When the stars align

This is not my garden, I am somewhere in middle Jamaica approximately 2100 feet above sea level in a cool and windy Manchester. For some reason I have no courses scheduled(and more importantly no projects outstanding) for the next couple of weeks so I made the best of this odd occasion and took two weeks off work.

I plan to make the most of these few days off and plan to tour this little isle a bit and if weather permits take the jimny for a dip in Atlantic ocean at the east most point of the island :p

Photos to follow.

postings from the couch

It is Thursday night and after 200+ km and a twisty turny trip though Sligoville I am now sitting on the couch not the guest bedroom as promised. What am I doing in Montego bay in the middle of the week? vaca, I needed it badly as Ruthie may have noticed. Being over here wasn't 'plan A' but the stars lined up right and I had to jump on it, the stars don't often line up for me.

Anyway for those who follow this blog you may have noticed last month my sister moved shop to Mobay and her parents followed her up here to help her get settled in. When they came back to Kingston and said they loved the townhouse complex that my sister moved to so much that they were going to buy one. Fast forwarding to this week they made the final payment and have now taken ownership of a unit. Will I ever be that cashy? I guess I will just stick to my window shopping for houses while I save my pennies.

So they decided to take a road trip to see their newly acquired property and coincidentally I was on leave this week so I could get to go(yes this is what I get when the stars line up). Of course my parents won't be moving to Montego Bay anytime soon so they just planned to rent it and use it as income since they are retired. This is a good plan but had a major flaw, they decided they will rent it to their daughter(for now) at less than 1/2 the going market rate. WTF! yup when the stars are lined up for my sister and actual ruler is used and I guess I get a best effort eyeballed 'straight' line scribbled by a kindergartener.

Pushing bad mind to the back burner these row houses are pretty sweet, they are up in the hills and have a view of the city and Mobay harbor. Crown molding, granite counters, double paned windows, these people know how to please. I hope the sun comes out tomorrow so I can go to the pool and bake myself to a cripsy brown lol. Maybe the stars will line up a cute girl for me by the poolside? lol wishful thinking.

on easy street

So I spent the last 4 days in Montego Bay "working". I have never really spent any time in Mobay before, I've only just driven through the town a few times before so I learnt a few things during my stay there.

• Not to diss anyone but the food there sucks(well the restaurant at my hotel at least and in the town as well). It wasn't just me, I heard someone else from Kingston complaining about the food as well.
• Traffic there is 10x worst than Kingston. The town is always in gridlock cars parked everywhere, a sea of people walking in the middle of the roads and everybody trying to fight their way through the stoplight/sign-less intersections(all 500 of them)
• The local girls there are to die for. I drooled over the girls at work, I drooled over the girls on the road and I drooled over the girls at the hotel. How can any man get any work done over there? I think a few of them were checking me out too, it's a shame I wasn't staying long over there.

I'm not really a big fan of going out by myself so I didn't really do much while I was there. Since I was in a tourist town on the coast I had to go to the beach, so one day I left work at 1pm and went over to the Aquasol park for a swim alone. The "Theme Park" theme must have been boring beach, I never saw what the hype was.

I also went for a stroll on the hip strip alone one night. Every last local there thought I was a tourist, put on their fake accent and tried to talk to me. One lady and her friend tried to stop me to talk(for what reason I don't know). She asked where I was from, I muttered Kingston, she wasn't convinced I was Jamaican, she went on to cuss me for not stopping to talk and shouted that she knows my type as I walked on "you don't talk to people darker than yourself". All I could do was turn around to look at her in amazement and shake my head no as I walked off. Some other things I was approached to buy were: cold beer(top of the list), taxi, souvenir stuff, weed and special "massages" from girls at some club. I need to invest in one of these hats so that they would know that I am Jamaican in my original article outfit.

The North coast highway made most of the 4 hour drive home safe and uneventful. After I passed through Ocho Rios the twisty wet roads along with the single lane than JPS created while cutting down trees ruined somebody's day. The flagmen told us to stop, the man in front, me, the two cars behind all stopped, I heard a loud crash and saw lots of smoke.. some fool crashed into the back of last person. While looking in the rear view mirror still I see this taxi blazing down around the corner in the wrong lane and almost caused a head on collision with vehicles coming up.. damned fool. The next thing about 20 minutes down the road was a first for me, I was issued a traffic survey by the police. At first I saw some bright orange signs saying "Slow down", "Traffic Survey" and laughed to myself thinking they really meant the po-po were timing on that road, then as I turned the corner the police waved me down out of like 6 cars to stop. If I knew that it was really just a survey and they wanted to ask me questions about my journey I would have waved back and just gas it some more.. bastards.

Castleton.. finally.

So my first taste of freedom began on Monday morning at 8am after I came off my three weeks of standby work. It was the Independence weekend so all the young people (- me) found themselves at Negril as usual. A bunch of us decided to go to Castleton(finally after hearing so many people talking about it recently) after a Portland trip fell through.

We got there a little before noon and there were a few people there but slowly but surely people started to crowd the place as the day went on. The rocks were big and the water was low but enough for the kids to splash in and me to drown in



An interesting tidbit was that in the party of people that we(noodle[wifey] & I) went with was noodle's x-bf who seemingly still likes her. She advised to keep my distance so as to not cause any unnecessary jealousy, brilliant! push away the current to please the x. To mix things up even more, upon arrival a guy by the river called her over and she went over without saying a word. Feeling like chopped liver I stood for a minute looking at her waiting for her to look back for me or even(God forbid) call me over to introduce me to her friend but there was nothing. Eventually when she finished talking to him and I existed again I asked her who the mystery guy was:

me- who was that?
noodle- XXX
me- XXX who? (she knows many XXXs)
noodle- I'll tell you later
me- XXX your x-bf?
noodle- I'll tell you later(then she gets upsets and walks away)

I waited 5+ hours until we were in the car alone driving back to town to ask her again to hear what the big secret was. She then confirms "yes XXX my x-bf". Maybe I am slow but I am still lost as to why this information couldn't be shared before if there was the slightest possibility of somebody else hearing or why I was hidden away from him like a leper..

I just wrote it off to girl problems and moved on as you can see noodle and I throwing balls at each other. One final note, its not my baby.