Twelve Days of Christmas

Why are people talking about Christmas being over? I'm sure we all know the 12 days of Christmas song and few years ago upon further investigation I found out the 12 days starts on December 25th and goes on to January 5. So for those of you (like my parents) who leave up your decorations until Easter need to start taking them down on the 6th of January. My boss called me one day and dropped a bomb on me, he had a gift for me.. lol I must be doing something right or maybe his new wife strongly suggested[nagged] that he do it. Either way it made my day, thanks!

It has been way more than 12 days since I made a post so I'll just summarize all the updates that would have probably been posts if I wasn't so lazy in bullet form... yet again.

• I took some time off work to relax before the holidays only to find out the contractors the landlady sent over to renovate my place was ready for me. I was pretty much stuck at home the whole time as they fixed up the place and laid a fresh layer of dust over everything I owned along with drops of paint. On the plus side the place looks a lot nicer now. My parents are convinced she plans to raise the rent after she is finished.. I'm keeping my fingers crossed but even if she does, how bad could it be?
• As per usual the eating has been non-stop.. time to unbuckle the belt :p
• I went to a party that had a haagen-dazs stand.. this was a first for me. What was funny was I mentioned it to my sister and she said "I can't tell when last I went to a party and they didn't have one". I guess we live in two different worlds even though she only lives a few minutes from me.
• My standby duty starts today and goes on until next week Monday. Somehow I forgot this and was previously looking for somewhere to go on old years night. Oh well change of plans.
• Anybody that flips through tv on Christmas day knows that channel that has the yuletide log burning with Christmas carols playing for hours.. this year I taped dvded it. Yup this is probably the first time I made use of that cheap dvd recorder I bought from radio shack and was proud. Now I can listen to endless hours of Christmas music throughout all my 12 days of Christmas.
• I fixed one of the contractor's computer. After working for one too many days in my apartment and seeing all the boxes of electronic junk he figured I must know something about this computer thing so he approached me and I told him I would look at it for him. I fixed it for him and he offered money or at least to buy me a drink for fixing it.. I couldn't take a cent from him. I have long forgotten that there are people who don't really get the chance to use or know much about computers. I am glad he bought one for his kids so they can stay current.
  

Oh yeah happy new year when it comes.

thats whats up

It has been a while since I've posted.. things got a bit hairy at work since my last post. Needless to say I have taken this week off so I now have a lot of time to do what I do best, a whole bunch of nothing. My landlady sent over some contractor to renovate the place so I pretty much have to stay home for the rest of the week so he can do his work.. great way to spend some time off work eh? To keep things short I will just summarize what I've been up to since my last post:

• crackbook: yup I signed up for facebook and was a junkie like everybody else. The novelty died down pretty quickly though. It's very nice, I found quite a bit of old school friends I thought dropped off the face of the earth.
• I went to the New Kingston stage of the annual local rally and took exactly one picture.I arrived late, the stage only lasts like 30 minutes and the place was packed with people.. I was lucky I could even see a car. What amazes me is that people will stand on the corner and watch the car race head on at them into the corner at ridiculous speeds and have the time not to crap their pants. I have seen where rallies go wrong and the spectators feel it.
  
• I went to Web 3.0 Banana Boy, Alex's, wedding. Congratulations Alex! I want it to be my turn next :p. Need to find a girlfriend first to get that ball rolling. I don't really get suited up often so you know I had to take pics I'm not really sure what I was doing in the second pic but the kids seem to be putting up all sorts of finger signs these days so I joined in with my own lol. For those of you who may ask, that's a Trinidadian flag on my wall(better than a plain wall), yes I'm half Trini too.
  
• Noodle came over on Saturday for the first time since we broke up. She was hungry so we walked over to Barbican to get something for dinner. On the way back home in the darkness we got held up.. that's Barbican for ya. Anyway the guy crept up behind us with what he would have liked us to believe was a gun and told us to give us our valuables. This was the first time I was being jacked so I stood there a bit stunned trying to figure out if it was a gun, knife or what in his hand. Hearing noodle struggling with him to keep her purse snapped me back to reality and I rushed him. Well I'm still alive so I guess he wasn't packing heat.. he ran off and jumped in a waiting car.
• The following day I visited my parents for the usual Sunday lunch and my pops said he had something to show me. He brought down a knife sheath he found in my old room and questioned me about it with great concern. My only answer didn't offer him much peace of mind though, "it's just something to remind me of high school" I said. It was a pretty big sheath and the knife that belonged to it was something of this nature with spikes in the knuckles. Looking back now I'm glad my teen years was less eventful.
  

