Science Fairs, Open Mic Nights and Pulp Fiction Live Reads in Antarctica?

Science Fairs, Open Mic Nights and Pulp Fiction live reads. And you thought Antarctica was boring in the winter! And all this within the span of 2 weeks.   

The fun started with our Open Mic Night.  We've been having these pretty consistently once a month.  We have some excellent musicians here that get up and perform for us all.   We had a five person jazz and blues band, an excellent banjo/guitar duo with original music,  a dueling guitars performance and a dance routine.   For a community of just barely 140, that's pretty impressive.  We had some stellar, almost professional performers and then you had people like me who just enjoy an audience. This most recent one I was requested to play Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by the Flaming Lips so I obliged.   I also sang back-up for my friend Katie who dedicated her favorite song to her mom.    The woman who's been organizing the event is leaving soon. I'm hoping someone else will take up the charge because I'd like to avoid getting my hands into one more project. 

 Open Mic Night was followed up two days later with a Science Fair! I find it hilarious that we were hosting a science fair at a science station when all but one scientist have left.  On the other hand, I think our fair was much more entertaining than if we had real science to look at.  (not to insult any of our researchers in McMurdo's First Annual Winter Science Fair).  I thought it was funny and insightful that of the 10 or so experiments we had, only two of them weren't focusing directly on McMurdo or the McMurdo community.  With such an insular community,  we are often and mostly focused inward.  That in and of itself is an interesting thing to think about and look at.  But, let's get down to what our participants put forth as their all important research.  

 My question was about our Radio Station: Ice Radio 104.5.  When listening to Ice Radio, I felt that the vast majority of the songs that got played (when the station was on Autoplay) were Country or Christmas-sometimes both.  My question therefore was: does Ice Radio play mostly Country and Christmas? My hypothesis was "yes, yes it does."  The result, however, was no.  Unfortunately, I couldn't answer part of my question.  I couldn't find information for Christmas as it's not listed as it's own category.  I did discover that while the station is not playing mostly country, it is playing a lot of it-Country is played 21% of the time.   I had a lot of fun putting that together.  Other experiments were "what's the chance of a guy finding an eligible woman?' That one was slim as there are only 7 available women on station right now.  Crazy, huh?  There were a few about the galley: How many average calories is a meal, how many ounces does each bowl hold, which mug keeps your coffee warm the longest?  One of my favorites was a survey of travels to see how well traveled we are as a group. The average number of countries people here have been to is 20 and the average number of states is 39.  Pretty good I think. 

The best part?  We made Sorbet from liquid nitrogen.  Liquid Nitrogen is a byproduct of our water treatment plant.  (I'll tour that and get you the full story in the future).  What a great use of it, huh? Can't let it go to waste. 

The following week we had a Pulp Fiction live read.  Essentially, we read the script of Pulp Fiction in front of an audience.  This was way more fun than I expected it to be.  We had a few rehearsals and honestly, I was worried it was going to be super boring.   When we did the full read though-it took more than three hours! Isn't that insane?   But then, when it was finally time to perform, it was so good.  Having an audience made it much more entertaining and people really hammed it up making it much even more engaging.   My friend watching said it was just the right amount of camp and seriousness. She said it was a great evening of "good theater".  I'll give her a little leeway with her "good theater" comment but it was pretty interesting.   If you remember Pulp Fiction at all, Jamie and I were "Pumpkin and Honey Bunny" the couple that hold up the restaurant at the beginning and end of the movie.    I think we did pretty well.  

It'd be great if I had photos of those fun things I was just mentioning, but well. I don't really. Sorry about that. I'm working on it.  For now, just enjoy these fun photos!  

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OK.  So you've had to see lots of pictures of me driving loaders.   Well...there you go.  If you look closely in this photo, you can see the windmills poking up over the hill. 

This happens once a week. Jamie puts in a food order and then it all gets delivered on Thursday.  The people pulling the food are called "food monkeys' because if they have to get something that is up higher they have to, literally, climb up those boxes to get the requested items.   Often, what we get served in the galley is restricted by what is accessible in the freezer.  After the vessel comes in summer, this freezer is so full that we can only access things on the outside of the "box" of frozen food that gets built, filling the center of the freezer. 

With such a small community, the medical staff tries to make sure that as many people as possible are trained to help assist in an MCI, a Mass Casualty Incident or any emergency that would overwhelm our two medical professionals.  I've been trained to use the X-ray machine but other people are trained in labs, pharmacy, general triage, recording or just basic assistance.  They have held a few training sessions since then where they'll bring in "patients" and we'll have to respond as if it's a true situation.  Very interesting and I'm enjoying learning new skills.