Why di Rahtid 2004 Nuh Gwaan bout it Business?

This has been rough and trying year from a global, national and personal perspective. Firstly there will be no long post this morning. Amidst all the natural disasters, wars and economic hardship the phone rang this morning before daylight. Can't be good news:-(. Wifey's brother, my brother in law, who lives in Canada suffered a massive heart attack yesterday evening. His wife luckily had the good sense to take him to the hospital as soon as he started complaining about chest pains. The doctors have completed two procedures through the night and he is schedule for triple bypass surgery as I write this. Kindly keep him and his family in prayers. Apart from the above all is relatively quiet. Right now everybody is kind of tense every time the phone rings. On a lighter note, my family and I went to the movies last night. The Short One wanted to see Sponge Bob and would not be deterred by my suggestions that she hold up the kitchen sponge and call it Bob so we went. Her brother, The Tall One, actually agreed to go with her without a fuss. Altough she is almost thirteen I still feel queezy about letting her into movies and stuff alone. Nuff sick mofo's out there. So, off we went, The children to Sponge Bob and wifey and I to see Meet the Fockers. Horrors of horrors, di cinema ram pack. I had to park in the bottom car park on Brentford Road (I think it was renamed recently to Studio One Blvd or something like that). I had to spring for box seats to Sponge Bob and wifey and I ended up watching Oceans 12. Meet the Fockers was sold out for both shows last night. Why people don't go to dem yard and lef free seats in di movies eh??? The evening was good. Oceans 12 can watch but as to whether I would recommend shelling out the cinema money that is another story. Wait on the DVD. Too many flashbacks that tended to be a bit confusing sometimes. Here what go watch it yuhself! Anyway I am not really in the frame of mind to post too much this morning so till whenever. Oh yes BTW......

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!! And best wishes for a better 2005!!!

Quickie

Hi all, I have three words for you this morning; swamped with work. I haven't even been able to do my usual scratching around the place. I've been here from before daylight and I am sure evening will see me here as well. It's expected though. My job calls for a heavy workload at year end so I just need to survive the next 2 weeks or so then I can resume normality. We have many statistical type reports to complete and utilization reports and reports about reports and finally staff appraisals and increments so Excel and I become really good friends just about now. Anyway, just letting you know that I haven't given up the ghost or blog so to speak but just bear with me a bit. Till lata.

Christmas Past.....

I feel like I have been in my own version of "A Christmas Carol". Over the past few days I have seen Christmas' past, present and future. Let's stay with the present (now recently past). The week leading up to Christmas was hectic but I can't complain. With my job it could have been a whole lot worse so I give thanks. I went out with a few of my high school friends on Thursday night. It was good and I stuck to my drink limit of 2 Red Stripes and only followed them up with Pepsi. Besides I needed to be awake for the rest of the evening heh heh heh. Friday was OK...quiet and I got to leave work a little earlier than usual. Christmas day was good. I went to look for a friend and my God-son in the morning. The only hard part of the day was that I had to go to the airport to pick up my niece. Iyah the airport did ram pack wid people. Luckily we saw a friend who was able to accelerate the process. We had family dinner in the evening. The children put on their Christmas show which has been a family tradition since my youthful days. The evening was well spent. On Sunday I went to church. Gots to catch likkle blessing for the season nuh true. Went to dinner in the evening and spent the time chatting and joking around. Good fun. Yesterday I spent the better part of the morning working on a job I had started on Thursday evening. I had to finally put my foot down and advise the client that what she wanted done to the computer was next to impossible. Her bill was already more than what the job would have been worth normally. Never let non tech people try to dictate what they want you to do. I wasn't in any mood to argue with her before but really it was becoming a bit long in the tooth so I spelt it out in ways she could understand, it's either this way or nuff money. She finally relented. Had the stupid machine up and running in 2 hours. Had family over for the evening. More liming and joking around. Dr.D called to invite me to meet with some of the blogging crew but unfortunately I had to pass since my wife's brothers and sister and their families were still there at the time. I hope I will get an opportunity to meet them before they run back to their respective parts of the blogging globe. All in all the holiday was good. New Years is still to come so we'll see what mischief I will get up to then. Probably stay home and chill inna mi bed. It's still so hard to believe that Christmas came and went all in the space of 24 hours. I guess we'll do it all again next year. Later guys.

