slacking off..

It has been two months without a post and yep I said it, finding time to write a post is me slacking off.

There is so much to do

• house work
• school work
• baby work
• work work
• standby work
• overtime work
• sidejob work

Even my books are no longer balanced don't be fooled though, they are still mostly correct. On the plus side, my postgrad studies has reaped benifits already, I can now easily model my opex and capital requirements and make better decisions. I am now well on my way to paying off my mortgage in maybe 10 years all things remaining equal.

For those of you who may be interested this is what has been terrorizing everyone and everything in my apartment, don't watch the face, she just tasted something bad :p. She has just turned 10 months now and looks like she will soon be ready to start standing on her own for more than 5 seconds at a time.

So what else is new? let me review a few firsts and lasts since my last post two months ago.

FIRSTS:

• I slept at school one night in the post graduate lounge before a morning exam. I was a bit too lazy to drive back home and risk not waking up in time so I just camped out on a couch and slept like a hobo. It's surprising how much activity goes on in the library late at night even when school is off its regular semester.
• Swimming in the pool at school. I now swim there every chance I get, trying to build up my stamina so that one day I can swim the length with ease. I met a fellow blogger there one Saturday too. Hi Gela! come back to the blogshpere.
• I bought a new GPS device. This new gadget+ the jimny and myself will conquer all corners of this land. First stop will be Morant Point.
• Being disengaged at work. Change is the only thing constant at my company and I am now tired of it and their attempts to save every penny at their employees expense. Don't get it twisted, I still love my job and am very grateful for being gainfully employed.
• Thanks to my coworker who didn't mind me swiping his test LG phone for a bit I am now an Android user. It's a nice phone and OS full of features but something doesn't seem right about it. I probably miss at least 10 calls a day due to this phone disconnecting them when I try to answer it. I don't recall having this issue with the bb or palm.
• I was driving through Grants pen at around 11pm one night and the police caught me in their spot check drag net. All of my papers checked out ok but this fool still tried to get me to give him something, a monetary contribution I assume. I just took my papers, drove off and gave him a view of my tail lights.

Some lasts:

• I canceled my last credit card with NCB. It was fun whilst it lasted we have traveled a small section of the world but it was time to part ways. The last thing I bought with it was probably some blank circuit boards from Japan in February.
• The beach.. I cant tell when last I've been there. I miss you mr crab
• ?

I guess the lasts list isnt as large. Anyway cya next month.

At work..

*sigh*

It is almost 1am and I am at work yet again. I was in the middle of watching the hurt locker(great movie so far) and I got the call to come in. meh.

My work here is just to watch the building services people flip between JPS, UPS and all sorts of combinations of bypass while my servers go flip flop waiting for the power to settle.

All is well though, I haven't blogged in a bit for good reasons. look out for more in the near future.

August updates

Oh blog how I have forsaken you.

Time is not on my side, there have been many things to do.

1. Tie up loose ends with the old landlord
2. Get electrician to re-certify new house then get power supply activated
3. Get metalwork contractors to install security grills in the new house, a must in Jamaica.
4. Buying baby stuff to quell the irate pregnant girl.
5. Get curtains made to stop new neighbours on spying on me.
6. Homework. OMG going back school is crazy.. I have to suffer two more years of this.
7. The side job. I will probably lose this work given the amount of time I put into it last week.
8. Bills. I paid all of my July credit card and utility bills late not because I didn't have the money, because I didn't have the time.
9. Day job. Two people doing the job of six? a recipe for delayed but sure disaster.

I plan to try and get two days departmental leave this week to handle some of the monster tasks that are yet to be completed. Wish me luck because I don't think my boss will be too happy with this.

On a side note, I like the finer things in life, I can't afford them but I will admire from far. One of these items are watches and last week my coworker reminded me of this when he left his watch on his desk and asked us to secure it for him. I dropped it in my desk draw and locked it without much thought but when I didn't see him the next day I popped it out to further inspect it since I knew that he liked to collect nice watches. It was a very nice auto winding mechanical watch, I couldn't tell when was the last time I saw one of these. After a quick google search it turned out that the watch could buy my car, they start off at $5000USD and go up to $90,000 depending on the casing and options. I promptly took off my watch and wore his watch for the rest of the day until he popped up. Ahh the finer things.

summer work

Did I mention that I had an intern? the key word being had.

