and showed promise in the further development of his/her abilities, two more students expressed real enjoyment of the game and a desire to play further, and the last student just played along.  But you can be sure of this: 23 more young people in St. Kitts now know how to play Chess than did yesterday. 

As expected, after failing to gather enough (i.e. any) volunteers for my planned training session last week, the Chess demonstration board that I specifically requested for this pursuit did not come through.  Instead, I was relegated to my own oversized vinyl set for teaching the kids how to move and such.  Not that this was a problem for four kids and one adult huddled around a table; I was just careful to not allow them to play on my set after I was done teaching them.  *Shudder* I can still feel their icky school-aged hands all over my chess set.  And also as expected, the money for gourmet catered lunches from Neville's Eatery did not come in, so my lunch today was limited to two hot dogs.  Still, at 1 o'clock and after (essentially) lecturing for three hours at that point, it was delicious!

As not expected, we've had a minor weather system move in from the East, and it was Rainy Rainy Windy Windy all day.  This means that the planned outdoor games in the afternoon was halted.  And you, as wise readers, can extrapolate what that means for 23 young persons' energy levels.  Much like the rain in some places, they were through the roof.  Also not entirely expected, with the apparent dearth of volunteers, I was usually on my own in the Chess classroom, and there were only a handful of volunteers manning the Games room across the hall; one of the planners stopped by only very briefly in the morning and left again, much to the UWI director's consternation.  I'm still not sure what sort of miscommunication went on there, but suffice to say that if we hadn't had a recently dubbed young teacher come by and handle the students that afternoon, I don't expect that anyone would have.

It made for an exciting day, and I really look forward to the progress each of these students will make, particularly tomorrow when we discuss Check, Checkmate, and Stalemate, and the students get to play through their first real match.

COS Pon Us

It's funny how PC training is one of those things that one finds repellent at the beginning, when it is forced upon us for weeks at a time, but then looks forward to by the end of service.  Now, instead of being a month-long ordeal of flipcharts, security briefings, cultural awareness sessions, and more flipcharts, it's all about reconnecting with our fellow volunteers who have been serving on Antigua and St. Vincent for the last two years, and a dose of inspiration and retraining at the same time.  (Nothing like a little sugar to help the medicine go down.)  So it is in Antigua for Close Of Service Training where I will find myself from Wednesday to Sunday this week.  I will, as always, attempt to keep readers abreast of goings on at training with a brief post of the day's events each evening.  But until then, the news from the week past:

Imagine if the Dream Team came to town one day to play an Olympic qualifying match against, say, Spain, in a best-of-three format set to last all day.  Everybody who could would, most likely, get off work in the interest of seeing this nationally heralded confluence of talent.  In fact, if the town is small enough, businesses and government offices that were savvy to this might not even bother to try and operate on that day, conceding priority to this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle.  That scenario is a little like what we saw happen in St. Kitts on Wednesday: earlier in the week, in anticipation of the West Indies Test Cricket team hosting New Zealand to a 50 Overs one-day match at Warner Park, the government called for a work holiday that day in support of the Cricket match.  And rather than stroupes, shake my head, and wonder aloud what could be so important about a Cricket match as to shut down businesses that day, I chose instead to embrace the deviation from regular life and go attend the match.  I certainly learned a lot, most notably all about limited-overs Cricket, and enjoyed having an excuse to sit out in the sun for six hours (10AM to 4PM).  Unfortunately, the Windies underperformed that day, and dropped a match 249-168.  In fact, the pummeling was so harsh and our home team's showing so dismal, that one PCV friend of mine tried to cast it in a positive light by saying, "Well, at least we came within a hundred!"

I had a very heartening meeting on Thursday regarding the board games summer camp, now entitled Smart Moves Summer Board Games Camp.  I will be primarily responsible for two things: first, beginning next week, a day-long training session for the volunteers, and secondly of course the actual Chess instruction during the camp.  I have overarching outline already prepared –

• MONDAY • 60 min. • Individual Piece Movements, Rules of Chess
• TUESDAY • 30 min. • Starting and Ending a Match, Check & Checkmate • 30 min. • Freeplay
• WEDNESDAY • 30 min. • Openings, Piece Development • 30 min. • Freeplay
• THURSDAY • 30 min. • Common Mates, Endgame • 30 min. • Freeplay
• FRIDAY • 60 min. • Freeplay

Possibly, if I think the students are mentally ready for this step, I may institute a short 1-hour tournament, maybe 4 15-minute matches, for Friday's session.  I have lots of prizes left over from working at the school, so I'll happily use those then.  I'm already getting excited about this endeavor, and about the prospect of sharing my knowledge of something very important to me with the young people of St. Kitts.

I hope you enjoyed the last couple of videos added; if you didn't get to see them yet, check the Videos page.  Otherwise, if you're like me and anxiously anticipating the following months' contributions (February through June), know that they are on their way and should offer further glimpses into my work here in SKN as well as the beauty in nature that can be found here.  Additionally, (and I keep forgetting to mention this) please pray for assistance in my finding a job, specifically that I might hear back quickly from the two organizations I currently have outstanding applications with.  Finding the motivation and the focus to continue to job search is getting increasingly difficult, and I'm rapidly wearying from the process.  Thanks, and don't forget to give me a shout on Skype if you're not busy.

Funnyquote Friday

The office I work at in Basseterre, the NSTP, is in an old, decrepit building that is heavily infested with termites, among other vermin.  We've looked for other locations to move to, but the government, as a rule, cannot afford the down payment on a nicer office space.  The room where I work, the computer room (also the only climate-controlled room in the building) unfortunately has a wood floor in lieu of the more common tiled concrete floor, and in certain places the wood is sinking, warped, cracked, or quite literally falling through.  When Betty, the transient cleaning lady came by one afternoon and stuck her head in to the computer room, she stumbled on the threshold when it nearly gave way under even her meager weight.  She frantically exclaimed,

"Oi! [Prime Minister] Douglas ain't got no money
to look out for me?!"

We EC82 Volunteers received a welcome surprise on Wednesday: Close Of Service training, scheduled for the third week of July, will be held in St. Mary's, Antigua.  So I get to see everyone a third time and experience a third EC island, making this an experience I'm very much looking forward to once again.  COS is intended to help us, in the words of our Training Officer,

1. Reflect on, share and celebrate your experiences in the Peace Corps.
2. Develop plans for your remaining Peace Corps service as well as your readjustment to the United States.
3. Consider your short- and long-term goals, and determine options for life after Peace Corps.

... particularly in view of our remaining three months of service, which will be immediately in front of us come July.  In related news, judging by the guest list, my class of EC82 has diminished from its high-water mark of 28 down to 24 – that's only four volunteers lost in 22 months of service!  To give you some idea of how much I feel connected to the group, my first reaction to seeing the list was one of shock at what felt like a bunch of PCVs missing – but, in retrospect, I can now tick off the four in my head.  So that's an 86% retention rate - not too shabby!