Happy Holidays

Hi everybody, Just a quick note to say..... A MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all!!!! May you and families enjoy the spirit and the true meaning of this very special time of year. Let there be Peace on Earth and Good will to all.

What can I tell you....

Well Christmas is right on top of us. It seemed so far just the other day an look ya now, it right pon di door step. The week has been really hectic. I was off doing exams last week and in my three day absence, very little of my desk was touched so I have literally been doing two days work in one. I didn't blog yesterday. I just couldn't bring myself to rant and rave after reading about the shooting of the young man who cleans windscreens. Crime in my homeland has certainly taken on epidemic proportions. Being Christian, it puts me into two minds simply because there is the obligation to try to spread the Word. On the other had I see the very real need for drastic action by our law enforcers. The question is, "Where do we draw the line?" Honestly I don't know anymore. It seems that every half idiot out there has an illegal firearm or can readily obtain one and the sad truth is that they are willing to go to any means to get what they want. Sometimes I don't even bother to read the newspaper anymore because the news is always depressing. This week the main topics have been accidents. Our drives have quite a few new roads, some really good cars and mad people behind quite a few of those steering wheels. Madness has escalated. I was going to say "taken over" but I recall when I was in high school some 20 odd years ago, there was an accident involving a Toyota Starlet on the way home. The jokers actually managed to fit 13 people into that car. Needless to say, crashing was inevitable. For those who are unfamiliar, a Starlet is a sub compact hatchback car a little smaller than a VW Golf or a Geo Metro for my American readers. It small!! This week there have been at least 2 or 3 headlines with accidents resulting in either death or serious injury. It is the silly season. Last night I decided to go play some badminton with my co-workers. I haven't been in a while so the fitness is non existent mi tell unno. Mek mi tell you suppen...I pain up dis morning. Pain in places I never know muscle di deh!! The workout was good though and the after chat and lime was cool. Left the training centre at about 10:00 and couldn't believe the amount of babylon (police officers) still on the roads. They were on every corner writing tickets left right and centre. Good thing I was on my best behaviour. Cannot afford the $5K that tickets run at all. This evening I am supposed to be getting together with my classmates for drinks but I am getting a bit wary of the entertainment package if you know what I mean. At any rate I will definitely try to be there although my office is trying to throw broom in mi spokes. We have external auditors buzzing around so I may need to do some late hours preparing for them. It's hard but honestly the quicker they look and leave the better it is for everybody. I'm hoping that my boss doesn't want to stay today, it being so close to the holidays and all. We'll see. Anyways I think I've more than made up for yesterday and plus if I go on much longer you naw go read it anyway. Tink mi nuh know sey a so it go? Later all.

Where are those Keys

Hi all, I'm off to a really late start this morning. I had to literally be tearing down the house trying to find the keys for the house. I live right across the road from my parents, so on Saturday we went out on the road leaving the helper to finish the washing and ironing and she said she was going to clean the house as well. She would then lock up and leave the keys at my parents. She did just that. When my son came in he picked up the keys and carried them over but since then they have disappeared. I have looked high and low for them and ...no keys. We have another set but I am uncomfortable with having a set of keys out there. Last night I changed up the padlocks but mi still want mi keys. The padlock keys are special as they belong to a special set of locks that I use for safety. They are not the best arrangement but both locks use the same key so as not to spend so much time when I come from school at nights fiddling with locks and keys. The downside is that if you lose one key and someone finds it they can open both locks. The upside is that the locks are supposed to be bulletproof so you as a regular crook would need the key to access it. Any of you seen the keys in your neck of the woods? Addendum: Wifey just called...Keys found!!! I won't even bother to tell you all where.

Honey, I'm Home!!!!!