I did mention that they were slashing 20% of my department at work and that some how maths out to one person with that person being my coworker. We had the same job title, worked at the same level and sat in the same large empty room alone in a mostly abandoned building downtown for many years. I always figured that he was my competition and would most likely be promoted before me since he had many years experience over me.. I was wrong(thankfully).

I am not promoted but at least I have a job. It was the decision of my boss' boss and for the first time I could see it in his face and hear it in his voice it was a hard one as he explained how he reached to this decision. It was a bittersweet moment as apparently my efforts had not gone unnoticed by the senior management but he the fallout is that will be jobless now and I will have to pick up his workload. To put things into perspective when I joined the company the job that my boss and I are currently doing was being done by a team of 7 people, a 71% reduction in staff. Now the competition(if any) is between the boss and myself lets hope I can survive.

Anyway back to the subject, shortly after they cut my coworker they gave me an intern. I was a bit confused as to how they were cutting people but still managed to maintain a summer program but I was happy for any assistance I could get. He was a fresh grad from university and was hoping to get a permanent job, this was perfect, exactly what I wanted. I treated him with respect, assigning him weekly objectives, giving him training material and gave him the ultimate goal to finish developing a database webapp I had started in my free time. My boss would have(and wanted) to give him some brainless slave work to do and I should have. He sucked at the work I assigned to him I had to be following behind him and fixing everything he did.

The final slap in the face was when the intern came to me at the end of his second week and resigned ughh!! two weeks gone down the drain. He was offered a [ever so scarce] permanent job at some other company so I let him go, I would never hold it against him in these harsh economic times. My friends and coworkers all think that I drove him away but hey if you cant stand the heat stay out of the kitchen.

On the horizon

Anybody knows this view and where it was taken from?

• I got a bill via email from my attorney last week and it looks like they are finalizing the transaction. It has been a long time coming, I've been waiting about four months now and it looks like I should be able to move in to the new apartment next month. Anyway the bill was fat. 1/2 stamp duty, 1/2 registration fees, my lawyers fees and other misc fees left my once health bank account empty. Seriously I could use the closing costs to purchase a car, this money would have been so much better else where. That is water under the bridge for now and I am just eagerly waiting to get my keys and tell my landlady to chuck it.
• Who remembers when I told my boss I wanted his job? Well it is clear that he isn't going anywhere soon but recently other possibilities have presented themselves. Yesterday my boss and my boss' boss' boss[big boss] were casually talking about the lack of a supervisor for the team in Barbados. The big boss proposed that I go there and take that role and I instantly told him sure I would be interested at which point in time he pointed out that he was dead serious and I confirmed that I was up for the challenge. It would be interesting if I can get it, the job will have to be posted and I would have to beat all other candidates in Barbados who may apply for it as they would get preference but at least I know the people who are making the decisions already think that I am capable.
• I have to go to work later, starting at midnight. The last time this work was attempted, the vendor's engineers corrupted our database and what was to be three hours of work turned into eight. This is not going to work tonight as I have to wake up tomorrow at 6am to head to the airport for the first flight. I hate travelling when I'm not well rested but I was requested to come in at the last minute and I have some fat bills to be payed. Let us hope that all goes well and I can be in and out in 30 minutes lol.

Definitely interesting times ahead. Time to go pack.

Life updates

The commenters have gotten bold and demanded an update on my life. Who knew I was so interesting? lol let's get started. On Thursday I apparently left a large window open in my apartment and when I came home from work there was ash everywhere. I looked outside to see if I could identify the fire but there was none, it was a bit puzzling. After sweeping and vacuuming I closed up all the windows and left for work on Friday and yet still ash(a lot less this time) found its way back into my place by the time I reached home. The Friday night news cleared it all up, there was a large bush fire in Jacks Hill that I was totally oblivious to. Yup it is fire season once again for the hills of St. Andrew, every year around this time Jacks hill and its surroundings blaze up.

