Quick Jotting

I have been scarce of late, no unnuh nuh do mi nuttin! No mi nuh inna malice wid unnuh! I have been rather busy and unda some serious pressure. A I have mentioned before, school is in full swing and the lecturers did not hesitate to start unleashing streams of notes, assignments and labs. O I have been trying to cope with the stress of school and work. I have three assignments due on Thursday: only lab, one report and a homework. The homework and the lab are done already and una lock, but the assignment is breathing down my neck. I should have started a long time ago, but all the information I dug up on the web, just kept turning me off. Have you ever had an assignment that you just don't know where to start? Well this is one of them.

You may have noticed that between Tuesday and yesterday I have managed to drop a line or two on your blogs, so I have not forsaken blogsville. I will drop a decent post Thursday night...Well that is if I'm not too beat! Anyway, till dem time deh, enjoy this comic yah.

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Return of the Traffic!!!...Stay Cool

The traffic as seen through my side mirror.

September is not just know for being the peak of the hurricane season or just the beginning of a new school year, but it is also known as the month of the return of the traffic! Yes the miserable feeling of sitting in your car stationary for minutes at a time, the constant blowing of horns at the stop lights, the awful feeling of having to get up early, the anguish of reaching work or school late despite your best efforts, is upon us again. School is now in full swing and so its partner in crime the never ending traffic. It seems as if there is no escape from it, you try the back-roads only to end up at another end of the main road in more bumper-to-bumper traffic. As if that isn't bad enough even the back-roads and shortcuts have now become overwhelmed with traffic!

The traffic along Waterloo Road.

This is the scene on Waterloo road this morning as I was making my way to work; a never ending stream of vehicles trapped in a bumper to bumper queue en route to their morning destinations. Don't you just hate it when you're stuck in traffic and the other side of the road is as empty as your pocket just before payday? It just seems so unfair! Oh how I missed the summer holidays when I could get up even a hour later than usual and still arrive at work on time. Well there's just no way of getting around it, unless the government builds some super highways with over-head passes. I recall reading a post by Cool Destiny who was complaining bitterly about the whole traffic situation on the Portmore Toll road and now I am faced with my traffic torment too.

Since I can't do anything to avoid the menacing traffic here are some things the Stunner does to keep his cool in traffic:

• I try to leave out as early as possible in the mornings. This strategy often fails for me, as I find it hard to pull myself out of the sweet early morning sleep. But is does pay off when I do as there is less traffic on the road and even if the traffic is bad I have enough time to still reach work early.
• I ensure I have some serious bad-ass music to listen to and jig to in my car while I am stuck in traffic. This helps to keep my mind off the stress of being trapped in a traffic jam. Sometimes I wonder what the person behind me or the persons in front of me think when they get a glimpse of me in my car. You see, it's a regular thing for Stunner to be jigging, Willie Bouncing, among other dances and singing on the top of my voice in my car while in traffic. Thank God for midnight tint!
  
• Apart from listening to my bad-ass CDs, I also enjoy listening to Francois and Dannae on Fame.FM, especially on Friday mornings when the have Full House Fridays when they have a whole bunch of comedians on their show doing all kinda crazy things.
• One of my favorite pass time has resumed, as you can see from the above photos, taking photographs while stuck in traffic. I know people must be wondering what the hell is wrong with this idiot taking photos while driving! But don't worry I do it safely, I only take pictures when the car is stationary and on rare occasions when I'm driving slowly.

I know at some point you all have been trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic, whether to or from work or school. What do you do to keep your cool?

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The Tailgater

A honest man was being tailgated by a stressed out woman on a busyboulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection The tailgating woman hit the roof, and the horn, screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection.

As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, finger printed, photographed, and placed in a holding cell.

After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects. He said, I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled upbehind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the Choose Life license plate holder, the What Would Jesus Do? bumper sticker, the Follow Me to Sunday-School bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car.

I got the above in my email, and thought it conveys a wonderful lesson. I think the lesson is "never put bumper stickers on your car". Just kidding, I think it means we should remember to practice what we preach and that our actions speak louder than words. What did you learn?

