Why oh why?

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!

Prophecy?

When I was 19, I received a phone call on my birthday from my big brother. ‘Do you have a boyfriend at the moment?’ ‘No’, I replied.

‘Well be careful. You could turn into an old spinster living in a little house surrounded by loads of cats.’

Fast forward a few years and it is my (cough cough) birthday this weekend. And last weekend, I went and got a cat for my little house which I live in on my own.

Is his prophecy starting to come true? The cat and I have a good relationship so far. He doesn’t cause mess, he doesn’t take up all the bed, he comes home for dinner every night. Maybe I’ll happily embrace the prophecy!!!

However, the man and the cat get along well so far. Maybe I can just have half the prophecy. Live in a house surrounded by cats and with a man who loves me. Who knows what the next year has in store for me!

Ready for mas again!!

I have a confession to make. It’s one I’ve made on this site before, but I’ll make it again for my more recent friends. I love carnival. I love soca. I love jumping in the hot sun. I love glittery costumes. But I’ve never been to Trinidad.

2008 was supposed to be the year. But you know how these things go – elections get in the way, people aren’t sure if they’ll have jobs or leave, hurricanes distract you, the girls you are going with are in too many countries to make the planning easy… so it is only know that we are actually trying to get it sorted. Which is of course late to be doing it. Tribe is sold out. Flights are getting fully booked.

The question is: Is it too late? Should we postpone our dream for another year? Or should we go for it?

I need help! People who have done Trini carnival, let me know! Will we be able to get Tribe costumes through Carnival Junction or somewhere? I’ve looked and it seems that loads of people are looking, and no one is selling. Or should we jump with another band?

2008 or 2009…

Driving

Does anyone else who lives in Kingston play games on their drive to work in the morning? You know the ones – how many times have I nearly been killed this morning? How many police cars have raced past me with their sirens on and only one officer in there? How many window cleaners have I had to tell to leave me alone?

just wondering!

On a different but related note, I was on my way out with a friend on Friday night and we were stopped at the traffic lights near Devon House. A man appears, selling roses at the car window. We wave him on – ‘we are girls who have flowers bought for us, not girls who buy them ourselves’ we tell him. So then a  moment later, he reappears and hands us a rose through the window. This is accompanied by a car horn blowing – apparently the rose was a gift from those men in that car. We smiled, waved and drove off with our rose.

Ah well, at least if blah times get worse, I know that I can at least attract men in a car in the dark!!!

Feeling blah

I’m going to copy from Island Spice - I’m feeling blah. Something about ordinary time, nothing much exciting. Well, actually that’s not completely accurate. The problem is partly that too much is happening… just I don’t know what it is! You see, being a civil servant, a new government means lots of changes. And this time, for my department, a heck of a lot of changes! But the problem is we don’t know what they will be yet. We just know changes are coming. So in the meanwhile, we are sat here in limbo. Waiting for instructions. Waiting to be told what to stop doing, what to continue doing and what to do differently. And we are all wearing our Ministry shirts today as they will be outdated by next week!

Otherwise, also feeling blah as it is bird season. I don’t shoot. I don’t want to shoot. But the man does. And I think it is really bad planning to have bird season starting so close after elections. You know, we gave up our men in election season, allow them to go off and campaign and save the world etc. But we expected to be spoilt afterwards in return. And then they put bird season immediately afterwards. Grrrr!!!! And they don’t even shoot the birds near a nice hotel so I can go and relax while they shoot. They shoot them in backabush locations with no decent hotels nearby.

 I am not impressed.

Changes?

I am in the process of renewing my contract at work at the moment. I wanted to be made permanent, but as a civil servant in the current environment, that wasn’t going to happen today. So a new contract it is. Now one of the problems of a contract is that you don’t get some of the perks you get if you are permanent, and I wanted to be sure exactly what I was entitled to… which resulted in the personnel officer and my boss getting very worried.

Me: So if I am on contract, what is the status re maternity leave?

Personnel: Huh? What?

My Boss: What? Is there something I should know about??

No there is nothing you all should know about. But hey, I’m a female and 30 is approaching soon… I’ve got to know my options!

Go and Vote!!!