I'm still here and very much alive. I haven't checked in at all but that's life sometimes. I can actually say I missed you all very much. This will be short since I'm trying to catch up at work. The exams are over and I won't comment until I get the results. The Econ was ruff. They presented you with a choice of questions but the questions were all from the same area so there really was no choice. If you were not up to scratch (no pun intended) with that topic your pork get cook!!! (sorry Melody). I should pass all three though. Finally got in some shopping over the weekend. Got to the mall early and left before the masses arrived. It will be a low keyed Christmas from a spending perspective but I am going to make it a great one from a family and friend point of view. I should be linking with my school crew later this week and the rapping is always good. Dr.D ribs me about my drink of choice (Pepsi) but that's life too. Maybe I'll have a Red Stripe or two, who knows? Thank you to all who remembered me while I was undergoing academic stress. I don't plan to go back to any shopping so I will try to do all my supermarket stuff etc. by tomorrow cuz traffic out a road nuh pretty iyah!! My niece arrives from New York on Christmas day so I'll be spending part of the day fighting with customs but hey.... I will be standing as god father for her daughter in early January so that's another event to look forward to. Anywayz, I gots to go, so see you all on your blogs later.

Nothing at all

Bwoy, I feel like a fishy out of water this morning. Can't think of what to say today and honestly mi unda nuff nuff pressure at work. I have a report that's due at 10:00 this morning and I haven't even started it yet. I'm going to get myself in a bit of trouble and present it half finished. I think it's time that they stop taking me and my time for granted. They knew they needed the info from their last meeting which was held last Tuesday and only chose to tell me yesterday evening near to leaving time. So apparently I have nothing to do but take home office work and use my own resources to complete it at their whim so I decided that I was going to work at it during working hours. Enough is enough!! There is a background to all of this but I'll tell you about that later. For now just trust me, it's the right thing to do. Anywayz guys, have a great day and remember that I'm off for the rest of the week so you'll see little of me till Monday.

Weekend Review

Hi all, A hectic weekend is over but I can say in all honesty that it wasn't bad at all. Got in some yard work on Saturday morning followed by some studying and ended the evening with family get together. The socializing was good. My nephew got a double CD system with a DJ mixer and was having a ball bringing sound to the gathering. Let me say that none of the DJ's who do this for a living will have anything to worry about for quite a while. He enjoyed himself though and that's what is important (I hope). I have never heard so much crap music played over and over again. The other teenagers there took turns at the set and at the microphone. Jokes galore. Yesterday was the brunch put on by my high school graduating class. The food was good and the bad mouthing was present but comradery was good. I had to leave a bit earlier than I would have liked but two exams on your doorstep tend to talk louder than socializing so it was off to study group. which was also pretty good. I am less panicky about the exam later this week. It will be Econ and I still think of it as imperialistic in nature. Anyway since I won't be in office as of Wednesday, I have much to do between now and then so take care till whenever we chat again.

Respec' to the Blogging Crew......Zeen

Hail up to all blogging massive. I'm upbeat today. Nothing much going on and that once in a lifetime, all encompassing, posts of posts continues to elude me. No brilliance to spew from deep within to wow the mass, the hoi polloi as my 4th form English teacher used to say. The ST. G.C. crew should know what it means. I see the rest of you reaching for the dictionary. Well as an update, my house has finally been sold. I won't receive the funds directly and the amount retained must be plowed back into the purchase of a new home. Well the good thing is that I can now commence the search for a new abode. I'm happy because at least the limbo existence is on its way to an end. I went over to the house to do a last look through to ensure that I wasn't leaving anything there. The wasps and lizards have certainly taken advantage of ten months of unoccupancy. Luckily the purchaser intends to do some work on it before she moves in because it is not pretty. I have been there several times to clean up but because there isn't constant traffic they just simply hide until wi gone. Today promises to be really hectic so I need to get started soon because once staff starts to get here my day done. I should be meeting up with some of my old school mates for brunch on Sunday so I'm looking forward to that. Well we already know that MB won't be there unless he plans to do a fly in today. Tomorrow we go to a bar-be-que which is a delayed celebration of birthdays for one of my nephews and niece. Family fun Saturday, school fun Sunday mixed with nuff studying should be a good weekend I hope. One of the rally cars I saw last weekend is up for sale. This would be a good way for me to break into the scene. Let's see now, between Piggy,Doggy, Bull, Sunshine, Stu, Abeni, JDid, Ciya, Seven, Natty, Desiree, CoolDestiny and the rest of the blogging crew footing half the bill and Dr.D. footing the other half and my driving expertise we should be a winning team. What yuh sey guys? :) (Yuh haffi mek Doc feel important yuh nuh so him get half to pay.) Anywayz guys enuff crap from me for one day. Off to visit sites till work time. Have a great weekend.