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Number 1!

Once again the worlds fastest man has done it, he equaled his own record of 9.77s and has been named as the Performer of the Month for August by the IAAF. Asafa Powell has certainly earned a name for himself in the world of Track and Field as a 100 meter king.

I know equaling the record must have dropped a bomb in the US training camp especially with the recent doping scandal involving Gatlin still lingering in our memories. No hard feelings to my US peeps but I just had to drop that in.

Asafa has certainly shown himself to be an excellent sprinter and continues to make Jamaica proud. Hopefully he will continue to keep up his wonderful performance and continue to say "no to drugs".

The women have not been taking a back seat on the tracks as Sherone Simpson has taken the top spot for both the 100 meters and 200 meters sprints.

Sherone has been showing that she has the potential to do great things on the tracks and this number one position has shown that she definitely has what it takes to be a dominant player on the track.

Congratulations to both Asafa and Sherone on being number one and making Jamaica number one through your excellent performances.

It has been another rough week again, school just seems to be getting harder and harder every week as the notes increase and the assignments begin to manifest their ugly selves. The mandatory work courses have just been adding insult to injury as this makes my task of trying to stay pon toppa tings at school even harder. Hopefully I'll make it through this semester in one piece and still sane (...hmm, was I ever sane?)

Here's a shot for the weekend. This pic should seem familiar to the Mad Bull, as I took it on my decent when I visited Grand Cayman in early 2005. Enjoy your weekend.

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9/11 The Aftershocks

Picture of Ground Zero formerly The World Trade Centre. I took this picture while in New York in 2003.

September 11, 2006, Americans, young and old, man and woman and people of different ethnic background commemorated the tragic events of what is now most commonly known as 9/11. It was five years ago when terror came from the sky and brought down one of Americas symbols of strength and economic dominance as well as the lives of so many innocent people.

I can still remember that day, it was my second week at work, fresh from University. I was sent to another location for cross-training and I had just arrived, about a hour before, waiting to for the senior technicians to impart their knowledge, when a technician came into the room and two planes were flown into the Twin Towers! At first I didn't believe, but after rushing to the pantry and turning on the TV, reality slapped me in the face! Smoke was bellowing from the buildings and there were flickers of flames everywhere until finally it all came crashing down and ending so many lives as well as breaking so many hearts.

Well, it's five years later and this act of terrorism has and still is affecting the lives of all Americans and the world over. The event's of 9/11 sent shock waves through the lives of not just those who lost family and friends in the towers and the planes, but in the lives of countless persons around the world. How so?

Since 9/11 traveling changed drastically, the US dictated new stringent security measures in an effort to thwart any recurrence of that attack. The US formed a traveling watchdog the TSA, which dictated several restrictions; no longer were allowed to travel with nail clips and tweezers in our hand luggage, travelers to the US were subjected to random shoes searches, visitors to the US are now subjected to being finger printed like felons and other forms of biometric identifications (yes, yours truly was subjected to the felon treatment) and airport security was beefed up to maximum.

The US government as well as ordinary citizens now live in fear of the next terror attack. When will it be? Where will it be? What form will it take? Will I be next? Are the questions that run through the minds of many today. This paranoia, or maybe common sense, has led the US authorities to implement a terror alert system ranging from yellow to red alert describing the various severities of a possible terrorist attack. Every accident, malfunction and man-made mistake triggers the words "terrorist attack" in the minds of the US authorities and citizens as well as people from other countries around the world until it is proven not to be. 9/11 has certainly plunged the world into a morbid fear.

The US was not to take this attack lightly as they launched an offensive against the man named as the mastermind, Osama bin Laden and Taliban regime who the US named as his supporter. The US army overturned the Taliban government and killed many who they implicated in terrorist activities, but yet still the mastermind is still at large, looming over like a dark ominous cloud. But America wasn't done yet, this was an opportunity for an all-out attack on the US long time arch-enemy Saddam Hussein and Iraq, which was attacked in the name of Terror. Although Saddam has been brought down, blood still flows like a river, the blood of American soldiers and the blood of many Iraqi people.

