UWI Carnival '09

So it's that time of the year again and I found myself at the UWI Mona campus to capture some of the coeds bump and wining themselves into a frenzy last weekend. I was looking at last year's photos and was wondering if I should bother put up any for 2009 after all it's essentially the same theme but then I looked at my stats and of course there is a boost as the search engines push people my way. Why not give the people what they want? so here goes.

We arrived on the campus at the usual start time, 2pm, and aside from the one or two scantily clad girls walking about there was no sign of carnival. I wasn't bothered much though as I was sure I didn't get the dates mixed up and there was another event, Fun In the Sun, going on in the Mona bowl and I could kill some time down there. A few hours passed quickly and it was 4pm when things were just about starting.

The bands weren't as nice as last year, you could definitely tell that something was up.. recession but the kids never minded much as long as they could chip along like conjoined twins joined at the hip. There was less costumes, less trucks, less give aways, these surely are hard times.

As usual everybody got action, the young, the fat, the uninterested and the dorm room railing.

After making a full circle along the ring road they stopped in front of the library and had the competition between the bands which is the worst pronunciation of dry hump session in the dirt. It looks like time was running out so they hurried back around the ring road and debuted Allison Hinds.

By the time they got around to the maintenance section of campus they took out the water trucks and was spraying everybody. I stood from a distance and took a few shots but it was getting dark and I don't particularly fancy the built in flash on my camera so I just made my way back to the Fun in the Sun concert back at the bowl.

See you again next year UWI carnival, hopefully I'll be a student again then.

pad status: debatchelorized

I sold my pool table.

It was probably the biggest and heaviest item in my apartment, it defined my place. It was a dead give away when my friends visited me for the first time, they would come through the door and question in amazement you have a pool table? lol or ask if it came furnished with one.

I didn't really use it much for 8 ball, I just used to put stuff on since it was so big.. and tabley. So after I went to my attorney to sign the transfer of title for my new place I made my way down to the gleaner[local paper] and put an ad in their classifieds for it to be sold. It didn't really make much sense to move with it since I don't use it and it took up so much space.

It sold the same day the ad ran.. maybe I under priced it :( Two days later the guy came with a truck and a football team[literally] and they took it. My living room looks so empty without it now. I have to stop myself from buying furniture to fill the space since I know I will be moving sometime soon. I now realize I don't really have much to move with that table out of the way but I still have a few large items I need to sell or dump before I move. Somehow I don't think they will be as well received as the pool table though.. I got calls for 6 days straight after that ad ran.

fuzzy life

I have gone vintage.

lol well not as old as Asahi Pentax but almost there. Last month for my birthday I ordered my second[the last one got lost somewhere in the mail between Japan and Jamaica last year] Pentax 42mm screw mount adapter for my canon camera and I got it a two weeks ago. I screwed on my Tomioka 55mm f1.4 lens and the rest has been *click* *click* *click* history.

I am still getting used to manually focusing and other luxuries modern lenses but I have a new found appreciation for fuzzy life. I used to aim to have everything in the frame be in focus as much as possible but now I only want what I desire to be in focus. This lens is pretty hard to focus when it's wide open though, I will probably take a few more weeks to fully get used to it but so far I am loving the blast from the past.

With my new found interest in photography again, I decided to try my hand at photo stitching. So I installed Hugin, enblend, enfuse and autopano-sift-c[all free and opensource] got to making panoramas.

I was off for last week so of cruised on up to Castleton to try my stitching skills and swim of course and these photos are some of the end results. The water was crystal clear almost perfect but a bit shallow.

The photos came out nice for such an old lens eh? If y'all want to see a larger picture of the rocks, check my panoramio page here.

My real birthday..

My real birthday was this week and most of my real friends forgot it. My x-friend called me last weekend and reminded me that the day was coming up so I went on facebook and removed my birthday details to see who the real friends were. Lets just say if my real friends called or wrote on my crackbook for my birthday I would have exactly 3 whole friends. Even the girl who reminded me that it was coming up forgot to call, well she did call on the day but she was complaining about something as usual then she called back the day after and apologized for forgetting.

Sad eh? my fake bday in January was 100 times better. wingman tried to hold another barbecue for my bday but I passed cause that is too much attention for little ole me. Last year I went to a friend's house for her birthday drink up.. now that was the definition of sad. I wish I could put to words what went wrong with her night but it all sounds so mean and depressing in my head.

