New Year… and finally a new post!

Sorry, you know how it happens – Christmas comes and you become too busy with living life to blog about it! So, to catch up, here are some highlights (and the lowlights) of the last few weeks…

– Spending time with my good friends. Yeah, we see each other all the time, but those group Christmas meals are still great fun

– Catching up with people you don’t see much. Christmas parties and gathering are a great way to catch up with people you won’t make the effort to see but you are still mildly interested in, you know the ones – pre-facebook you’d have no idea where in the world they are, now you know that they are freezing in Boston but have no idea of anything deeper than that.

– Going to the beach. When my British friends say to me ‘how can it feel Christmasy when it’s cold’, I always tell them that it doesn’t feel Christmasy until you have Boxing Day in the sun on the beach.

– Getting  food poisoning. One of those long leasurely lunches with friends turned into three of us being on drips in hospital… a drastic way to shed Christmas weight!

– New Year in Jamaica = start of the soca season. Excellent!!! So have enjoyed some soca at parties and am now needing to get into the gym swing in order to be ready for Carnival 08…

– Being back at work. Hmmm, will say no more on that one now!

On my way to work this morning, I …

… drove behind 4 cars who had only one brake light working

… drove behind 2 cars with no brake lights working

… narrowly avoided squashing the toes of the window cleaner who wouldn’t take no for an answer, despite the fact that it was a busy intersection and the lights had changed

… was very happy that it was school holidays as I was running late and still got to work early

… listened to the Love Actually soundtrack to encourage the Christmasy feeling

… ignored my collegues who were calling my cell phone – I was on my way, it wasn’t late, what could they want?

… yelled lots of rude words at the man in the brand new BMW who felt he could just pull in front of me with no warning – I’m not scared, I’d hit his car… apart from the fact that I need mine to be working at the moment! 

… and the whole journey took less than 15 minutes! 

Winter cold

I’m not impressed. I seem to have got myself one of those nasty winter colds, with coughing and sneezing and generally not feeling very good stuff going on. I started last week, and I was off work in bed for 2 days. I made it out of bed on Friday night (hello? Christmas season? Parties to attend!) and was not able to do any justice to the good wine on offer that night. I hibernated for the next few days and made it back to work on Monday. But I still feel less than 100% and my voice is missing in action.

I’m confused. I don’t know where this has come from. I’m normally healthy. I’ve been eating loads of tangerines recently so I’m full of vitamin C.

All I can think is that I am having a throw back. My body has realised that I haven’t had a nasty winter cold in 4 years, since I moved back to Jamaica. And has decided that it is time for me to have one to recollect every winter in Britain.

Maybe I need to go and lie on the beach this weekend, to remind my body that I’m back in the Caribbean and that this winter cold needs to move on out of me.

Secret Single Habits

I was watching a rerun of Sex and the City last night, the one where Carrie has just moved in with Aidan and where she comes up with the idea secret single habits. And it made me think that I’m pretty normal, I don’t have any weird habits that I wouldn’t want anyone else to see.

That was until this morning when I was sitting in the bathroom and having a conversation with my cat. And it struck me that yes, this could definitely be something that I wouldn’t want a potential partner to see. As I live on my own, I don’t tend to shut the bathroom door completely, and for some reason, my cat always likes to follow me and sit by the door and have conversations with me while I’m on the toilet. I think that classifies as one SSH.

Others? Well, does yelling at the American voting public when they vote for the wrong person to be thrown off Dancing with the Stars (hello? Mel B was sooo much the better dancer!) count? How about dancing in front of the mirror in my underwear to encourage me to do to the gym before carnival arrives? Probably not unusual, but not something that others need to see!

What about you? What do you not want others to see you doing?!

Aargh

This is our busy time of year at work. As in our ‘lunch, what’s that’ time of year. Our all staff on the edge and anything will tip us over kind of time of year. We get through it by the thought of December. December is our nice month. The recovery period for the hell we’ve been through. The lets breathe, read our emails that we’ve ignored, open the post and actually smile at each other again time of year.

But not this year. We’ve been informed that at the end of our period of hell, we have 3 days, yes 3 days to pack our boxes, unplug our computers and move office. We were lucky to get the three days. We were asked to move in the hell period and it was only by explaining that that could lead to most of our staff resigning that the powers that be were kind and said that we could have 3 whole days after heel to prepare for the move.

Aren’t we lucky?

And what move is complete without bits of the computer getting lost (hmm, I might move my mouse myself!), phones being down for weeks and no internet for months?

Oh December 2006.  What a lovely time you were. We will think back on your fondly in December 2007!

Kingston Restaurant Week

My advance planning paid off… I saw the pink trailers in the Gleaner. I checked every morning to see if dates were announced. The second they were announced, I called. I had to call back later as reservations didn’t open until 2pm. I called back. I kept calling back. I nearly developed a blister on my dialing finger. But it worked. I succeeded in getting seats for the Saturday night of Restaurant week for Macs.

And it was totally worth it. The food was fabulous. The decor was gorgeous. The staff were total darlings. The service was fabulous. The entire evening made us feel fabulous.

 And no, I’ve not run out of superlatives… it’s just that being at Macs, well, the fabulousness of it all rubs off on you!

Being original

I was out with my friends on Friday night to hear a band play (Gas Money – pretty good indie band…. that was an unpaid endorsement!)  at Red Bones. While waiting for the music to start, I was standing at the bar getting a drink when a guy opened the conversation with me with the line ‘I saw you in traffic today.’

In response to my question of where, he replied ‘In New Kingston’.

Well, that’s a new one for me. I’m impressed – a line like that could be true of 90% of Kingstonians, yet it makes it seem like you stand out in traffic! I’ll give him marks for effort.

Motorbike Manners

I passed a man on a motorbike on my way to work this morning. This man was kindly giving his woman a lift to work behind him. Unfortunately this women had got dressed this morning without remembering that she would be on the back of a bike, and was wearing her very smart, but also very short, work skirt. Yup, you know the look, holding on tight with her skirt riding high, it’s a look we often see.

And I remembered the ladies* in India  who were either driving or on the back of their motorbikes in their saris. These ladies have perfected the art of riding a motorbike side saddle so as to maintain their dignity! And they are very talented at it – their roads are as bad as ours, their taxi drivers are as mad and they also have to dodge cows, yet they managed to sit their sedately, with their legs to one side while the bike twisted and turned all over the road at a rapid pace.

 Safety versus manners. Hard decision!

 *note that the Indians are ladies, not women…

I’m back

Back at work, exhausted, with jet lag and lots of dirty clothes at home and a very clingy cat who is upset that I went away and left him. But India was great, Goa is gorgeous, the conference was productive, lots of interesting people and most importantly?

 

Yup, that’s Kingston Girl on the back of the elephant! What else was I supposed to do with the half-day I had free at the end of the conference?

That’s one of the many shops nearby and that is the river at the bottom of the road – stunning. One of the cool things about the conference was that instead of giving us a boring mass produced bag with all our conference documents in it as you usually get, we got funky colourful bags like those in the photo made by local people. How appropriate for a conference discussing issues related to poverty and self-sufficiency and youth development?

Now back to reality…

In India

Yup, you read right. I’m in India! That’s why posting has been delayed as I was told last week that I’d be spending this week at a conference in Goa. So here I am. Sat in an internet cafe with bollywood music in the background. Remembering the good curry that I had for lunch. 

Ah well, it’s a hard job but someone’s got to do it!!!