1/4 Normal to 1/2 Normal

So blocks are coming up in mere 7 days and once again the frantic feverishness has taken a hold on the tired and weary patrons of AUC. On top of beginning to set into panic mode by discovering how much i still do not know, I decided to make an investment into a more beneficial mode of transportation that didn't involve bipedal locomotion. The ad for the car began "a typical island car" loosely translated into English--you can leave this car unlocked and running cause no one is going to steal it.

OK so I'm hooked right there, I do enjoy myself a good adventure. So I call the guy up and he turns out to be an Australian pilot, flying chartered island hoppers all over the Caribbean (what a dream job!!) "so yeah, mate, no worries, no worries, i'v got the kah right ere, you can come take a look at if if y'like" Hell yeah send me some photos i'm liking this more and more as it progresses. I got the photos through a quick email and told him i'd meet him in half an hour.

"Beautiful, mate...I"ll ketch ya down by B.B's"

Upon further inspection, "typical island car" also translates into bearing a bit of rust along the underside of the fender wells, with a few leprous lesions making it onto the body of the "kah" itself. But nothing unbearable, hey there is only 37 square mile of land here, and 85% of the vehicles here suffer from this malady.

"look, mate...I'll be strait up wit' ye...other than the bit of rust, the AC is shot, and the brakes are bit sketchy"

A test drive proved that the brakes had passed "sketchy" about 1,000 km ago, and the mechanic (who works shade tree jobs by the strip joint---true story) said the AC job would cost about $70US.

But not all that bad, after a bit of deliberation and pondering and consulting with the powers that be (wife) we squared away on a nice very low price and that he would fix the brakes and throw in an $250 internet antennae (most of the internet here is provided through the airwaves, not many places are hardwired) SOLD!!!

Now I do not ever want to hear anyone complain about the DMV back in the states ever again. Buying the car and getting the cash here was the easy part. Getting insurance, inspection, and plates is a fantastical journey that sucks up the greater part of the day. There is one inspection depot for the entire dutch side of the island and it rests in an old bombed out gas station in Philipsburg, I entered with extreme caution and was waiting for Jason Vorhees to leap out around the corner at any given moment.

Apparently one does not need to see the vehicle in question to inspect it on the lovely island of St. Maarten, a simple response of "yes" by the handsome patron in front of the desk to the question of "is everything working properly on the vehicle" seems to be quite sufficient (that and a 20 guilder note). The insurance is quite nice $234.34 bought me protection for an entire year, it is cheap because they say no to every claim brought forth to them. I am in the wrong business!!


Like the rest of the island, it doesn't matter how well things get done of if they are done in the proper fashion or not, it just matters if you pay for it properly. There are no vehicle titles here, I have a 5 line bill of sale that Steve Erwin's cousin and I (crikey) signed on the hood of the car in a grocery store parking lot. That bill of sale with a 5 guilder stamp from the government administration office is now my sole claim to the vehicle SWEET!! With that stamped bill of sale, the government office in downtown Philipsburg sold me the annual car plates for $163. What a world we have down here, I may never return to the really real world.

Most of the weekend was spent in the perpetual bounds of this desk chair, trying to get a grip on the mass of papers and textbooks that are scattered from here to there. Saturday, however was a quasi half day off so the 1st semester volleyball team could compete in the highly competitive beach v-ball tournament. Got a hot dog and a sunburn out of the deal and had a fantastic time diving about in the sand like a wild person. Won the first game but lost out on the next 2, which was good cause we all really needed to study.

In other news guess who showed up.

Of course I was in the dissection lab upon Leah's arrival and had to sequester the help of my neighbor to retrieve her from the airport. After I was able to tear myself out of the lab and make sure all the cadaveric particles were off of me, we were able to make a short trip over to Baie Rouge to introduce Iva the Terrible to the ocean.

After some good ribs and chicken kabobs at B.B.'s I had to come put in another 4 hours of studying the doggone regualtion of gene expression, I hope that I can surely use this information somewhere later in my life.

With another part of me at least on the same piece of ground I have made the transition from a lost 1/4 normal person to that off somewhat found 1/2 normal person, I will become fully complete again on July 6.

Thoughts in my Hands

-------“All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river”

Perhaps one of the most thought provoking people that ever lived wrote these words in a short essay many years ago shortly after he became a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River and learned to successfully navigate the “majestic river.” Mark Twain felt that by discovering the secrets of the river, the river lost is beauty, its charm and its once overwhelming majesty. A mesmerizing ripple in the water in the shipping channel lost its allure, because now he knew that that ripple was there because there was something just under the surface just waiting for some unsuspecting pilot to wreck his steamboat upon it. His beautiful sunset fades into a warning of wind tomorrow; a lone floating log evolves into a perilous sign that the river is rising. He relates these strong feelings toward doctors and their patients. Twain feels sorrow for them because they may no longer see a “lovely flush in a beauty’s cheek”; it is now only “a ‘break’ that ripples above some deadly disease”. He wonders if the physicians fail to see the beauty of their patients, as they read their bodies and symptoms, much as he fails to see the beauty of the river. He wonders if they feel sorrow for themselves for losing their vision and forgetting why they began to practice medicine in the first place. Much like Twain’s love of the river, their study of medicine stemmed from their love of the human body and all of its mysteries. It is a fantastic read, look it up and give it a try: “Reading a River”

So how does this relate…

I pulled the brain out of my cadaver today, someone’s daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother. All of her emotions, memories, personality, her ability to speak, to walk, to carry on a conversation with her children, to laugh and cry, to tell stories and listen to stories was all reduced to a highly organized mass of tissue, vessels, and nerves all resting in my hands. I will have to say that it was a little overwhelming to think that what I held in my hands was the center of a human once going about their daily life, going to buy groceries or watching a beautiful sunset.

