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.

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.