I've spent a lot of time at The Ripple Institute this week, and I got a lot of work done towards a number of projects that promote the institute's public presence.  The new building sign will be hung on the office this week (barring any setbacks) and the logo (seen right) has been completed, approved, and finalized.  With this out of the way I was able to create official copies of the letterhead, enrollment form, and government NGO license.  The work there is rewarding, and something closer to what I had envisioned myself doing in NGO development on island.  And even though my time is more and more rapidly coming to a close, I hope to be around just long enough to see the Institute open and start functioning at capacity.

Well, the interview did not happen as planned on Tuesday, but it was rescheduled for the following week.  The company posted some new videos on YouTube this week, however, so I was able to catch up on some history and additional info that will hopefully serve me well.  Please remember me this upcoming Tuesday afternoon, when I will field questions from the co-founder and Senior Vice President of the company.

Funnyquote Friday

Oh man, I almost forgot to post today!  And one of the best weeks I've had here on the island wouldn't be complete without a great new (code for old) quote from April's issue of Serious Ting.  As the reader knows, I was the Design Editor for the second issue running, solely responsible for designing the graphics and layout of the 40-page, full color magazine.  As the previous Editor-in-Chief was on board for the second issue to deliver a couple of articles, one of which was on the "Origins of Serious Ting" which were previously shrouded in mystery, I had worked closely with him and so was not unpleasantly surprised when I discovered a little Easter Egg of sorts in that article.  The line goes like this: "As with other past design editors, [Andy Montgomery's] work in the Ting was a prequel to a long career in graphic design...

"... (Are you reading this, Chris?)"

I nearly fell out of my seat with laughter when I proofread the article the first time.  So, yes, I am reading this and with the requisite amount of glee.  I ended up choosing to move the shout-out to the small comic box adjacent that section of the text, for more comedic framing; to see it for yourself, check out page 3 of Serious Ting Volume XXIII, Issue 1.

So what made this such a great week?  Well, I was primed for a very humbling Tuesday, wherein a nexus of four separate long-term demands had settled onto that same 12-hour period: a maths tutoring session with the Beach Allen Primary students, an change in my status on a very important job application, a first interaction with my contact at the ICT Department, and a Team Trivia Quiz that I was co-leading that evening.  Curiously, in the end, the only thing that did go down as planned was the last of the four.  It was raining Persians and Poodles that morning, so I could not justify the half-hour walk to the school.  And after the debacle there last week, who knows? – maybe it was for the best.  I never did hear from anyone with regards to the ICT Department and their help in preparing server space to host our new website, so I made sure and followed up on that Wednesday.  And as for the job application, I received an e-mail notice at 12:15 the following morning stating that the company had, for the second time, delayed the decision to narrow down its candidate pool.  In unrelated news, I'm getting better every day at dealing with or else ignoring the fears and anxieties of ambiguity in a job search.  So I had most of the day to, instead, prepare a kick-ass quiz for the 18 people that showed up that night.  *sigh*

But then, out of nowhere, a very uplifting Thursday sprung upon me like a swift feline predator.  I spent the better part of the morning untangling the cobwebs in the part of my brain where my HTML and CSS knowledge resides, and managed to crank out the navigation frame of the website I am designing for The Ripple Institute.  ... LOL – the link – it didn't work, did it?  You know why it doesn't work?  'Cause I'm still working on the website! Anyway, even a basic framework is better than nothing, and I'm confident that the project will flesh itself out nicely over the next few weeks, but it won't go live until I am actually able to meet and discuss the specs with a representative from the ICT Department.  Once that happens, of course I'll make the new pages available here.

After this, I did the grocery shopping for tonight's dinner of stir-fried Barbecue/Teriyaki Chicken and Veggies on Rice and prepped for my interview at 1:00 with an organization looking for a Graphic Arts Designer.  It went very well; so well, in fact, that I was late leaving my house to go to the airport and join my friend in picking up her parents at the airport.   But! I ran into Karl, a fellow Hasher (that's a runner in the running club of the same name, btw) who gave me a lift out of the hot, hot sun all the way to the airport.  Finally, with the day's duties fulfilled, I relaxed and agreed to meet up with everyone at Sprat Net to welcome the island's newest guests.  A perfect day!  What could possibly go wrong... barring, perhaps, getting locked out of the car I was hoping to ride home in.  Oh well – another adventure, another excuse to ride the bus home.

Funnyquote Friday

The reception to my work on-island lately has been as variable as the weather this time of year.   In just the past week, I have been met with both extremes: at once I am praised and thanked for work I have not had a chance to do yet, and then again I am openly criticized for work that is proceeding on-schedule and showing great promise.  Fortunately I've managed to avoid becoming discouraged, or allowing my emotions to become equally mercurial.  Instead, I've managed to keep things in perspective here and maintain an even affect, though this was not particularly easy on Tuesday, when it wasn't just the students who were out to challenge my authority (although this happened in good measure) – it was a teacher as well.  Apparently responsible for the lowest-performing students in the sixth grade, she regularly sends three of her students for maths tutoring, which is two more than the median amount of all the classes.  When I went to pull out the three students as usual, she stopped me and casually informed me that she didn't believe her students were learning anything from me.  Stunned, I simply and politely responded, "Oh?"  She repeated, "I don't think my students are learning anything from you.  Do you think they are learning anything from you?"  I pointed out that, while the progress is slow, particularly for some students, that I believed that the work I was doing was indeed helping.  She requested proof: she asked to see the evidence of the work we were doing on paper for that day.  Since we have been reviewing for the Test of Standards (end-of-course testing) the last few weeks and have been working example problems on paper and in composition books, I obliged, though I was astounded at the gall and impertinence of this woman.  Shaken, I escorted the kids to the classroom, where they were no less unruly than the others had been that day.  We finished the session with less progress than I had hoped to achieve "under the gun," but since the work is largely cumulative, I presented the teacher afterwards with the notes sheet from our previous sessions.  She proceeded to quiz one of her students right there with the notes on the paper, at the entrance to her classroom, in front of me.  At this point I had had enough, so I walked away to collect my final gaggle of sixth graders.  She called after me, "Do you want to keep this sheet?"  To which I replied, "Yes I do.  I'll come back for it."

In my mind that day, I went through a dozen different ways I could have responded more assertively, esprit d'escalier that would have really stuck it to that careless teacher just looking for a scapegoat or someone to bully.  But I'm glad I handled it the way I did – I reminded myself of the support I have from virtually every other adult at the institution, and the positive strides several of the students have made in the handful of months we've been working together.  In this way I got over it in a few days, but I also don't plan to subject myself to that kind of unnecessary harassment again.  So believe me, if she abuses me once again, I will report her to the principal for unprofessional behavior.

My brother told me about a similar incident that happened to him at work recently, where a superior, tragically mistaken, alleged a lack of faith in his abilities.  I commiserated with him on the thoughtlessness of people no matter where you go.  I should have told him then that we have a saying for this down here, though I suspect it's not exclusive:

"Same s**t, different dialect."

Alternatively, I also have good news rife with positive life-changing potential.  I have recently made the acquaintance of a Dr. Izben Williams, former SKN Ambassador to the U.S., who lives on-island and who is involved in starting a youth development NGO in Basseterre.  His organization, picturesquely dubbed The Ripple Institute, has not yet launched and is looking for assistance in starting a website and online presence.  I received word of the need from a fellow PCV, and said I could help.  I've already begun work on ideas for logos, though I am waiting on the SKN Department of Information, Communications and Technology to identify and cordon the server space and domain for the organization's use.  There is no telling how long the turnaround on this largely simple task could take; fortunately, I can begin work of designing a simple website on my local drive.

