The wingman is back

I was minding my own business at last night when my phone started to ring, I wasn't planning on answering it but I noticed somebody just drove up outside. It was Jason, he wasn't supposed to be here as he has been out sailing the seas of the far east for the past few months and was supposed to be sailing his way down to Brazil from Canada now.

He ended his contract early and is now back in Jamaica, he normally misses Jamaica quite a bit when he is out at sea for many months in a ship full of men. He gets to travel extensively though and gets paid well for it so I'm not sure why he is complaining, if I.T. wasn't working out for me this line of work would be for me right after investment finance.

I'm not sure why we got along so well at UWI because we are on the opposite spectrum on many things, we even went to rival high schools STGC and KC. One thing was certain though, we had a common interest and shared the same taste in UWI girls. Wherever I would fall short with one he could always come and pick up her interest and girls who didn't fancy him much seemed to fancy me.

Jason often tries to get me to follow him when he parties in a sad attempt to get one of my friends. I introduced him to her at UWI many years ago and ever since he saw me with her at a party one night not long after he has been head over heals for her. He seems to assume that any party, club, gathering, thing he invites me to I would get her to tag along. I don't think I have ever gone along with his plans as she doesn't like him like that, I'm sure she has told him this but he chooses to ignore it.

I think for this year I will follow him out more, its been a while. Oddly enough he knows a strip club owner and I know different strip club owner so if our plans fail we can always go have backup options as we can get into these clubs for free. I must say Jason at the strip club is hilarious, he always tries to pick up girls(who I assume, a good assumption, are lesbians) and fail. I leave those girls alone and gave the last one that tried to dance with me some very dirty looks. Fun future ahead.

Is it wrong to be single?

The last time I had an official girl friend was October 2004, due to the fact that I am rather picky of who can actually call herself Miss Adrian. Not too long ago I walked pass some ladies in my office talking and heard one say "Ask Adrian he can buy one" Clearly this was a ploy to get me to ask what so I indulged them. One of them was apparently selling basket orders for Valentine's day. I eloquently responded "buy basket fi who".

At this point in time they were quite shocked, one asked if I was single, another asked if I was gay. They then proceeded to talk about me refusing to believe I was single so I injected that I was indeed just single and not gay... only to hear one of them mutter "yeah him don't look gay" WTF!&#!. They then proceeded to question me as to why I was single and I explained that I didn't like the quality of women I am seeing these days then exited that conversation. I guess its safe to assume that everybody else in my office has a significant other based off of their reactions.

Maybe one of them will hook me up even though I doubt I would like their friends. Fast forwarding a few hours earlier I was walking back from the bathroom and I came across the office apple of my eye. I had long given up on her as she confirmed a few weeks back that she was indeed 30+ and I was convinced I was too young for her but she surprised me today by asking me if I was up for lunch today. Her saying "call me when you are ready and I'll drop what I'm doing" and "Its a date" got that ball rolling again in my head. I was all smiles after that as I rushed off to a meeting I was late for.

The meeting was long and boring as usual but the food was good. So good that I had about four sandwiches, three banana nut muffins and a couple glasses of juice. Needless to say I was full at the end of the meeting but it was now after 12 and time for my lunch date. I went to her and explained the situation but still offered to accompany her and we had a good time together. I am torn as to whether or not I should pursue this not so young lady.

I have told my friend about apple and she doesn't seem to like her. This friend uses me as a booty call ever so often has expressed nanny will lock off if apple comes into the picture. I suspect this breaks some booty call rules but its understandable, so I imagine the question becomes: Do I want to throw away the young, hot, fun piece of ass for an old girl and a steady relationship? I am leaning towards yes but this whole office affair just raises red flags all over my head which can't be ignored. Drama is one thing I have made ever effort to avoid but this is hard.

it

A few weeks back I was up late one night using my computer and I had a little 2.5" portable TV on my desk playing in the background. I was vaguely paying attention to it but was hearing some of the words: "If you have it, you don't need it. If you need it, you don't have it. If you have it, you need more of it."...