I didn't walk with my camera today but if I did you would have seen this same hill naked with a layer of black. These pictures were actually taken back in '07 after hurricane Dean I think, if you look closely you can see the twigs(or trees) on the hill are all broken, well now they are burnt off. I am amazed by the size of the fire and how it completely missed me, normally when there are fires in the hills I can spot them at night but over the past couple of days most of this hill went and I didn't have a clue.

The pictures above were actually taken from my (only) favorite and most hated walking(or climbing) hill. It is soooo steep but us Kingstonians seem to love to park our cars at the bottom and make the 20-30 minute walk up. I have it in my to do list to walk with my new camera to get better pics of the trek up.

Boring eh? on to other topics.. how are y'all surviving the economic downturn, recession, depression, ...? I see a lot of other Jamaican bloggers writing about the jobs being slashed.. *sigh* I am no stranger to this, my company has been slashing since I've joined a couple years back and I am glad I have survived thus far.

The last time I checked interest rates were dropping on the world markets but some how Jamaica is busy hiking their rates, good for local investors bad for borrowers. I had the deposit for my house invested[legitimately] before they raised the interest rates and the monthly interest could cover all my expenses(rent, food,car,...) easily. I would be living on easy street now if I didn't take all that money and give to my attorney as payment for my condo and moved myself to the other side of the fence to a world of debt.

I have a theory on how the Jamaican economy reached this state. Bear with me, this isn't really my subject.
- 1. mortgage crisis causes credit lines to tighten. the movers and shakers on the world markets drop interest rates to stimulate the economies.
- 2. Jamaican investment houses make a run USD currency to pay off their investments to avoid margin calls.
- 3. The value of the Jamaican dollar drops fast due to item 2.
- 4. The BOJ tries to stem the devaluation by raising interest rates to mop up liquidity and encourage the people to keep their JMD investments. really who can turn down 20+% rates?
- 5. Borrowers get the shaft. I hear my coworkers and friends cussing about their loan payments increasing due to item 4.

Who knows whats going on? I hope I was close. Anyway my stock portfolio lol sucks. It has lost more than 1/2 its value. I have written it off for now, I am in no immediate need for the cash so I guess they can sit there and lets hope they will revalue eventually. Under my mattress is looking attractive now.

My first birthday in Barbados

The water looks so nice eh? It's a shame I haven't even stuck my toe in yet and I've been here for the past couple of days. I did make the effort to get back to the hotel early today and with the last few rays of sunlight hitting my face I threw myself into the Atlantic ocean. There are gorgeous beaches everywhere, you can't escape them, there was no way I was coming back to Jamaica without trying one out. Anyway I'll be here for a couple more days hopefully I can squeeze something more into my busy schedule.

So yesterday I did something I promised myself I would never do again in Jamaica, I went to TGIF to celebrate my birthday. After going to TGIF for my and a lot of my friends birthdays I decided to strike any such future endeavors from my datebook but the girls from the office over here decided that they were going to do TGIF and it was going to be my birthday today. *sigh* I went ahead and got my ice cream and a bunch of random people singing happy birthday to me. So I can now say I came to Barbados and celebrated my birthday and I have the photos to prove it! lol those pics aren't going to see the light of day though :p

A bit off topic but I don't think I would put this up in a post by itself but it's worth mentioning somewhere. So we all know they accepted my bid for the last condo I went to look at, that was step 1. Many steps and weeks later I signed the sales agreement just before I left the island and my bank should have sent the 15% deposit to my attorney yesterday. Also my mortgage company called me yesterday to tell me the process is complete and I can collect the documentation to have the sale proceed. yup.. I'm on the final leg to being a home owner. I can't wait to get back so I can wrap up business.

oh the pain..

• Day 1 (Monday) there was a slight discomfort while eating lunch.
• Day 2 there is no question about it, something wrong with my throat. There was also signs of a fever but I didn't have a thermometer to prove it.
  
• Day 3 I woke up and decide to take a peep in the mirror and see what was going on. My left tonsil was the size of a golf ball. I tried to have breakfast, too painful. I threw up my white flag and decided it was time to go to the doctor.

There was too much to do at work that morning so it got pushed back. The afternoon was jam packed as well so it didn't happen either but for the last hour of the work day I made a trip up to the data center and had to stand up and I was dieing after 20 minutes, my entire body ached.