As with everything I do here, the new work did not go unnoticed, and I have already received one proposition for website design assistance in the efforts of another volunteer.  This is fine; I welcome the sense of busy-ness that comes from having a full schedule, though I hope I can continue to create and problem-solve for as many groups as I can without sacrificing on potency.

Work at the AWANA chapter on-island is also going well.  A missionary couple from Indianapolis (this is their SKN blog) have set up the program at a church in Middle Island, and I go there on Saturday afternoons to be a team leader.  I never really got into AWANA in Hiawassee, even enough to be a Listener, despite my parents' diehard commitment to it.  But here and now, necessity almost demands that I be a Team Leader (Blue Team, so far) every week.  Though I must confess, I enjoy the Book Time with the children far more than either Council Time or Game Time.  I find it very inspiring to listen for the handful of kids that take the verses and activities in their books seriously enough to participate week in and week out.  Sure, there are the majority of the kids who didn't even remember to bring their study book, who are just there for the Game Time or the social aspect or for no other reason than their parents made them.  But every night I've gone, I've been able to find at least one boy or girl who was sharp enough and dedicated enough to have learned at least one section's worth of verses over the previous week, usually coupled with a willingness to study the next section for the half-hour we have devoted to Book Time.  These moments of successfully challenging the children and discussing the meaning of the verses with them has been more rewarding than I expected, and significantly more meaningful than simply watching our team outrun the other three teams around a big circle.

In other news, I received my first invitation for an interview, a mere 2 months after beginning my most recent job search.  Paired with this positive if dubious revelation is the fact that today is, by my understanding, the final day to hear back from the company I applied to last month, the one that I had devoted my entire April's free time to completing the largely abstract deliverable assignments.  Since I have not been scheduled for a telephone interview with that organization yet, I wouldn't be surprised to find out very soon that I have been passed over once again.  Despite these inauspicious results, I'm doing my best to stay positive, and haven't lost steam in continuing to seek out opportunities.

I wasn't exaggerating before: we really have had back-and-forth weather the past few weeks.  After the warmest March in recent memory, and an April that reintroduced rainstorms to the dry island, May has enjoyed equal shares of both phenomena, and seemingly on alternating days.  It's that time of year (again) when one has to pack both an umbrella and a pair of sunglasses, in the event that both are needed in the same short period.

Funnyquote Friday

In Palmetto Point, the next village over from where I live, there is a nice little down home grill on the side of the road which a family runs on Friday nights for a little supplementary income.  I was there a few weeks back, enjoying some barbecued ribs and beers with friends, when one of the patrons stepped over to our table and introduced himself.  He was clearly a little less inhibited, and possibly did not understand what we meant when we were Peace Corps Volunteers.  Whatever the reason, when we were leaving to walk up the hill to my fellow PCV's apartment, he said,

"Good night! Drive safely!"

For those readers who don't get the joke, it's not only that none of us had taken a car down to the grill in question, the irony was mostly borne of the fact that as Peace Corps Volunteers, the lot of us are not allowed to drive.  At all!  During the full extent of our term of service, as long as we are on-island, we volunteers are not allowed to operate a motor vehicle of any kind, or accept a ride on a motorcycle or other non-enclosed vehicle.  To be caught in non-compliance with this restriction could, if the circumstances warrant it, result in administrative separation.  The reason for this stipulation is presumably the inability of the Peace Corps Agency to afford liability insurance for all 9000+ current volunteers, which seems reasonable enough.  The practical offshoot of this reality is, however, that I have made an occupation of relying on either public transportation or on the generosity of friends to provide me with a lift whenever I need to go anywhere that is farther than I am willing to walk.

Speaking of walking, I'm getting into this fitness thing – just finished week 1 of the Hundred Pushups Challenge, a 6 week workout regimen designed to train your body to do 100 pushups in one go.  This week alone was a challenge: today I did 51 pushups over 5 sets.  Next week begins with 5 sets totaling 60+ reps and ends with 80+ reps!  Add to this my daily run and sit-ups, and I'm actively combating (pun ostensibly intended) my otherwise sedentary lifestyle.  I'm trying to bring my time for 1 mile down to around 6 minutes – today I managed to set my personal best for the year at 7:02 minutes.  So things are looking up!  Anyway, I'm tracking all of my progress at Fitocracy - the premier online social networking site for people trying to stay fit - and you can too!  The program is currently in closed beta testing, so you need an invite from me (while supplies last!)

The newest Serious Ting has been officially released online; check it out when you get a chance.  As with the previous issue, I'm very proud of how it turned out, and I really like the HEART & SOUL theme that sorta happened on its own.  St. Kitts and Nevis was very well represented in this issue, too, offering 4 articles by 3 PCV authors and 2 contributions from a pair of host country nationals (not to mention yours truly).  The printed copies are expected in a few week's time, and I'll make sure and grab my fair share to spread around to each of my public circles.  Gotta spread the good word!

Also, I never did quite get the hang of networking.

Funnyquote Friday

In praise of a particular high school instructor that hosts A Ganar meetings in her classroom, an upper level administrator from the same school mentioned that she is always present, always comes early, always leaves late – even on Fridays!  Moreover,

"What other 4A6 teacher do you know
that comes to work on a Friday?"

So a rather poignant quote for this week, more than a LOL kind of funny.  But it serves to highlight one of the curious problems the schools here in St. Kitts and Nevis faces.

Well, the latest edition of Serious Ting, Volume XXIII Issue 1, is metaphorically out the door!  As soon as they start shipping, I'll post a photo of the cover, and there should also be an accompanying link to a virtual edition of the magazine as well.  I'm pleased with it, for my part, and once again proud to show off our mutual contributions as a Peace Corps community here in the Eastern Caribbean.  This edition will be printed just in time to be made available for the outgoing EC81 class, set to COS in mid-April.  Analogously, there will be plans to prepare a second issue for this calendar year, presumably in time to be distributed before I end my term of service in mid-October.  I, however, will decline to be responsible for the layout of that edition, as I anticipate a hefty schedule in the declining months I have here.  However, it will also be satisfying to pass on my previous examples and assistance to the one that eventually takes my place – not to mention enjoy the expression of another one's expertise.

I recently threw my lot in with the Fitocracy, due to a previously sought yet admittedly unexpected invitation to their limited-membership beta test.  It's a social network for people who want to (1) get in shape, (2) stay in shape, or (3) brag about how in shape they are.  Since experiencing those rare and usually fleeting desires myself quite recently, I took to it swimmingly rapidly.  I've already carved out a workout regimen for myself, involving running the dirt path away from town and back for a total of ≈2.25 miles, followed by alternating sets of inclined push-ups and sit-ups, up to 4 sets each.  I'm seeing some moderate performance results already: I set my personal best in total push-ups and sit-ups yesterday.  The physical results, i.e. strength, conditioning, and muscle tone, are naturally slower to come.  But I'm staying positive, and not getting down on the times when I am unable to fulfill my goal for the day.  Rather, it usually steels me with a stronger resolve to make up for it the following day.  Here's hoping my parents' much-anticipated arrival on Sunday doesn't mess up my routine too much.

