stomping with the big dogs

Last week Friday I went to the bar with the rest of my new department.. it's the first time I'm meeting most of them in person. It was just a few of us there at first and I was talking to my boss' boss' boss' boss while drowning myself with some drink called an ocean blue. It is always strange whenever I go to these gatherings with the big wigs in my company but they are normally cool when you realize they are people just like me and you.

Drinking on the company's tab is the only way to drink, the exotic mixed drinks was flowing all night and we were all liquored up good. After leaving the bar I went up to Renee's house to drop off her very late birthday gift which has been bouncing about my back seat. I spent a while at her place catching up on old times when she reminded me how much of a lush I used to be. Ahh the good old days when I was a university student idling and drinking on the spine. Don't get me wrong it wasn't a habit but if I was to spend 12 hours at UWI and only have like 1 or 2 hours of class why not mix things up and make life interesting :D. Not much harm was done, after all I still managed to put in enough work to earn a distinction in my degree.

The rest of the weekend was uneventful as mentioned before I was on standby and of course the inevitable I will be on standby till next week(three weeks straight) Monday filling in for my boss who has fled the island. I passed through megamart(trying to blend in and not be spotted by Tami again) and the place was full to the brim.. I could barely find a parking spot and there was a long line of traffic going around the parking lot. Pay day end of month shoppers and people stocking up for the public holiday this week would be a good assumption for the ridiculous crowd. That reminds me, maybe I should have stocked up for the holiday too :(

Yesterday

I am showing signs of being burnt out, yesterday was Tuesday but when work called at 5:30am I was convinced it was Saturday. I looked at my phone it said Tuesday.. still not convinced I went to my PC it said Tuesday too... where did the weekend and Monday go? It was nice waking up so early in the morning though, it gave me time to relax, eat breakfast and watch some TV instead of the usual rush to get ready and leave for work.

I went to my office uptown and spent a couple hours there, it only take me 5 minutes to reach work up there and it is free flowing all the way against the traffic so I smiled to myself as I drive by people stuck in long lines of bumper to bumper hell. After traffic died down I left to go to corporate building and spent some time there before going downtown to my main office for lunch. I have to pass through some locations and make my presence felt or people might feel I don't need my shit anymore and steal things from my desks. I am still loving the freedom to choose where I want to work for the day.

Later on in the night I went to a launch party with wifey for some model search competition.. Talk about carrying sand to the beach, the place was packed with girls dressed to the bone and only a handful of men. I'm serious when I say the ratio was something of the order of 20+ girls for 1 man.. Too bad wingman wasn't there, I'm sure even he could have gotten a girl there last night. Anyway I had to call it a night early as I got a call from work and I was on standby.

Needless to say wifey wasn't too happy about us leaving early but hey work is work, it pays the bills. This is my second straight week of standby and I'm possibly in for a third if my boss flies out next week. The money is more than welcome as my car insurance is due in a few weeks and I'm sure after the last incident the premiums will be nothing short of fantastic.

How good does it have to be?

I watched the movie The Devil Wears Prada the other day and it got me wondering. In the movie the young star had to choose between success at work and personal relationships, eventually she quit her demanding job, kept her boyfriend and pursued her life long dream job. The question raised in my head was how good does a relationship have to be for someone to leave their job for it? In her case it was easy, she never liked the job and she had other careers on her mind but even then it was hard for her to leave the success behind.

An interesting way of looking at that same question is How good does work have to be for one to sacrifice their personal relationships for it? I'm guessing most people hate their jobs sufficiently to make these questions easy to answer but it is common for work to throw a wrench in the spokes of love. What would you do if you were offered your dream job but it was thousands of miles away from your significant other?

Bye Boston

Well I should say Burlington which was about 30minutes outside of Boston. I liked it up there, the weather was so much more comfortable than Jamaica, the temperature mainly stayed in the low 80s for the duration I was there. I am green with envy that its close to 100f here in the shade in Jamaica while I was up there running around in the sun and breaking a sweat.