And once the  hurricane has past, we are left with the usual post-hurricane issues to deal with. Light and water have been fixed, but the absence of anay fresh fruit and veg is a bit harder to fix right now. And yes, there is also that other post-hurricane situation which has kept me away from my computer for the past few days. You know, the one that comes about because maybe some of the meat you ate somewhere wasn’t keep quite a cold as it should have been, maybe the ice in your drink wasn’t made with bottled water… I think you get the scenario. It’s been three days since I’ve eaten any solid foods now. But I think I’m getting there! I hope so – soup is getting boring.

In other news, the athletics is going well!!!! I will be up early tomorrow to watch the 4×100 events. It is hilarious how newspapers cover events, I was reading the UK Guardian online today and noticed that they think they have a chance in the men’s 4×100 final. Hmmm. I think we must be thinking about different events. As in my humble opinion, it is between us and the US … and as Asafa has something major to prove, my money is on Jamaica.

Please don’t let us down again!

And other than that, it’s elections on Monday. I won’t tell you who to vote for, but I will tell you to get up and go and vote! Remember if you don’t vote, then you have no right to complain about anything related to the way that the country is run for the next 5 years as you had your chance and you didn’t use it. Nuff said!

Normal service has resumed

That’s right, internet is now part of my life again! The hurricane has been and gone and thanks for all of the good wishes. I made it through well. I put everything in my apartment on blocks (I’ve been informed that the place has flooded badly in the past), took photo albums to my parents, packed my bags, locked the door and headed to the man’s house where the generator and water tank were well enjoyed. And when I went back home to inspect the damage afterwards, the only water in the hosue was that coming out of the taps. Boy, was I lucky and am I thankful.

But I need to keep remembering that and remembering how bad things are elsewhere. In Ivan, we were still living at our old house outside of town and things were rough – the roof nearly went, no water for 2 weeks, no electrivity for 5. And apparently Dean hit up there worse than Ivan did.

Although I am very keen to get elections out of the way so that we can all start making plans for the future, I do hope that these elections will be able to be carried off properly. In areas where there is no light and water, I hope people can still be able to come out and vote. It is so easy for us sitting in a city where things are getting back to normal quickly, to forget that there are others who are suffering lots. And that these people also deserve to vote and have their say.

Enough preaching… off to check that everyone else is OK now!

Oh yes, nearly forgot – the hurricane and the rain last week has been excellent for my new grass! It’s looking good now!

Dean

And once again, it is panic time in Jamaica -  a hurricane appears to be on the way. I have a question. You know all that stuff that people buy for hurricanes that never hit us? You know, the candles, the flashlights, the tarpaulin, the water buckets? For hurricanes like Dennis and Emily who come close but miss? What happens to them when it turns out to be just a scare and we don’t get hit?

As you can be sure that the next time there is a warning, these same people will be standing in the same long queues in the same old shops to be the same things over again.

Me? I have an excuse – it’s a new house so I’ve never had those things before!

And my plan is to batter down the windows, put things in high places away from flooding and head to the man’s to shelter in his big bed!

Pain!

I am in agony today. My body hurts. Specifically my back, my shoulders, my arms and my legs. That doesn’t really leave much else does it?

What happened was as follows: I am having a housewarming party this weekend (assuming that we are not being hit by a hurricane!). While the inside of my house is well up for display, the back garden was looking rather pathetic. Depending on the weather, it was either a dust bowl or a mud bath.

So after investigating, I discovered that if you go to Bog Walk (about 1 hours drive from Kingston), you can buy rolls of grass. Great I thought, just buy the grass, roll it out and I have a garden. No planting of seeds, nice and simple. So I called up, ordered, borrowed my dad’s station wagon, roped him in to help in the afternoon and off I went.

Well, of course it’s not that simple. The grass merges together in the back of the vehicle on the drive back to town, becoming one big pile of mud and grass. Which is very heavy to move. You can’t just put this on the ground either, you have to break up the soil with a heavy pitch fork thingy. My dad helped – he carried the heavy stuff! However, I still did all of the earth breaking myself. And damn it was hot.

It’s on days like this that I realise the despite the fact that I grew up in Jamaica, that this is my home and where I want to have children one day, I will never truely by a middle-class Jamaican girl. As my friends all said to me today on hearing of my plight: ‘Why didn’t you just get a man in to do it?’