Speaking of which, I went ahead and planned out the first eight days of my parents' stay here, almost down to every meal.  I'm much more excited about getting to show them a piece of my life here on the island, though admittedly it will never meet up to exactly the same experience, since, for among so many other reasons, they will be driving me around in a car.  Woot!

Funnyquote Friday

Trying to find a fellow Peace Corps' home in Keys Village, I was given the following directions:  Get off the bus, and go up the hill.  Take the second right off the main road.  Then,

"Keep going until you pass the squished frog."

What makes this extra funny, is that my traveling companion and I did actually find this remnant of an unfortunate amphibious excursion, the latest victim of mindless road rage and an unwitting landmark guidepost.

This is my last week of work on the Serious Ting before it goes off for approval in St. Lucia.  I'm pretty excited about how it's shaping up, and as usual I look forward to seeing the end result in print form.  I've cordoned off this weekend entirely for putting the final pieces together, and exporting the result.

I've spent every evening this week visiting a different high school in town and interviewing applicants of the A Ganar project for official USAID paperwork purposes.  Every evening beginning at 5:00 and going until after sunset, trying to coax thoughtful responses from 4A6 students (high school seniors, lowest achievement stream), I am exhausted by the end of the day.  The result has been that when I get home in the evening, I'm too tired to cook and eat simple high-carb meals like PB&Js or Mac&Cheese.  As the week has progressed, I didn't have the energy to get up early to perform my usual workout regimen, which has made me feel even more bleahhh...  So even though it is the start of Lent this week and I was hoping to use that as further incentive to keep to my new self-improvement activity, I'm likely going to have to wait until this weekend to continue going with that.

My mother, in response to my laments of loneliness here on my island, mercifully and charitably (though guilelessly) recommended I read the book of James – given that was the material her church family is currently exploring in a sermon series on that book of the Bible.  But anyone that knows the book of James knows that it is hardly applicable to someone that sincerely needs a morale boost.  Instead, she should have recommended the wise words of Holland-Dozier-Holland via the dulcet chords of Phil Collins.  Now, far be it from me to compare this favorably against scripture; I'm just saying that in this great big world and full life we've been given, inspiration can come from all kinds of different sources.

Funnyquote Friday

In a joint training session for instructors of the NSTP and Project Strong, one that devolved into nothing more than a philosophical discussion about who was more at fault for the declining standards of this generation's youth - the parents or the youth themselves, one individual provided the token technophobic argument, by pointing out,

"They all have a Blackberry®. 
I have a gooseberry."

So, what's going on?  Let's see... Last weekend was a real trial for me, but I got through it with only a few scratches.  Valentine's Day on this lonely island was no better, but there's nothing like a Valentine's Day come and gone to push oneself to get more fit.  So the last few days I've got started on my running once again.  My sleep schedule is finally such that I can go to bed regularly around 9:00, get up refreshed at 6:00 sharp, and be done with my workout by 7:00, in time for an early shower.  I'm going to supplement my runs, this go-around, with sets of push-ups and sit-ups.  I did that this morning, but really I had no choice: I noticed a spasmatic muscle/tendon behind my left knee this morning, and it was bad enough to prevent me from running.  So I'm going to give that the weekend to heal, and try and focus on my upper body in the meantime.

Work on the Ting continues.  I'm down to my last two weekends before I need to send away a final draft to St. Lucia for official PC/EC approval.  I'm still sanguine in my chances for pulling off the one-month turnaround time, but next week's schedule of A Ganar interviews every weekday evening from around 5:00 to 10:00 is going to be grueling, not to mention interfere with my Ting work time (and sleep schedule! *gloom*)  Anyway, seeing how the month is half gone, I should probably let my boss know that my family is going to be in town come March.  One thing's for sure – having a hard deadline at the end of the month sure makes the days fly by a lot faster!

Funnyquote Friday

There are multiple ferry companies that service the route between Basseterre, St. Kitts, and Charlestown, Nevis.  However, one of the companies has inexplicably stopped running since before the new year – the Mark Twain, as it is called, has grounded its boats "until further notice."  This means that other companies, in order to fill the now vacant timeslots, have tried running more boats to meet the demand.  The Sea Hustler, for one, has a half-passenger half-vehicle ferry that I had not seen running before this month, but now see all the time.  The locals commiserate with me on the drop in quality of these "new" additions to the fleet: in the words of my Nevisian coworker,

"The Sea Hustler – it doesn't really hustle..."

In fact, it takes a few minutes over an hour for this unideal ferry to traverse the miles between wharfs, which means that after its 7:00 departure from St. Kitts, it reaches Nevis at 8:05, with a scheduled 8:00 departure time.  With minutes to board, and scurrying along the water, it reaches St. Kitts at 9:10, and prepares for its 9:00 departure.  With a boat that loses 5 minutes every hour, it only makes sense to schedule it for hour-and-a-half runs so it can reasonably maintain its timeslots and not make all its passengers late.  But since the hour-by-hour method is the way it has always been done, there is too much inertia to overcome, and this almost certainly will not change.

Progress on the Ting is coming along nicely.  With several articles typeset already, and work put into the holistic look of this new issue, I'd estimate that I am on track to meet my deadline of February 26.  No decision on the cover artwork yet, though that might get pushed nearer the end of the month, once the tone of the whole magazine has been established. 

In other news, things at work are getting a little strained.  Now that my Intro to Computers class has ended, and the A Ganar project has started up, I have effectively run out of projects at work to keep me busy.  So my time is mostly filled up with small IT trouble-shooting, a task that is so coarse and unnerving for me that just one out-of-control situation is enough to make me unsettled.  It's hard to explain how stressful it is being the "go to guy" – since I am apparently the senior staff member in terms of experience with these tech issues – and yet not really being properly equipped to handle 60-75% of them.  The expectations of my coworkers is that I know these great and terrible secrets about their computers, and that I can magically flip their console upside down and, with a wave of my hand, fix all their computer inadequacies.  Since this is not the case, 60-75% of the time I fall below expectations, which is a heavy performance anxiety burden for someone like me, who's not used to being so unhelpful.  This, combined with the fact that I don't have much else going on there, means that my job satisfaction at my primary assignment is suffering right now.  I'm considering calling a meeting with my boss and my APCD for the end of the month – I don't want to do it sooner, due to my being busy with Serious Ting goings-on.

July in November?

I went by the school yesterday in order to take picture and video of the children receiving the books from Hands Across the Sea, which did in fact arrive while I was attending to matters in the States.  However, the principal suggested that I might do better to come on Thursday morning of this week.  I said that even though it was Thanksgiving, I would be happy to come in briefly that morning and snap some shots.  So, sooner rather than later, we should have some new material for the blog in the form of happy kids and teachers getting an early Christmas surprise.

