Tables turned

It was after 5pm, training just finished and I was trying to make it to the bus stop when I heard someone shout 'Adrian!!' in a happy voice. They could not have been calling to me, anyone who knows me well enough to be screaming my name knows to save themselves from that potentially embarrassing situation that occurred. I turned around and scanned the area.. nope didn't know anyone but there was a girl standing in front of the Dyoll building looking right at me with a big grin on her face.

As I walked over to her and she(clearly oblivious to the look of disgust on my face) threw her arms up expecting a hug but I stopped short as I was not about to touch this stranger or even pretend to know them. I asked for her to identify herself and tried to look at her work ID but she snatched it back quickly and said her name.. it was #1 crush. She was a bit meaty when I used to like her back in the day but not this plump apparently life has been good for her.. food wise.

To my surprise while talking to her she took out her phone and showed me she still had my number and thanks to my name being Adrian I was at the top of her contact list. I thought I was the only person who kept peoples numbers for a ridiculous amount of time even if I don't talk to them. Anyway she tried to explain why she kept my number but didn't use it before she had to run off. She called me later and said we should do lunch while I was in New Kingston but she didn't.. how typical of her.

The few days I took the bus I also made a friends with a few other girls who shared the same route with me, who knew the bus would have been fun and the girls so friendly :) My interactions with them were too short lived for me to feel the need to exchange any form of contact information with them but in retrospect they would make some convenient friends since they all lived fairly close to me. lol I should modify my friend making policy for the next time if I ever take the bus again.

On a somewhat related matter I mention the NWA had changed the traffic flow in New Kingston as well. Well last week I should have zigged when I zagged and I ended up with a traffic ticket.. damned police and road changes. Well it's not so bad, I haven't gotten a ticket in long time and I had many near misses and was due one.

jutc has a website?

So I am back in New Kingston again for training this week and the training center does not validate parking. Needless to say everyone that goes to that facility is not pleased with shelling out $200 a day for parking in a KSAC parking lot. When I used to work in that parking challenged section of the city I used to arrive at work before 7:00am just to squeeze into the last available free parking on the road in front of my office but that is no longer an option as I am now spoiled and probably wont leave my house that early just to wait and the NWA has now re-zoned the parking spaces into roadway.

Class was really boring and while spacing out I came up with the bright idea of taking the bus for a few days this week. The bus stop is less than a minutes walk from my house and I would only need one short $50 bus ride to reach the hip strip! I always thought my location made it so easy to get around but never really felt the need to hop on a bus before until I had to face these daily parking fees. Other than that it's totally not worth it.

What is funny to me is that I always cuss about Jamaica's public transport system being outdated and unreliable but my quick google search today brought me to JUTC's website with route information and all! My jaw hit the ground.. the site is ugly, the buses are probably still late but this was a step in the right direction. Maybe if my stint with JUTC works out for this week then I can look into using them some more.

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.