Day 4, I refused to go to work and suffer through another day so I stayed in a bit and went to the doctor. I'm in between doctors now, I haven't been able to find a doctor I like so I tried a new one. One letter, F. I don't like her. She was old, she had a thick African accent, I could actually read her hand writing and she tried to sweet talk me too much. She wrote me up for two days off work, gave me a prescription and I was out of there. I filled her prescription that contained vitamin C supplements, anti-histamine, antibiotics and 3 days worth of pain killers. I went home took my meds and nothing happened. Didn't feel any better, didn't feel drowsy and I was still miserable. When night came I walked across to the pharmacy showed them what the doctor gave me and asked them for some pain killers that will knock me out, enter Panadol PM. This always does the trick for me.. maybe coz I only take them every other year or so.

Day 5->6 the pain was still very much there and I can barely talk by this point in time. I am so drugged up that I have no problem staying home all day and doing nothing. The nights are even more terrible, I had a fever so bad that I woke up and was soaked like somebody threw a bucket of water on me. I figured that ice cream would help so I walked over to the supermarket and bought a carton of my fav (fyi Edy's butter pecan) but to my surprise my throat wasn't having it, something in the ice cream burns my throat and my gums are also sensitive now so the pecans and them not going to work out.

Day 7, Today, I woke up the left tonsil doesn't look as swollen as before but now my gums hurt even more. Today is the day to be sick, I was going up to the parents for lunch and my sister[specialized in internal medicine] was in town as well so I would see her as well. Of course she doesn't come to lunch by herself she brings along her bf(also a medical doctor) and her good friend(also a doctor). So when they started to talk to me and realize things were horribly wrong she went for a flashlight, took 1 look and was horrified. She called her panel of doctors and all of them were looking down my mouth and then went into a discussion on my current line of treatment. Three doctors trying to fix me for free, now that's what I call proper health care and they all agreed that the first doctor could have done a much better job with the drugs she prescribed.

I can still barely talk now but I am about to start this new set of antibiotics and painkillers my sister's friend prescribed for me. I have to go back to work tomorrow, hopefully this new line of treatment will fix the tonsillitis.

a time to catch up

Where does the time go? I took this week off to catch a breath and it's almost Thursday already! not to mention it's almost December.. but the year just started. I have observed that as I get older my perception of time speeds up. *sigh* I just googled it and apparently I am not the only one. I haven't read that article though, it looks pretty depressing for me to stop and read now, it will probably change the whole tone of this post. So what have I been up to? time to make another list

• I got myself a 22" wide screen LCD for my computer and it's officially larger and much prettier than my 21" regular tv that I am now ignoring for several reasons. This larger monitor is great for editing photos and watching HD video :D
  
• I went to the UWI to get information on their post graduate degrees. All the kids there look so young and it's only been 4 years since I've left that campus :-(. I am looking forward to going back to school again, it should be interesting trying to fit classes, exams and projects into my busy work schedule. yay!
• I got a call from a guy in my section on Monday, he just came back from vacation and got his walking papers from our HOD. So my section now has 4 members.. I am not looking forward to that extra work. I like my work though, I hope they keep me.
• It's all gravy. 11 months ago I made a resolution to spend more. I checked my finance app and I have spent a bit more than the same period last year but I am still way ahead of my end of year savings target.. so far ahead I can cut a check and pay for my post graduate degree in full and still be within my budget. I guess I can mark that down as a failed resolution.
• I viewed a townhouse in New Kingston and an apartment in Kingston 8. I loved the location for the New Kingston place but the 18yo place left a lot to be desired in terms of maintenance, if a next real estate agent says bachelor pad I will know to lower my expectations. The uptown apartment was absolutely gorgeous! It's not in my ideal area[right in the middle of things] but I made an offer a little shy of the asking price, I hope I don't get it. I don't know whats wrong with me, I want to hold out until I can find the ideal place in the perfect area.

Let's hope I get some rest and post some more before I go back to the rat race.

