Coming to Jamaica
There’s something about cheap travel that you really have to think about before you indulge in it and that would be the timing of your flights. Because, let’s face it, if you have enough money, you can travel where you want on your own terms and with the best available connections, departures and arrivals.
When you’re a cheap skate (or simply have too many kids) you do things like take the plane that leaves Calgary at 12:30am and arrives in Toronto at 4:30am. And then have the 3 hour wait until the plane departs for Jamaica with tired kids strung out in an airport.
And as with so many of these things, I started this in one place and now find myself finishing it off in a completely different one, both mentally and physically. Often that will mean that the starting portion gets cropped out somewhere in the extraordinarily brief editing process that I use, but today I decided to let it stand, because there is a distinct reversal of emotion from when I started to when I now sit here completing this little piece.
At the time that I started, I was on a plane somewhere between Toronto and Jamaica (Montego Bay to be precise) and so still carried closely and personally the scars that one accumulates with small children gathered in a very public place without access to anything that they actually want to do (ie they have plenty that can be done, but chose for those moment that there is sweet nothing that they want to do.
Whereas at this precise moment in time (2112 hrs on the25th of February for those that care about these things – and probably less now) I am sat upon a reclining wooden chair on the balcony of our accommodation at the FDR resort in Jamaica. I am also at this point on the good side of a reasonable number of Appleton Rums with half a cold red stripe lager beside me to help see me through to the end of the evening and if it is an auspicious evening, possibly even the end of this post, though the fact that I’ve just had to deleted approximately 20 o’s for the second time in as many minutes doesn’t bode well for a coherent culmination to my literary efforts.
We arrived in Jamaica to the pleasant discomfort of being somewhat warm, having dressed at least in part to cope with the departure temperatures of Fort McMurray …-30C.’
Bring on the temperatures that we landed to, +28C
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Especially as I am not continuing this 3 days later. I have to say that the rum and noddies got the better of me and I simply wasn’t in a position to continue typing. Fortunately I left myself some notes as to what it was that I was going to write about. One of those is ‘remixed version of the chicken dance’ and for a rew moments there I was a little mystified as to what on earth that meant. I have however just remembered. They have a section here at the resort where they put a kids buffet on every night so that you can feed your kids before caring about yourself and worrying if there’s anything on the menu that they might like.
We sat in there on the first night and they have some music going. So during dinner, we were subjected to/entertained by a remixed version of the chicken dance, complete with some kids that decided that they would like to do the dance as well. Combine that with the ‘books of the bible song’ and you’re in for an interesting evening’s entertainment to say the least.
Quite late on our first day here, we discovered that there was going to be a ‘mini miss’ fashion parade and of course, because she heard about it, our mini miss decided that she really wanted to be a part of it. It consisted of three sections, the swimwear, sportswear and formal wear sections combined with a brief talent showing as well. Emily decided to sing.
She did incredibly well in front of a crowd of strangers in a foreign country, though her choice of song was somewhat amusing. When one considers that we’re in the tropics for the sun, “I love Christmas Morning” does seem just a little bit out of place! She had fun though and that’s what it’s all about
As you may have noticed from the first post that I put up from Jamaica (strangely under the influence of rum once again) we went horse riding along the beach. It was fantastic, especially as we didn’t just go along the beach, but took the horses into the water as well. We managed to get as deep as my crotch at one point which Thomas duly pointed out meant that the particular wave in question was up to his chest! But unlike one of the guides that was riding bareback, Thomas’ horse didn’t stumble and drop him in the drink.
And of course, the little pink thing spent the entire ride with a grin from ear to ear.
Until today, the rest of the holiday has been all about what it should be … not doing much at all. Drinking dacquiri’s by the pool, soaking in the sun and the kids entertaining themselves however they so choose. Its been an absolute delight.
Today we opted to get out of the resort for a while and went on a shopping expedition in town. It was fun, though it was predominantly an exercise in haggling and getting harassed. We managed to walk away with a few things that we felt we hadn’t paid too much for, probably because we managed to escape from the resort with only Thomas in tow … the joys of a nanny at your service for most of the day every day!
