Unwanted neighbours..

So my friend Alex was so kind to come down and give me my camera last week. I am still trying to figure out how to use it properly but here is my first blog picture post using it:This is a hawk of some sorts that has decided to live under my eaves since last year after I installed a 2' florescent bulb to light up my parking area for better security at night after they stole my neighbours car. You can't see the light but its about 1' to the right. To install this light I had to carry a heavy wrought iron chair unto a ledge that is less than 2 feet wide to climb up and drill and install the fixture and I remember while I was up there looking at the top of that column noticing no signs of life.

The picture clearly(maybe not) shows droppings and urine(?) running down the walls. This indicates two things to me:

• The bird moved in after I installed the light
• The bird is a pest messing up my wall and needs to go

It would be cool if the bird ate the other pests around like the roaches, lizards, wasps or rats I see in the yard below, but I doubt it does this as I have seen no decline in the other pests. I have done my job on the other pests though, bug spray for them all. I see roaches fly in every now and then if I leave my windows open and the light on at night but I think my place is roach free for the most part as I tend to go for the broom and bug spray to kill them if they don't fly out instantly.

I don't really have a problem with lizards as they eat other bugs but the girls who visit me always seem to create a bit too much drama for me every time they see on here.. so they get the bug spray too. I always feel bad killing the lizards though, esp. the big ones like this one here. I snapped this picture last year April before I started the genocide. This one was a fat one, over 1" wide, and would croak so loudly that it would often wake me up at night. I sprayed him with bug spray and he jumped off, falling downstairs. I assumed the fall killed it but it came back two months later. We repeated and it hasn't showed up since, RIP lizzy.

blast from the past

I was cleaning out my old PC recently so I could sell it and I found a bunch of old(relatively) pictures on the hard drive, pictures I took when I used to live with my parents back in 2004. This first picture here is in my bedroom with my then girlfriend trying to hide from the camera. Can somebody explain to me the phenomena where people try to hide from the camera by hiding their face? The camera will still see the rest of them so the hiding face thing makes no sense, especially if your face is your best feature. Sorry if my room was messy, this is actually one of the better states one can find it in.

This next picture is of a stuffed animal a previous girl gave me on our 1 year anniversary. We like her, she holds the record of longest relationship in my books with a record breaking 1 year and 3 days together! I have gotten a bit of stuffed animals from girls but this is the only one I still keep around due to the strong sentimental value. Funny enough though girls who come around always run and pick up this bear and hug him and walk around with him until they ask and hear that it was from an x-girlfriend. One woman, 28, who I would assume is beyond such behaviours actually used to hit the bear every time she saw it to openly show me her hatred for it. Of course she was also one of them who ran and hugged it up as soon as she saw it too, go figure.

Life was simple back then, no bills to pay, my only responsibility was to get good grades at school and of course I went to school and wasted most of the time. Simple isn't always good though.. I had no money, mind you my parents had money but they ensured I didn't see a cent unless necessary. In fact I was looking at this month's pay slip and it covers completely all the money my parents gave me for the two years prior to me working, ie. 2002 to 2004. In fact this is exactly why I am tight with releasing funds, my pauper history doesn't allow it. They would give me money every 6 months and not a cent between. If I needed more money it was available through a loan and would be deducted out of the next payment. The budget was so tight that if I wanted to buy myself something such as a watch meant that I wouldn't be able to eat lunch cause the money couldn't do both... the bad ole' days

Birthday weekend, a new year.

Yesterday marked the first day of the year of the Boar and also my birthday. My parents took me out to lunch at the Terra Nova hotel for their famous (and now played) brunch. That place is so tired, they have the same items every Sunday and my family always insists on going there. Its sad I'd much rather have gone to dim sum at Dragon Court but not all of my family likes Chinese food.

Anyways my parents did surprise me this year with a gift, I wasn't expecting anything at all, they mentioned it as we sat down to eat that my gift was in their car and they would need to follow me back to my apartment to give it to me. ?! Of course I was confused and they explained it was about three feet wide and weighed about 80 pounds. I didn't give it much conscious thought after that but apparently my mind worked on it as I ate and the thought of a safe popped into my mind as I knocked down dessert.

Of course I was right as my parents are pretty predictable buying me gifts they think I need, I was just lucky this time that I also thought I needed a safe too, I love this gift. I have been contemplating buying one for a few months now to secure my documents and other things I wouldn't want to perish in fire.. sorry potential thieves I don't have anything of monetary value in my safe. I have even committed the long series of turns to get the combination lock open to memory already.

