I Want to Leave the City Behind

I want to leave,
Leave the hustle and bustle of the city,
Move to the hills where it's quiet,
To the hills where its clear and pretty.

I want to retreat,
Hide away from the horns, the shouting, the constant chattering,
Give it all up for the birds chirping, the rustling of the trees as they caress the trees,
A place I can relax and have no part of the city's beat.

I want to go above the light grey smog and the haze,
I want a view, the breath-taking scenery of the hills,
A place where I can see the moon and the stars as I gaze.

Give me a place where I can find refuge from the daily grind,
Somewhere I can feel inspired,
Yes, a beautiful place on the hills where I can leave the city behind.

Apartment hunt: Update 2

The hunt is still on, I still have not fully secured a place for myself as yet. I had one promising place so far, the Landlord has even agreed to rent me the place, but I am not 100% certain I want to take it. The parking arrangement is not that conducive to my working schedule and the other thing is that I would be living at the same premises as the landlord and is sister. I really don't want to share the same place with the landlord, even though he seems cool. The place is a really nice, new, flat, but I would prefer an apartment. I have to make a decision by this afternoon, so I have a lot to sleep on. Should I settle and make do with this one, or give up certainty for uncertainty and continue searching for something better?

I would love to get a nice place on the hills, but Ill settle for a decent apartment in a decent part of the city. So as my time here dwindles down ever so rapidly, I am still on the hunt. Hopefully, I will find a place that suits me as closely as possible.

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Weekend Quicky With An Eye Candy

Another rough week has passed, I had my first test of the semester on Thursday, I think I should pass...I hope. As if that wasn't bad enough I have another test next week Thursday, so I will be in the books as much as circumstances and my brain will allow. I also have my Senior Project hanging over my head and I still haven't started any serious work on that as yet. Not to mention the impending final exams in four weeks time. Ahhhh!!! Lately I find it hard to study, I literally have to be forcing myself. But I have reached too far now to fall along the wayside. So I have to do it...starting tomorrow. I just need to take two days to de-fragment my brain.


Sunday is another day of hunting for a place. Truly I'm not looking forward to it, but it's something I have to do. Hopefully it will be productive this time, as this whole process is cutting into my valuable time that I should be using to study.


Here is a little something for the weekend. Checkout my weekend Eye Candy from khrystihill.com, that is a body! (drooling) I know only the male bloggers might enjoy this one, sorry ladies, no half naked men on this blog. Enjoy your weekend.


P.S. I have also added a new photo to Exotic Fotos.

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Apartment Hunt: Update 1

Sunday apartment hunting was great, I actually found a nice apartment with all the amenities that I would want, in a wonderful quiet neighborhood, well kept, and one of the most wonderful landlord that I never thought I would meet..........Shit! Mi *!^$$*#& daydreaming again! Damn it!

Back to reality, Sunday, my first official apartment hunt was almost a total waste of time. The hunt actually started early Sunday morning... I mean early! I left work at about 12:20 am. I deliberately left work a bit late to ensure the "Early Edition" gleaner men received their Sunday supply of the Sunday Gleaner. Any avid house/apartment hunter knows that's the best time to get your gleaner to get a head start. But to my surprise the damn Sunday Gleaner wasn't delivered yet! Instead the half crazy gleaner/windscreen cleaner/rose sellers were instead out there trying to sell people roses at minutes past twelve in the morning! Just great, I had to go home wait a while and then hit the road again, fortunately this time the Sunday Gleaner had arrived and the scanning of the classifieds started shortly thereafter.

Cockadoodle doo! (Not mine), the sun was up and the alarm clock was making a racket, it was daybreak, some minutes pass seven and time to start phase 2 of the hunt. I started calling the places that was selected earlier. After talking to a few, rejecting a few, leaving a few voice messages, i managed to set up a few meetings and then it was on the road. I viewed a couple of places, but the ones I saw were definitely NOT worth the price the landlords were asking. At one point I was tempted to ask what the &@^##*#*!^#! yuh tinking bout yuh want so much fi dis ole dump! But in good manners I curtailed my thoughts. In another 2 cases, I spoke to the persons renting the places and after heading to the location I started to call to get the directions, only to have my calls going directly to voice mail. When I finally got through, the damn bastards had the heart to tell me that the places have just been rented! What the *#^#%@*!