I'm Back

Good Morning all, Hope today finds you well and in good spirit. Well firstly let me thank you all for being there in the exam with me. It's finished and I will wait on the results to determine my status. The paper was manageable and apparently it was adjusted to deal with the Ivan situation, and as aresult we ended up having extra time. Most persons completed the 3 hour paper with at least 1/2 hour to spare. Hope we wrote what we were supposed to. Christmas is in the air. I went window shopping yesterday evening. Things look good but prices look really steep especially when yuh work with government (no bonus). My daughter wanted to feast her eyes so we went. One of my wife's students is returning home to turtle country on Friday so we were looking for a Jamaican gift to present to her from the class. We settled on a Jamaican ornamental doll dressed in the school's uniform. The young lady came to Jamaica in the wake of Ivan as her school in Cayman was badly damaged and her parents thought best to send her to school in Jamaica temporarily. We wish her all the best on her return to her homeland. Wifey must have been impressed as she made a special effort in choosing the gift. Another sign of Christmas is the escalation in robberies. From media reports the ole criminal dem keeping the babylon dem pon dem toes. I have told wifey to be extra careful when she stops at traffic lights and when she goes home before me. The car we drive is a long standing favorite for the thieves although they seemed to have turned their affections towards the Hondas these days. Traffic has also gotten ridiculous but it gives you more time to sit and watch the lights :) (Gotta think positive yuh know!!) Our power utility company is in the news again. One lady was quarreling that her billed has jumped from $2300 to $13000 in one month. She certainly must be bringing new light to the world. Her case is apparently not isolated so the investigations begin as to why how when where who. We'll see how that turns out. I'm waiting on my first bill to come. I settled all previous so I'm supposed to start fresh but we'll see how that goes. Anywayz, I think I've bored you enough for one morning. Have a great day.

See you all Thursday

As i wrote on one of the blogs, I had to sacrifice blogging in favour of books today. I've been up from 3:00 a.m. reading and if I told you I remember anything...I'd be a liar. In through eyes out through...you chose where. Tomorrow I have my 1st exam for the semester. The course has been tedious and requires reading and analysis of a 600 page text. We are not ready for this exam. Ivan took 2 weeks of our time and exams were set long before Ivan so I'm sure there will be stuff on that paper that we have not covered but ............ I got through with my exam admission and stuff with relative ease so I am hoping that favour continues to shine on I. I will be leaving office now to try and cram some more and I won't be able to interact again with you all again until Thursday so wish me all the best and try not to miss me too much. No tears now :) I will try and check in on my usual rounds but with the dial up connection at home it can be a frustrating experience especially since you have gotten accustomed to high speed. Take care all and we'll chat on Thurday.

Weekend

Hi all, Just checking in. The weekend was hectic but not too bad for the most part. Sadly a member of my graduating class of '81 (his brother is now my co-worker) lost his mother on Friday. Please keep that family in prayer. I had my final classes for this semester on Saturday. It was a really long and tedious day. We were trying to look at all aspects of the remaining syllabus in prep for exams which start for me on Wednesday. There is hope for Jamaica's service industry. I signed up for my new cable service on Friday and guess what? They came on Saturday morning bright and early and did a full install. Thumbs up guys. The office party was held on Friday night. I went for a short while since I knew I had to get to class on Saturday. It wasn't bad but nothing to write home about either. On Sunday was church. In the afternoon I went to New KIngston to see the final three stages of the car rally. About 15 out of 41 cars finished. Most of the top contenders were out by the start of these stages but the remaining drivers really put on a show. Motor racing is the one thing that I can honestly say that I wish I had the funds to participate in. We had competitors from Barbados join us for the event. Pretty good show. Anyway I will chat some more with you guys later. I am running out to school to try and collect my exam slip so gotta go.

Phew what a day...

