Day 12: Where did the last week go?

Right, enough lallywagging. I've spent a week under what can be considered interesting circumstances. Right now, I'm at the apartment, making up for some lost time.

Sunday evening ended in a surprise. I was enjoying the mild weather in dry clothes (my clothes never really got to dry out properly during the cookout) on the porch when all of a sudden the gate opened. The three guys from last friday entered and proceeded towards my table for a chat. I asked if they had rented a place here, they confirmed. They then switched the subject over to the location of my laptop. Oooo-kay. I told them it was over at the office and excused myself for a night's rest. Feeling pretty weirded out by their presence. It later turned out that they had not rented a place at all. How they got in was anybody's guess. As a precaution, the owner replaced the locks on monday. Apparently they were spotted at the gate the next day by my neighbours, who had trouble getting convinced to let them in. That very same day, they passed the offices where I work. Whatever all of these chance meetings are for, it sure felt pretty unsettling.

Then, on wednesday the unbelievable happened: I came home around 17:00, went to the laundry room to wash the pile of clothes I collected and came into a bare, squeaky clean room. Turns out that both washing machines were stolen. During the daytime. In plain sight.

I mean, damn. The police came over to file a report, drove off and I spent most of the evening with the doors barred and locked. I did not feel particularily safe.

The next day was my big x20 day (birthdays, another thing I rarely keep track of) and talked this through with VK, since the safety of that place was really beginning to look incredible. In the meantime, the internet connection also had given up the ghost, so the place felt more and more like a crappy prison where people had a hard time keeping unsavory people out.

It was decided that unless something positive would happen about the situation, we'd switch places. Since VK would have a hell of a time to find a suitable alternative (something long-term and roomy where people could stay overlapping segments of time), he suggest I'd stay somewhere temporarily. I chose to to take a kind offer of one of interns working on the grounds, E. She offered a spare room in the house she and three other internes were staying. The place was in a safe neighbourhood, there were people around the place pretty much most of the time and it was actually a place where I could sleep like a log. I didn't miss the airconditioning for a second. The interns were friendly but so preoccupied in their schedules that we never really talked much.

At the time of writing this, I'm at the original apartment. The owner has been busy boosting security a bit, and it looks like the weird times here have subsided a bit. I've never seen this much of the owner as the two times I've been back for things, and it looks like my long-term neighbour of apt. #1 will be coming back tomorrow. That's pretty reassuring to hear, building on the stories of Wouter. Looks like I'm good to go and stop being the weird guy in the spare room over at my benevolent saviors' dorm.

More later, as I've actually done things outside being a paranoid recluse.

What is it, exactly, you do here at this company?

Intermezzo!

In order to lighten the load of my occasionally ambiguous references to my current relocation: why am I in Paramaribo, rather than freezing my ass off in Amsterdam?

From the start:

I am a senior frontend developer at the web company Us Media in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Our company is an active partner in a new company in Surinam, Spang Makandra. This company will be actively developing web and ict projects in the Caribbean area with a young and very enthusiastic crew of locals. Our part as a web company in the first phase of this project is to teach and train them in solid, best-practice web development. This covers XHTML/CSS, Flash and PHP in the course of nine months, after which Spang Makandra will offer nine of the trainees a steady job at the company. The rest will have learned enough during their stay to easily be gobbled up by -or becoming- the competition. Rather than making an offshore sweatshop, this is wholly dedicated to raising the bar of web development in Surinam, a surfacing market nowadays.

My colleague Wouter has been training them in applications and basic XHTML semantics, and I took over the torch this week to train them in the more fickle arts of compliant XHTML/CSS pages. By the time I'm done with them, they'll be more than ready to deal with cross-browser compatibility, semantically sound web pages, and some of the cleanest markup in Surinam web developer circles. They've shown pretty good progress, and are eager to learn everything they can get their hands on.

It definitely helps that all of them aren't scarred and corrupted by bad HTML practices. Save for a few, a background in web and design work was never the case. I'm pleased to see they pick up on web standards as if it's second nature -better trainees one couldn't ask for.

During the next five weeks, I'll be spending the weekday evenings after work in a rented appartment in the suburbs of southwest Paramaribo. Weekends, I cannot say for sure, but no doubt I will be able to see a bit more of this rather pleasant place.