After a while I started to wonder what the 'it' really was only to hear him end with: "if you've never had any of it, ever, people just seem to know"

I looked it up online that night, nada, apparently it was a brand new commercial and there wasn't much buzz about it yet. I remembered this morning and decided to look it up again and it was all over the place :) My question is what is your initial interpretation of this 'it' he speaks of? I know I was completely off.

I want a bike, ride and die

The Yamaha R6 has my name all over it, its affordable, at 600cc its not too fast and it would be a good addition to my weekend/late night gallivanting. I am very tempted to get one.. my only issue is that bike owners don't seem to live as long as non bike owners.. I am also sure that my parents wouldn't accept that idea too well too. I guess I'll see what my sister have to say on this topic, she seems to be an unbiased voice and can give me this from a medical perspective.

My desire for go-fast machines also extend to WRXs and Evolutions. The problem with these cars is that they are so expensive to maintain. My friend bought his evo in 2005 and I am amazed at how much money he poors into it, its a good thing he makes a lot of paper. His explanation was that you are only young once and it didn't make sense for him to wait till his 30s before buying such toys. Driving on 15psi boost in an aluminium body car always makes me imagine the news reports as they cover the scene of the accident with our bodies in the crumpled vehicle. Yet still I jump in his car whenever we are going somewhere like a little Charlene. My assumption is riding a bike would be that (thrill/fear x15) - 80% cost.

ps. That isn't really me riding the bike without a helmet in the above pic, don't worry :-p

When it rains, it pours..

Where to begin? This has been one of the worst weeks I've had in a while. Lets start the list of things that went wrong in chronological order.

1. I realized I lost my membership card to pricesmart then inadvertently voided my visa card.
2. My mechanic calls me and tells me he has given up hope in finding replacement rims for my two damaged rims for my car. This has been the only thing that has been keeping my car from me these many weeks. So I went and picked out a set of new rims $$$ which the insurance company will only partially subsidize.(They are only paying for like 1 rim)
3. I realize my freezer is only partially working, the front 3/4 is at 0C and the back quarter at -20C while the compressor is at 80C and been running non-stop** all week, running up my electricity bill, whilst the meat in my freezer still thaws out. I figure that the sands of time has run out on that fridge and its time to buy a new one.
4. My boss casually* tells me that I need to be on a plane to the northern state of New Hampshire before the end of the month to perform an evaluation of a new system being offered by one of our vendors... My us visa is expired.
5. I rushed to get the visa application forms filled out, ask my friend where is a paymaster and she sends me to Superplus Liguanea. There is no paymaster there so I ask the staff where is the nearest paymaster they point me to hi-lo Liguanea.
6. While walking over to hi-lo I noticed that the sole of my boots has started to tear off.
7. At hi-lo there is no paymaster either I asked the staff at hi-lo and they point me to Sovereign Center, I proceed to walk there in my 1/2 dead boots only to find they don't take credit card nor debit card for US visa applications. I asked them to point me to the nearest ABM which wasn't far then came back, paid and had to walk all the way back to my car which was parked at superplus.
8. I came home to enter the paymaster the receipt into the embassy's site and make my appointment, the only to find the the only date available to me is 1 day after I am supposed to leave. I accept it and send an email to the embassy requesting an emergency appointment they email me back the next day stating they don't give out emergency interviews so early and I should continuously check the website for earlier dates... wtf I check the site and find the next available date is now 2 weeks after my departure date.
9. One of my friends told me she was pregnant, I ignored that statement and she said nothing more on the matter. She called me again today(a few days later) and she said it was just a joke. Ladies, this is not a joke to any man who isn't actively trying to get you pregnant.
   