Worked to death

I overnighted at Breezes Montego bay last week and I was a bit disappointed. This was my first time staying at an all inclusive hotel and after my 4 hour drive up the only thing I could get was a beef cheeseburger with fries or a hot dog? come on now. I got the food and went to the bar for a drink and was called over by one of the trainee managers who tried to pick me up to take pictures for her. I would have said that she had some big cojones to fraternize with the guests but it would seem all the staff was that way.

One thing I noticed at the outside bar was all the bees. I took a walk around the property and there was so many bees, apparently they were attracted to all the soda machines. You had to fight the bees to get to the machine and when I actually got a cup it was full of dead bee parts. The bees needed to chill from all the work, they were at a "luxury" resort. I did the same though, I dragged my ass out of bed at 11pm and drove to the middle of the city to put in a few hours of work. sux eh? my work patterns are so odd.

back! but barely here

I think I promised my Mobay friend a picture from the last post.. so here it is! where does the time go? I have some many things to blog about but no time to update it, things have become so bad that I don't even have the time to go through the other blogs I normally read or to reply to my messages and friend requests on facebook.

What have I been up to then? Lets digress, the last time I was on a AA flight their in flight entertainment got me hooked on the big bang theory theory. I sat in the hotel that Monday and watched CBS' entire prime time comedy lineup and found the greatest thing next to sliced bread so when I came back to Jamaica I continued to follow their series. After missing a few episodes I did some googling and found I could download them via public torrents and the rest is history. I now have the full seasons of all the shows I liked but never had the time to watch downloaded. Is this illegal because I could have just watched them on my cable.. which is what is not happening now. Instead of watching the crappy quality How I Met Your Mother on my cable, I just download the episode the next day and watch it commercial free in wide screen format.

Now that I have hours of shows to watch on my computer I still don't have much time to watch them. I still probably just spend 30 minutes per day to watch an episode. So what else have I been doing with my time? I find that if I leave at 7:30am I can beat most of the traffic and reach work before 8 so I have been waking up and leaving early. I have also fought the urge of leaving at 4:30pm and started to stay at work until 6:30pm at which point there is pretty much no traffic on the road to go home. At the same time I come off as being a good employee and so much more work is getting done! What I need to start doing is waking up earlier and energized so I can go walking.. but one step at a time.

Enough chatter for now, I'll leave y'all with an interesting photo from that trip to Montego Bay. This photo was taken on the way back to town as I was passing through Ocho Rios. I am just going to assume that this is not really meant for the pedestrian crossing but for the dolphin park that should be somewhere near by. Yet again as per usual walking through the town all the locals thought I was a tourist and harrased me to no end. How does one look like a Jamaican? It shouldn't be that hard for me.. I born and grow here.

I am alive.. somewhat

I will not call names but I am not one of those people that have forsaken blogsphere, I try to update this thing at least once weekly but as GC may have noticed I have been spread a little thin lately. So what have I been up to since early June?

• I have learnt art is where the money is. I went to a swanky art show at somebody's house in the Acadia suburbs of Kingston. Free wine, free food, 1/2 naked models bouncing up and down the runway, bumping elbows with people who buy paintings and prints at $400,000 a pop.. it was a good night. I think its time to pick up a paintbrush and a canvas.


• I passed through Caribbean Fashion week and a few of the parties. At two of the events fate would have it that r-dawg, my x from about 4 years ago, would cross paths and have plenty of time for awkward silence and to catch up. She is doing well she is now a medical doctor.. congrats r-dawg lol. Anyway the picture on the left does have some relevance. The promoters of CFW advertised a bunch of b-list celebs associated with the event and made a big deal about it. Now can someone tell me what does Nia Long, Eve, some lady from soul food have to do with Caribbean Fashion Week? You can't really see it in my picture but Eve has put on a lot of weight or was she always that fat? Does the TV camera hide the pounds? It took me about 20 minutes to figure who the fat lady was beside me at a party that everybody wanted to talk to. meh, maybe I'm just slow.
• The price for everything is went up yet my company has found a way to make savings by cutting my pay. I used to work at least 123 extra hours on a standby arrangement per month but effective July that figure has moved down to at least 67 extra hours. It's understandable though.. the timing is just bad given the current inflation trends. This will now free up some time for me to enjoy my nights and weekends more. They may be cutting my standby pay but as of recent I have been clocking some major overtime hours. Even later on tonight at midnight I shall be going to work to add 4 more hours to the meter. I'm not sure how I will make my meeting tomorrow at 9am after tonight's work.
• I went to the beach and got sun burned as usual. What was unusual was the two couples I saw doing it in the water. I always heard of people having sex in the water at the hellshire beach but this was the first time I was spotting it for myself. Should have brought along Tami the paparazzi to capture evidence. I guess it is time to find a new secluded beach.
  