To answer GC's question I haven't found anybody new yet.. it has just been tv, sleep and work for me. :(

For those of you looking for a sex scandal

Last week a local paper posted the latest scandal College girls gone wild and since then a barrage of people from all over the world has been hitting my blog looking for the photos. Upon further investigation I realize that I was ranked 2nd for the search of "naked uwi girls" on google thanks to my uwi carnival post earlier this year with a few scantily clad girls. Poor pervs they wouldn't find those pics online any time soon... well not until today at least :p

I went to the other side of town today to attend a 2 day workshop and I met a cute UWI girl during the lunch break. Apparently her mother was in the workshop and also works at that location so she often hangs out at that office and studies. She seemed like a really fun girl so we chatted for a bit then it hit me that since she was in the mix of things maybe she knows about this sex scandal. My word did this girl have the hook up, she brought up email and began to show me pretty much every recent local sex scandal. So for those curious onlookers I will post one of the cleaner pics of the UWI girls she sent to me.

I'm not sure how effective my censoring is but I'm sure these girls would appreciate it. Now when I went to UWI my friends and myself were mostly dirt poor.. where do these girls find such a nice boat to have their night sexcapades on? My next question is whats with all the girl on girl on girl action? There is no shortage of men out there (like me.. I'm single :p)

I'm sorry for those of y'all who were expecting more pictures but such is life, find a uwi person to send them to you. On that note I need to find some reason to go up to campus, this coworkers daughter reminded me how hot uwi girls are. Maybe if I see her around that office again I could try something :p the last time I checked the jury came back with the verdict that coworkers daughters were fair game lol.

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.

on looking for entertainment

I was talking to a friend the other day and she was trying to understand how/why/what would lead people to dating and getting married to people they meet online. She was totally lost as to how to even meet someone online. I then explained to her that earlier in my more idle days online I used to hang out at a few online communities and I went out once with one of the girls there.

It sounds sad but it was really just for kicks, I had no problems finding girls to go out with. Anyway I met her in Halfway Tree and she brought along a friend for security.. lol. I don't blame her, there are some strange people online. When they got in my car she exclaimed that I was nothing like what she was expecting. I had to bite my tongue not to say that she was everything I expected to get in an online girl.

Since as far as I was concerned I picked up the bad end of the stick in this date I decided that she would be buying me drinks at the bar despite my initial offer of me taking her out to the bar for drinks. She didn't really put up much of a fight when I informed her that she would be treating so we proceeded to the then happening place Escape in New Kingston.

It was cool at first, she bought me my favorite drinks, we hung out and played games. Eventually I noticed that my friends had started to come in and this was a situation that I didn't really see myself explaining anytime soon so I said bye to my date and neatly tucked out of there. I didn't mean to make such a hasty retreat but at that point in time no amount of gin and tonics was worth it.

That being said, I just watched you got mail.. lol she wishes life was like the movies.

Things have changed but we're still the same

My phone beeped and I saw "Strike on friday". Granted that the friend that sent it worked at the NWC the first thing that came to mind that there would be no water on Friday but then my mind flashed back to when used to play counter strike from dusk till dawn. A quick phone call cleared it all up, they were planning a game night on campus for all the old veterans. Those were the good ole' days where we had no worries in the world and would pile up at a friends house or at a lab on campus and play games till we had no sense left.

Eventually we people started to drop off one by one as jobs, girlfriends**, children... etc started taking precedence and we had greater responsibilities to worry about. We were no longer university students and everybody got busy all of a sudden and the only thing we had time/energy left for was a game of dominos every now and then. Of course even the dominos died out after a while so we now gather more then than now to relive life like we were young again.

On the matter of things being the same last Friday I got a call from my ex Mel to remind me to call her for her birthday on the weekend... lol kinda pointless. Anyway we were talking and she complained that I haven't invited over for a long time. So since it was her birthday weekend and I haven't let her stay over in well over a year I invited her over to have a movie night like we often used to have before. Aside from the fact that we didn't actually watch any movies it was just like old times, I guess she will be a friend for a long time to come.

On the Saturday she went to go celebrate her birthday with other friends and I linked up with Barbq and went to an art show in Manor Park. Barbq used to live right beside me at my previous apartment a few years ago and I used to admire her from far as she was always busy with her then ever present boyfriend. Anyway the event itself was pretty small and uninteresting but I still had fun liming with her there. We got a few compliments from people saying how cute and happy we looked together as people seemed to have us confused as a couple.. definitely food for thought :). I asked about the bf and she told me they broke up a while back.. the plot thickens.

