Fast Forward

Many days I feel that I am living life in fast forward. There just seems like there are so many changes and events going on. The end of our Cayman Adventure is only a few weeks away. We will officially return home on August 12th, but we leave the island in early July for a much needed and anticipated Europe trip. We'll come back to Cayman in August for a few days to ensure we have everything packed up and ready to go- then off we are... back home. Back to reality.

With the end of the KPMG contracts many of our friends are also getting ready to leave. Last Thursday was one of the hardest good-byes, as my best girlfriend Kate, and Lachie left for Australia. It was difficult to see them leave, not knowing when we will see them again. She is also 6 months pregnant, so I am a little disappointed that I won't get to see their baby! Blake and I often talk about moving to Australia, but at this time it just isn't in the cards. We're hoping to look back into it in a few years, but I am realistic when I think that we may have "settled" by that point and it would be much harder to move. So, last Thursday we all gathered at the best Pasta place on island; Grand Old House and had a great night of laughs and over the top Pasta servings. Although there were a few tears at the end, I am so thankful to have met such amazing friends through this experience.

Saturday night was another goodbye party, but of a slightly different variety. My staff had their year end party at the residence of the private hospital's owner. Lavish is one word to describe the mansion, which had its very own roundabout, manicured shrubs, a games building on the property, an outdoor kitchen the size of our flat and a staircase all the way to the roof, which could arguably be the highest point on island (you know you're in the big leagues when you get to have your own airplane lights affixed to your roof). The party planning committee had the event catered Caymanian style- which means that we all put on at least 2 pounds eating oil drenched pasta salad, 1000 calorie Jamaican patties, chicken wings, conch fritters with cream sauce and Swedish meatballs followed by three triple chocolate cakes and cupcakes. Smart Blake had worn his lovely white shirt too- so it wasn't long until barbecue sauce accented the front of it. I sure can dress him up, but perhaps should think twice about bringing him out?! Being a mainly Caribbean staff, the drinking was at a minimum, but that didn't stop Blake and I from uncorking our wine and watching the party unfold. There were no real speeches, but a nice grace before dinner. After dinner the reggae and soca started up and the principal was on the dance floor grooving away by himself. He was soon joined by some other teachers, all of them twirling and shaking their behinds seemingly unaware of the other dancers. The principal (apparently also a bit of a wine drinker) was downing his cups of red wine and his moves became increasingly funkier with each sip. The real show stealer, however, was when the extremely large and generally cranky year 4 teacher sashayed her way over to the tall and quite Year 6 teacher seated on his chair and proceeded to give him a clothed version of an x-rated lap dance! There were hoots and hollers from all over the pool area as we were scandalized by such a show! Only in Cayman...

Anyways, with the plethora of going away parties and Year-end dos we have been keeping ourselves busy, so busy infact that we really didn't realize how fast time is flying! I guess the old saying "time flies when you are having fun," really is true.

Pictured above: The boys and the girls, The venue for my staff party

Ecay Fever

The disadvantages to living on a desolate isle in the middle of nowhere can sometimes be numerous. High travel costs, no protection from hurricanes, higher expenses for goods and a less than healthy interest in other's business, just to name a few. However, sometimes you can work them to your advantage. Take the hurricane warnings for example. There are plenty of full and half days off work when hurricane season is at its peak. High travel costs may make us moan, but they do keep away the average tourist. As discussed in earlier blogs, one of the clear disadvantages, in my opinion, is the lack of materialistic goods. I like a good shop, just like every other girl, but it is close to impossible to find a good bargain on the island, and most of the items here center around gaudy patterns, beach themes and floral prints... hardly worth getting excited about. This cloud does have a silver lining though, in the form of a website called Ecay. This site is modelled after Ebay (hopefully you picked up that connection!) and is similar to Kijiji, but a million times better than both. When living on a tiny island with no access to mainland goods without paying exorbitant prices, Ecay provides some relief with its buy and sell feature. No shipping, and the ability to track down the bastard who sells you something crappy, make this site a favourite for all islanders. We got an amazing bargain on our dive gear last year, from a woman seeking a divorce because her husband made her scuba dive. We also have bought both of our cars off of Ecay (okay, to be fair, the first car was a bit of a lemon). So when it came time to start getting rid of our items we turned to this website. We didn't actually think we would sell some of the stuff we were offering. They seemed like random items; a blow up mattress, a floor lamp, a drying rack and a red Igloo cooler. The beauty of inflated costs soon became glaringly evident when only an hour after we posted the cooler we had 4 emails, three calls and many texts. No matter that the average person can head across to Cost-U-Less and buy their own cooler for $10 more, everyone here wants the bargain! Although the cooler was gone in less than 12 hours, we also managed to sell the drying rack and mattress the next day. The lamp was slightly less coveted, but sold on the third day. After the initial cooler frenzy Blake and I got Ecay Fever. We started posting everything. Our dive gear went up, including the smallest accessory, like the dive knife. Then the car. It was a free-for-all! The calls started pouring in, and if someone did not know better, Blake could have been taken for the busiest drug dealer in town; cell phone ringing constantly while we frantically made drop-off and pick-up appointments. Through the fervour we even debated selling our landlords possessions. Cooler Lady actually perused our living room with a greedy eye, asking what else we were selling. It was so highly addictive that we were late for our dates with friends, and spent the entirety of last Saturday on the phone and computer.

Aside from one fall through on a BCD from Blake's dive kit, we managed to sell all of our dive gear last weekend. Blake the accountant whipped out the calculator and discovered we did this with a 225% profit! The car is still up though, and only time will tell. We don't actually want to sell it until the end of the month, so I'm not too worried. I can't say that I didn't feel a little guilty at first, about preying on the Caymanian's with my second hand wares, but it seems this is the culture. Gone are the days of garage sales (Hope yours goes well this weekend Reita! Send us whatever you can't sell!) and here are the days of virtual sales. Piqued by the sale of our goods, I did a thorough search of Ecay and discovered that much weirder items have been sold. Like the 33rd edition of an unknown book, gold grillz- you know, the denture like gold teeth that rappers wear, and an obviously free-in-a-beer-box Coors Light laptop bag. So with that knowledge I no longer feel like such a vulture. But enough of this babble, it is nearly bedtime and I must be off for one final check of our hits on Ecay. Have a great night!

Pictured above: Aforementioned Coors Light Laptop bag, some old rapper's gold teeth, our dive gear