The good news is that my ear is getting better, but the bad news is I’m out for another 2 and an half weeks. Last Thursday Mo and I went to Anthony’s Key Resort to have another checkup for my ear because the first time I went in the doctor could not see my eardrum. This time the doctor said that the infection was clearing up, but that I had a perforation in my right eardrum. Mo took a look and said that yes, she could see the black dot on my eardrum. The doctor said that the perforation should heal in 2 weeks but that I couldn’t go diving until at least a week later because it wouldn’t be strong enough to equalize so 3 weeks in total out of the water. I only have one more skill, the equipment exchange, to do to complete my DMT. So it’s another 2 weeks and maybe I won’t know how to dive by then, so the new DMT’s Conal and Michael will have to do a refresher course for me. Ha ha.
I started working at this restaurant; the first day was their infamous Sunday Brunch. Infamous because although the sign says free flowing Champagne Brunch for $16 a person the one time Kala, Chase and Conal and I went there they were out of champagne. Fine, fine it can happen I guess so they offered us any other drinks we wanted from the bar as a substitute. We all order our favorite cocktail and then waited for 30 minutes to get our drinks and bottled water. Finally, we get our drinks and we order as well. Well the food took about an hour to come and it wasn’t that great, in fact the whole thing was quite a fiasco. So I worked my tail off the first day for their Sunday Brunch, of course learning the ropes with Samary the other waitress who had been there for 2 months. I found a new appreciation for servers and on top of that for kitchens that run properly. Excuse my French but the kitchen was a bit of a clusterfuck, people running around with their heads cut off with no idea of any order what so ever. I’ve watched enough reality food channel shows to know that yes it can be stressful, but if the Iron Chef and 2 helpers can make something like 5 courses on the fly within an hour, these people should be able to have it down pat on how to make an eggs benedict in 15 to 30 minutes. Oh crap, I forgot I live in Honduras. Well, the food is pretty good there when the chef is there; apparently he wasn’t there the day that we went in before for brunch. I made a decent amount of money there the first day, but the next nite it was a fucking fiasco. Plates were being smashed, apparently someone had too much to drink and I made less money than the first day. My third day the shift was during the day. Someone sent home the other waitress because her clothes were inappropriate for some reason and I was the only waitress. It again was busy from 8am until 4pm, the kitchen was a bit more organized I also tried to push them more and at the end of my shift I made $15. Now 10% is included in the bill already, and I shared my tip with the 2 kitchen staff and the bartender and I’m assuming that the food sales for the day was around $350 or so and I know that almost everyone put in extra tip because I was a good waitress J but after my $10 a shift pay out my tip was only $5. Sorry Charlie, if I wanted to volunteer my time I’d work some place a little bit more organized. The next day I went to the Argentinean Grill and they said that yes, they were looking for one more wait-staff and they said they would call me and that I could work there. Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways, remember the story about how when I first came here with my parents that we went to the Argentinean Grill and now hopefully I’ll be working there.
One afternoon it was unbearably hot. I can tell, even though it is raining as I’m writing this that the hot weather is coming. Apparently it gets so uncomfortably hot in the summer, with the humidity and the sun that diving is the best way to cool off. Anyway, the doctor said that I couldn’t jump in the water, well that I couldn’t go under the water. Mo was going to Half Moon Bay with Max to sit on the beach by Sundowners and cool off. I joined her, as did this girl named Amanda. Amanda’s in my life have always been these amazing women. This website I used to read all the time called Gawker did articles about women’s names from A-Z, using the author’s own high school knowledge of the type of girl as well as famous people to support her articles. It was pretty clever and well written. Well, I think for A they did Anna not Amanda, but if they had done Amanda I think it would be the girl next door with a twist. Interesting, intriguing and Amanda’s definitely a good match to be friends with a Jacquie. Amanda, Mo, Max and I hung out to later be joined by Robyn. Four girls together always make me think a little bit about Sex and the City, but four amazing girls will rock your life. 4 must be the magic number for girls. The great thing about Sex and the City was that each girl could identify with one of the characters, on a deeper level all the ladies on the show were characteristics of women; everyone has a little Charlotte, Carrie, Miranda and Samantha in them. Well my 3 girls and I chatted until the sun went down at Sundowners and then grabbed a bite to eat at the Dive where we watched old leathery tourists dance while waiting for their food with their shirts off, not the women, just the men. The weather is getting better which also means that there has been so many more tourist then when I got here. After dinner we went to the Blue Marlin, Max had to go to bed, he is almost 3 and still has a bedtime, so Mo and him left. Robyn, Amanda and I hung out for a while longer with our DMT’s Conal and Michael for another drink and then went home.