10. I received a fax from my union earlier this week stating that I was getting a 35% raise on my basic pay backdated to April of last year. Later I checked my HR records online and realized after crunching the numbers that the raise is only 12% and also conflicts with another raise I got back in April.. with my luck my pay stub will not reflect the new raise in pay due to this conflict.
11. I had a meeting with my boss reviewing my performance over the past 6 months and I lost a bit of points due to things beyond my control. His explanation was that one person in the dept. can't get a high score and everybody else scores low. That is understandable but this lower score hurts my yearly bonus.
    
12. I found out that the camera I ordered online earlier in the week is now almost hopelessly lost in shipment via USPS at some post office in Florida... I called their main IVR and it says it has no records of that tracking number and after arguing the IVR for over 20minutes I got to speak to a real person!! who said that the package was at a local post office in Florida and gave me a number to call them directly. Of course they had no clue about the package.
13. A girl stalker just called me on my house phone as I was typing this post and said she has been trying to reach me all holidays.. its a good thing I don't answer my phone much. This girl has had a crush on me since the first year of UWI and always tries to talk to me whenever she builds up the courage. She somehow managed to squeeze my number out of me before I left UWI. She also somehow managed to squeeze my new number out of my parents after I moved out of their house too and left them strict instructions not to give out my home phone number.. She just now seems to be making renewed effort into starting something with me.. what am I to do? I've already told her a few years back its not going to work and I don't want to be mean to anybody.
    

So as not to dwell on the bad I shall also list a few of the positive things for this week in no particular order.

1. There is a chance the raise goes through properly and I get almost a year of retroactive pay+benefits.. if not I have to sort it out with HR and wait till next month.
2. I notice my boss and his boss goes on all the business trips but this time my skills have been noticed and I've been selected to go even though the US embassy may throw a wrench in this project. Hey, its the thought that counts.. unless they put it as one of my objectives then I am screwed.
3. I spoke to someone at my company who made a few calls and gave me a one last chance procedure to get an immediate interview at the US embassy. I am still doubtful of this as what I have been told directly clashes with the consulate's instructions which they have bolded on their site. Failing this I will be stuck in Jamaica for this trip. I still have faith as they came from somebody with clout.
4. I had quite a bit of apple martinis tonight while typing this as my fridge is on the fray and some of the ingredients are perishable. So as to not be wasteful I will be using up as much as possible without killing myself. On the flip side I've had quite a bit of meat(my breakfast this morning was all meat) as I had a freezer full of meat that I also don't want to spoil.
5. While searching for my lost USPS parcel online tonight I found a way to make free calls to select business' in the states. I also suspect I've located the post office the parcel is at currently. I just have to wait till Monday before I give them a call to see if I can get it re-dispatched.
   

Only 5 good things to list? meh

* my boss always throw things like this on me.. he has called me at 11:30pm to ask me a question only for me to go in the next day to see an email from him stating he is now in another country??! The other guy and myself normally have a good laugh when we find out these important details by accident or many days later as we are always left in the dark.

**Coincidentally JPS bill just arrived via email 39minutes ago and it has an actual reading up to yesterday. As suspected the consumption for this period is significantly higher due to the fridge. At least its not as bad as the 2005 Decembers bill where they doubled my bill for no good reason. That month stuck out like a porn star in a convent, I was hardly at home then and didn't have any Christmas decorations up.

Ebay... It has been so long

One can't really be a geek without a geeky camera.. so since its a new year its time for a new camera, well new was the plan but I settled on almost new. Last year I had a small 5MP sony camera which everybody loved before it got stolen from my apartment only 3 months after I bought it. The camera took ok pictures but wasn't so hot in the night when I went out and tried to take pictures, after doing some research I realized it was a common issue amoung compact digital cameras so those are out of the question for this years exercise. After doing some research on ultra zooms this is what I came up with, the SP-510UZ:

I decided to pick it up off ebay and have it shipped to my friend, Alex, in the states who should be coming down sometime in the first quarter.. (hopefully soon) as I refuse to pay taxes duty/gct on this. I am sure over the past year or so I have paid over $100,000 in customs fees just to get my junk into this backward island. I used to shop on ebay quite often last year but that died out after I had a disagreement with a guy on it. It has been so long that much to my surprise after I made payment for the camera I saw the following on the reciept

Congratulations! You have just made your first payment using PayPal.

