coincidence?

A coworker of mine recently started selling apple iPhones for ridiculous sums of money. He sits about 10 feet away from me and is very vocal so most people in our general vicinity knows his business so when he came in last Friday we all knew he was quite cashy. Some of his friends in the office were troubling him that somebody might rob him and one guy even said it was too late, he already sent the guy to do it. Needless to say when he came in on Monday morning he told us he got robbed at gun point over the weekend.

He was in town on his way to the airport with 1/4 million in cash cool under his gym bag in his car and they held him up took the cash and two cell phones from him but left him, his car and his mac notebook to leave unharmed... that is a bit too coincidental for me to handle.

As I have grown more paranoid over the last few years this is how much they would have lifted off of me.. a cool $150. They would have been so pissed they would have probably taken my car to make up for the rest but insurance should cover that. I'm not sure what $150 would buy but I pretty much use my credit cards for everything. I know of a few friends and my sister use this no money approach and it is a pain to get them to pay me back monies owed to me as they always show me the moth flying out their wallet/purse when they say "I don't use cash". Bastards.

I am still amazed at how quickly he got over it though, the only time he seemed upset(understandably) about it was when a coworker was teasing him and laughing about it. Although I wasn't pissed for long either after they stole some stuff from my place last year. Thankfully in that incident my company only charged me about $25,000 for carelessly leaving the laptop in the car so my losses totalled maybe $40k at most. You live and you learn.

Jamaican CES minus the E

So I decided to pass through the 2007 Digicel consumer electronics show last Saturday and yet again I feel robbed that I paid them a $400 cover fee + $100 parking fee. I figured that since they changed their venue from the normally packed Hilton Hotel to the National arena they would have improved the booths they had. If I wanted to see standing fans, fridges, chairs and insurance companies I would have gone to the plazas and done it for free.

The show was so lame that this "silver man" was reportedly the main highlight of the event. He did his robot dance, tore up a newspaper and like magic it came back whole! His silver body suit did nothing to hide every unsightly feature of his aged body and I could barely look as he did a few other mildly entertaining magic tricks. After the silverman's show digicel had a competition where a phone was the prize. This lucky fellow with his arms in the air won and he was quite deserving as he was previously owned one of those nokia flashlight phones. I was tempted to enter but I don't think my company would have appreciated that.
The fame girl on the right came up to me and asked me to give the turntables a try and after explaining to her that my music hand/eye/ear coordination left a lot to be desired she turned to begging me to play. After explaining to her how firm I was on my decision not to play I strongly encouraged her with my hand(pushed her over to them) to get one of the other patrons to play where she spent a few second talking to them, they say now then she comes back over to me. Her pursuit seemed endless so I went to talk to some other booth people and left her by the fame booth and I returned when she seemed to be more occupied. She came back over to plea with me just to come behind the table with her and she will play, I didn't have to do anything but just look. Something was very fishy with this situation, somehow she is trying to con me but I couldn't figure out what she was getting out of it. I wasn't born yesterday and I had a good enough view of the turntables from the side I was supposed to be on so I made haste and retreated from her booth.

This is the first time I was seeing a chat booth and I must say this was probably the only thing that impressed me at the expo. I got a phone call and when I went in there the blasting music and noise almost went away, they needed a few more of these and it would be perfect cause the next time I got a call I looked inside and somebody was already using it. They need a couple of these at every party, club and event.

it's peanut butter jelly time

I'm not really a fan of jam but a couple weeks ago I spotted this grape jelly at the supermarket with noodle and decided to get it since she loved grape so much. It isn't like the other jams I've had before, it's not as sweet so I am loving it. It makes a good breakfast, many days I have some crackers with peanut butter, grape jelly and maybe a banana. The other day I decided to try it with some new Cinnamon crackers and it didn't end well, the crackers were so big, tough and dry that as far as I was concerned it was inedible.. I didn't know what I was going to do with the rest of the bag. They remind me of the same nasty water crackers a previous exs used to snack on without any toppings, it always blew my mind why she liked them so much.

