Nat Arem's Blog

In some ways I’m dreading it while in other ways I’m more excited than I’ve ever been for a trip in a really long time. One week from today, I’ll be in South Africa with my family. We’re doing a 16 day safari trip to South Africa and Botswana. It’s supposed to be really incredible. It’s basically like the Africam (I’m sure P5s OTers know what I’m talking about) but being there in person. I’ve never seen lions or many other animals in the wild so it’s really exciting. I recently went out and bought the best binoculars I could find in Cayman (okay, so that isn’t a really high standard) so I’m hoping to catch a glimpse of some cool stuff.

But, you may ask, why am I dreading it? Pretty simple… the flight over. It’s sooooo long. I’m flying Cayman to Atlanta and then Atlanta to South Africa direct. It’s like 16 hours on the way there and over 17 on the way back. That’s just an absurdly long flight. Luckily I have a ton of TV all ready to watch and I have a power outlet so I should be set for the periods when I’m not able to sleep. Even once we’re there we have a bunch of flights inside the country including some stuff that is listed on the itinerary as “light aircraft” flights. Needless to say I’m not looking forward to those. I’ve never been afraid of flying on jets (by the time I knew what was going on, I’d already been on a bunch of flights so I never had the chance to get scared) but little prop planes are not fun at all. I’ve been on them in Costa Rica and I avoid them as much as possible. Unfortunately I don’t have a choice on this trip so I’ll be dealing with the little planes a few times over the next few weeks.

Other than the South Africa stuff, I’ve been spending the last week bearing down on doing some detail sort-of stuff that just needs to get done every once in awhile. It’s been a week since Hannah and Ashley went home so I’ve had the time/space to get that sort of stuff out of the way. I’ve been dealing with more Cayman work permit stuff so that’s been tons of fun (usual story… no parking, long lines, cramped waiting areas, not-so-helpful staff, etc). But we’re almost finished with work permits round two so at least the whole process will be over with for awhile.

I’ve also been hanging out with some other people in the area. I’ve now crashed two parties thrown by the same couple down at the pool. Both times it was by accident and I’ve tried to not be the “random dude who hangs out with a whole bunch of people who know each other” but I have played that role a few times now. Pretty awkward but the people here are definitely nice and very welcoming so it’s been less awkward than it would normally be in most situations. I also met the brothers who live across the hall from me and hung out with them and their friends a few nights ago. It was fun as well — except I think I need to learn how to play Rockband. I’ll try to work on that when I get back from South Africa. Even though I’ve met a bunch of people here now I’m still not really sure how the singles scene works here. Almost all of the girls I’ve met are living with a guy so even though it’s good to broaden social horizons it hasn’t really led me to any sort of conclusions as to the best ways to meet girls on Cayman. I’ll also work on that when I get back from South Africa…

My sister Hannah has been visiting for about five days now. She also brought down her friend Ashley so the three of us have been hanging out a lot. It has been an action-packed week to put it mildly. I mainly have a bunch of pictures to share, so here they are:

This is a sunset from my porch:

My sister and I went parasailing. This is us just as we’re being let back from the boat. Obviously I’m off the boat and she’s probably a few milliseconds from being swept off as well.

This is a picture of Hannah and I over at a beach area called Kaibo. It’s a more isolated beach in the Cayman Kai area of Grand Cayman. We’d been out jet skiing just before this.

This is a picture I took of Hannah and Ashley doing parasailing. Obviously you can’t see them but it gives you an idea of how long the rope is. You’re waaaaay out there. And you get about 400 feet in the air so it’s pretty spectacular.

This is us on the parasailing boat.

Last night we went on a sunset sail on a 65 foot catamaran. This is a picture of the boat:

Here is a picture of my sister and I on the beach before the sunset sail:

Lastly, here is a picture of me on the boat with the sunset in the background. It wasn’t a great sunset. Very diffuse light so we never actually saw the sun go below the horizon. Nonetheless, it was a great time.

The last 1.5 years of my life have been without HD channels.  Costa Rica is years away from having a quality HD lineup (they had like… two channels in HD, both pointless).  And my first Cayman apartment was furnished like a beach rental place from the mid 90s.  The TVs were all tubes and sucked.  Today, however, Dish Network was installed in my new Cayman apartment.  Finally order has been restored to my life.  ESPN HD, TNT HD, etc, etc.  It’s great to be able to see things like this in HD (not that I’m a big baseball fan but whatever):

Also, here is a picture of the view off of my balcony at night. During the day, you can see the ocean. I’ll get a daytime pic in the next few days:

This is a night time view of the pool deck which is below me. It is on the second floor of the building and it’s pretty ballin. Usually the pool is lit up at night but for some reason the lights are off right now. Not sure why… maybe it’s on a timer or something.

