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redcoral_h2o
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Name: Justin
Country: Cayman Islands
Metro: Grand Cayman
Birthday: 2/23/1985
Gender: Male
Interests: Lots and lots of stuff... There is more to come, but procastination shall undoubtedly delay it.
Expertise: Studying Biochemistry at Trent; Certified PADI OWSI Instructor, Emergency First Response (CPR & Primary Care) Instructor, and EANx Instructor
Occupation: Student
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Yahoo:  redcoral_15@yahoo.co.uk
Member Since:
12/2/2004
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| I just realised how long it's been since I put an update up here, so here's a short one for anyone that watches.
I'm
enjoying one of my last weeks of summer vacation at home in Cayman, and
I've just successfully finished training to become a PADI Open Water
Scuba Instructor, and as of this morning (17-Aug-2006) a PADI EANx
(Nitrox ) Specialty Instructor. So if you're ever in either of my
regions (Cayman or Southern Ontario), and you think you might like to
try scuba diving, just let me know and I can teach it or arrange
something for you. Oh, I can also teach CPR and First Aid
Courses, so if you need a re-cert, or know someone that needs training,
let me know.
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| Re: Sunday, 05 June, 2005
Okay, so I guess it was.
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| Sunday 29-May-2005 08:30AM EDT (GMT -500)
Well, this is NOT the massive Xanga update that I promised, but I'm working on it.
I'm sitting in the departure lounge at Toronto's Pearson International
Airport waiting for my flight to Grand Cayman to start boarding.
The best part is that it's a direct flight, non-stop from TO to GCM in
4 hours! So there's no fooling around with the nonsense of going
through the US and their "departments of passenger harrassment"
officially known as Homeland Security, Customs & Immigration.
Even better, my student fare turns out to be cheaper than taking
connections through the US!
I stayed at my cousin Carla's place in Markham last night, and her best
friend (who also lives there) was kind enough to drop me off at the
airport this morning on her way to work. I took the Greyhound
coach from Peterborough to Scarborough using a ticket that one of my
old housemates left for me, and then took the TTC public transit from
there to Markham. Unfortunatley, I hadn't had directions by the
time I left, so I had to call Carla on my dying cell phone. The
problem was that my cell phone has to run on the analog network up
here, although it is a digital phone, so the battery ends up lasting
about 3 minutes of talk-time instead of the usual 3 hours. As a
result, I wasn't able to hear much of the directions (thanks to the
constant unnecessary bleeping of my phone as the battery died) and got
off at the wrong stop! Well, since all I heard in the directions
was "get off at Bu...," I got off at Bullock street, when I was
supposed to get off at Burr Ridge, which was about 3 traffic lights
away, which doesn't sound like much until you realise that there's
about 1km (which seems like a million miles with luggage) between each
set of lights.
Sunday 29-May-2005 12:11 EDT (GMT -500)
Well, there are about 2 hrs left of my flight... the in-flight movie
sucks (though I'm not really watching it), they forgot to load my
vegetarian meal, and gave me coffee instead of tea - yeach, I hate
(okay, strongly dislike) coffee! It's actually not anywhere near
as bad as I'm making it sound (that's the flight, not the
coffee), they were very apologetic for forgetting my veg meal, so
they gave me a meal voucher for future Air Canada trips and one of the
meals from first class. It was pretty good, greek salad (which
supposedly had salmon in it, although I didn't really taste any, but I
think that's probably what the soft tofu-like cubes in the salad were),
and they gave me extra Lindor chocolates!
There's a little girl playing peek-a-boo with me sitting in the row
ahead of me - it's really quite cute. Well, one of the
air-hostesses made her sit down and buckle her seat belt, and she's not
amused, since she's too tiny to look around the seat when she's
strapped in... *sigh* oh well.
12:35 EDT (GMT -500)
I can't believe the on-board sound system is skipping! You'd
think that they'd be using mp3's or something, or at least have ESP on
the CD player... Besides, there isn't even enough turbulence to justify
turning on the seat-belt sign, in fact, there is none! Maybe the
discs are just scratched.
Wow, this is getting pretty long... I wonder if my "Massive Update" will be this long.
13:13 EDT (GMT -500)
We've just passed over the Florida Keys, I've also just had a rather
frustrating game of PacMan... I can't believe I've got so bad at
it! Well, for now there seems to be nothing but ocean beneath us,
but we should be flying over Cuba any minute... Try that on American
Airlines... HA!
13:22 EDT (GMT -500)
Ah, lovely Cuba, there it is at last! Almost home.
13:29 EDT (GMT -500)
Goodbye Cuba!... That was quick.
Wow, I can't believe my laptop's battery is still going strong - it's
only down to forty percent! For a 5-year-old computer, that's not
bad. Okay, I'll admit that it's a new battery that I bought a
couple of months ago, but I still think it's impressive.