Day 4: a storm to remember

Sunday was a casual day. I woke up, cleaned up a bit and left for the Men's Cookout Contest.

The origins of the Cookout were put down in really simple terms, but apparently this benefit fair was (ahem) cooked up by the wives of influential men as a nice counter to the idea that women should be the ones doing the cooking. The cookout is a contest between teams of men running food stalls, where the aim is to be the best at selling food and drink to the attending crowd. This non-profit food fair attracts a large number of people and excellent chefs.

Spang Makandra was competing as well. Sure, winning is always a nice prospect, but Vincent had more ulterior motives in mind. The preparations, manufacturing and selling of their goods was an excellent exercise in teamwork, and it would be a nice way to raise more awareness to this young and promising company.

When I arrived, I had to hand it to them, the whole setup was an enormeous undertaking, and they were taking it all in with glee and enthousiasm I couldn't match for the life of me. I ran into Jeffrey again, who was accompanied with his ladyfriend and Paul.

I was barely there when it hit us -a tropical storm came raging across the bay, visible like a sheet of rain cutting through the water. Straight for us.

Oh boy...

Impromptu relocation of grills, gas tanks, electric devices happened everywhere. When the storm hit the waterfront, it was massive. Rain poured down in torrents, thunder cracked and boomed quite dramatically, the inflatable toy castle upturned and squashed the little booth next to it. Across the street, a tent upturned. "This won't be good for attendance", Vincent quipped.

Despite all that, his primary concern was met -the team took the whole thing in stride, started cheering and singing in Sranantongo. People in the other booths looked bemused and puzzled at this explosion of optimism, but damn me if it wasn't catching. Contestants still tried to rescue their cooking, but with less of a grim determination than before.

The storm raged on, turning most of the place into mud. Jeffrey managed to come out of the ordeal with a completely mud-cacked back, which of course didn't really do wonders for the initially white clothes he wore. In comparison, I got off lucky -I got soaked to the point where a wet t-shirt contest would be doable. It just added to the cheerful hilarity in the Spang Makandra tent.

When the weather finally brightened up, crowds bustled in. Music started blaring, people were loudly advertising their wares and the team got to work. Their secret weapon: Buru Heri Heri (I certainly hope I got that one spelled right, or else I'll bnever hear the end of it). I was confounded by the preparations needed for a complete meal on the menu, so I was pretty much reduced to being the guy to hand others implements, water and other vital things. I really need to look into the cuisine here. A richly filled peanut soup was another high seller, while a squad of trainees was concentrating on bbq'ing an impressive amount of meat. Lou was selling a copious amount of Spang Cocktail, which contained a rather hefty dose of alcohol while tasting pretty innocent. I had plenty of them during the cookout (all paid for, ofcourse)

Spang Makandra sold out before the end of the event, which defintely looked promising. We broke up came later, and I was dropped off at the apartment by Vincent when my regular taxi got stuck in traffic for an indeterminable amount of time.

At the apartment I got a rather odd surprise.

Day 3: Groceries, goodbyes and slacking off.

Burglar alarms are highly effective alarm clocks. Me and Wouter managed to crawl out of bed and came to the conclusion that where ever the alarm was coming from, it definitely wasn't us. Wouter went in search of the source, and found it two doors next to us. Turned out to be a fluke of the alarm system. The guy who was renting the place managed to wake up and shut down the alarm some five minutes later. How on earth he could sleep through this was beyond me -the noise was almost deafening two apartments down the row. There was some muttering about this not being the first time the alarm decided to act on it's own. I'm looking forward to more of this...

After a failed attempt to grab some more shuteye, we planned to head to the city. Wouter wanted to hunt for some souvenirs and I was looking forward to obtaining some food and a hammock of my own. Going across town, Maikel (our taxi driver) commented that we'd better hurry -shops in the city close at 02:00 and we had about, oh, 15 minutes left. After some false positives (some stores *do* close earlier than 02:00), we found what we were looking for and raced off to Choi's.

Choi's is a supermarket which definitely is a godsent for Bakras with a yearning for food from home. Prices are somewhat high when compared to the usual supermarket here, but when you need yoghurt, pizza tonno or something as remotely out of place as Fruitontbijt, this is the place where they not only have it -but in every flavor as well. It's like an Albert Heijn where the cashiers are all Chinese.