Lastly, here’s a picture looking at my living room and dining room area. It’s a long/narrow apartment but this doesn’t show the den, bedroom and two bathrooms. It’s plenty big for just me.

I’ll post some daytime pics in the next few days.

Since getting back to Cayman I’ve been doing a lot of moving sort of stuff.  Doing a fair amount of shopping for the essentials (toilet paper) etc.  Another thing I’ve been dealing with is getting my work permit renewed.  The way it works in Cayman is you get a six month temporary work permit to start and then you’re eligible for a full permit (1 year at a time in most cases).  Everyone has to start off with the temporary permit.  So my permit is up in August and there are a few things I needed to do to get it renewed.

First, we went to the lawyer’s offices and filled out paperwork which we’ve filled out before.  It’s the same form as the one we filled out to get the temporary permit.  I’m not sure why it needs to be filled out again but whatever, I could deal with that.  The next thing was to go get a blood test for STDs.  They don’t allow people with STDs to work here apparently.  I proved I was STD-free back in February but I guess they are concerned that I picked one up since then.  Fair enough, I got that done yesterday.  Neither one is really that tilt-worthy.

The next task on the list was to get a police report showing that I haven’t gotten into trouble since I’ve been here.  This was not easy to get done.  First of all, the George Town police station has like… negative parking spaces.  It’s a total shitshow with people double-parked everywhere.  Yesterday we went there and somehow found a parking spot but then the line was out the door so we decided to go back this morning.  It turns out there’s never parking space there.  I tried double-parking today but they told me that I had to move my car … despite the fact that I wasn’t blocking anybody and there was tons of room for people to get by my car.  I guess everyone else can double park but I can’t.  So I ask the policeman where I should put the car and he just shrugged.  Very helpful.  I was totally on uber tilt at that point.  I mean, they make it an application requirement that work permit holders need this police report.  And they put it in a place where there’s zero parking and one person helping a big crowd of people?  WTF is that about?

So I move my car next door to the Dept of Licensing parking lot.  As I’m walking back over to get back in line at the police station, the security guard in the parking lot of the licensing office asks me if I’m going to the police station or the Dept of Licensing.  I’m not going to lie so I told him the truth.  He told me that I couldn’t park there.  It’s hard for me to describe the tilt at that point.  I told him there was no parking whatsoever at the police station.  He still said I had to move my car.  I asked where I should move it to and he just said that this parking lot is only for the Dept of Licensing.  I saw a sign behind him on the fence that a parking violation was a $75 Cayman (about $90 USD) fine.  I just said, fine, I’ll pay the fine.  Then he proceeded to give me a speech about how money is important and how I shouldn’t throw it away.  After he finished I just looked at him and was like, Can I go?  And he motioned for me to go so I walked over to the police station and paid my fee to get my blank rap sheet.  The best part is that you have to come back the next day to get it (and deal with parking all over again).

The tilt from the work permit stuff has been compounded by internet connection tilt over the last few days.  For some reason they decided to put 30 apartments in my building on one 10mb internet connection.  Unfortunately, I taught some of my co-workers how to use BitTorrent.  Suffice it to say that the internet speeds have been utterly unbearable.  As of about 30 minutes ago, I finally have my own internet connection (after three trips to the “Digicel” store) and it’s glorious.  I’m going to revel in this great moment for a few.  It’s amazing how having fast internet will relieve tilt.

My last day in Vegas was pretty uneventful.  I moved over to the Rio for one night because Adam left to go back to Costa Rica.  I stayed with Jeff from Bluff Magazine but I only saw the guy for a few minutes because I spent most of the day hanging out with Steve and Alex.  First I met up with them and two of Alex’s friends over at the Venetian Grand Lux Cafe.  That place is really good.  I know it isn’t some super fancy deluxe cuisine or something like that but I think I prefer a place like Grand Lux over the $300/person sort of places.  Then we went and checked out the Palazzo (ie, Venetian addition for those who don’t travel to Vegas) for a few minutes because Alex’s friends were staying there and I don’t think any of us had really seen much of the Palazzo yet.  I have to say it’s really incredible.  I really like the Wynn/Encore set up but I think I might have to stay at Palazzo next time I go to Vegas.  Between the food, rooms and pool area I don’t see how anyone can go wrong staying there.

Now, after a short one week trip from Cayman, I’m back on the island.  I had to get up at 5 am Las Vegas time to make my 6:45 am flight to Houston.  That was brutal.  Travelling is really a drag in general but getting up at 5 am makes the day pretty rough.  I took an accidental 3 hour nap when I got home which is kind of causing a problem now because I’m not even slightly tired.