Thank you for choosing PayPal, the fast, easy and safe way to pay for items on eBay.

I must say to all the critics of ebay/paypal out there that it is pretty safe if you do your due dilligence. I did pay a bit extra for this used camera than if I had bought it new but the ebayer bundled extra things in there such as a 2GB memory card among other things that just sweetened the deal. Another thing that sweetened the deal is that if I buy from an individual on ebay often they will send the item to any location I desire such as my friend. Online stores tend to frown upon such practices and require the shipping address be attached to my credit card and is often a big hassle. This is a bit concerning though as this seems like a wide open door for CC fraud to take place, but i'm not complaining though as it works to my advantage for now via ebay.

On that note of CCs and plastic, over the weekend I went to pricesmart to pick up an item and realized that I've lost my membership card. I think I noticed it was missing from my wallet before as the last time I went there was 3 weeks before but didn't pay it much mind. They issued me with a temporary card good for single use and said I can get two more before I have to buy a replacement card, its cheap though. Upon reaching home I decided to search for it to see if I just left it in a pile of some papers somewhere but only found my health scheme card(I didn't even realize this card was lost).

After some time searching with no success I looked in my wallet again and noticed my visa card was dirty, tried to clean it and unwittingly voided the card after I noticed the signature strip at the back was mostly wiped clean and now the words "void void void" were in place of where my signature used to be. The reason I decided to clean the card was due to the fact that when I recieved it it was stuck to the letter with regular cellophane tape that left a bit of sticky stuff at the back. After I tried to sign the back it didn't come out too right and as a result some merchants ask me for an ID when I try to use it. I am always offended as I remember the days of my other credit card which absolutely nobody asked for verification, I would just pick it up and go and ever since this new visa card I make sure and walk around with an ID.

I called my bank and surprisingly enough they said they would replace it free of charge, so now I am walking around with my old CC and this voided visa as well with plans to go in one day and request a new one. If they could find some way so that I don't have to go to the bank I would be a happy camper. Last year I remember requesting another set of cheque leaves from them and within 2 days a courier called me and dropped it off at my office. I checked my statements the following months and saw no charges for the cheques nor the service, I guess they are doing something right as I am a happy customer with over 5 accounts with them.

To buy or continue renting?

What to do? I have entered my third year of renting and I'm currently spending a couple hundred thousand per annum doing so to live right smack in the middle of things in the Kingson 6 area. At some point in time last year my wet behind the ears self decided that instead of wasting all of this money on rent I should buy a place and have it go towards my mortgage as at the end of the day the place will belong to me!

It is still the first week of the year and I have already placed a bid for an apartment even more in the middle of things in New Kingston. I placed two bids for a two bedroom apartment or a one bedroom apartment in the same building, I doubt I'll get any but it doesn't hurt to make an offer. I was not in any rush to buy a place but oddly enough my parents pushed this one on me. Last year when I mentioned to them that I was interested in buying property my mother laughed at me and told me I was too young (24?) to be thinking of such things then both of them started to tell me of their ages when they first bought property. They changed their tune quickly after they learnt about my ability to save and invest, as well as a nice healthy income (a lot healthier than they imagined).

The tables have turned though now as I have realized that mortgage is not a pretty thing. It would put me in debt for many years to come where as if I save a bit more it would significantly cut debt and interest payments. We will see what this/next year brings as I have mandated to myself to be a home owner by the age of 27.

I blog because I have to..

I have spent quite a significant portion of my work day today thus far in blogsphere catching up on many months of other people's lives. At some point in time before midday I got up to use the bathroom and realized I was the only person on the floor at my downtown office now and wondered what was it I used to occupy myself with before blogs? One should note that it is a pretty big building and this floor has the capacity to house over 100 people. Of course there is always the option of doing my work.. but I work so efficiently that there is often no rush to get it done.

