Random Stories from a Kingston Girl

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!

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.

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?!

Why is it that this week, the week when the rains won’t stop and we all start to think about building arks, is the week when the fan belt decides to break on my car?

Leaving me stuck in the pouring rain. In the middle of nowhere. (Well, not quite nowhere, but near UWI - not at home, at my parent’s, at the man’s, at work, you know somewhere easy).

Leaving me without a car when everyone else in Kingston is trying to get taxis due to the rain so they have become a rare commodity.

And of course, it turns out that my car, despite being fairly common on the road, has a fan belt that is ‘tall’ and hence hard to find and hence a 1 hour job has turned into 2 carless days and still counting.

Please let it get fixed today. Please let the rains stop. I want to enjoy my heroes weekend!

It’s the Kingston on the Edge arts festival this week. Go. Take part. Enjoy. Lots of it is free!!! I went to the tour of the Natioanl Gallery on Sunday and to see Capoeira on the Waterfront which was good.  Not a huge crowd… so support it if you can!!! I’m planning on getting in a few more of the events as the week goes on.

It appears to be the yellow butterflies time of year again. It started a few days ago, but this morning was the first time that they were swarming everywhere.

There was a cute little old man in front of me buying his lunch yesterday, you know, dressed in the immaculate trousers which were high on his waist, with a well ironned plaid shirt. And then he turned around and I saw the front of the immaculate white cap he had on with a big gold blingy ‘G-UNIT’ on it. I had to stop myself laughing, it just looked so out of place with the rest of him.

My honey went away for a long weekend, I like it when he comes home again! And soon it will be my time to leave him for a month…

And thank you Mad Bull for the assistance!

I got tagged by She’s Royal to tell you all 8 random facts about myself . So here goes….

 1. I have worn glasses since I was 18 months old. I was in my 20s before my optician would allow me to get contact lenses. I still think I am a nerd because of this! 

2. I’m only 5 foot 3 tall. Most people I work with think I’m taller as I always wear heels to work. But I actually like being short.  

3. My family is slightly strange. We have always had pets and went through a spell of naming our dogs after biblical prostitutes – we had Delilah, Bathsheba and Jezebel.  

4. I love chocolate in any form, especially dark chocolate. But I have an inability to eat it without covering my face with it. 

5. I went shopping for a new dress on Saturday. And I tried on about 30 dresses before I found the right one. I’ve never tried on so many dresses in one day before.  

6. I have just started to take golf lessons. I’ve decided that as it seems to be the love of my man’s life (after me of course that is!), then I should make an effort to learn it too. And so far, it’s actually fun.  

7. My current main ringtone on my cell phone is Roll it Gyal. My boss hates soca and that’s part of the reason why I don’t change it.   

8. And for all the admirers of my red wall out there, the final fact is that it is called “Cranberry Red” so now you know!

I am now supposed to tag 8 people but as this started with Mad Bull before moving to She’s Royal, I think most of you will have got it by now! But if not and you want to do it, consider yourself tagged!

I have an admission to make. I know I’m behind the times, but this week I have officially become a facebook addict.

It’s not a good thing to be addicted to. Each day I get new stories of who has got engaged and who has had a baby. But I can’t help it, once I’ve started I just have to keep going.

And that leads to another admission. I can’t think of anything interesting to post today. All I can think about is either decorating my house or things that I have learnt from Facebook which aren’t my stories to share.

So I need your help - how can I become unaddicted? How can I resume a life in the real world? As this facebook based existence cannot be here to stay.

For labour day*, my father and I decided to put together a bbq which he had just bought. It seems fairly simple - according to the instructions, all we needed to do ‘assure fast and easy assembly, follow the instructions below in their proper sequence.’ Excellent, we can go that.

We quicly discovered it was a good thing that were written instructions rather that just pictures, as the pictures bore no relation to what was in the box. You can image the picture - printed poorly wiht each piece looking the same and arrows pointing to nowhere. So we started to follow the instructions.

We then discovered that this was not as simple as it seemed, as you first had to try and work out what the instructions actually meant. Things like

‘Insert the hadle into the long leg using the sirew’

‘Aling the tectandular wire shelf into the leg ends’

‘ Insert secure with caps uts and wheels on both sides’

After a while, we gave up and tried to do it on our own. I think we did good. It stands properly now. It looks like it will work.

And we only have one piece left over now. We don’t know its purpose so we are just hoping it’s nothing important. I’m sure we’ll discover when we use it…

* For the foreigners out there, Jamaican Labour Day is actually supposed to be a day when you labour on projects in your communities. Not when you sleep or do things at home…

Yup, that’s what we ended up doing on Saturday. We made a mess. A big mess. Ice cream on clothes. Red marks all over clothes (those funny art pieces in the front of Devon House are great for climbing races). And sent them home tired and happy at the end of it.

And yes, I still want children - 4 hours of 3 them hasn’t changed my mind!

(and as he isn’t really mine, just a borrows, I thought I’d better follow Yamfoot’s example and block out the eyes!)

On Saturday, my friend and I have volunteered to baby sit our god-son (aged 10 months) and his siblings (sister aged 13 and brother aged 7). We get them at 4pm and have them for as long as we can tolerate them for!

Any ideas what we can do with them? My usual plan (taking them to the swimming pool) can’t work as it is too late in the day and the pool I used isn’t lit. Plan B also can’t work as the 7 year old has informed me that he has already been to see the only film that looked like it would satisfy them all (Spiderman 3). I am refusing to do anything involving a tv or computer as they do too much of that in my opinion.

Hence suggestions are needed for fun, affordable and preferably outdoor activities that we can do with them.

And you could look at it and say that I am trying to get in practice for when it is my turn!

On a different note, apparently the package I sent with the 27 stamps has arrived at its destination in well under 2 weeks - I’m impressed!