The birthday weekend was just like any other weekend for me but it brought misfortune to a few other people. On Saturday I was driving on some roads behind Eastwood park and noticed a large column of smoke some distance away. As I got closer I noticed a car in a big blaze also spreading fire to the building it was parked under. I also briefly saw a girl with the skin from the whole of her right arm seared off, exposing a white underneath with streams of red blood. I was about to drive off as my friend in the car asked me to stay longer as she recognized the girl with the burns from high school. I looked closer and I knew her too, it was one of my neighbours from my old apartment a girl I affectionately called Supple. I was stunned a bit when I realized it was her but she, amazingly, stopped and waved back at me as she was entering some guys van who offered to take her to the hospital. My take on the situation is that the car caught on fire and she tried to reach in to save her purse or something and BAM, no more skin on right arm. I tried calling her today but no answer, if my theory is right her phone would have burned in the car too, maybe I'll go look for her tomorrow.

On Sunday morning now at about 1am I heard tires screeching then a loud crash somewhere up the road, I was a bit busy to go investigate immediately but about 30 minutes later my friend insisted on looking so we jumped in my car and went for a short drive. I saw nothing but she claimed to see where the car knocked down a sign. That accident apparently was minor or I drove on the wrong road. Later on during the afternoon while accepting the birthday phone calls I heard another big accident down the road and I could tell this one was big(I counted hearing the car roll three times). I told my friend I had to jet and took a stroll down the road to see a burgundy lancer upside down on the sidewalk with the young female driver standing behind the car on her phone explaining to somebody the grave situation. She is a lucky girl, only walking away with a few scratches and bruises, the car looks like its heading to the scrap yard.

As long as all that bad luck stays away from me I am cool, this new year looks like its shaping up to be a good one for me. *keeping my fingers crossed that it stays good until my leave starts next week*

Valentine's Day.. the irony

Like everybody else (from what I've seen) in blogsphere I too refused to take part in any form of Valentine's Day traditions and live it like any other day. What I didn't calculate was for my friend to not be on the same page as me and she was in somewhat of a bad mood the whole time(disappointed I guess). So I ended up getting no naany when on any other day I would have gotten a healthy share of poontang pie.. plus seconds.

I also sent some v-day calls and sms messages to the usual suspects and funny enough two girls who know and hate each other, who also share the same name, wanted me to stop by after work. I like to call them Original and Barbeque, it makes discussing them with my friend more entertaining and easier as she always had problems telling them apart until I named them after different flavors of chicken at KFC.

I have always had a liking for Barbeque and I suspect the feelings were mutual. I like to admire from far though when the girl has a boyfriend and this one had a really old Chinese man for a boyfriend, something I will never understand. I lost most of the feeling I had for her though one day when she tried to fool around with me before the man came home and at that point in time I was thoroughly disgusted with cheating girls as I just resigned my position of boytoy under Original's administration. That story is a long one and I'm sure I'll write about it someday..

My first barbeque

A few weeks ago the wingman suggested we hold a barbecue to celebrate his return and somehow convinced me that it will be a joint party for my upcoming b-day. Ignore the fact that I hate birthdays and that he suggested a date a few weeks from my actual birthday and it would be perfect. I felt guilty for all the previous times I've flopped his flex so I agreed to go along with his plan this time(even though it was so obviously a ploy to acquire a partner to help fund the venture and seek one of my female friends).

He then instructed me to invite my friends and gave me a list of female friends who needs to be there. I'm not sure which world he lives in but he really couldn't expect me to invite all of my X's along with other girls I've fooled around with, so after filtering his list and going through my other friends in my phone I came up with a pool of 4 girls who I figured could get along. I have never been able to get the girls I know to get along without confrontation. The wars seem to start after one girl calls and another girl answers my phone or I maybe walking on the road with a friend and another girl sees her and the rude exchange of words/threats start. It doesn't matter if the girls are wifey, matey or just platonic friends they almost always hate each other and I can't do anything with them collectively.

Anyways I invited the 4 girls I deemed fit to be in close proximity to each other and was proud until Jason with his nuff self saw one of my friends encouraged her to come and pop my bubble of peace. I invited her before but she declined as she assumed my other friends would be there and has it in her mind that she will get beat up by them(I don't blame her as the messages passed to her was something along the lines of "tell her seh mi a go tump her inna her face"). I doubt any of the harsh words would have realized but luckily for me her enemy never showed up :D.