I had no plans of working from this ghost town of an office today but I saw my boss uptown yesterday and he asked me to spend the rest of the week down here since the other 1/3 of the department(1 person) was on vacation and this office would be empty. I obliged so I am now stuck here for the rest of the week, my other alternatives are working from home and working from some other building uptown where I would pretty much be alone too. Working from home is a mind boggling concept for me at the moment as I am not sure how much work can actually get done at home, even though not much work gets done at the office. I only opt to work from home when I know I am too tired to fight the morning traffic to come to work when I know I have a early morning deadline to meet, at that point in time its so much easier to just wake up, do my work, send it off and then take my own sweet time to get ready after rush hour traffic has died off.

One other issue is that I am not challenged enough at work so all this flexibility leaves me with a bit of free time on my hands. Blogsphere is my new tool for keeping my sanity. It has gotten to the point up to where my mother called me last night and after realizing that it wasn't going to be a minute conversation I told her that I will call her back when I got to the office today so I could fill out my morning a bit. I have mentioned to my boss' boss that the work needs to be more challenging but that didn't go anywhere.

An option I take up every now and then is to create work related projects for myself and work on them. This is a good route to go if one is looking for a promotion but it adds a lot of responsibility. The last project I created for myself got visibility from my boss' boss' boss, pretty high up, but ended up with me receiving phone calls at ~ 3:30am a few times since then after I handed it over to the operations dept. whenever they fumbled with it. Feel free to advise me on how to occupy myself here. Also on that note I have added a widget with the list of blogs I am currently reading on a regular basis, one of them has even added me to their blog as a friend! the blogging future seems bright for me in 2007.

Streak broken, new year off on wrong foot

Happy new year, one and all!

One of my friends gave me a ticket to the French Connections new years eve party on Saturday night. I am not particularly fond of the French Connections party series especially this one which stated that all tickets must be bought pre-sold at $5000.00 a pop as no tickets will be sold at the gate and of course lo and behold as I entered the venue I saw they had a ticket booth selling tickets at the gate. Anyway it was pretty much set in stone that I would go to this party as I felt guilty for turning down all other invitations all season and this was my last chance to make up (it was also a plus that I wasn't on standby duty for work like I was for the previous Christmas weekend too). In keeping with 2006's theme of staying at home I somewhat ditched a pre-party new years eve parties being held at my friend's house earlier that night and stayed home to catch American dad and Family guy on Fox, I feel bad about this but such is life.

The party was an interesting mix of young and old, the crowd seemed to be from their 20's up to 40's. I guess the teeny-bopers couldn't foot the ticket price but oddly enough of the seven people I asked, nobody I knew payed to go in either and clearly stated they wouldn't have gone unless they got free tickets too and were planning to sell their tickets to go to a cheaper party where all their friends were going to. The drinks were acceptable, they didn't have much of my favorite drinks (All gin based drinks were absent from their line-up) but they did have Verdi Spumante my new favorite cheap wine as discovered from the last post. I was warned about the food from before so I wasn't disappointed much by the not so hot finger food which was served and scattered in stalls all over the venue. To get a full cocktail plate of food would have required going to several stalls to get a spoon full of food so I remained hungry for the night.

The music and entertainment was good, they had their own miniature firework show, confetti and balloon shower at midnight which would set the mood for a new years kiss but this wasn't going to happen for me as I suspect the girl I came with has Herpes simplex 1 so she just got a hug. This just reminds me not to go to parties with girls who I don't plan to hook up with and I'm not one to ditch the person I came with even though the two girls I came with ditched me after I stopped to talk to this other girl they didn't know. While searching for them Marsha found me. She is short little cute girl I met at my friends house many months ago that I was forbidden to talk to by her friend and most people who know me are well aware that I love short girls. She put a smile on my face for the rest of the night and to cut a long story short the night was bleh.