So what am I doing with myself, this is the first weekend I have off in a long time.. I think I'll go to a beach with preggz and get some sun on my pale ass.. hopefully the place will be empty and I can skinny dip too lol. I think your comments have been alluding to the fact that you want to hear about preggerz? Well the bun is slowly baking in her oven, lol she's not doing too well with the morning sickness though.. lol and yeah the milk has arrived. There is no milk yet but she moved up a cup size or two.. no complaints here :D

Life updates

The commenters have gotten bold and demanded an update on my life. Who knew I was so interesting? lol let's get started. On Thursday I apparently left a large window open in my apartment and when I came home from work there was ash everywhere. I looked outside to see if I could identify the fire but there was none, it was a bit puzzling. After sweeping and vacuuming I closed up all the windows and left for work on Friday and yet still ash(a lot less this time) found its way back into my place by the time I reached home. The Friday night news cleared it all up, there was a large bush fire in Jacks Hill that I was totally oblivious to. Yup it is fire season once again for the hills of St. Andrew, every year around this time Jacks hill and its surroundings blaze up.

I didn't walk with my camera today but if I did you would have seen this same hill naked with a layer of black. These pictures were actually taken back in '07 after hurricane Dean I think, if you look closely you can see the twigs(or trees) on the hill are all broken, well now they are burnt off. I am amazed by the size of the fire and how it completely missed me, normally when there are fires in the hills I can spot them at night but over the past couple of days most of this hill went and I didn't have a clue.

The pictures above were actually taken from my (only) favorite and most hated walking(or climbing) hill. It is soooo steep but us Kingstonians seem to love to park our cars at the bottom and make the 20-30 minute walk up. I have it in my to do list to walk with my new camera to get better pics of the trek up.

Boring eh? on to other topics.. how are y'all surviving the economic downturn, recession, depression, ...? I see a lot of other Jamaican bloggers writing about the jobs being slashed.. *sigh* I am no stranger to this, my company has been slashing since I've joined a couple years back and I am glad I have survived thus far.

The last time I checked interest rates were dropping on the world markets but some how Jamaica is busy hiking their rates, good for local investors bad for borrowers. I had the deposit for my house invested[legitimately] before they raised the interest rates and the monthly interest could cover all my expenses(rent, food,car,...) easily. I would be living on easy street now if I didn't take all that money and give to my attorney as payment for my condo and moved myself to the other side of the fence to a world of debt.

I have a theory on how the Jamaican economy reached this state. Bear with me, this isn't really my subject.
- 1. mortgage crisis causes credit lines to tighten. the movers and shakers on the world markets drop interest rates to stimulate the economies.
- 2. Jamaican investment houses make a run USD currency to pay off their investments to avoid margin calls.
- 3. The value of the Jamaican dollar drops fast due to item 2.
- 4. The BOJ tries to stem the devaluation by raising interest rates to mop up liquidity and encourage the people to keep their JMD investments. really who can turn down 20+% rates?
- 5. Borrowers get the shaft. I hear my coworkers and friends cussing about their loan payments increasing due to item 4.

Who knows whats going on? I hope I was close. Anyway my stock portfolio lol sucks. It has lost more than 1/2 its value. I have written it off for now, I am in no immediate need for the cash so I guess they can sit there and lets hope they will revalue eventually. Under my mattress is looking attractive now.

BIM contd.

It is official, I love Barbados. The photo on the left there is a piece of their parliament building in the capital Bridgetown. Things seem to just work in Barbados, the people are patient on the road[damned Jamaican traffic and road rage], they don't litter and they are a generally disciplined set of people. Discipline goes a far way, it pains me to see how people in Jamaica disregard it and are slowly destroying themselves. Tourists walked the streets[all hours of the night] without someone tagging them trying to sell them stuff, I watched the news and there was no murders. The general mood was just laid back. I have been to many countries in the Caribbean but this was the first to have left such a good impression on me.

One thing to note was the food and its abundance. All the towns I went to had hundreds of food places scattered everywhere, the options and variety were endless. I passed to many Cefettes not to try them so one day I passed by to see what all the hype was. Am I missing something? their food was horrible, why is it so popular? blacklisted, do not go there. Also another question, do you see what is on the catch of the day menu in that first picture above? Can someone tell me why they are catching flipper and his friends and grilling them up? I wasn't brave enough to try that dish.. my conscience probably wouldn't let me sleep after that.