Sunday 05-June-2005 17:38 EDT (GMT -500) 16:38 EST (GMT -600)
Well, I've been sick with a cold pretty much since I landed on this
island, and I'm just getting over it, and getting around to finishing
this.
Before the plane landed on the Island, I noticed some of the striking
differences to the Island as a result of the devastation caused by
Hurricane Ivan on 11th-12th September 2004. The most noticeable
things were the new roofs on most buildings, and the skeleton
structures of buildings (and homes) under construction, to rebuild from
the damage. Unfortunately, the cinema hasn't re-opened yet, and
the other cineplex hasn't been finished, so we can't go to the cinema.
However, since the recovery efforts are well
underway, it is relatively difficult to tell that there was a hurricane
while you're on the ground, apart from the slightly beat-up appearance
of the island, and the edifices thereon. But most tourists don't
really seem to notice, since the conditions are still generally better
than those on most other Caribbean islands.
The biggest problem seems to be traffic now, since everyone has SUVs
and 4x4s now, given that they were among the only vehicles that
survived the storm unscathed. It's pretty impressive that
anything that was here before can still drive, considering that the
whole island was flooded with seawater during the storm (yet another
problem with being a flat, low-lying island in the tropics).
Nonetheless, there seem to be more cars than ever, quite a few of which
are brand new, and the 5-mile (8 kilometre) drive from where I live in
West Bay, on the Northern end of the island, to the city of George Town
on the Southern end, takes an hour and a half, and can take more than
two hours on a really bad day!
Right now I'm sitting around with my brother and his friend Derrin (who
lives with us right now) listening to one of the thirteen radio
stations that are now on this island, since we've been banned from
playing GTA San Andreas on my brother's PlayStation 2, on account of a
CI$457.67 electricity bill (which I had nothing to do with, since I
wasn't even here yet) and also because of the enjoyment she said we
were getting out of killing innocent people in the game. To put
that bill into perspective, US$1.00 = CI$0.80, so it is quite a bit for
the three people who were living in the house.
Well, I think I'd better post this now. | | |
| Still alive... Moving tomorrow... Just one more exam to go:
Bio205 Genetics on Monday... Will have massive update session soon....
not much time right now.
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| Well, I'm trying to make a habit of keeping this updated, despite having lots of work to do, so here goes.
On Friday, 01-April the Trent Association for Baha'i Studies hosted a
performance by the Wildfire Dance Theatre! Unfortunately, the
crowd was a bit smaller that it might otherwise have been owing to the
fact that there were two other theatre/dance performances happening on
campus at the exact same time, but there were still a good 130 people
at the wildfire performance.
We had a potluck with them at Celeste's house (some of the Maxwell
people may know her, as she's a Maxwell graduate) and to our surprise
Vera Polouvytnova (Luba's daughter) is in Wildfire, which was a nice
surprise. We all had an awesome time at the potluck naming the
colour of our toothbrush(es) and when and where we got it (or them), to which
there were some very entertaining (and shocking) responses! We
also named what super/magical power we would like to have, and there
were a variety of responses ranging from "the power to make people
dance" to "the power to pass any test, but most especially organic
chemistry on the 18th"
I met quite a few people from the local Baha'i community at the event
and it was evident that I don't get out enough, 'cause I hardly know
any of them.
Earlier in the week (Thursday night), my housemates and I went out for
dinner together... Earlier in the day, my friend Liz had invited me to
go out with her and a bunch of our friends for "cheap slushy night" and
neglected to name the venue, so I told her I couldn't because I had to
go out for dinner with the guys (also neglecting to name the
venue). Well, "cheap slushy night" turned out to be at the same
restaurant we went to, which made things a bit awkward, and I kinda
felt like a bit of a jerk... but everything was okay after we discussed
the miscommunication the next day and had a good laugh about it.
Well, to top it off... my housemates and I went out to a
poolhall/nightclub last night (the nightclub is upstairs) to play pool,
and the girls went to the nightclub! Liz was queued up outside
with her housemates and a couple of her friends when I saw her waving
to me. At least I knew she was coming this time (thanks to looking at
her MSN display name), and I left a message on her MSN saying that we'd
be there playing pool, so it wasn't so much of a surprise. They
sent Katherine's boyfriend Connor (Katherine lives with Liz) downstairs
to play pool with us, and he was ridiculously good at the game, so the
objective was soon shifted to blocking all of the possible shots that
he could make, and we eventually lost in the end. Then he went
upstairs and it was back to a 'normal' game of pool.
OK, now that I've written a short novel, I think I ought to get back to
work on my Genetics essay, and Organic Chemistry and Cell Biology lab
reports.
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