The next day I met Paul and Tyll. After busting my bum at the restaurant and trying not to be too bummed that I made $5 tip for 8 hours of work and trying not to think that somehow the owner’s had screwed me over, I chatted for a while with this older English fellow named Paul. The characters I have met here cannot be made up; they are priceless and so unique. Well, Paul and I talked about my future career in marriage counseling and his marriage and his children from different women and his life and viewpoint in general. He’s got amazing stories and amazing connections, all the type of rock and roll English people of a certain age he’s a friend with because he owns a teahouse in England next to some famous musician. Well, Paul and I had a very entertaining conversation and then the famous Tyll came over. I dive at Tyll’s Dive, which is currently and has been owned for the last 8 years or so by Uwe (my grumpy german) and Dorte (sweetest little Dane ever). Tyll moved to Roatan after an already extremely fascinating and full life and started the dive shop over 25 years ago and was the first dive shop in West End. He still owns the land under the shop as well as the restaurant next to us and the ATM that hasn’t worked since in the 3 months I’ve been here. He is the namesake, obviously, of the shop, and the creator of our slogan “Fiasco’s in Paradise” which couldn’t be more fitting for most of the things that happen on this crazy little island. Also, Tyll said fiasco about 10 times during the hour that he and Paul talked while 2 American men of a certain age; one who was wearing a Ron Paul 2012 tank top with his white Mohawk hair flowing down longer than my hair and the other in his hawaiiana floral shirt opened with a tank top and a Nascar hat listened. Eddie, Mo and I also witnessed the amazing banter of Paul and Tyll, the crazy stories where they fill each other in the details the other omitted or to rag on the other person a little bit or to put in their version of their extremely interesting stories. These things are amazing and hopefully have been written down in some form. It’s a slice of paradise with all sorts of fiascos written in the storyline. There is a reason they are best friends and like all the best duos in history, they make each other- they complete each other. One quick story, which I will not do justice because not only do you have to hear it from them with their own inflections, accents and with Tyll and Paul constantly saying fiascos in all right moments is the story on how they met. Tyll is sitting at his house one morning on the deck having his morning beer when 4 black hawks come rolling into the island. It was during the Iran Contra scandal and he thought that “holy fuck, what a fucking fiasco, the Nicaraguans are taking over Roatan.” Well, it wasn’t part of that just some special ops or something that if they really told me what was going on they would have to kill me or something like that, so this team of men come up to Tyll’s house, which is one of the few in West End at the time and they had heard that he can fill scuba tanks. So Tyll says, who the fuck are you, Paul says, will you fill our tanks?, Tyll says, yes but you have to have a beer with me first. A friendship forms and many fiascos follow. There is nothing like serendipitous moments that change your life forever.