Anyway, both flights went pretty smoothly except for one interesting moment on the second plane.  I was talking to the woman sitting next to me while people were still boarding the airplane and the engines weren’t really fired up so it was relatively quiet on the plane.  A few minutes later the guy sitting in the row in front of me (but sitting directly in front of the woman I was talking to) flipped his shit and tilted on us for talking.  He was like “the whole plane can hear you” (speaking directly to me).  First of all, I’m really not a loud talker.  Second, we’d been sitting there for no more than a few minutes and it was only a matter of time until we pushed back from the gate and took off.  After which there would have been plenty of background noise to drown out the conversation.  I’m not debating that the guy could hear us talking.  He definitely could — I could hear people all around me talking.  I mean, we were speaking like 2 feet from him or however far the next row is.  I just think that he could have asked nicely and not been an asshole off the bat.  It isn’t like he flipped out after asking us to talk really quietly and we proceeded to be loud or something like that.  I proceeded to do the passive aggressive thing and disturb the seat in front of me over and over (it was his wife or gf) … ie, tapping it, using it to get up, etc.  The woman next to me was equally dumbfounded by his outburst so we proceeded to make fun of the guy for the rest of the flight.  Not sure how much of it he heard.

Back in Cayman, I am now spending my first night at my “permanent” apartment.  For the first four months I was living in a short-term rental waiting for construction to finish on this place.  It feels great to have a more permanent place to set up my stuff.  And it’s also a really nice apartment on a really nice part of the island.  Unlike my typical busy travel schedule, I’m going to be here for the entire month of July (August travel gets crazy again) and my super smart sister is coming to visit me in a few weeks.  She’s about to start her PhD at Yale so she’s doing this trip right before getting settled in New Haven.  It should be a really fun month.

Started off by getting up around 10.  I was trying to sleep late but it wasn’t working great because I’m still pretty much on EST.  I had an absolutely delicious bagel+salmon+cream cheese+etc for breakfast.  Room service in Vegas is really amazing at the good hotels.  Then I met up for some business talks followed by a trip over to Palms to see stevesbets and a friend of his from high school (who I also know because we all went to the same small high school…).  It’s only been a few years since I was in Vegas but it’s really amazing how little I know about the city already.  I don’t know about what’s in all of these new towers (Palazzo, Encore, etc) so I’m still kind of learning my way around.

After hanging out with Steve for a few hours I went over to eat dinner at a steakhouse called 9 at the main Palms casino.  The food was absolutely terrific and I was eating with Adam (from P5s fame) and some business partners.  The food was good and I think we had a productive meal so that was great.  It’s a really long story but I can’t really eat steak these days because it’s hard to chew so I got the salmon dish (recurring theme today I guess) and it was also great.  Farm-raised but what can you do…

Dinner was followed by coming back to Wynn to catch the tail-end of yellowsub86 + girlfriend (also known as LD) eating dinner at Okada with Steve and Alex (Steve’s friend from high school).  I didn’t eat anything so I wasn’t involved but sub managed to lose the flip — granted, with two cards out of four.  Then we went over to Terrace Pointe Cafe (also at Wynn) to get some dessert.  Sub lost that flip too.  He runs good.  Then, somehow, Steve managed to talk sub into some sort of cash/online swap so Steve could run a quick craps session.  While we’re standing at the cage swapping some Rio chips for Wynn chips (takes awhile, they have to call over, etc) I noticed Amare Stoudamire standing at the craps table right by the cage.  He was with some hot girl and had a security guy.  Pretty cool.

Anyway, about 20 minutes and several thousand dollars later, Steve’s craps session was over with and he headed back to his PokerStars room at Palms (that hotel is completely overtaken with PokerStars logos btw).  Oh yea, and we ran into the legendary TC (Taylor Caby) while standing there lurking the craps session.  He was with the new Ezra.  Also known as the new marketing manager.  She introduced herself to me but I was somewhat distracted because I noticed that Amare had left the table next to us and I was trying to figure out where he went.  So I don’t remember her name.

Anywho…  Sub, LD and I went over to Blush for the Doyle party.  All three of us were wearing flip flops and sub and I were wearing shorts.  I was definitely expecting to get rejected at the door.  Sub actually didn’t even want to try to get in.  But the marketing manager from Doyle’s Room had given me a VIP pass earlier in the day and that proved to be the magic pill.  I was standing there at the rope and the guy looked at me kind of in disgust then his boss saw I had the pass and just shrugged and said “let them in”.  So we went inside to hang out for a bit — I met the online legend AMAK316.  I’m actually pretty sure I’ve met him before but I can’t remember where.  Either way, we didn’t stay for too long because sub wanted to get out of there and I really can’t stand noisy places.  Even though, for a “nightclub”, I would say that Blush is right up there with being among the most tolerable that I’ve seen.  It wasn’t too loud and there was plenty of room to move around (at least, when we were there).  If I wasn’t so tired I definitely would have stayed longer.

I know it’s only like midnight but I’m really struggling to stay awake right now.  EST and all.  Time to pass out.