The food was OK, all of it seasoned and cooked by Jason in his front yard. After having my plate of food I invited some of my hungry belly male friends to come and play dominoes, they don't particularly care about the late notice at 10pm, all they needed to hear was free food, dominoes, girls and they are good to go. I knew I didn't really have to worry about inviting my friends as I am familiar with most of Jason's friends and he did invite a lot of people, in fact over 50 people squeezed themselves into his barbecue. I guess its because Jason can be very persuasive, he could probably convince Frosty the snowman to take his vacation in Jamaica.

He was so happy with the turnout of the barbecue he thinks this is something he wants to do every four months. The only draw back is getting the people to leave your place when you are done. Us domino people didn't leave until after 4am and by that time I saw Jason fast asleep on his front veranda. I met one of Jason's friends girlfriend who can play dominoes pretty good, I am intrigued. Oddly enough Jason said I should have made a move as she would probably cheat on her man(who was there) as it is known that he has cheated on her before and she probably wants revenge. That is too much mix up right there but if she lives in town she could be my friend ;) lets not throw away the benefits too.

Goodbye

My uncle Champy passed away last month two weeks before his 64th birthday. I have never met him before, in fact I first learnt of him when my mother told me her brother died, but I will miss him. Pretty much the only thing I know about my mother's side of the family is that they are Chinese and grew up in Trinidad.

I felt nothing when I heard the news as I didn't know the man but when I picked up my mother at the airport last week Monday after she came back from the funeral she started to tell me about him. I saw her again today and she continued where she left off, she also gave me some of his stuff she brought back.. lots and lots of gum and a box of chocolate, I now have gum to chew every day for the next couple of months.

Apparently Champy liked to shop and buy stuff in bulk, hence the lots of gum. She said she found lots of clothes brand new still in the packaging too amongst many other things in his collections. While the family went through his documents they also found out he donated quite a bit to charity even though he worked a minimum wage job carrying laundry in a hotel in Toronto. She also mentioned that a bus load of his coworkers from the hotel also came to the funeral.

I have always wondered who would come to my funeral when I die? and what would people say/think of me after I'm gone. I never did like the answers I came up with, maybe I should work on changing that.

R.I.P. Champy

T.G.I.F. - Thank God it's February

I'm not sure if I could take another day of January but I can relax now as it is February. I worked feverishly hard to close off all the bad things that is January. A short list should summarize my current standings.

• I got back my car and the new rims look better than ever, it was ready from before but I asked my mechanic to keep it for a bit to service the CVT transmission as it had an issue. I took back the car with the issue resolved for now but he advises me it still needs work, more ~ $25,000+ I'll just ignore it for now as I've been doing over the years until the day I have massive transmission failure. Then its time to get a new car :-D
• I bought a new fridge from Pricesmart and its wayyy cooler than the old one[pun intended]. I was aiming for a stainless steel model but I could only find them in 18+cu feet sizes which were too big for my needs. Unfortunately(of course) enough for me, my truck guy told me he sells 15cu foot stainless steel Frigidaire fridges while I was chatting with him and waiting for the merchandiser from Pricesmart to take the fridge I just bought out of storage.
  
• I now have my 10 year US visa, even though its too late and I should be in Nashua now I don't mind, I'll leave my boss to brave that cold weather. Once I was inside the embassy it wasn't that bad, I gave them my application, they asked me 3 questions and then sent me on my way. They didn't ask me for a job/asset letter or anything, it's a good thing I didn't waste my money paying NCB for a letter of assets.
• I think I am slowly winning over apple. She now insists on having lunch with me anytime I am available and at her office. I was idling with her for a minute outside in the parking lot today and she tried to sneak in a cuddle, I had to use all my might to keep my hands from molesting her.
• I got the raise, the money was put to good use. This is the first pay stub I've seen where the tax deductions reach six figures, lets hope Omar Davies puts it to good use(not likely)
• I tracked down my missing USPS parcel and got it delivered, thanks Joy. I called the Boca Raton post office and found Joy, I described the package to her and she instantly knew what I was talking about. She is responsible for routing the packages and was the one who initially bounced back my parcel to Washington. After a quick chat with her she understood how to deliver my parcel and it was on its way the next business day. I am slowly getting the hang of various couriers and postal services after having several parcels from Hong Kong post stuck in Jamaica's gummed up postal service. At least its not as bad as work, I was supposed to receive a crate with a very expensive server and I am now finding out that it was shipped to Barbados in error and has been there for the past two months.. wtf. I would be so pissed if it was my money who actually payed for it.

I am going to keep things simple for February. This year the Chinese new year falls on the same day as my birthday! I try to keep up with my asian traditions as I am 1/2 Chinese but things tend to fall on the wayside. Maybe I will have luck on my side for this month.