Overall, the day was almost a total waste, the only good that came out of it is that I got to take a few wonderful shots while in Red Hills. I will share them with you during the course of the week on Exotic Fotos, starting Tuesday.

(sigh) So the hunt continues, during the course of the week and even more intensly on Sunday coming. Melody, CD and everyone continue your prayers so my dream can come through.

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Dutty Landlord!

Once again Stunner is on the hunt for a new place to rest my head...among other things. The painstaking tasks of: buying The Sunday Gleaner at 12:00 midnight, waking up early on a Sunday morning, making endless futile phone calls, driving to all kinda areas across the corporate area, only to be disappointed by ridiculous prices and substandard places of dwelling are to be repeated once again! It seems I just keep moving, never settled; every year or two I am on the move again! Why? Because of Dutty Landlord!

From the time I moved from Portland to Kingston, in my younger days fresh from University, till now a full fledged Kingstonian, I have never had a good landlord! Is getting a good landlord too much to ask for? Why can't I get one of the good landlords?

I have lived on the same premises with my landlord before, and I vowed after the second experience that never again will I share the same space with a Dutty Landlord! It seems that whenever you live on the same premises as the landlord, appart from imposing endless restrictions and rules, he/she feels they can still do as they please because is their property. The Dutty Landlord feels he can put things anywhere he feels, burn bush (grass) whenever he feels and pound the whole place with his hammer as early as he feels, with no due regard to the tenant. The place belongs to the landlord yes, but from a person decides to rent a place he must understand that he has to give up some of his rights and have consideration for the tenant who is paying to live there. Mi not begging a cotch!

As a result I decided to rent apartments or somewhere where the landlord doesn't live. But even then I encountered problems! It seems it is an universal thing with almost all landlords; they love to collect rent, but never want to repair the place! Why is it that one has to "run dung" (beg and constantly remind) the landlord to fix something that is broken, due to no fault of yours. And when the Dutty Landlord does decide to fix it, he brings his tradesman friend to "bitch up" (temporarily fix the problem in such a way that the problem will reoccur in a short time). Why Dutty Landlord? I am paying you your rent punctually every month, and yet I can't live in some form of comfort!

I can't wait for the day when I'll open the doors to my very own place. God bless that day! Until then, (sigh) I guess I will have to put up with Dutty Landlords and keep moving when I can't tolerate it anymore! Pray for me as I embark on my hunt that I find a good landlord, and a decent place I can afford! And no more Dutty Landlord!

New photo posted on Exotic Fotos!

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Extortion!!!

Extortion is what it is! Poor decent people who strive to pay their utility bills are now being asked to pay...no, sorry, forced to pay fee to pay their bills! What kind a &#^#%ry is that? Let me set the plot for you.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, honest hardworking, bill paying, customers of the utility companies would queue up is almost never ending lines to pay their exorbitantly high bills at the utility company's branch offices. Some time ago the idea of a bill paying agency was born. It was like a blessing, the best thing since slice bread! Now you could go to one central place to pay all their utilities!

Seeing the success of the bill payment agencies like, Paymaster and Bills Express, the utility companies, like JPS, The National Water Commission and Cable and Wireless, decided it would save them a whole bunch of money if they shut down their branch offices and allow the bill payment agencies to do the job of collecting.

Now these bill payment agencies were basking in success, now they are collecting for all the utility companies. Now instead of getting a fee from the utility company to collect the payment of a few who found it convenient, they were now being payed by the utility companies to collect from everybody on a full time basis! Oh, Paymaster and Bills Express were now reaping their rewards! Or so you would think! Just a couple of months ago, Paymaster, seeing how they could plunder hard working underpaid Jamaicans and get fat off the spoils got greedy! Paymaster decided that the money the utility companies were paying them was too little, they wanted more! So what did they decided to do? Ask the companies to pay more? No! They decided to target they poor consumer by charging a fee to pay a bill! Yes, consumers were told that they would have to pay a fee for every bill they pay!