** of course before I finished typing this post I got a call that it has been postponed due to the admin who was sponsoring us the lab on campus forgot that today was an anniversary for him.

The wingman is back.. the sequel

After many months at sea wingman called and informed me that he will be back in Jamaica before the end of the month. I can foresee the interesting times ahead as a few things have changed which he has no visibility of(yet). The first of which is that noodle and I aren't together anymore. He is very long winded and the last time I told him I broke up with someone that conversation almost lasted two hours(ignoring the fact that he was calling from 1000s of miles away on a long distance call). So I can only imagine the verbal onslaught that will follow when he is back here and notices someone is missing.

My problems are trivial compared to the other item which he is unaware of. At the barbecue I met and chatted with his biggest crush. He has had a thing for this girl for over 7 years now.. I dunno why they never moved from just friends. Anyway we became friends while he was gone and it turns out he didn't know she was pregnant and recently had a baby. She asked me not to tell him, she eventually will, but this blows my mind as to how he was oblivious to it. It will be a hard task not telling him this bit of information but he is very well aware that I will mostly honor peoples requests to keep information under wraps.

Hopefully this will close that chapter of his life as it has been loooong drawn out. Due to the wealth of free time I have now and the pending news of his crush's baby I think he will be more than willing to live up to the name bestowed upon him and a night of debauchery is in order. Hopefully things haven't changed but there was never a shortage of ladies when we are out looking for trouble so this should put our past where it belongs :-p

surviving

It has been a couple of weeks and I am still at square 1. It has been almost 4 weeks since I've slept in my bed, the last night I spent in my bed was the night before I broke up with her. Every night I drop asleep curled up in my futon by the large window, my favorite sleeping spot before she started staying over.

I haven't been back to the supermarket since things came to an end. It's a miracle I could survive so long on the food I had stored up but now there is nothing left.. if I don't go soon I'll probably starve to death.. lol or more realistically lose a few pounds :p. Much to the dismay of the other patrons we were very cozy and had lots of fun at the supermarket... so sad, going back will probably be hard.

Quite fitting the lady cranky posted on the topic the other day stating: Your supposed to bounce back, shinny and new. When they call your supposed to be able to pleasant and unhurt, say nice things, ask nice questions, your supposed to hang up with no regret, or at least hidden regret. I have such a long way to go, every time she calls(ignoring my requests for her to cease and desist) one or both of us ends up hurt.

Also not making things easier are the girls at work. The one who asked if I was gay when I told them I was single last valentines day brought up the topic of girlfriend again and of course to her the answer didn't change.. single. The expression on her face said a million words so I just explained to her I have yet to meet the right person for me and I wasn't going to pick up any slacker off the street to fill the void. Maybe it was how I looked.. you be the judge:
I am not normally too fussy with how I look but when I reached home one day this week I had to take a pic. I am not sure how I ended up with this shirt but I think it used to belong to my father at some point in time many years ago. The thing barely fits me and the wrist cuffs are a bit tight so they normally end up undone. This day I decided at work to just role them up to form this look I am unsure of. I felt like queer eye for the straight guy dressed me. I need to start dressing better and tear myself from my fortress of solitude and go back to my bachelor lifestyle (quite an over exaggeration by Renee)

waterlogged

I'm pretty sure that most of Jamaica is pretty tired of the rain by now. I normally stay high and dry at home during this kind of weather so I had no complaints. It was a sunny morning when I set off for my parents house to have the usual Sunday lunch with the fambily but that quickly changed to a heavy downpour as the afternoon progressed.

It was only natural that the conversation changed to the inclement weather at hand and my sister mentioned her very wet (inside and out) car. Apparently she tried to drive on Mona Rd. last week during one of the bouts of rain and ended up in water half way up her doors. She of all persons should know that you don't drive on that road when rain falls heavily as her husband lost the use of his car for a couple of months after shutting off in floods on that same road a few months ago. It's a miracle she didn't shut off but its a shame she got all that dirty water in her car.

After filling our gut my sister and I were ready to leave so after waiting for the rain to die down a bit I left and she should have left shortly after too. After coming off Red Hills it quickly became apparent that my journey across town to my home would be a long one. The roads, when I could actually see them under the brown water, were torrents that brought traffic to a crawl. At first I made a u-turn when I saw some deep water but the alternative route was just as bad.

