What a nice surprise this morning to see that the deep blue sea has returned, instead of being all white and frothy. There are still some rollers coming in, but they're breaking offshore and you can actually see mooring balls now. Further down the beach closer to George Town there's some breakers still but she's really calmed down now in the last 12 or so hours. Another day or so and Seven Mile Beach will be back in shape and calm, warm and crystal clear for snorkelling. Without the waves, the beach boats will be able to come in and pick up divers and things will get back to normal after a few “snow days“ of no diving.

The big story now are the grocery stores. It's been too rough for any container ships to dock in George Town, so they're starting to run low on perishables and some of the shelves are looking rather empty. I wish I had time to stop this morning and take a picture of the produce section of Foster's at the Strand, it looks more like a produce display rack showroom! They have little signs on all the racks and shelves saying that some items are running low because they haven't been able to resupply because of the weather, but that starting Tuesday they'll be airlifting in some perishables (bread and milk most likely). That's gotta be hella expensive for the grocers to do that, but to their credit, everytime it's happened before where we can't get ships in because of weather, all the prices have stayed the same.

On another note, this is a good thing to keep in the back of your head. When trying to reach someone in a disaster area, or after a hurricane, earthquake, Backstreet Boys CD signing appearance or whatnot, use SMS. SMS hasn't really caught on as much in North America as it has in Europe or Asia so you may not even know what it is. SMS is like email, you can send Short Messages (the SM of SMS) from handset to handset. It's a lot less 'strain' on a cellular switch than a voice call is, so chances are it will go through quicker than if you tried to call and call and call and call. Most providers have a web interface to send SMS messages through as well, such as this one from Cable & Wireless (Cayman).

My friend Shannon lives in Ft Lauderdale and told me beforehand that they didn't have a generator this time. Rather than waste my time trying to get through to her yesterday and if I did, chewing up her battery and if not, chewing up her battery while she checks her voicemail, I sent her an SMS message. That message popped up next time she turned her phone on, and she replied and told me she was ok without having to sacrifice any precious talk-time on her cell's battery. Now that I know she's OK, I won't sit here and nervously hit “Send/Receive“ every two minutes looking for an email saying she's OK. The other thing you can do is make sure you have a solar cell phone charger handy for times when there's no power, especially if you live somewhere where it's usually pretty sunny (so that kinda rules out Canada, but hey, very few natural disasters in God's Country, right Gramma?)