• Everything at my company is last minute so when they asked me at Lunch time on Friday if I was able to attend a meeting in Florida on Monday I was not surprised. I looked on the itinerary and saw that I would be staying at a hotel right in front of Sawgrass Mills mall in Fort Lauderdale and my weekend instantly took a turn for the better. By early Sunday afternoon I was unpacked at trodding the 1+ mile of mall. I must say even though they have added two new sections since I've last been there the mall seems a lot smaller than I remembered.
• I have sold my trusty sidekick Olympus camera this morning and got $200 for it. I didn't want to sell it but after stepping up to the even geeky-er 400D Canon DSLR I could use some of the extra cash to help buy a lens. So far I've spent around $900 and I only have a starter kit, I need to budget like $600 more before I can start putting out some good quality pictures. I guess I should make photography my new hobby, or maybe I can make some money off it based on what I saw at the show mentioned in the first bullet point.

That's it for now.. hopefully I can put out more than 3 posts this month. I think it's time for some leave.

Projects: from start to finish

Who can relate to this cartoon? It's my slightly modified version from project cartoon.

How the customer explained it

How the project leader understood it

How the analyst designed it

How the programmer wrote it

What the beta testers received

How the business consultant described it

How the project was documented

What operations installed

When it was delivered

How it was supported

After it was launched

The disaster recovery plan

What marketing advertised

What the customer really needed

The open source version

How the customer was billed

If only things could be different.

3/4 left to go

Well it's spring now (not that Jamaica has seasons) and the first quarter of the year has flew past me. So whats new?

• Much to my shock(and horror) my company moved my dept. back to I.T. *sigh* It also looks like they are trying to dump a whole lot of extra work in our laps too. The company has gone through some organizational restructuring and many heads have rolled. I got a call from a guy today who was employed with the company for 15 years asking me for advice in moving his career into my field. That will probably be me in a few years time when I get placed on the chopping block but until then I shall stay on milking this corporate cow.
  
• Another one bites the dust, crashplus looks like its about to be wound up and liquidated to see if it can meet it's liabilities. lol good luck with that. I do not feel sorry for those who ignore all logic and put $1 in a black hole expecting to pull out $2.
  Tip-of-the-day: don't put money into anything that has more liabilities than assets.
• Thanks to google my blog, throughout its lifetime, has been discovered(not that it was hidden) by several friends and of course subsequent phone calls/emails followed. They mostly say it was my profile picture that that gave away the owners true identity so to avoid passers by from quickly identifying me I have replaced my face with my foot. Now any friends in the future that want to pass by and "discover" me will now have to actually stop and read the blog.
• So I noticed my past few blog posts had been picked up by people and passed around via email and was even posted to a facebook group.. *pops collar* I wonder what they are saying in the emails.. any lurkers out there care to share? What was entertaining is that a young lady on facebook pointed out that my blogger profile stated that I had "none" for my favorite books and she was turned off. I racked my brain and updated my profile, go check it out.. maybe now I can get me a girl!
• RE: new years resolutions.. I think inflation pretty much dealt with that.. did it hit 18% last year? other than that I guess nothing has changed, maybe the haters where right. I'll have to check and get back on this one.

I actually woke up and jogged this morning! great way to start Q2 `08. How are things with you?

a time to kick back

For the past 7 weeks there has been one person missing from my dept. at work so I have been picking up a lot of slack but it is now my turn to shed my burden and drop it on their shoulders. I spent some time last Friday transferring knowledge to the rest of the dept. and now I am off for this week :D. What are my plans? maybe do some spring cleaning, some shopping* but my main goal is to relax and do absolutely nothing.