It was the first time I was travelling that far up North. The people were nice and friendly, the town was clean. The area was generally well taken care of and looked like it was maintained by a professional landscaper. One thing that boggled my mind was that most of the buildings I saw had a propane or coal barbecue grill outside and they seemed to be used. I cant imagine going to work, feeling hungry then going outside to grill a steak or some franks for lunch.. but these people do it. They even had lots of picnic tables everywhere to compliment the grill. I can understand the hotel but pretty much every other business in the area had the same thing... The whole area reminded me of a nature getaway, if my workplace was like that I would love going to work.

Aside from the great weather and friendly people all was not dandy. Viral meningitis slapped me back to miserable reality on Wednesday night which I am still yet to fully recover from. It's a good thing I was a trooper and decided to fight on, I'm told if I went to a doctor they would have done a lumbar tap and I must say I have grown attached to my spinal fluid so that wouldn't be cool.

Also along the lines of not cool was my work's credit card being denied. As I was checking out of my hotel room yesterday morning the lady at the front desk informed me I needed to pay for the room. Let us ignore the fact that before I left I asked the people at work to book and pay for the room then I did my due diligence and called the hotel to verify that they did so before I left Jamaica. Now the reason I was being told I needed to pay for the room was due to the fact the bank was denying my companies card possibly due to limit restrictions. So the lady tried to bill most of what she could to there card and I gave her my card to pay for the rest. Lets keep our fingers crossed that my work doesn't give me much BS to get back what I paid.

I decided to save some bucks and skip the $60 taxi back to the airport. I took the shuttle to the mall and from there the public transport. I figured I would actually get to see a glimpse of the real Boston this way before I left since I was stuck up in Burlington all week. The shuttle came late so I missed the first bus. To make my flight at Boston Logan international airport I couldn't afford to miss anything else, I took a long bus ride to the subway station, took the redline subway to the silverline bus route and hopped on a bus to the airport just in time to check in.

Rocking chairs at the terminal? lol this was definetly weird at first, this was the last thing I'd expect to see at an international airport. The people seemed to be loving them though. One thing that was of concern the whole time I was there was the fact that I had only 35minutes in Miami to make my connecting flight back to Kingston. I tried to get it changed but that would have been $200 extra so I decided to take my chances of being stuck in Miami overnight since my flight was the last flight to Kingston yesterday. Things worked out fine and I'm back in this sweltering heat and humidity.

Kate you didn't even offer to buy me a beer for come visiting your city! lol I came across her blog randomly when I just started out blogging and loved it, her blog was the only one I visited for a few months before I decided to look for my Caribbean bloggers.

Hello Boston, MA

I leave on the first flight out tomorrow and will be spending the rest of next week on a training course up there. I must say that this whole thing was rushed, even though I knew I was supposed to be attending this course two months ago. The hotel was booked yesterday, the plane ticket was bought yesterday and they gave me the money for travelling 10 minutes before I left work on Friday at 4:40pm.

As far as I was concerned I wasn't going anywhere since as at yesterday morning nothing was paid for in relation to my travels. It didn't dawn upon me until I reached home that maybe I should have gone to the bank to withdraw some money from my US account for myself in case I want to go shopping too(but of course the banks would be closed and will not open today either so I'm stuck with whatever money work gave me). Thank you for credit cards although I don't really see myself shopping much up there.

I am so tired right now as I'm writing this.. I should be sleeping now, I leave on the first flight out at 6am and I didn't get much sleep last night. Wifey and I went to the titty bar and didn't reach home till 5am giving me about 3 hours of sleep so I am currently in debt. I must say I am all stripper's worst nightmare. Shortly after we sat down and I ordered a drink wifey was sitting on my lap with the money to pay. As the bar girl came back with the drink/change I noticed a hot, young, slim, light brown, cute stripper[drools] hopped off the stage into the VIP lounge right on the lap of wifey sitting on me.

Now this stripper obviously had a plan to get some of my change but wifey didn't swing that way and was thoroughly disgusted by the stripper's advances and wondering hands violating her body. The stripper realizing she wasn't having it actually had no money then turned to me and begged some money. Anybody who knows me know that I would not be surrendering anything to a stripper(no matter how hot they are) and I'm sure this girl knows this now but she grabbed a one feel from wifey's breast before she got off her and left. Wifey is understandably afraid of strippers now, many apologies, I'm sure you will recover :p. Well enough babble for now, hopefully I get enough sleep before I have to wake up at 4:30am tomorrow.. my eyes are already 3/4 closed :(