Seeing it was a rather big bag and I wasn't going to eat it and I think throwing away food should be a crime punishable by death I took it with me on the way to work in hopes of finding someone more needy to give it to. I didn't have to drive far before I came across the I am HIV lady, who normally hangs around the Barbican area. She was very happy for it unlike the other supposedly hungry homeless people who have asked me for money before but when I offered them some of my breakfast rejected it and walked off. I guess they were only hungry for coke.

Click her picture for more from Ria on her.

The grass is greener on the other side

After a set of long drawn out discussions Noodle and I are officially dunzo. I am no relationship expert but as far as I'm concerned we were not compatible due to the DR. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde persona she took on in the few weeks preceding our demise. The complaints, resentment, disappointment and bitterness she directed towards me made it clear what needed to be done.

She is normally a very nice girl though so in trying to make sense of her changes into Mr. Hyde I imagined the following explanation so as to not get dirty with details: Maybe she expected a knight in shining armour riding a stallion to come and whisk her away to a pampered life of luxury and no worries but instead she got me, Shrek, an ogre in rags who throws her on his donkey's back and carries her to a life of hard work for her to earn her keep.

Now this ogre was as entertaining as a rock, he thoroughly enjoyed sitting back and watching the grass grow. Tired of life in the forest, working for her supper and watching grass grow his fair maiden longed to go to the royal balls in the town and be treated as a princess should. To further complicate things there was a line of prince charmings with promises to fill said void in her life. Infuriated that all of her grooming and kisses wasn't turning her stubborn ogre into a prince she started unleash Mr. Hyde upon the ogre's humble forest life.

The ogre realizing he was the cause of all the fair maiden's distress surrendered his hold on her and released her back to her village where she can pursue her dream life with the prince of her choice. It was a hard decision to make but the ogre realizes he will never be a prince nor expect his maiden to live the ogre lifestyle and be happy but she seems to be afraid of change forgetting all of her problems she had with the ogre and wants to come back to the forest. The water is always wetter when the well runs dry.

She will be missed.. This song Ralph Tresvant - do what I gotta do seems most appropriate

Landlady changing course

The roof guy called me last Friday afternoon and said he had the material/time/tools to fix the roof and was on his way there now. When I reached home I was pleasantly surprised(thanks to his many broken promises) that the roof was fixed.. finally! What is funny is that rain fell nearly every day before the roof was fixed and since then there hasn't been a single drop.

The next day the landlady came to renovate/garden around the other empty house on the lot and blocked my car in. When I found her we were talking about my roof and she said she had to get a new guy on Friday to fix the roof. Apparently the first roof guy who called me on Friday after wasting all that time lost the job by just a few hours.. oh well, you snooze you lose.

Before moving her car she then took me on a walk around the lot and she started pointing out all the wrong things the caretakers were doing with her garden. The caretakers being the guy who lived in the now empty house and the strip club owner who lives in another house on the lot. It would seem mr. strip club used some weed killer on some weeds about the place and she , to quote her, doesn't take too kindly to weed killer. She claimed she will be taking back responsibility of her garden then finally moved her car after moaning on about other problems she had with the people on the lot... one really has to wonder what she says about me to other people. When I came back the property was well manicured and well taken care of, I hope she keeps this up.

I also visited Barbq and my old apartment over the weekend.. the place is looking really nice. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that one of the two bedroom units are for sale when I am ready to buy a house, it would be perfect :p. My only problem with over there was the parking lot was a bit on the small side for the amount of units so it is a tight squeeze to fit all cars there when everybody is in. After my whole dilemma with the landlady and the roof after the hurricane I am ready to actively start looking for somewhere to buy but I have pumped a lot of my cash into the stock market since the start of the year. I guess when the market becomes right I can reap the benefits of those investments and build a larger deposit. The analysts predicted the JSE to boom this year due to the elections.. I haven't seen anything yet, not even a spark :p, still keeping my fingers crossed.