I just spent 5 hours in the dissection lab trying to figure out how it all worked, and I still think we are amazing. There are many, many secrets still left to be discovered…..

Discovering Wildlife

We were blessed with a day vacation from class today because of a big faculty symposium on campus. To make the most out of the day before I started the drudgery of an all out free study day, I decided to make a morning swim. To my surprise the pool was already occupied by an attack iguana who was not too happy at all about the intrusion that my neighbors and I made upon his new found domain. We did scatter quite a bit, having been bitten by a dang iguana in the past I did not wish to experience it again

So that got me to thinking about the other wildlife that exists on the island, I don't know why it never occurred to me before, especially after discovering the Snail of Unusual Size outside my door a few weeks ago. Fortunately there aren't any animals that I discovered that are considered dangerous. The fish and marine life here is fairly tranquil; the most dangerous I've found is the long spined sea urchin and the water is so clear you can avoid these at all times if you find yourself having to walk across their habitat. Even the sharks are fairly laid back, they are the smaller and less aggressive Caribbean reef and Blacknose sharks. I heard some students say that there are bull sharks here but I haven't found any literautre supporting that.
There is one harmless grass snake, many species of birds but nothing real "islandy exotic" like Macaws or anything like that. There is this one strange bird called a sugar bird or bananaquit that is very tiny and has a brilliant orange chest and can be attracted to your patio by leaving a small bowl of sugar out for them. The most unique thing is the sound they make, check it out here Sugarbird Song

.

There is also one species of monkey that I have not yet seen, although it is reported to hang out here in Cupecoy. No new adventures other than that, now its back to protein metabolism and anatomy of the skull, eye and brain. Hooray for me!!

A Hectic Week with a Nice Ending

It seems that once the faculty saw that we could make if past the first block without suffering spontaneous implosion, med school really began. The amount of material being fed to us easily doubled or more starting Tuesday morning. In addition to the increased pace of education in the classes we were already attending, someone found it necessary for us to begin another class just to make things interesting. So now Histology takes up another hour of precious review/understanding time. But it is all working out, every hour of my day is scheduled so I know where I am at all times and don't get lost in this sea of lecture notes, flashcards, and enormous molecular biology textbooks.

We started studying the neck and face in anatomy, which is notorious for driving people mad with its intricate detail and framework. The sheer amount of muscles,vessels, and nerves and how they all connect in such a compact area is mind boggling. All of this calls for careful and tedious dissection requiring extra long hours in the lab hovering over a formaldehyde infused body all the while suffering through an aching back and aching hands in order to understand it all. I am definitely not complaining, this is all fantastic. If it was easy, then everyone would do it, right?

see what i mean and this isn't all

After the week flew by in a series of 18-19 hour days, a few of us that live in the apartment complex decided that it was only fitting to spend Saturday away from such things as textbooks, and cadaver filled rooms. A much more open and inviting environment was severely desired, an environment named Baie Rouge . It is just across the border onto the French side of the island.



It is so named because the coarse sand that lines the beautiful turquoise water is slightly pink in color. The mixture of the colors are intensified by the bright Caribbean sun and are just spectacular.

In addition to being fantastically beautiful, the beach is renowned as a superb snorkeling spot. There is an enormous well protected reef just a few yards off the beach that runs for several miles along the cliff lined coast. We swam about 2 miles of the reef and the underwater wildlife was intensely diverse. There were butterfly fish, blue and yellow tang, needlefish, and several different species of grouper just to name the ones whose names I know. But most amazing was the school of cuttlefish that we came across. They were just hanging out in intensely clear water drifting along with the ebb and flow of the tide, when I got close to one they would fan their tentacles out in a defense mode just ready to attack. But it was all a bluff, any time I would reach my hand out to give one a little pat on the back, they would change color into a bioluminescent display of blue and silver and shrink down the the shape of a bullet and would be gone.

The cliffs offered some wonderful exploration areas with huge arches that harbored entire ecosystem in them. The cliffs also offered several hidden beaches that could only be accessed by swimming around the points of the cliffs. Since the kids always want something tall to leap from, I scouted out some nice places on the cliffs that could be climbed upon from the water and even tested some of them out for their leaping worthiness.

Just past this cliff 2 hawksbill turtles appeared out of nowhere to check out what all the commotion was, they just lazily swam along just happy to be there enjoying their surroundings. I followed one for a long while before discovering that I had swam halfway to Anguilla, but I had the tide at my back for the swim back and it was very enjoyable.