If I'm not careful, I'm going to forget about the special event tonight: starting at 7:30 at the Parliamentary Chambers in the Government Headquarters is the Remarkable Teen project presentation, which my dutiful colleague has spent months in preparations for, and who plans to welcome many government dignitaries to the ceremony.  I don't know how long it will go (or how long it will go over, for that matter), but I'm interested in seeing if the government leaders in attendance will appear sincere in their accolades for these couple dozen remarkable Kittitian teenagers.  The best part of it, I suppose, is that I'm free of any duties for the evening, so I have the luxury of just sitting back and enjoying the spectacle!

A couple of blog matters to tend to: first, here's a doff of the cap to 150 blogposts.  A milestone of sesquicentennial proportions!  Admittedly, I find it hard to imagine 149 other posts as trite and uninformative as this one.  And sadly, I have no real cake to mark the occasion, so this will have to do:

And in honor of this (quite pedestrian) achievement, I decided to prepare a little surprise for everyone; I know how long it's been since you last enjoyed a new movie from me, so I took a little extra time to make this latest video something new and exciting.  I hope you like it as much as the others, despite the content being four months old.  Feel free to share your thoughts and comments on the video below.

Funnyquote Friday

When I go in to work at the NSTP, I have a few places in the office I feel comfortable working at.  The highlight video from January shows my work station in the central breezeway, where most of my coworkers can be found.  I like working there, but sacrifice strong wireless internet connectivity, desk space, access to a 110V power outlet, and air conditioning when I do.  All four of these things can be found instead in the computer lounge adjacent the breezeway.  Indeed, that is where I find myself as I compose today's post.  Well, one day my frequent Kittitian companion in the computer room, Maurice, commented on the state of the air conditioning.  As it had been blowing nonstop at full power for the whole workday, it was rather chilly in the room.  I observed that the air conditioning could stand to be turned down a little – his response:

"That's not air conditioning, that's cold storage!"

It's certainly been an eventful week.  I enjoyed spending the weekend on Nevis, where I said goodbye to my fellow volunteer whose term of service just finished.  Then we had her over to St. Kitts on Monday night for a goodbye dinner, before she caught her flight out Tuesday morning.  All of us here really enjoyed getting to know her, and we're sorry to see her go, but we're also happy that she was able to fulfill her two years here and spend that whole time helping the youth on Nevis become more mature, responsible adults, as well as better swimmers and Mandarin speakers!

Also on Monday I submitted the final changes to the Remarkable Teen pamphlet to the printer, and discovered that I found a caffeinated beverage at Rituals, the local coffee shop in town, that I like: a spiced chai latte.  Which, fortunately for me, is basic enough that I expect I can find it just about anywhere.  This makes the third beverage I have grown to like in just the year that I have lived on island.  The others, namely beer (in which drinking from a glass bottle does change the taste a little, but mostly just getting past the initial "I want to try it" to the "I want to like it" stage was what proved to be most crucial) and rum (in which it turns out that so-called "Caribbean Rum" marketed in the US is way WAY stronger and more pungent than the cheaper rums sold in the Caribbean) have also helped ease some of my limitations around social drinking.   Now whether its a bartender or barrista asking me what I want, I'm set!

Then on Tuesday, I visited my new acquaintance, Ms. Learnice Mitchell, down at the National Museum.  Her idea of using the auspices of the St. Christopher National Trust to publish a special pamphlet/magazine celebrating the renovation of the St. Thomas Anglican Church is taking off, and I'm happy to be participating.  It's the first time ever, I believe, that I've been brought on to a project in a sort of consultant role, where my expertise and opinions are valued and followed!  The resulting confidence boost and ego trip is rather exciting, too.  It really serves to confirm my belief that I would, in fact, be well suited for a career in consulting, whatever the consultancy firms and their hiring reps say.  I must confess, though – I may have made a bit of a power play to get the SCNT to take me seriously.  I did bring by a copy of my recently published issue of Serious Ting, in it 40-page full color glory, knowing that this was something above and beyond what Learnice envisioned for her project.  The result was as I had hoped: she nearly fell out of her chair when she saw what was possible if given the time, skill and resources.  Naturally, she now wants to bring the project as close to this benchmark as possible, but we're already running into the issue of financing – the moneys for printing would almost exclusively have to come from in-print advertisements, which means marketing a not-as-yet-seen product to the businesses around the island, specifically the ones that target tourist business.  Which, in turn, means that the content of the magazine should be appealing to tourists, and made readily available to them (perhaps to be sold?).  There are still lots of questions to be answered, so more on that later.

Then again, on Wednesday, I taught my first Intro to Computers Applications course:  from 1:00 to 3:00, I spent the afternoon in an airy classroom with 5 teenagers enrolled in the Certified Electrician course offered at the NSTP.  As part of the curriculum, two hours a week are given to supplementary material on working with computers, and I was asked to pick up that class.  It went almost exactly as expected: the kids were bright, felt engaged when we talked about something of interest to them (which wasn't the same for everybody, but everybody found something at some point in that span), and did whatever they felt they could get away with to disengage when they got bored (i.e. listen to an iPod, fiddle with a laptop, leave to use the restroom).  Still, we somehow managed to get through all of the material I had planned for that day, using up the full two hours – wouldn't want to set a bad precedent!  And even though the material is supplementary in nature, and the kids probably won't even be tested on it, I hope that they still learned something in the process.  Call me cynical, but even though the kids were grateful and clearly eager to take home the notes we copied for them, a finer investigation might just reveal the blank side of the paper being used at home as free copier paper, something that remains rare and expensive on island.

Furthermore, on Thursday, I continued working on a new project for my PC administrative assistant here in St. Kitts.  Her church is celebrating an anniversary (so sorry, I don't remember which!) this November, and she wants a highlight video to be compiled and prepared especially for this occasion.  A simple enough task, you say?  Excepting, of course, that the source material that she acquired for the video is actually film on VHS tapes – requiring a conversion that is certainly possible but for which I do not have the necessary tools.  So I left it to her: get me digitized copies of the source material, and I'll do whatever I can do.  She got back to me last weekend with the DVDs, which I inserted into my MacBook on Thursday to find, to my dismay, that the video had been converted as video viewable by a DVD player.  This meant that I had to spend about 4 hours ripping three 2-hour videos from the DVDs to my hard drive, into a .m4v format.  When I tried importing these into iMovie, I discovered, to my even greater dismay, that the encoding was slightly off, and I first needed to convert these DVD rips to MPEG-4, which would be readable by iMovie.  This conversion, frame by frame, took my computer over 7 hours straight, finishing off my day.  The good news in the end was that I was able to import the final converted ripped videos into iMovie (which took another 30 minutes) and managed to get some housework done, too!

Whew; told you it was a busy week.  So, what do you think of my new favicon?  (That little square to the left of the URL in your browser.)  Cool, eh?  At least until Ting soda bottlers find it and tell me to take it down...