Well, Paul runs a cruise ship excursion here and the next day he had invited Mo to sell her jewelry from one of her friends back in Holland to the cruise shippers. The brand is called Good Times, it’s beautiful silver with a funky bohemian style to it made by this world traveler dude. I help Mo out by setting up the jewelry for the cruise shippers to see. Unfortunately nobody bought any that day, but it was a good experience to set up the jewelry (it reminded me of doing the fashion shows I used to do back when I lived in New York and we had shows in LA and NYC.) I’m pretty sure Paul’s girlfriend wants something or five things and will persuade her honey to buy her something soon. J
Tyll had asked me the first night I met him if I new the no decompression limits. Now to be honest, I understand the basics of them… how long you can stay at a certain depth before a person starts getting bent or how long you have to wait before you dive again, but I figured he was probably the master at teaching and it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. One morning after drinking too much with Robyn, Michael and this romantically challenged guy named Andy, I went to Tyll’s deck, which is behind the shop to learn. (Side note about Andy; one of the sweetest guy on the island, a British guy who seems hopelessly devoted to his on again/off again girlfriend who is also one of the cutest girls on the island. Their story could be written into a soap opera or classic romantic story.) So Tyll taught me the no decompression limits and the theory behind them and the history. He first told me about free diving and how a person can actually dive to 100 feet. Diving with a SCUBA tank you must be aware of the the cause and effect of pressure on gases in your body and the air you are breathing. At a certain time the Nitrogen in your body can become too compressed and there is a time limit at each depth that your body can handle stay there until it turns into liquid and can cause the bends or Decompression Illness if you don’t have a decompression stop. For recreational diving we officially only use no decompression diving because we don’t have stops along the way up from a depth to let the Nitrogen dissolve back into the body (well, we do have a safety stop, but that is for safety). Pressure increases as you increase in depth, the partial pressure on oxygen increases as well when you decrease which can become a problem because you can get oxygen toxicity so there is another thing which you must be aware of while diving to deep limits. Tyll told me about the rule of 120, for Navy diving which at a certain depth you can stay down for a certain number of minutes which when you add the two numbers up equals 120. The rule of 120 is not used anymore though because people were still getting the bends because although these are theories each person’s body dissolves gases and responds to pressure in different ways. The PADI diving became more conservative and thus we do not use the rule of 120 for recreational diving. Tyll is an amazing teacher and I feel very fortunate to have spent the 45 minutes with him teaching me about the no decompression limits. Hopefully you learned something as well. J
After my lesson with Tyll, I helped Mo set up the jewelry again for another event at the Blue Marlin. The Roatan Woman’s Club was having their monthly lunch at the Blue Marlin. It’s always interesting to meet people in different circles and network with them as well as to see women on this island who are successful in business. We got a positive response to the jewelry again, but again there were no sales. Mo is planning on opening a little boutique at the Blue Marlin so it was good to preview the jewelry. It was a good lunch and afterwards quite a few people were headed off to West Bay to see the airshow. Yes, an airshow. It seems a little obscure for a 3rd world country to have an airshow but it did happen and it was an absolutely beautiful day. 4 pilots and their group came down to celebrate 25 years of shows and the day could not have been more beautiful. The regulations for the airshows here are unlike anywhere else the pilots have been because well, there weren’t any regulation. You could tell the pilots were having the best time flying over the beautiful Caribbean Sea with the beach, the dive boats and the big cruise ship in the background. Absolutely picturesque. Completely priceless and everyone was in a good mood. Max fell in love with airplanes and now for his birthday (our birthday) he wants not only a motorcycle, a bike, a horse, a helmet, a watch, a water scooter but also a plane. He’s all boy, that’s for sure.
Well, today is a busy day. I’m packing my stuff from Noelle’s house to move in with Peter and Mel. They live closer to town behind the police station. Canada is playing the US in the hockey final for the gold. I also have committed to Uwe and Dorte that I will join them for a early Sunday dinner and most importantly I am supposed to meet up with my girlfriends online again for a videoconference via Skype. I know this time they will remember the video camera because they are having at my very responsible friend Liz’s house who already has the computer at her house and she doesn’t have to depend on the other girls to bring a camera. I can’t wait to see all their beautiful faces.
Oh and of course, last but not least boys. So my mystery boy turns out to have a girlfriend. He’s Canadian and she’s Canadian. I heard from Robyn that he had a girlfriend and then the next day saw him at Sundowner’s with his girlfriend watching the first hockey game between Canada and the US (where we of course won). They started dating about 2 months ago, which maybe if I had gotten the courage to ask him out things would have been different? Or maybe not; you never can tell. I am kinda seeing this other guy very casually. The guy from the story about the Gypsy, the Frenchie and the Game… that character named Fish. He’s older, fun, a cool guy but like my mom said when she met him maybe you shouldn’t bring him home to meet your dad (because there is a closer age proximity between them then with me). He’s really a great guy and hopefully he’ll be a good friend even after I leave. Ok, enough digressing I’ve got to go pack!
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