Not only did I have work to deal with my parents decided I needed more to do. They were re-shingling their roof before the rain season and them being 2 old retired folk decided that I needed to make the time to inspect the progress of the work as they couldn't climb up on the roof. So I had to drive up to the sticks with my camera in my work clothes in the middle of the work day and scramble up on their roof to take pictures for them. I wouldn't mind as much if they lived close but they lived on the other side of town and beyond. To demonstrate how beyond they live look at the view from their roof below, yes, that is a cloud at the same level I am at.



If that little hill on the other side of the valley wasn't there that view would be priceless but we all can't have a nice view. This picture on the left is what I see when I look out of my bathroom window at my apartment. Those houses are in Jacks hill.. not a bad place to live if you can weather Jamaica's version of fire season. After months of no rain it seems like a yearly occurrence now for them to have massive fires on those hill sides.

* As I was leaving work on Friday they gave me a gift certificate to show their appreciation for all the work I have been doing.. lol. It lists 10+ places I can redeem it at such as jewellery, computer, furniture, clothes, music, hardware stores, hotels and some supermarkets. The value isn't that much to make me say wow but at the same time it's large enough not to ignore. I guess I will pop by some stores this week to see what I can buy.

The end of the beginning

yup it's official, I have just clocked the first twenty five years of my life and what do I have to show for it? This ecard my friend sent me.

The email also came with an apology so I was very curious to click the button to find:

older *sigh* I was caught off gaurd but good one.

So what do I plan to do for today? nada.. I think I pretty much lost interest in birthdays after growing up with my parents. The nail in that coffin was one February as a young teen when I asked my father what was I getting for my birthday only to have him point out that I didn't deserve anything.

To make the day interesting I left work early at lunch time to go home and sleep. yawn, still tired. between the birthday and work calls I probably only got in half an hour, it's like they were watching me and as soon as I dozed off the phone rang. I need some time off yet again. I only have to wait two more weeks before I can even consider applying for leave(according to my boss who is currently on leave). I'm guessing we need more people in my department, but thats just wishful thinking.

breaking the habit

The subject of my photo is somewhat off but this was a lunch from the canteen at my workplace. I have long recognized that this food could not be good for me and have been trying to cut back on it but it was so hard granted that I got it for free. I would sit at my desk telling myself not to take their lunch then HR would send me an email with the current days menu in all its barbi-fried goodness [drools] and the only thing stopping me from slobbing one down is just for me to pick up the phone and let the canteen know what I want. They make it so easy that I don't even have to get up, it would get dropped off at my desk.

Well not anymore, I am playing starvin' Marvin up at my new location. They have no canteen and I am not willing to walk/drive anywhere to get food. That is one of the few things I miss from working in New Kingston, if I didn't want to stay couped up in the office I could walk over to one of the many restaurants on the hip strip. I'm not a big fan of fast food so my choices were limited but at least there were options. It's still early but I think it has started to affect me at home too, on Saturday I only had 1 meal for the day.. A bowl of oats at 1pm in the afternoon and I wasn't hungry or anything the rest of the day. I had 1 meal on Sunday too but that was Terra Nova, 80+ item buffet[I had 5 plates], so I guess that doesn't count lol.

I must say I am loving the 5 minute commute to/from work now.

the days have been long..

but the worst is now over. Yup we moved office last weekend and the contents of the data center that I used to work in downtown is now uptown. The move was hardly smooth though despite the many months of planning. I was supposed to go to the new location on Sunday morning at 6am and do the cleanup work of bringing up any troublesome systems after the move. Much to my horror by that time[after 9 hours] only a fraction of the move had been completed.

There was problem after problem which resulted in me working from 6am Sunday straight through to 2pm on Monday. I could have only dreamt that after the 32hour shift it was over but there was a lot of work still left to be done so I went home and got a 4 hours sleep only to return to work at 8pm that night and work straight back to 5am Tuesday morning.

Needless to say that when I reached home on Tuesday Morning I put my phone on vibrate, threw it somewhere and slept like I've never slept before lol. I woke up ate something at lunch time and went back to sleep. The next time I woke up was dinner time so I went to dinner with some colleagues at the Liguanea Club. That place is pretty posh.. I need to start earning 4x my current income so I can afford to become a member :(

The rest of the work week flew right by me and I returned back to my office downtown today for the first time since the move. Oddly enough I saw my boss and the other guy in my department down there as well, I guess we have problems giving up such a nice large secluded office environment. It should be interesting to see how much longer they will run the AC for to cool 10,000+ sqr feet just for 3 people.