Hi all. Not a lot to say today and even less time to say it in. Went to school this morning and got myself registered. Took ID and got that as well so I am good to gone for exams next week. I need to collect my exam slip next Tuesday so that is another war brewing. Didn't reach office until 11:00 so work a bus mi shut. I have been around on my blog circuit but have not tried to post. I'll do that over the weekend. BTW I got back my regular ISP yesterday so things looking up. At least I can surf and only have the phone bill to worry about. At the alternate ISP, I have to pay them per hour of connect time (US$2.00 = J$120.00). It really adds up. I have also made an application for cable service so I should have that by Monday evening hopefully *fingers crossed as well as toes arms legs etc*. We have a new blogger in our midst and I invite you, if you have not yet done so, to visit Melody's pages and "kiss de pig". Her URL is http://kissdepig.blogspot.com. Christmas is indeed upon us and the temperatures are showing it. I actually like the cool breeze that is blowing. Ciya and the other foreign Jamrockers can keep those deep freeze temperatures. Not me iyah. Anyways I have to finish up some stuff before leaving and my office Christmas function is tonight so I will be going to nyam some food. Ham had better be there (no not Melody). We are having it now because on our small island good venues are booked solid some from a year ago so you have to tek what yuh get. Anyways (you can tell that I can be a rambler can't you)...I man gone for now. Lataz!!!

Runnings

Well people I can safely say that a macro economist I am not!! I got back my results for the test I did on Saturday and I was in two minds. I passed so I was glad for that...no make that elated. On the other hand it was my lowest grade in my university life. I will blow my own trumpet since I can(heh heh heh). I have had a consistent "A" average since starting back at school 2 1/2 years ago. My GPA has remained a consistent 3.7 for that entire period. However in life we encounter obstacles that we know immediately are sent to trample pon black man spirit. I can personify economics as an Imperialist. It was designed to hold back a black man, mind you not in its principles or teachings but in that handcuff sort of way. Anyway I have escaped the clutches of the imperialist temporarily...that is until my final exam in about 2 weeks. Needless to say my GPA will suffer sake of this scurge but hey....life goes on and no resits. I can also report that I found a way to obtain half of my school fees (legally) and this will allow me to register, sit my finals for the semester and still have a bit of leeway in coming up with the rest of the cash by April. Yeeeaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!! I am blessed. I will go on campus tomorrow to sort out the paperwork and get my new ID. It will take some getting use to since I have had this ID number since my original enrolment at school in 1985. It has all my history attached to it, and although they say that all records will be transferred to the new file, experience with their systems has been an excellent teacher. It took me two years to sort out the last set of problems they had and it took that amount of time to obtain my final certificate. We'll see though. There isn't anything I can do about it so ...go with the flow. Other than that life is life I suppose. One step, one day at a time. More from me later. Right now

Hi all

Hi guys, Just saying a quick good morning. Exams are down on me and believe you me the ol' brain too tired to think about anything to post. So I'll spare you the details on my courses cause that's all you will be able to get out of me right now. I am enjoying the new browser. I haven't found any issues as yet. I downloaded it at home and it took about 10 minutes with a dial up connection speed of 44.0 kps so it really isn't bad. The interface is exactly like IE so you don't even have to get used to a new screen. The difference is how it handles the files. I LOVE IT!!!! As Desiree was saying to Dr.D. its just "download file, double click on the icon when it is finished and wahla instant speed". I saw this lite humour somewhere and thought I'd share a smile. (Plus it gives Dr.D. a chance to get back at me for giving him such a low grade for his jokes. MB turn stand up comic too but we'll see. Enjoy the day... Jim and Edna were both patients in a mental hospital. One day while they were walking past the hospital swimming pool, Jim suddenly jumped into the deep end.

He sank to the bottom of the pool and stayed there. Edna promptly jumped in to save him. She swam to the bottom and pulled Jim out.

When the medical director became aware of Edna's heroic act he immediately ordered her to be discharged from the hospital, as he now considered her to be mentally stable. When he went to tell Edna the news he said, "Edna, I have good news and bad news. The good news is you're being discharged; since you were able to rationally respond to a crisis by jumping in and saving the life of another patient, I have concluded that your act displays sound mindedness. The bad news is, Jim, the patient you saved, hung himself in the bathroom, with his bathrobe belt, right after you saved him. I am so sorry, but he's dead.

"Edna replied, "He didn't hang himself, I hung him there to dry....How soon can I go home?"