I eventually gave up on trying to find alternate paths and wished I didn't leave yet
and tried to call my sister to tell her to stay at the parents or go back there if she had not gotten herself into more trouble yet. By this time I was in water over 12" deep slowly creeping on where I suspected the road to be and wondering what to do. Thinking ahead of the roads I would eventually have to take to reach home the outlook was dismal.

By the time I reached home the undercarriage of my car should have been clean granted the amount of water I was in. The car didn't shut off and no water seeped inside so I was mostly happy. I dropped in a deep pothole once as I crept through some murky water but at 5km/h no damage was done unlike the pothole on the main road outside of my house. Yes the same pothole that was fixed last year was now back with a vengeance claiming over 100 cars in the past month. The latest of which was a Range Rover HSE which some lady managed to blow out two tires in on Saturday. She was waiting for somebody to come change her tires for her and I noticed she called somebody to pack the hole with sand/dirt... lol lets see how long before I hear people tires being blown out again.

Broke ass friends

I'm sure everybody has friends who just can't seem to hold on to money but some of my friends take it to the next level. Now this same girl saw me online again recently and asked for a big favor. I instantly knew her request would be interesting but she surprised me by asking to borrow a couple hundred thousand dollars to fund a project she was trying to get off the ground. She claimed it was a sure thing and could provide me with documents stating that she would be paid upon delivery of her product so that in turn she could pay me back.

First problem with this situation is that my conservative nature makes me the furthest thing from a venture capitalist and she knew this. Problem number few was that I, along with anybody else who read that post on her was painfully aware of her financial standings which still haven't improved much since May. The third problem is that I tend to have to write off a portion of the money I have previously lent friends as there is normally no hope of getting it back.. no matter how small it is.

I asked her if she approached any financial institutions on a business loan and she explained that there was no way she could get one due to her bad financial standing. The answer was clear, no. She offered the title to her car to secure the loan, it made no difference.. what does she expect me to do repo her car when she defaults? lol that isn't risk I would take on but she didn't seem to be too understanding. What I found funny was that in her pitch to get capital from me she mentioned nothing of my return on investment. Reality is a bitch eh? Welcome to to adulthood.

back to the rat race

My word.. I have forgotten how horrible the traffic is. Ideally I would like to spend 1 hour in traffic daily, 30 mins to work and 30 mins from work and I would be happy but this week had me in traffic for up to 2 hours :(.

After spending the first few days back at work in hiding at the downtown office I decided to go to the main office building. As I walked up to the doors I noticed a group of familiar faces, it was the people from my floor. I thought it was odd that they were all outside at 8:30am but as I got closer their makeshift placards became obvious and one popped out of the group and pointed at me exclaiming it was my fault. I was on a call with senior management so I only paused to read their message and proceeded upstairs to my desk. They were complaining about the AC being too cold and much to my dismay they blamed it on me even though this was the first time I've been back to that office in two weeks.

After I finished my call I went back downstairs to them to try and address the issue yet again. I had previously explained to them that due to a fault in the design of the cooling on the floor I needed the central AC to operate at roughly 17C to ensure that I don't have hardware failures in a server room which is under my responsibility until we can find a permanent solution(which is in the pipelines). Asking them to adapt to this temperature isn't a ridiculous request but increasing the temperature a few degrees on their floor would result in a huge jump in temperature to my servers and have caused failure before. I was then accused of hiding out and being comfortable in my other offices but it is quite the opposite... I am no stranger to the cold as I think my other offices aim for 15c.

They waited until their vice president came and they all negotiated a middle ground. I hope no new enemies were made lol

Time heals all

I have a long way to go but I am on my way there. Before ending things with noodle on Tuesday I allowed her to explain the situation in case there was by some miracle a plausible explanation and it would have all been a big misunderstanding. After trying to deny deleting anything and accusing me of invading her privacy she started to give her reasons.

I already wrote an epistle here when I started this post a few days ago but that shall go unpublished and I will try to keep my comments on her reasons short.

• She referred to me as aunt because she was uncomfortable telling Joe she was out with her bf
• She kept her conversations with Joe a secret because I would misread it and make a big deal out of nothing. She further went on to explain that I was so jealous lately she didn't want to add fuel to that fire.
• She still maintained that nothing went on between them and she was just being foolish.