How annoying..

How is it possible that a crew of three workers take more than two weeks to paint my place? I wish my apartment was that big that it justified them taking so long but given the same amount of time, a paintbrush and a few gallons of paint, I would have single handedly finished the job already. Anyway they have finished with inside which is no longer boring white(thank you) but a "Almond blossom" according to the paint can or light yellow according to a straight man. I notice they have painted over the black wooden decorative finishes on the outside walls of the ghetto penthouse with this same color and have uglified the place imho.

Now almost every day I come home I see them tinkering about the place painting something, I'm sure nobody likes to come home and be haunted by the smell of oil paint. Anyway at some point in time I bought a bottle of febreze... whats the deal with it? I feel totally tricked by the commercials that got the best of my curiosity. Well at least if the paint smell starts sticking to my curtains or other stuff hopefully it will sort it out.

School has started back and the long lines of traffic picked up right where they left off. I was enjoying the past few weeks of cruising to work and back home in a few minutes, this will no longer be possible until summer or something else changes. Those changes specifically being me changing offices, yup I am finally leaving downtown and moving on up to.. uptown. On the topic of annoying I sat in 50+ meetings while planning this move which has been in the making for over 12 months now. I'm just glad I didn't have to chair any of those meetings. I am however looking forward to after the move, this other location shrinks my daily commute time to 10 mins to and from work in peak traffic :D. For y'all who like pictures these are some I found on my pc that I snapped from out of the windows of my soon to be x-office. My ode to downtown:

A view of Kingston and Lime Cay.

Kingston public hospital and the post central sorting office, I think all mail passes through here.

My old alma mater, STGC and the Holy Trinity Cathedral.

Sabina Park.

Twelve Days of Christmas

Why are people talking about Christmas being over? I'm sure we all know the 12 days of Christmas song and few years ago upon further investigation I found out the 12 days starts on December 25th and goes on to January 5. So for those of you (like my parents) who leave up your decorations until Easter need to start taking them down on the 6th of January. My boss called me one day and dropped a bomb on me, he had a gift for me.. lol I must be doing something right or maybe his new wife strongly suggested[nagged] that he do it. Either way it made my day, thanks!

It has been way more than 12 days since I made a post so I'll just summarize all the updates that would have probably been posts if I wasn't so lazy in bullet form... yet again.

• I took some time off work to relax before the holidays only to find out the contractors the landlady sent over to renovate my place was ready for me. I was pretty much stuck at home the whole time as they fixed up the place and laid a fresh layer of dust over everything I owned along with drops of paint. On the plus side the place looks a lot nicer now. My parents are convinced she plans to raise the rent after she is finished.. I'm keeping my fingers crossed but even if she does, how bad could it be?
• As per usual the eating has been non-stop.. time to unbuckle the belt :p
• I went to a party that had a haagen-dazs stand.. this was a first for me. What was funny was I mentioned it to my sister and she said "I can't tell when last I went to a party and they didn't have one". I guess we live in two different worlds even though she only lives a few minutes from me.
• My standby duty starts today and goes on until next week Monday. Somehow I forgot this and was previously looking for somewhere to go on old years night. Oh well change of plans.
• Anybody that flips through tv on Christmas day knows that channel that has the yuletide log burning with Christmas carols playing for hours.. this year I taped dvded it. Yup this is probably the first time I made use of that cheap dvd recorder I bought from radio shack and was proud. Now I can listen to endless hours of Christmas music throughout all my 12 days of Christmas.
• I fixed one of the contractor's computer. After working for one too many days in my apartment and seeing all the boxes of electronic junk he figured I must know something about this computer thing so he approached me and I told him I would look at it for him. I fixed it for him and he offered money or at least to buy me a drink for fixing it.. I couldn't take a cent from him. I have long forgotten that there are people who don't really get the chance to use or know much about computers. I am glad he bought one for his kids so they can stay current.
  

Oh yeah happy new year when it comes.