OK, paying a small fee for the convenience of paying all your bills at one location isn't that bad, right? It wouldn't be bad if it was a small fee, instead Paymaster has imposed a $30 fee per transaction! Paymaster's main competitor Bills Express, could not let all this loot pass them by and decided to jump in on the action and slapped it's customers with a $35 service charge per transaction! There is no escape now! So if you have to pay your cable bill, light bill, telephone bill and water bill you will now have to pay as much as 4x35=$140 extra on your ever increasing utility bills! What the %#$#, this is ^#%@^@ robbery! It would be somewhat OK for them to charge a fee if consumers still had the option of the utility companies' branch offices. At least their would be a choice.

Who will save the defenceless consumer? The OUR (Office of Utilities Regulation)? Please, they can't do shit! the OUR is like a dog without teeth. When the consumer turned to them for help they outright declared that they can do nothing to protect consumers from this form of extortion.

Although this doesn't affect me as I pay my bills online through the bank, it stills upsets me to see this level of exploitation. And who knows, the banks may be the next ones to jump on the band wagon!

PS: New photo posted on Exotic Fotos.

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Little Old Lady

A little old lady is walking down the street, dragging two plastic garbage bags with her, one in each hand. There's a hole in one of the bags, and every once in a while a $20 bill is flying out of it onto the pavement. Noticing this, a policeman stops her...."Ma'am, there are $20 bills falling out of that bag..." "Darn!" says the little old lady....."I'd better go back and see if I can still find some. Thanks for the warning!" "Well, now, not so fast," says the cop. "How did you get all that money? Did you steal it?" "Oh, no", says the little old lady. "You see, my back yard backs up to the parking lot of the football stadium. Each time there's a game, a lot of fans come and pee in the bushes, right into my flower beds! So, I go and stand behind the bushes with a big hedge clipper, and each time someone sticks his little thing through the bushes, I say: "$20 or off it comes!" "Hey, not a bad idea!" laughs the cop. "OK, good luck! By the way, what's in the other bag?" "Well", says the little old lady, "not all of them pay."

That's a laugh for the weekend, hope you all enjoy the weekend...I'll be working unfortunately. I was going to vent, but I'll save that for Monday, right now I just want to laugh.

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Exotic Fotos

As some of you may already know, I have started a new blog! How can Stunner start another blog and he can hardly get time to blog on Stunner's Afflictions? Well, as the name suggests it's a photo blog, I will just be posting my photos on it, with a short comment describing the photo. So it won't be too time consuming, and I should be able to manage that. Ever since I go t the new camera I have been snapping away like crazy, so why not share some of those shots!

Anyway enough long chatting, go and visit my blog at http://exoticfotos.blogspot.com/.

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And the Stars Rise

Picture of One Third and Nikeisha taken from YardFlex.com

Another successful staging of the Digicel Rising Stars competition has once again come to an end. And history has been created in this third staging of the programme that has won the hearts of Jamaicans. For the first time a group has come out on top and has claimed the winning title of Digicel's Rising Stars 2006. The group One Third has been voted the winner by the Jamaican public, who has their hearts stolen by this singing group of three, who sung a variety of songs from oldies to their most popular cover of Anthony Cruz's Half Way Tree. But One Third was not just faces that drove the girls wild and voices that thrilled their souls, they also had a commanding stage presence with their choreography. Congratulations One Third and all the best with you careers...and the one million dollars!

I have to also highlight the second runner up Nikeisha Barnes who also had a commanding stage presence, not only for her voice and her cover of a few Mary J Blige's song including her powerful performance of I'm Going Down, but also with her hot body. Yes she was not only a strong voice, but also a stong body gal! She had a nice shape, wonderful legs, accentuated by her outfits, and a decent pair of lips that keeps driving one of my coworkers wild! (ok, ok, I liked her lips too and her body) Nikesha wasn't a winner from the start at all though. She was eliminated in one of the early rounds, but for some reason the toughest, most feared judge of the competition, Anthony Miller, saw something in her and pulled her back in the competition. And I know he wasn't disappointed. Congratulation Nikeisha and I wouldn't mind sharing some of that six hundred thousand dollars!