The photos above are from Broad St. and the waterfront in Bridgetown. I totally tourist out that trip to Bridgetown snapping pics every chance I got, it was a shame I got there as the sun was going down and didn't have much time to linger as I had to bus it back to the hotel to get ready to go out later that night. Bridgetown seems like it would be fun after dark but then we passed by Oistens and the gap later on that night and there it was the place to be. I couldn't stay though I had an early flight out in the morning.

I need to find myself back there in the near future. Barbados was pretty expensive.. but fun. I am definitely more relaxed from 'working' a bit in Barbados, hopefully it won't wear off soon as I am slapped back to the harsh reality here at home.

To the left is Grantly Adams international airport which is pretty good for such a small island. lol I have been in airports before that consisted of a single small room with everything in it, baggage claim, customs, immigration and departure but I shall not name the country.

My first birthday in Barbados

The water looks so nice eh? It's a shame I haven't even stuck my toe in yet and I've been here for the past couple of days. I did make the effort to get back to the hotel early today and with the last few rays of sunlight hitting my face I threw myself into the Atlantic ocean. There are gorgeous beaches everywhere, you can't escape them, there was no way I was coming back to Jamaica without trying one out. Anyway I'll be here for a couple more days hopefully I can squeeze something more into my busy schedule.

So yesterday I did something I promised myself I would never do again in Jamaica, I went to TGIF to celebrate my birthday. After going to TGIF for my and a lot of my friends birthdays I decided to strike any such future endeavors from my datebook but the girls from the office over here decided that they were going to do TGIF and it was going to be my birthday today. *sigh* I went ahead and got my ice cream and a bunch of random people singing happy birthday to me. So I can now say I came to Barbados and celebrated my birthday and I have the photos to prove it! lol those pics aren't going to see the light of day though :p

A bit off topic but I don't think I would put this up in a post by itself but it's worth mentioning somewhere. So we all know they accepted my bid for the last condo I went to look at, that was step 1. Many steps and weeks later I signed the sales agreement just before I left the island and my bank should have sent the 15% deposit to my attorney yesterday. Also my mortgage company called me yesterday to tell me the process is complete and I can collect the documentation to have the sale proceed. yup.. I'm on the final leg to being a home owner. I can't wait to get back so I can wrap up business.

The final nail in the coffin

Day two 2009.

She calls me to wake me up at 6am so she can come by and pick me up so we can go walking up the hill I hate so much, mountain spring. This was the first time I was seeing or talking to her since I found out that the other girl that she wasn't too fond of was preggers for me. How to break it to her? I had about 30minutes of hill climbing ahead of me to try and figure it out, nada. On the way back down I wrecked my brain trying to figure out how to slip it in the conversation and luckily for me close to the bottom a guy was walking up carrying a little baby. This was the sign I was not looking for so I just lifted the hammer and started putting in the nails

me: I called back xyz yesterday.
her: of course you did, what did she want?
me: she was calling to let me know she was pregnant.
her: for who?
me: me
her: *jaw drops open and she walks off in silence*

I picked a good time(if any ever existed), we were almost back to her car. Now for the awkward silence as I drove us back to my house. I normally leave upset girls to sort out their feelings so I didn't try to say anything her after she walked off but on the 4 minute ride back home I peeped over at her and noticed she was busy deleting every trace of me from her mobile phone. Yup I could have seen this coming from a mile away, anyway she confirmed my suspicions that this will be our last encounter when she patted me on the shoulder and said 'good luck' before driving off without hesitation.

The magic word

Day one 2009.

I came home this morning around 1am with a friend, it was the first time she was staying over. She cuddled up to me in bed pretty quickly and we were off to sleep. In the morning we went to her church to start the year off right, it was my first time back in a roman catholic church since prep school.

While she was at my place she was all over me. 2009 was going well so far, a potential girlfriend in my lap telling me all the dirty things she wanted to do with me. What magic words could possibly stop anything happening between us? The phone rang a bit but I didn't answer. I returned the calls after she left and heard the last thing I expected "I'm pregnant".

She forgot her heels when she left, I should see her tomorrow. How do I tell her?