The Cayman Islands are Known for Their Turtles

Day Two brought with it continued, ample sunshine and deposited us off the coast of Georgetown, Grand Cayman, Caymand Islands, BWI. (That is a lot of commas folks!)

Tuesday would allow us to take in what we all learned from Brent on Day One and some sunshine to boot.  For the most part we all went ashore – even if just briefly – to experience the Cayman lifestyle.  That is, once you break through the barriers of duty free shops, Tortuga Rum and Rum Cake emporiums, diamond outlets, tee-shirt palaces, and the like.  Surprisingly enough, with the dollar valued at about 90% of the Cayman dollar, the shops were still packed full of red, sweaty, puffy, and bewildered tourists from the four (yes, FOUR) cruise ships anchored as the least fearsome blockade any colony had ever seen.

Once safely past the land of the overpriced and undervalued gold chains and screen printed bling we went our separate ways.  I won’t lie to you – we lost some good folk that day in the duty free.  It was sad, but that is the risk associated with sending out a landing party from a cruise ship.  Luckily they eventually made their way back to shore.  The rest of us hit the beach for some sun (but not much peace thanks to the Spring Breakers), took on a tour of the various island locales, spent the day at the Cayman Islands Turtle Farm, or went straight to Hell.

Austen and I opted for the Turtle Farm.  Taking the most-bizarre taxi ride I’ve been on; our driver, Shabba, had a great conversation with himself all the way through the 20 minutes it took to navigate his way to the attraction.  He honked, waved, saluted, and shouted shorthand comments to a wide assortment of locals and tourists alike the entire way there.  If I had more time, I could have enlisted a research crew from the collection of college students there on Spring Break (if any were studying those social sciences that didn’t include tanned co-eds, or the effects of cheap beer on 20-year-olds) to study his strange and ritualistic language and mannerisms.)

Once at the farm Austen and I we were reunited briefly with some of our fellow travellers while they joined us via a tour of all the area’s better-known attractions.  We also found out we not only could visit the turtle farm/hatchery/exhibition hall and gift shop, but we could also snorkle with a collection of tropical fish and turtles as well as take in some shark action and spend time lounging around a private pool.  I was sold!

Our Idera Iditarod Winners

Once back on the the Norwegian Dawn we collectively cleaned up and prepared for our sole SQL Cruise event of this day of rest:  The Idera Iditarod Contest.  This competition – for which the winning team received Flip Mini HD digital video recorders – was derived from a mash-up of the popular television shows The Amazing Race and Minute To Win It.  We formed the cruisers into three teams and their guests and sent them off to return envelopes based upon simple clues provided to them after completing mini-games of skill for all to see and laugh at.  It wasn’t about making the clues hard in this innaugural itieration of the event – it was about making the contestants fan out from one area of the ship to the other while we relaxed and talked shop.  Teams had to roll a Yahtzee (which, surprisingly one team was unable to do the entire contest), use Barrel Full of Monkeys playing pieces to pick up a chain of six without using their hands, and finally (and mostimpressively on a moving ship) stack three golf balls on top of one another!  The winning team of Mitch Bottell, Gareth Swanepoel, and Bill Sanscrainte managed to easily beat out all the others and earned the glory, prizes, and awe of those SQL Cruisers and NOSQL Cruisers alike who watched-on. 

Done, we found ourselves back deep into the discussion of the various events of the day and, as we are want to do as SQL Professionals, shop talk.  It’s these times that I find we learn just as much – if not more – than we do in any training session.  It is one of the reasons we structured SQL Cruise as we did – with plenty of formal training – but at the same time ample downtime to relax and hold these valuable, informal discussions about the solutions we have come up with individually in our daily experiences so that we can collectively derive improvements and new solutions to more-difficult issues we face.  I’m actively interested in using gaming and collective learning in the education process.  While on the ship I read a great article in the January issue of Wired Magazine  (the only magazine I still read cover-to-cover monthly) that was written by TED Curator, Chris Anderson that discusses how YouTube is furthering creative innovation through sharing of experiences.  I see that whenever SQL Professionals gather.  Our community is not one of fractured and competitive individuals, but rather a close-knit group that thrives on learning and (for the most-part) improving one-anothers’ careers.  Something Brent and I try to reinforce and foster with every SQL Cruise. 

In all, we had a great day in Georgetown and the surrounding cities of Grand Cayman Island.  Oh, and regarding Hell?  You’ll need to check in with Gareth Swanepoel about that!