Funnyquote Friday

Every Tuesday night is an excuse to go down to Frigate Bay for Team Trivia, an event patronized by British expatriates, Ross students and PCVs alike.  Since it is too far down on the Southern Peninsula for public buses to travel down there, "grounded" folk like myself have to hitch lifts from other gracious residents of the neighborhood – in my case, my neighbors and their friends.  Practically, this means that I am regaled weekly with amusing stories from Nottinghamshire and The Old Country, and often partake in discussions about the quirky differences in our allegedly common language.  One such discussion led to naming car parts.  In the information age, of course, everybody calls parts of the computer (the CPU, RAM, monitor, mouse, keyboard) the same thing, since they were developed in the time of near-instant overseas communication.  But autos?  At the turn of the (previous) century, everyone presumably had to come up with their own names for things.  And as it were, popular acceptance of car part names varied greatly across the pond.  For example, when our friends' jeep is crowded, and I have to sit behind the back seat, in the trunk, it is not to be called the trunk.  It's "the boot."  As in, "into the boot wit' ya."  Alternatively, if you needed to check under the hood, Brits would give you a double take, since it is not called a hood.  It's called "the bonnet."  So from boot to bonnet, our names for things are very different.  More often than not, the British name is accepted as the end-all-be-all, but occasionally the American English word is considered more practical.  For as my British neighbor so adroitly observed, to all of our great amusement,

"You'd never see a movie called
Boyz In the Bonnet."

So... good news!  A great vote of thanks to the Jabez Sunday School Class of McConnell Baptist in Hiawassee, who have collectively covered the $300 to fund a donation of books to the library at the Dr. William Connor Primary School.  This means that my first fundraising undertaking in the Caribbean was a success, and the results should be seen very soon – as per my understanding, the books should have already been purchased, and will be shipped within days.  I now have to prepare the library for the incoming book barrage!

Cover design by Yours Truly

Additionally, I just finished putting together the event program for the Remarkable Teen project, a youth empowerment project as envisioned by my colleague here on St. Kitts.  The same creative mind that put together the Healthy Breakfast project has, for this latest idea, collected the names and inspirational stories of 25 teenagers as nominated by the community.  The honorees will then be presented their awards at a specially called session of parliament.  Unfortunately, I will be in the States come November 10th, but I'm sure the event will go as smoothly as envisioned.  At the least, I know the students are thrilled about their selection, and excited to be noticed for something positive, instead of negative.  The event program itself is a behemoth: 25 pages of profiles, each between 1/2 and 1 full page of 12pt, single-spaced text in length.  I had the pleasure of reading each person's story (ranging from the familiar, to the unfamiliar, and all the way to the horrific) and their strong, self-propelled climb to the place they find themselves today.  It's a terrific project, and I was happy to be able to contribute to it in a creative, productive fashion.

Mid-Service Training has been scheduled for the week of November 14th, so I anticipate being busy for those five days, with the possibility of being on a different island!  From my sources right now, the odds are 50/50 that we on St. Kitts could be shipping to a different island for training.  Travel costs and available facilities are, naturally, the biggest determining factors of that decision.  So I'm eager to find out soon, and especially to see some familiar faces after a full year of service!

Funnyquote Friday

Seen on a sign at Frigate Bay, advertising for home air conditioning sales and services:

"Your wife's HOT!!"

Well, I'm pleased to report that I have a bit of a swagger back in my step after the doomy gloomy first half of the week.  A few notable things going down helped to get me back in a positive frame of mind: First, I met with fellow volunteer (whose blog you can read here) who asked me to sign on with her "Remarkable Teen" recognition program, running through the Ministry of Youth.  I'll help put together a booklet highlighting each of the 25 students that have been selected for commendation, in a broad array of categories like "Scholar Athlete," "Civic Involvement" and "Fashion Design."  The booklet will be distributed to parents and community leaders, and a special session of Parliament will be called to honor the students in early November.  I met with my friend over lunch to discuss the project, and I was impressed, as always, with the scope and magnitude of the undertaking.  That, as well as being complimented on work I hadn't even submitted yet helped soften me up to take on the assignment.

Second, I was asked by another fellow volunteer to visit the National Museum on Thursday in order to discuss my involvement in their upcoming newsletter, which will feature renovations on the old St. Thomas's Anglican Church.  Ms. Mitchell, who works for the St. Christopher National Trust and is in charge of the newsletter, was grateful for my vote of assistance in either writing or copy design, and I'm expecting a note from her in the future with more details on how I can help with it.

Thirdly, and most exciting, the Serious Ting has been printed and shipped – I picked up my 5 copies this morning!  One will go to the office, one will stay at my apartment, one will come home with me for friends and family, and two will remain free-floating until I find a use for them.  And they turned out great: 40+ pages of full color photos alongside challenging articles written exclusively by Peace Corps Volunteers currently serving in the Eastern Caribbean.  I'm very proud of my involvement in the project, and look forward to participating once again for the next issue.  Even 3 shots in my shoulders this morning (HepA, HepB, and Flu Vaccine) couldn't bring me down!

Good to be back.  Also, someone's finally getting a little long-deserved credit, it seems.

Something Old, Something New

As my term of service stands roughly at one full year, and I recently submitted my third trimesterly progress report to the Peace Corps Headquarters in Washington, D.C., I felt like this would be a good time to take a small glimpse into that report.  Of the many angles we are asked to look at our service over the previous four months, the most difficult for me to answer is the section labelled "Success Story."  You may come to your own conclusions why that it, but I fear it has mostly to do with my tendency towards apprehensive pessimism.  I do not remember perceived successes as sharply as failures, and this bias often clouds my objective assessment of the effectiveness of my work here.  With that said, here is the story I chose to be this semester's "success story:"

With the school year winding down, I knew I had a little more free time to devote to new secondary projects during the summer.  So I scheduled a couple of meetings in the interest of kicking off a pair of new projects: one with Fr. Christopher Archibald, Associate Rector at the St. George's Anglican Church, in the interest of starting up a youth group to combat AIDS spread and school drop-out rates, and a second with the Ministry of Education's Curriculum Development Unit in the interest of promoting the Math Activities pamphlet and distributing it to the schools on the islands.
Five minutes early to the meeting with Fr. Archibald, I considered the directions he gave me to the church office, and yet I was unable to pinpoint which building was the office.  I spent the next half hour trodding up and down the residential street, stopping occasionally to inquire at houses and ask if they knew the whereabouts of the office.  Finally, as I came upon it, Fr. Archibald met me outside as he was leaving to go on an emergency call he had just received.  We quickly scheduled for next week, pushing my two meetings to the same week.
Attending the CDU meeting which a contact had set up for me, it became clear as time neared that the contact was going to be unable to make the meeting.  Furthermore, the CDU representatives were under the impression that I was prepared to make a multimedia presentation; I had simply brought a single hard-copy of the Math Activities booklet.  Thinking fast, however, I obtained a virtual copy of the document from a previous e-mail I had sent, and borrowed one of the CDU's student-use laptops to make an off-the-cuff hour-long presentation of the material.  The CDU director was pleased, and I will shortly get back in touch with him to finalize the project.
Later that week, I trudged through the beginnings of Tropical Storm Irene to meet with Fr. Archibald, and this time I was forced to wait at his office, as he forgot our agreed time and drove from home to meet me.  In time, however, it became clear that my suggestion for a youth boy's program was something of interest to him and the church, and indeed until just a few years back, the church had been sponsoring a program very similar in nature.  So with many of the foundational aspects already in place, I offered the willingness to pick up a share of the legwork it would take to bring the program back, and this was met with enthusiasm.  I was very grateful, therefore, after much time and anxiety borne of ambiguity, that my ideas for new projects were met with such positive results.