The war in the middle east has sparked an unprecedented rise in the worlds oil prices and dented our pockets with ridiculously high prices at the pumps. The surge in the price of the "black gold" triggered an increase in the prices of many other products that rely on it for production as well a hike in the utility bills, especially here in Jamaica. As the prices of oil continues to climb we feel the ribs of our pockets even more.

Undoubtedly the world has changed since then and things will never be the same as the aftershocks of 9/11 continue to ripple through our lives.

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Just for the Weekend

So in my last post I celebrated getting my new camera and some of you were anxious to start seeing some photos. So I decided to post the first of many picture from my Kodak 650. The camera has performed well so far and I am certainly not disappointed. I call this one "Full Moon". I like it because it seems to impart a sense of tranquility, and I need that in these financially turmoil times.

I have been a bit busy this week: school loan application, work, school, gym and other stuff. I have started to feel the stress coming on as I have several mandatory courses to do at work and this semester at school seems as if it's going to be the roughest so far. I haven't selected a major project or a major project group, so I will be concentrating on that as well as the challenges of the new courses for this semester. So I might not be as visible as I would like to be on the blogsphere. This week was somewhat hectic, it took me three days to browse through and read the posts on your blogs, so Im way behind. But I'll still try to read the posts as well as dropping a few posts of my own.

This won't be a long post, as my weekend posts are normally short. Here is a little weekend laugh, enjoy your weekend.

The Three Caribbean Prostitutes
Prime Minister P.J. Patterson was at a cocktail party.He met three high class prostitutes during the function, an American, a Cuban and a Jamaican.

To the American he said: "I am the Prime Minister how much would it cost me to spend some time with you?" Only $1,000 she replied. Then he asked the Cuban the same question: "No mas, only $100 Americano dollares," was her reply.

When he put the same proposition to the Jamaican girl she replied:

"Yow P.J. if you can raise mi skirt as high as mi taxes,

pull dung mi baggy as low as mi wages,

get your 'ood as hard as the times are,

and screw me the way you ah screw the ghetto people,truss me Mr. Prime Minister, yuh can wuk dis yah pumpum fe free."

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Good to Snap!

The lens, the final frontier, these are the voyages of the Stunner's Kodak Z650 Camera. Continuing mission to explore strange new shots, to seek out new scenes and new candid opportunities, and to boldly go where no camera has gone before! Stunner Cam!

Yes, as you might have guessed by now from the above nonsense, Stunner is back in business with his brand new Kodak Z650! For some reason I had the date mixed up and thought the person who was carrying down my camera was coming on Tuesday! Bwoy was I wrong. There I was sleeping away after coming from Ochie last night, when my sister calls and asks if I collected my camera yet. So I had to jump up and call the lady to find out where she was, fortunately Air Jamaica was late... For once I'm glad they were late! So I now have my camera and have already started to fool around with it! It's a very nice camera, bad nuh ratid! 6.1 Megapixels, so I can blow up my shots to poster size; 10x Optical Zoom so I can really zoom in on my subject; and lot's of picture modes to get that perfect shot! Now I wish my vacation had just started, I would be all over the place with my camera!

Other Random Stuff
My weekend on the North Coast wasn't bad at all, although I didn't go to much places. Just walked the town, slept and relax, and soaked up some of the warm Caribbean sun and sea. I don't have any pictures, because the person who was supposed to lend me a camera forgot all about that agreement. But that won't be happening again, thanks to Kodak Z650! I went to this nice restaurant name Carletos, I can't remember if that's the correct spelling. But the ambiance was ok and the food was great! You can even get a mixture of meats and the price isn't too bad. So if you're in Ochie you can check it out.

Today is the final day of my vacation, it's back to work tomorrow morning and back to school later in the week. It seems as if it was just yesterday my vacation started. But as they say, "All good things must come to an end."... and that includes vacation.

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