Then, this afternoon, we joined in on a snorkeling trip out in the glass bottom boat. That was fabulous, swimming in a nice warm ocean, watching beautiful fish in their natural environment. It really helped us to appreciate just how lucky we are to be here.
Anyway, its time for bed. So I’ll get this posted and wish you all the best from Jamaica!
Feb 28, 2009
Feb 26, 2009
Feb 24, 2009
jamaica bound
We're currently sitting in the airport awaiting the departure of the first leg of our trip to Jamaica. Assuming that the little pink thing settles down or not, we may all get off our final plane tomorrow afternoon for a bit of sun.
I must say that I am rather looking forward to sitting by the pool saoking in the sun and sipping on a dacquiri or two. Rest assured I'll have one for each of you as well.
I must say that I am rather looking forward to sitting by the pool saoking in the sun and sipping on a dacquiri or two. Rest assured I'll have one for each of you as well.
Feb 14, 2009
Catching Up
Yes, it’s been a little while since I last sat down and wrote something. Part of that has been deliberate. There were things in the wind that I wanted to have settled out to some sort of order before I discussed them too widely.
There’s something of a running joke that every time the CEO visits up here I come out of it with a new job. Well two weeks ago he was here … and I am still in the same role. Almost remarkable, but worthy of noting that it could well have been different.
In the discussion that I had with him whilst he was here, he mentioned that the company was looking for an Alliance Manager for a new contract that we’ve won in New Zealand. I’d taken a brief look at the location prior to his arrival and decided that I didn’t want to end up there, but following discussions with him, said that I’d consider it.
A bit of research suggested that there could be a nice place to live near there (Whakatane on the Bay of Plenty) but schooling options weren’t looking overly abundant and with a few other issues as well, we decided that perhaps we should just hang tight for now and look forward to our return to Oz at the end of this current contract.
That was the biggest piece of news that I was sitting on kept me from sitting down and writing. Although, it would have been nice to have been that much closer to home … possibly might have encouraged a few more visitors than we’ve managed to attract to this rather lonely part of the world.
In other news, we’ve had a couple of different illness’ run through the family. It certainly hasn’t helped with the ability of the family to cope with the extended winter that we get in this part of the world. I think that Sam and I are the only ones who have managed to avoid turning our stomachs inside out at some point in recent weeks, though we have both had the head cold that ran through the house.
Caroline was perhaps the least fortunate as she threw up early last Saturday morning when we were in Edmonton to watch Emily and Thomas’ ringette tournament. Instead she spent the day ‘relaxing’ in the hotel.
A month or so ago we were informed that Air Canada was having an international seat sale and looked very seriously at coming home for Easter. Sadly that was vetoed when the company banned us from taking leave in March and April due to a planned turnaround event. So there went our trip to the sun. So we looked for an alternative. We considered Mexico but in the end, booked a trip to the Caribbean, Jamaica to be exact! Yes, in approximately 13 days we’ll be soaking up the sun and drinking pina coladas! God I can’t wait.
And then, on top of that, and taking blessings from misfortune, economic slow downs and a fire in the plant pushed back the time frame for the turnaround to September which meant the travel ban was lifted. We didn’t do anything about it though. Not until early this week, when Sam was having a particularly hard day of it, not finding any joy in what was going on and we started to once again talk about when we could get home this year, or if in fact we would even manage to get home ahead of our contract end date.
And then there were specials on flights again …
Long story short, yesterday tickets were booked for us to come home for Easter! Cue party music!
I’ll be arriving on Sunday the 5th of April (Caroline and the kids will be there about a week and a half before that (Which I believe will mean that Emily gets yet another birthday in Oz) and then we’ll all leave together on Monday the 20th of April, having managed another Easter at Port Hughes and even getting a week of school holidays in there for the kids to see their friends. Due to the complexity of being stingy bastards, we’ll also have a day in LA on our way back over, so I am thinking that maybe we’ll be heading to Universal Studios. Can’t wait.
There’s something of a running joke that every time the CEO visits up here I come out of it with a new job. Well two weeks ago he was here … and I am still in the same role. Almost remarkable, but worthy of noting that it could well have been different.