Baie Rouge snorkel crew

Driven to thirst and hunger by our aquatic excursion, we made a collective executive decision to get some nice food to end such a nice day. And there wasn't a better place to enjoy a nice tuna steak burger and an Amstel than the Sunset Beach Bar where the sun put on another magnificent show for all to enjoy......

till next time...

planes landing at PJIA, next to the Sunset Bar, I got this standing by the fence that separates the road from the runway

One Down, Nineteen to Go!

This first month is behind me now. The adjustment, learning phase/adaptation phase of this journey is over. The first block exams have came and went like a sudden violent storm, one that drives everyone to panic and to seek shelter wherever they can. Only as soon as it started, it was gone again; its ostensible violence seems trivial compared to the expectations of its arrival. The sun still comes back out stronger than ever, shining brightly and ensuring everyone that tomorrow will still arrive.
Still though, I am glad that first hump has been transversed and successfully overtaken. With the worries of wondering if I can actually do this at this stage in the game put to rest, I am able to function on a level more closely resembling that of a human that can go outside once again; sort of a nice boost in the right direction.

To help with going in that direction, AUC has a terrific tradition for the first semester students after their initial block exams. They set up this "mandatory meeting" to be held immediately after the last exam of the day, which is held down on the bottom floor and is filled with a bunch of mindless chatter from the lecturer. But this is only a diversion tactic, it conceals the first semester students away from what awaits. After adjourning from the brief meeting we all walked back through the main building of the campus that is called the Rotunda. Upon entering, the entire campus, upperclassmen, staff, faculty were all jammed in there on the bottom floor, up on the balconies looking down at us, cheering,clapping and whistling voraciously. This went on for 3-5 minutes; everyone was all smiles as we made our first big step toward becoming what we dreamed.

After blocks are over, the next big tradition is for the parties to start, with no new material to have to review everyone is able to relax and unwind a little with much less stress on them. I used my time snorkeling down at Mullet Beach. Although it was overcast, the visibilty was still at least 70 to 80 feet. I found a long wall that extended out into the ocean and followed it out, finding enormous sea urchin, trumpet fish, parrotfish, puffers, queen angels, and others I did not know. My next goal is to grab one of those elusive Caribbean lobsters and hold him under some boiling water, till ready. I haven't been able to find any Zataran's Crab Boil anywhere here though, it seems that with crawfish this big there would be somewhat of a demand on that suff. I will just have to see what I can do.


But for now the next step approaches, muscles, nerves, vessels of the head and neck....joy!! Gotta go read.

Till next time.....

Repeat Offender!!!

Another earthquake last night.

I sure hope these silly subterranean plates are not undergoing warm up exercises for a big sprint. I do not know the strength of this one but it was early in the morning around 2 or 3 AM; it was strong enough to wake me up and make me hop out of my bed with an "en guarde" approach to whatever nocturnal stalker had breached my little modest apartment.

No other big news to tell of, I have been very sedentary once again, just hovering over lecture notes, a biochem book and some cadaver photos. T-minus 38 hours to the big exam. Not even a bike ride or a run, its tragic.

Later.....

Earthqukes, Anatomy, and Molecular Biology...what a combo!!

So get this....I'm lying in bed Wednesday night when suddenly the entire building made a big lateral shift to the west followed by a horrendous rumbling which dislodged several items from the shelves in my humble abode. Never have I moved as quickly as I did at that moment I don't believe, my first thought was a plane crash. They fly in and out of here, one right after another, form little single engine Cessnas to 747s. But there was no orange glow of a jet fuel induced explosion on the horizon, my second thought...earthquake. What the hell do Louisiana people know about earthquakes?? Then my mind began to calculate all the other possibilities, "hey, all these islands were built by volcanoes, hey..this school was destroyed by a volcano when it was on the island of Montserrat, hey...didn't an earthquake cause the tsunami in Indonesia" All of this rambling occurred in a matter of nanoseconds, after a little careful research I discovered that apparently there are earthquakes on this island and one quite significant occurred in 2007 that was 7.4 on the Richter scale. The Wednesday night quake was reported to be a 4.3....I do not wish to feel the 7.4 at all.
With all paranoia about being washed away in a torrential wave of epic proportions abated, I picked up the fallen items from the floor and went on my merry way, read some molecular and cellular biology and went to bed with thoughts of waking up to find 6 stories of building in my lap (I am so lucky to be on the bottom floor of a concrete and rebar building).

The mass morning pedestrian traffic to the campus from the residential areas

Everything is all coming together for the blocks on Monday (or at least it seems to be), I go to sleep with muscle group mnemonics, nervous system pathways and steps of DNA nucleotide repair sequences running through my head, only to find out that they are still there in the morning--running just as rapidly as they were when I last left them. The only way I have found to negate the squatter's rights they have claimed on every hemisphere of my brain is to make myself physically suffer instead of mentally suffer. Short, steep bike rides on the trusty Orbea up to the French lowlands or a brisk run to Maho and back seems to do the trick nicely. Nothing takes your mind off of things like a little lactic acid burn in your legs.

Till next time.....