I may not have mentioned yet that I was asked by the new principal of Dr. William Connor Primary to collect some new books in the interest of expanding and revitalizing the defunct school library.  I was referred to a charity organization called Hands Across The Sea, a book purchasing and donating organization whose goal is to promote child literacy in the Eastern Caribbean.  They've already helped several of my compatriots on other islands around the EC, donating upwards of US$25,000 worth of books annually.  Upon contacting them and learning that their book drive delivery is usually mid-October, and that they are in full swing to begin delivering shipments to the 80 schools and libraries they serve, they were still graciously willing to accommodate DWC Primary's request.  This is my first procurement/fundraising project, and it's starting on a strong foot!  Please check out their website, which shares some of their success stories, both in letter and video forms, as well as my own request for aid on their wishlist page.  I am asking for $300 to help HATS purchase new books from Scholastic®, a total which will then be matched by HATS and the sum quantity sent to DWC Primary.  In order to be in compliance, however, we need to have raised the money by November.  So I appreciate any speedy help in achieving this goal.

And I'm pleased to introduce a new blog header for the occasion.  Those are Ting brand bottle caps in the middle.  Enjoy!

Funnyquote Friday

In one of our great post-workday conversations, my coworker and I were discussing getting back and forth from the country.  I mentioned that I was grateful that my girlfriend only lives a short jaunt away on the bus.  "Jaunt?" she asked, as though never hearing the word before – in fact, she had not: they don't use it around here.  I explained what it meant, and added, "Besides, if I don't want to take the bus, I can always walk."  She gave me the incredulous look she always keeps for me when I start talking about walking distances strictly reserved for car travel.  I was anticipating this, and pointed out that it only takes 20 minutes along the road to walk to Ross University, near to where my girlfriend lives.  She responded:

*gasp* "That's almost thirty minutes!"

I have a lecture this morning, so I am making this post brief.  I will be presenting a basics tutorial on MS Excel to staff of the NSTP.  If it goes well, I'll continue on Monday with a similar lecture on MS PowerPoint.  At our last office meeting, some of the employees specifically asked me to take on this project.  In truth, I put it on the back burner for a while, and now it seems that one of the interested parties will be taking an extended hiatus to the States, so we're cramming in these two sessions before she leaves next week.  Hopefully some of what I teach will stick and prove useful in the future.

Looking forward to catching up on some projects this weekend, namely fleshing out the proposal for the youth group with St. George's Anglican, and adding some activities to the book of math games.  I need a de-tuner after yesterday, in which I spent the entire day finishing up the Serious Ting, making the edits from PC St. Lucia (EC HQ) and exporting high-quality .pdfs of all 44 pages (40 pages of content, plus inside and outside covers).  Here's hoping the printing goes well... I'm so entirely burnt out of that project now, I can't give it another thought.

Funnyquote Friday

Last Sunday at church, during the notices:

"...And a very happy birthday to Ms. Janet Caines.

She was born on the same day as Fidel Castro."

I've avoided the issue long enough: it is getting increasingly difficult for me to post on a regular thrice-weekly schedule.  The combination of getting caught up in other projects, sporadic Internet connectivity, and a full-on collision with the summer doldrums has left me both incapable and moderately unmotivated.  So apologies if you've pulled up the page in recent weeks and didn't experience something dramatic and new.  I guess the same goes for new video blog entries as well.

On to the news for the week.  I was successful in putting in motion two new projects for the upcoming school year, namely a youth group associated with the St. George's Anglican Church, as well as a distribution outlet for my Math Games curriculum.  I'll put a little time into a couple different entries next week elaborating on the direction of both projects, but for now, the good news is that both meetings went better than expected, and I've got some new developments that will, hopefully, ultimately supplant the school's projects that I finished up at the end of last school year.  Also, the word back from St. Lucia on the Serious Ting is that we are very close to going to print with it, and we may be able to cajole full-color output for it!  So that's very exciting.

My girlfriend has finished her final exams for this trimester, and will be heading home to the States for an overdue two-week vacation.  In that time, I'll be responsible for watching her two cats, Nebula and Pigeon.  I'm happy to do it; the way I see it, at worst I'll have some additional company while she's away, and at best, I'll have a better understanding of whether or not I would enjoy keeping a pet in the 14 months I have remaining here.  I'm also taking advantage of the excuse to give my apartment a good scrub-down, mostly of the wash dirty dishes + clear cobwebs variety.

In other news, apparently, I am a cruciverbalist.  I never knew there was such a thing, until now.  So watch out for any future updates involving crisscrossing words.

Funnyquote Friday

Catching up with a good buddy of mine Wednesday night on Skype, and mentioning that the Peace Corps is phasing out the program on St. Kitts following my term of service, led to this gem:

"So they figured, [after you,] how could they do better?"

Something like that.  Whatever the reason, though, it's true that my class of EC82 will be the last bunch sent by the U.S. Peace Corps to St. Kitts and Nevis for the foreseeable future.  The disappointment that each one of us volunteers feels is, as you might expect, a fraction of what the host-country national stakeholders feel: projects, burgeoning NGOs, government institutions that have all recently been approved for a new PCV have since been told that their request, while always subject to last minute change, will not be honored.  This change is most likely due to the combined effects of the manifest limitations on the government agency's budget, and the continued rise of living expenses for volunteers (and indeed, everyone) living in this corner of the world.  Speaking just from personal experience, the purchasing power of the average individual here is very small, despite the image that everyone and their kid walks around with a Blackberry®.  Curiously, this seems more often true than not; as first-world amenities come to this developing nation, so does the vanity of having, and more importantly being seen having them.

As for updates, where to start?  The island did experience the threat of Tropical Storm Emily late Monday night and Tuesday morning, but was thoroughly underwhelmed when it only skirted our island to the south, headed for Hispaniola.  I had taken special precautions, "battening down the hatches at the fort" as it were, and was prepared to be awakened at 3AM by what could sound like a train passing just outside my window.  Instead, the electricity came back on at precisely 10PM, never going out again, and it only rained off and on over the course of the night.  We volunteers were on Standfast mode, prepared in the event of a sudden call to consolidate at one of the hotels in town.  This did not happen either, (wisely it seems now,) and the rest of the week has been a calm week like any other in the Caribbean.  Why, Emily didn't even throw off our work schedules: Monday and Tuesday of this week was a national work holiday for SKN in honor of Emancipation Day.  And the long weekend is perfect for revelers to partake in Carnival-styled festivities on Nevis, known as Culturama.  I was not able to see the events this year, but will keep my schedule open for next year.