I can't end this blog without mentioning the famous Brushy One String, singing melodies with his two string guitar 9formerly one string). Although he was eliminated the week before the final round he still came out a winner. I doubt Brushy wanted to win, i think he just wanted some exposure, as he has been performing for sometime now. And exposure he got, as he is now a part of the line up for the Heineken Star Time Show!

The competition wasn't as intense as last year with Chris and Noddy, but it still had a lot of hype! Come on 4000 ticket sold out in just a few days! That's still a lot of hype! An I know Digicel is smiling all the way to the bank with all that money they made!

Click here for a sneak prieview of Exotic Fotos!

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The Bath Tub Test

It doesn't hurt to take a hard look at yourself from time to time, and this should help get you started:

During a visit to the mental asylum, a visitor asked the Director what the criterion was which defined whether or not a patient should be institutionalized.

"Well," said the Director, "we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient and ask him or her to empty the bathtub." "Oh, I understand," said the visitor. "A normal person would use the bucket because it's bigger than the spoon or the teacup."

The director's answer Is below...





"No." said the Director, "A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?"

Did you pass the test? Don't lie now! Got that one in my email so I shared it. Enjoy your weekend!

P.S. I have switched to the new Blogger (Beta) and may be experimenting with it over the weekend...if I have the time. So don't be surprised if things look a bid different or totally messed up.

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Eruption!

Well as you can see today is not Thursday, so the Thursday post didn't work out. I am still under the influence of the time consuming, school work. We actually got a one-week extension on the assignment that has been rocking my brain for the past few weeks. I am nowhere better off than I was when I just started but, one of my classmates claims to have a light at the end if the tunnel. So hopefully the information will help me out.

On the bright side I completed my lab report and handed it in, however I did another lab the same day I handed it in. Not to fret I spent the weekend and shot down that one too, cause you know I have to "stay pon top a tings, top a tings" But this is just the beginning of my stress, as I have to do my major project this year and the deadline for submitting the application is this week and we don't have a project as yet! You noticed I said we, well that is the only bright side...I actually am in a major project group. So the struggle to get the likkle piece a paper fi seh mi qualified continues. Anyway, as the title of the post suggests, this is not the main post, just a side info.

On another note, there is a fowl smell in the air, a smell of fear, of blood, of tears, yes a nasty odor. No I'm not talking about some smelly old socks, it election time around the corner. Yes the two major political parties (a.k.a. bands of thieves) are gearing up and are oiling up the pieces...oops, I mean their political strategies for the upcoming election soon to be announced. The campaigning and indirect campaigning has begun as everyone eagerly awaits the word from Sista P fi fly di gate!

How do I know that election is in the air, no you can’t actually smell it smarty pants, and no it's not the political speeches filled with empty promises, not the careless and numerous awards of contracts to repair the roads, nor is it the regular tours and motorcades across the island. Den how mi know?

It's the recent flare-up of tribal war...I mean political violence in the political strong hold communities. Yes the dreaded Mountain View community and Olympic Gardens are threatening to erupt again! The dormant volcanoes that have been so relatively peaceful seem to have started to send tremours through the corporate area and have even began to spew bloody lava on the streets and to hurl stones of bullets in the air. Other potential political volcanoes are under the radar such as Grant's Pen, Tel-Aviv, Spanish Town, Spoilers, Southside, and the list goes on. Once again our fellow Jamaicans have started to allow political tribalism to divide them and turn them against themselves as they do battle for political dominance. This has been the face of the political scene in Jamaica every time the election wind blows; various garrison communities battle against each other and even within themselves in the name of politics.

There is nothing such as a free and fair election in Jamaica. There is no freedom of movement in certain areas of this island. It's not just the innocent persons in these violent communities who suffer, not only the poor children, but also the whole Jamaica. Like it or not, political violence mars the beauty of this wonderful country. The Peace Management Initiative dubbed the PMI and the Police are trying futilely to put a band-aid on the laceration that political violence has made in the corporate area.

Why must we Jamaicans continue this violent cycle? Is it due to the lack of education why these elements of society war among themselves in the name of politics? Are the politicians to be blamed for the violent political tribalism, by instigating it or not doing anything to curb this malignant soar? What is your take?

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