Noodle was under the impression that a storm on jealousy raged inside of me? This was news to me.. I always thought of myself as secure and nonchalant. I guess I will keep an eye out for it in future relationships, I don't believe I will find myself acting that way though. On a purely coincidental note on the Monday before any of her activities were exposed she showed me an email from one of her clean accounts from a friend that asked what were the top 3 things I valued in a relationship and asked me to answer. Loyalty, sincerity and happiness was my response... how heartless does one have to be to face me after that and lie?

Truth and time tells all

How does one say goodbye to a friend? Noodle and I were best friends for a long time before we got together, she knew everything about me and she (supposedly)told me about everything current in her life as well. Somewhere along the way during the beginnings of our friendship she met a guy, who we shall refer to as Joe, who she dated for a bit while he visited the island occasionally. This was the only guy I felt she never did give me the whole story on but it was okay though, she was in no way obligated to tell me anything at that point in time.

As the months passed he faded to the background and she started sharing some of her untold stories about her rendezvous with Joe which only served to grow my trust for her as she opted to fill in the remaining blanks without me asking about him. Our friendship grew to the point where she started to pursue me as a boyfriend but I was hesitant as I knew the nitty gritty of her past and what she was capable of but she swore her loyalty to me. After a few months passed I felt sure her intentions were pure she was invited to exclusively enjoy all that my simple forest life had to offer.

We all know how her life in the forest ended and she was free to do anything she pleased. She insisted I misjudged her, apologized for taking what she had for granted and still pursued a relationship with me. Her persistence payed off and my nos slowly changed to yeses and we ended up getting back together again in Negril. Now to rewind a bit back to Joe, even though he was faded to the background they still communicated via phone, email and im but I never payed much attention to it as I accepted him as just one of her friends. A few weeks ago she called saying Joe was going to send her a ticket to go visit him and she gave me an acceptable reason #1 for wanting to go, I told her if she wanted to go she should.

At some other point in time she brought back up her trip again asking several times if I was sure it was ok for her to go, the first red flag pops up in my head now as she seems to be feeling guilty of something, I still give her the go ahead. After questioning her motives again acceptable reason #1 has morphed to shady reason #2, I point out to her the change I noticed and she gets upset saying she told me this already and reason #1 was just the pill she fed her family so they wont hassle her for going to visit her friend. of course more red flags. It is obvious to me that there is more here than she lets on but I left it alone to give her time to come clean on her own as she got upset whenever I asked her about it and blamed me for not listening.

As far as I was concerned noodle was exhibiting textbook cheating behaviours so I kicked back and observed, there is no point to start an argument with nothing hard to back it. When we came back to Kingston after our trip over the weekend she went to the pc as usual to check her emails and other things online but I noticed she only flashed her inbox for a second then ignored it the entire time I was close. I said nothing to her as the last time I asked her to show me something in her inbox she said she would show me later but when later came around all conversations were mysteriously deleted without a trace and she had no idea where they went. I went back on Monday night after she left to find the following email trail in her trash.

From: noodle
To: joe
Subject: Hon!

honey you got my mail right? i sent you the dates. when you have the time please reply or call. hope you are good and things going in your favour. miss you!
take care, Love you.
God bless, noodle
---

From: noodle
To: joe
Subject: Re: Hon!

will you be coming to Jamaica this weekend?
---

From: joe
To: noodle

No, I was thinking you would come up ...
---

From: noodle
To: joe

i would love to come up this weekend except my aunt paid for our weekend already. what about the 2 november?

Aside from changing the names for anonymity and clipping the conversation for brevity the emails are untouched. Now this weekend she speaks of was the weekend she just spent with me. It's nice to know that she tells other men I am her aunt. Aside from those deleted messages her trash was empty, I guess I was too late to catch anything else but lucky enough to find those. I then glanced over her inbox to find this other gem

From: noodle
To: joe
Subject: hello

hi joe!

i know you are always busy, which is why i asked for a weekend thats convenient to you. but here is some available times for me starting 9-11.11.2007 im free, so you make a decision.

i really do miss you, its feels like forever since ive last seen you. i wont go in details how much i miss you and what i miss mostly, we will resolve that when we are together.

take care, love you

God bless

Noodle

wow.. I couldn't help but imagine what was said on the phone/in the messages she deleted and emptied from the trash and from the im chat which she explicitley turned off logging for Joe despite the fact she logs everybody elses conversations. I would love to see her explain this one, but I didn't say a word to her until I saw her online the following day. This post is already long and drawn out so I'll post her response later.