I grabbed some vegetables, milk and white wine. The butcher store next door had a pretty wide selection of meat and cheese. Probably will come in handy in the near future. As a final act of doing groceries, I bought some vegetables and spices, so I'll actually be able to cook on my own. Definitely a place to remember.

Once we came back to the apartment, Wouter went back to packing his luggage for the trip home. With the aid of my neighbour, my spiffy new hammock (a present from Wouter -who seemed pretty intent on getting rid of his leftover SRD) was installed on the front porch. Around four, three of the interns dropped by to pick up Wouter for his trip to the airport.

Before I knew it, I was alone. I read some mail, wrote down a considerable amount of words about the days that had past and went to doing nothing. The next day there would be a cookout where the trainees would be competing. Until that time, I had time to myself and figure out what I would keep them busy with next monday...

First meeting with the interns

After shutting down shop at Spang Makandra, me and Wouter decided to first freshen up, ditch our laptops and meet up with the people of the Backlot for drinks. We also had the opportunity to have my laptop added to the allow list of the wireless internet I so fruitlessly tried to obtain.

When we arrived, we were greeted with a somewhat odd-looking situation. The guy who was there to add my laptop to the router configuration had left the gate open, leaving the place open for prying eyes. These were courtesy of three youths who were very interested in the shiny laptops me and Wouter were flaunting, as well as the surroundings and interior of the apartments. They excused their presence with the intent of renting one of the apartments and were here by appointment of the owner. We felt really uncomfortable about their prying and snooping, excused ourselves and went indoors. Turned out later that they were not supposed to be there, and their motives were at best unsavory. Completely freaked out, we arranged for our gear to stay over at Eddy's place for the night.

We started the belated drink run at Zus & Zo, which is adjacent to the Palmentuin near the Presidential Palace. Since we were delayed by the freakout moment, we basically made it there by closing time. We then left for 't Vat, a tourist trap which had the unfortunate idea to have a live tv report on the terraces. With Eddy Wijngaarde around, it took very little time until our table was targeted for a nice little question round. I recall nobody being happy about it, but I was having great difficulties dealing with the stifling climate at the time. I cannot be held accountable for my lack of insight at the time.

Me and Wouter left to meet the interns he'd been spending time with. The odd link here being Jeffrey, the cheery intern at Vincent's offices, who lives in a dorm-like situation with 13 other youngsters.

I had to admit that my state at that point (a time shift that left my body somewhere way past my usual naptime and an atmosphere you could physically touch) didn't really allow me to connect with any of them and I spent most of the time being quiet in a hammock, silently being gleeful at the fact that they adopted a stray cat, who was quietly sleeping among the hammocks.

After this brief introduction two of the interns were leaving for Krasnapolsky, and Wouter and I tagged along (with plans of leaving towards the city again). This way I got to actually talk to Paul and Amy. Paul can at worst be considered cheerfully annoying, but only ever so slightly. He has a hankering for Jazz music and has yet to not be cheerful, loud and assertive. Amy was a genuinely nice person to talk with and had some pretty good experiences to share about the cultural and political aspects of Surinam. Grim stories with a glint of admirable determination. We all ended up back in the city again, where I was subjected to the most terrible thing this side of the pond -Barka bars, where dutch music was craftfully engineered into a hellish tapestry of crap music. Natives argued that us white folks brought the music with us to their bars, but the interns were pretty adamant in their belief that they just got used to the crap that bar owners played to attract the Bakras in the first place. Chicken and egg theories are fun.

Finally, me and Wouter were picked up by Lou to head off to a night club, where several trainees were having a last time to meet up with Wouter before his flight the next day. I got several bemused stares from the trainees for not dancing, but I was just too damn busy observing a whole new ballgame by the sidelines. In the end Wouter ran into two more interns from the house, one being the dreadlocked girl so omnipresent in the pictures he sent to Us Media. According to Wouter I had met all 14 of them, though in the flurry of bar hopping and shaking hands, I pretty much lost track.

We left by taxi, crawled to bed around 03:30 and were somewhat asleep until 07:00, when a burglar alarm started whooting...

First day at the office

After committing my previous day to paper, my prearranged taxi ride arrived around 09:00 and brought me to the place where I'll be spending the next five weeks - the Spang Makandra training grounds.