In other news, the long weekend guaranteed that I finish up my work on the newest issue of the Serious Ting, expected for publication at the end of this month or the start of next.  I'm simultaneously very proud and very tired of the work that went into this issue.  It was my first experience laying out an entire magazine, composed of 40 pages of content, and the outside and inside covers, making 44 individual 8 1/2" x 11" layouts in the span of around 3 weeks.  And while each on is, barring instruction otherwise, set up to be in full color, the big question mark now is whether or not we have the budget to accommodate that luxury.  Time will tell, I guess.  At least there is some talk about hosting a virtual copy on the internet, free to readers.  Should that pan out, I will certainly post the link here for all of you – I recommend it heartily.  I'm also thrilled to say that I finally found a forum for my crosswords, in only my fourth attempt to get one published.  They are high quality, matching all the rules of the best newspaper crosswords (i.e. no less-than-three letter words, every letter goes to two words, radial symmetry) and is to the New York Times puzzle what Junior Varsity football is to Varsity.  So I'm surprised it has taken this long.

That's it on my end for now.  Did I forget anything?  Post a comment!

Funnyquote Friday

As I've mentioned, I'm the new layout editor for the Serious Ting, the Eastern Caribbean's Peace Corps Volunteer-prepared publication.  One of the common departments in every issue of the Ting is a welcome to all incoming PCVs, as per their starting class, (i.e. EC83 in this issue) as well as a farewell to all outgoing PCVs.  This time, our wise chief editor from Grenada decided to add a token bit to each outgoing PCV's profile, including a short message of advice from that PCV to the new class of incoming PCVs.  One EC80 from St. Vincent wrote, as his advice to other PCVs,

"Don't take too much advice from other PCVs."

Nice; I can't wait to see the smirks on people's faces when they read that.

Unilaterally preparing the layout for each article continues to go well enough.  All in all, I'll have laid out a dozen-and-a-half 1 to 2 page articles, two profile conglomerations of 50+ total profiles, the covers, and some special announcements and fillers.  I'm still on pace to be done by my deadline, the end of this month.  Even so, I'm starting to feel the fatigue of going through the same steps over and over again.  And even with 90% of the articles completed, the incoming and outgoing profiles represent an intimidating juggernaut of tedium that I do not relish toiling through.  The cover, on the other hand, is completed as well, but I can't in good conscience release the artwork to you, my readers, yet.  I'll wait until it has been definitively approved and printing has begun on the magazines, expected about a month from now.

In some unfortunate news, I went through a scary ordeal this week: my apartment was the site of an attempted burglary, shortly before dawn Tuesday morning.  Some person, whose gender, race, and identity I will likely never know, was attempting to take advantage of my (as since remedied) habits of leaving the porch light off during the night, leaving just one of the front windows open for a breeze, leaving my laptop out on the table in view of exterior windows, and declining to lock the deadbolt while inside, given it is a keyed entry from both sides.  I was not completely vulnerable - I had strong, unyielding burglar bars over the windows, a locked doorknob and hand bolt in the door frame.  However, the burglar's plan was apparently to bypass as many of these precautions as possible.  He (I'll refer to the burglar as a he, despite not being certain) got much of the way into his plan: (1) he first managed to remove the screen outside my center window, which was cracked open, and slide the window all the way open, (2) then he removed the screen on the window closest to my front door and reached inside through the open window, unlatching the lock on the closed window, and slid that window open, (3) and finally he proceeded to reach his arm into the living room, between the burglar bars, towards the front doorknob, in a clear attempt to unlock the door from the inside.  I was awakened by the sounds of muffled squeaks and creaks, what I initially mistook to be the sounds of yet another neighborhood cat being brutalized by some unseen, outdoor midnight assailant.  When the sound persisted, I sat up in bed and immediately noticed the shape of a man's head and torso cast in shadow onto an interior wall.  In one swift motion, my heart stopped and fell into by stomach, and I leaped out of bed, shouting loudly and as intimidatingly as I could muster, in an attempt to make my presence known.  For one long, daunting, hairy moment, the burglar, who was crouching and whose arm was the only thing I could make out in the dim light, hesitated; I'm still not certain why.  The most likely explanations are that either in that instant I managed to startle him almost as much as he startled me, or that, very simply, in his attempt to escape, he released the window he was holding up (which is unable to stay up on its own) and trapped his arm for a split second.  But in the heat of the moment, all I could think was, Oh dear, he's not running away.  This is bad.  But even as I took the time to formulate these thoughts, he was already out of the window, and taking off into the night.

For the next several minutes, I surveyed the scene, and took stock of my security firewalls, threats, blessings, and curses.  I wondered in passing why Bouncer, the neighbor's dog who lives upstairs, had not awakened to the sounds.  I noted that my landlord had recently been trying to replace the damaged security lamp on the front of my building, but hasn't been able to muster the Kittitian labor from his vantage point of Trenton, New Jersey.  I supposed that, had the burglar actually managed to reach far enough into the house, there was a small chance that he could have undone the locks and bolts and successfully entered.  I considered what kind of person, who was careful enough to try to not be noticed, would take all of these things in mind, but not that there was a person in the house at the time; did the burglar also carry with him something to defend himself with?  Would I have been in danger had he managed to actually break in?  These thoughts, coupled with the eminently pervasive feeling of being unsettled and anxious, caused me to lie sleeplessly in bed for the next couple hours, right up until dawn.  When I finally woke from some fitful R.E.M. sleep around 10:30, I called in the necessary reports to various Peace Corps officers, and they helped me through that tough first day.  My office's administrative assistant, a good friend to me, was even kind enough to visit me that morning; I can't express how relieving it was on my sense of safety to have another person in the apartment at that time.  After spending much of the night being terrified by every new shadow, or curtain movement, or dog bark, my nerves were frayed and my mind was highly, again, unsettled.  I would remain that way for the rest of the day, even through the evening when I went with my girlfriend to see Harry Potter at the theater.  The more I told myself that things were going to be okay, that I shouldn't worry, that I had taken the necessary precautions to ensure the strict unliklihood of this happening again, the more it became clear that I was far from being over the anxiety of it all.

Now, three days later, I am feeling much better.  I'm sleeping normally again, and I feel firmly ensconced in my little fortress of an apartment.  I have taken to leaving the porch light on all day and all night now (only useful at night, obviously, but hey, I'm not paying for the electricity), and sealing up all three façade windows whenever I'm not awake and in the apartment.  Additionally, I'm locking the doorknob, the hand bolt, and the deadbolt every night, and I found some plastic stubs that insert into the window screen frames that lock them in. 

Generally I would give you all of these updates at different points during the week, but given my busy schedule and my state of mind, this is the first opportunity I have had that I have been able and willing to post a log entry.  So, soldiering on...

I presented my six months' worth of work on the Client Profile Database to the National Skills on Thursday.  The meeting was hardly brief – when we started around 10:00, I was through with all of the points of interest by about 10:45.  But the meeting carried on until 11:45, with the gaping hour devoted to questions, clarifications, details, and other minutiae.  I'm well enough used to fielding questions like this for upwards of an hour; I guess I'm just out of practice.  I was pretty spent by the end of it.  And the unveiling of this massive ≈2MB database spreadsheet was not met with the enthusiasm that I expected; but everyone seemed comfortable enough in the idea of using it, anyway, which is the good news.  Just a few cosmetic changes remain, and in the meantime I busy myself with finding new ideas for projects.  I already have a few good ones – maybe I save them for another post.

Thanks for reading this drawn-out post, and wishes for a good weekend from the Caribbean!