This is Paul here:
It has been a month since I last wrote. It is summer season here and it does get hot outside. Coupled with an abundance of rain, it is not nearly so pleasant a season as in the middle of a North American winter. The main trouble with the rain is that the road to work gets really deep since the drainage is largely non-existent. Apart from that though, it really isn’t bad. When it stays dry for a few days, the days are gorgeous and we get good sea breezes. Actually the heat may be less intense than what we get in the middle of summer in Ohio. The “Flamboyant” trees are still in flower and looking glorious with their red-orange coloration and there are also several other trees in full flower. I wasn’t expecting this long flowering season of several months, since, in Ohio, flowering trees get over such exuberance quickly.
Mosquitoes come and go and I now have added a gizmo to the apartment to attack them. It is a battery-charged tennis racket looking “bug zapper” that I wave around and hear the occasional zing as a flying insects is zapped. Actually, I am fortunate that very few come in. I am not totally sure if the rule is the same here as for home: that the ones that don’t buzz are the ones that bite you.
The whole island is using the World Cup football championship as the latest theme for partying. Yesterday (Friday, July 2), we were given a work holiday since July 4 is a Sunday. Three of us went down to one of the bars on the lagoon at Simpson bay and sat all morning drinking beer and watching the Netherlands win over Brazil. Deafening roars after each goal with some Dutch victory song singing!! The other side of the bar was filed with Brazilians who were a lot more somber as they lost. St Maarten has strong Dutch roots and until 10 October this year it will be overseen by the Netherlands. After October 10, it is due to become independent but it sounds like this will not be a complete independence immediately. As with everything there will be trade-offs and most people seem to consider that nothing much will change though a small group of well-connected people will be enriched. Certainly the main talks on the transition have been attended by very few people.
Work continues: I just finished updating and giving a very complex set of lectures on microbial interactions with the immune system having been given pretty awful handouts from the previous semesters. I am using practice questions which have been so helpful before, but I have to do these outside normal lecture hours since my colleagues are suspicious of their utility. I am sorry they have such dyed-in-the wool attitudes but they do the bulk of teaching.
When I walk home along the beach, or in the morning, I am often joined by a band of island dogs that wanders around in complete freedom. They all meet up at 4:00 PM in the afternoon at one end of the beach since the canine words have become broadcast that Corey, a lady with the Quatre Paws animal welfare group which had the raffle where I won the painting, will be driving down to feed them! After meeting with her, they continue their merry ways. It is always a pleasure to see them with a happy grins running along the street in Maho (where I live) and maybe checking out the trash. A reddish odd-shaped one “Wolfie” hangs out on the driveway to our apartment in the evenings. He is getting used to me, though he looked shocked when I call him by name the first time (Corey had told me it).
On the cooking front, my formula for crepes has been converging on 2 cups of flour-meal base (2 parts brown flour, 1 part white flour, and 1 part flax meal) with 3-4 eggs, 2 cups milk(I think maybe more) and a olive oil instead of butter. The ingredients are mixed together and left in fridge overnight. I will retry this with no white flour next time. I do a big cooking of crepes then have them ready for meals. Next blog: the salmon fillets with vegetable combo!
I help out now and again with the St Maarten Diabetes Association blood testing stations. They go a good job on the island and we catch several people with high sugars. When people are working here illegally, something that is often the case, it can be a big problem for them to get medical help. One of the times we were at a Health Fair in Philipsburg (the Capital) where we were treated to excellent steel drum music (see photo). Some of the people on steel drums are fabulous: at graduation I met one who had done his music degree in Indiana transposing Vivaldi to steel drum for his thesis. The Association had an annual diabetes day, a whole day session, two weeks ago. There was a big turnout and an excellent speaker, a clinical endocrinologist from Florida. Among many messages, he made the point that everyone who has type II diabetes can expect to go on insulin if they live more than about 8 years after diagnosis and that if more medicines are used (including insulin) to control blood sugar levels, it does not mean that the disease is worse since few medicines may not actually control sugars at all well. Given that most people think the exact opposite way, i.e., the more you get treated the worse off you must be, this was a great take-home point but one that may be hard for persons to accept easily.
I think Julia's iconic recipie calls for one cup cold milk and 1 cup cold water (first into the mixing vessel, then eggs, then flour(s) then melted butter. Sounds very good! flax meal might do something odd when wetted and soaked.....
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