I arrived in a room full of curious stares of trainees and the unrelenting blinking eye of the wireless webcam which has been sending us pictures at the Us Media office for the last few weeks. I've been staring at these still images during coffee pickups and bathroom breaks, and no doubt my colleagues will be doing the exact same thing now, snickering at how dumb I look waving my arms about.

The trainees are everything Wouter described them to be. Eager, enthusiastic and definitely progressing so well that he actually had to tether them down in order for me to start where I wanted to start. There's some gray areas where they might need some more practice, but no doubt we'll get there.

Lunch does not come with the occupation like at Us Media -people bring their own lunch, or get their own at local food courts. I tagged along with Lou and Wouter to get some Roti (a first for Wouter, who cautiously asked about eating implements at the right and /or wrong moment).

We really tried to synchronize our agendas concerning progress, what to do next week and so forth, but had little time to do so. Not only did we handle questions and problems that trainees were having during their last exercise with Wouter, I also had considerable trouble connecting my laptop to the wireless network using Bootcamp. I expected the reverse, since linksys waps and OSX seem to lack the finesse to play nice. It also didn't help that this was Wouter's last day as the rather cherished trainer, and the day was pretty much cut short by impromptu gift giving, a intermediate showing of a bootleg copy of 300 (with hilarious engrish subtitles, no less) and general confusion about where to go. I dread starting on Monday.

First post: A business-as-usual flight.

Originally written down October 19, 08:00

Yesterday I woke up in my apartment, packed my flight luggage and got a call from JT that he was on his way to do a pickup and drop me off at the airport. I arrived somewhere around 10:45 and having already checked in through the website, it was a simple procedure of dropping off my suitcase and run off to the boarding terminal.

I happened to pass the El Al checkin desks, which were pretty much cordoned off with not just the usual security guards, but soldiers toting MP5s (thanks Half-Life, I recognize a gun because of you). Probably due to the incident with the nutball who tried to stab two police officers to death, but then again, charming policies as they are, it probably wasn't too far off from the usual security measures.

I tried to grab a no-nonsense digital camera, which turned out to be impossible because none of the models either fit my idea of a portable camera or just looked like the bastard lovechild of an acer notebook and an ipod dock. I guess I'll have to find one in Surinam. Also cute: they don't sell gum anywhere in the boarding terminal. I never noticed this oh-so practical ban :)

Boarding was pretty painless, by no small amount due to the fact I got seated in business class. It was a definite departure from the cooped-up sensation I'm pretty much comfortable with, and there's certainly something surreal about getting a wine list upon departure. I'm probably not the kind of person they aim this at, because I find it remotely ridiculous to be served wild hen in truffles while I'm traveling. You won't hear me argue about the seats though. Finally, room to stretch. They had a pretty crap selection of movies and the harpy in a stewardess' uniform promised equally unimpressive titles that were actually intended for the return flight (but us oh-so-elite business class people naturally wouldn't have to be subjected to such cruelty). Instead, I took some short naps, watched a movie on my laptop and pretty much idled away the 8 hours. I did obtain a couple of gin and tonics from the immensely nice drink trolley lady, who was a bit clumsy with the ice cubes, which tended to bounce around my seat a bit.

Arriving at de Zanderij, the warmth enveloped me like a sweaty handshake. The airport was partially under reconstruction, but looked more derelict than under construction. The sign that told us about the modernization looked worn, peeled and definitely had been around for a while. I guess it's one of those "someday" projects.

I got out of the airport and ran into a huge crowd, barely contained by officials, and immediately I noticed the lack of any sign that people from Spang Makandra were here to pick me up. After some confused wanderings about, people started to address me, either offering taxis or trying to help me. This was somewhat tricky as I had no money, no telephone numbers and calling the office in Amsterdam would have been fruitless (it being midnight there). I just stuck to my spot and kept gazing around the crowd for the next half hour.

Turned out Vincent was doing the exact same thing, a bit off my left. Joel was kind enough to pass him a photo of me passed out in the toilets at Breakpoint 2007 -one where I had long hair, so it wasn't really what you might call a representative picture of me. Once that was out of the way, we sped off to Paramaribo to meet up with Wouter.

Once we arrived I had some time to freshen up and we compared notes a little. He's been documenting the bejesus out of things, so I got phone numbers, profiles, progress reports and whatnot to rely on. Vincent picked us up for some supper, had some idle chat about the next day and went to sleep at what felt like 4:30 in the morning (which was definitely the case for Amsterdam).