In the discussion that I had with him whilst he was here, he mentioned that the company was looking for an Alliance Manager for a new contract that we’ve won in New Zealand. I’d taken a brief look at the location prior to his arrival and decided that I didn’t want to end up there, but following discussions with him, said that I’d consider it.
A bit of research suggested that there could be a nice place to live near there (Whakatane on the Bay of Plenty) but schooling options weren’t looking overly abundant and with a few other issues as well, we decided that perhaps we should just hang tight for now and look forward to our return to Oz at the end of this current contract.
That was the biggest piece of news that I was sitting on kept me from sitting down and writing. Although, it would have been nice to have been that much closer to home … possibly might have encouraged a few more visitors than we’ve managed to attract to this rather lonely part of the world.
In other news, we’ve had a couple of different illness’ run through the family. It certainly hasn’t helped with the ability of the family to cope with the extended winter that we get in this part of the world. I think that Sam and I are the only ones who have managed to avoid turning our stomachs inside out at some point in recent weeks, though we have both had the head cold that ran through the house.
Caroline was perhaps the least fortunate as she threw up early last Saturday morning when we were in Edmonton to watch Emily and Thomas’ ringette tournament. Instead she spent the day ‘relaxing’ in the hotel.
A month or so ago we were informed that Air Canada was having an international seat sale and looked very seriously at coming home for Easter. Sadly that was vetoed when the company banned us from taking leave in March and April due to a planned turnaround event. So there went our trip to the sun. So we looked for an alternative. We considered Mexico but in the end, booked a trip to the Caribbean, Jamaica to be exact! Yes, in approximately 13 days we’ll be soaking up the sun and drinking pina coladas! God I can’t wait.
And then, on top of that, and taking blessings from misfortune, economic slow downs and a fire in the plant pushed back the time frame for the turnaround to September which meant the travel ban was lifted. We didn’t do anything about it though. Not until early this week, when Sam was having a particularly hard day of it, not finding any joy in what was going on and we started to once again talk about when we could get home this year, or if in fact we would even manage to get home ahead of our contract end date.
And then there were specials on flights again …
Long story short, yesterday tickets were booked for us to come home for Easter! Cue party music!
I’ll be arriving on Sunday the 5th of April (Caroline and the kids will be there about a week and a half before that (Which I believe will mean that Emily gets yet another birthday in Oz) and then we’ll all leave together on Monday the 20th of April, having managed another Easter at Port Hughes and even getting a week of school holidays in there for the kids to see their friends. Due to the complexity of being stingy bastards, we’ll also have a day in LA on our way back over, so I am thinking that maybe we’ll be heading to Universal Studios. Can’t wait.
Feb 2, 2009
20
20 years ago today (Febrauary 2nd), on a Wednesday night, I went out to the pub with a group of friends. It was the Hackney hotel and the attraction was that for $5 you could drink as much beer as you liked (or in some cases, more than that, but there were consequences!).
One of the friends that I was going along with was an attractive young lass that I had developed a certain level of desire lust attraction for. In the time leading up to that, I had allowed that level of attraction to lead me to make a couple of (admittedly somewhat drunken) attempts to make known my level of interest, though they had been deftly deflected.
There had been some confusing signals, like the rather excited phone call I received one night informing me that this girl had broken up with her boyfriend of the time, but ultimately whilst the friendship continued unabated, it seemed that this poor boy’s intentions were ultimately to be thwarted.
And so, as this particular Wednesday night wore on, I steeled myself with a couple of handy schooners of courage and wondered just how on earth things might proceed on this evening when she would be dropping me home (along with another of her friends). Not exactly Casanova, or even anything resembling a silver-tongued wooer of women, towards the end of the night I made a bold a dashing move to once again make my intentions known.
I placed my hand upon her knee.
Yep, wasn’t that just the masterstroke! Too my utter delight though, there was no shrinking away of the leg, no slapping of the hand, no discouragement what so ever. In fact on the way home that night, the car was actually stopped and the friend shooed off for a moment and we actually kissed!
Well, from that moment on, I was a happy little boy and to our friends’ mortification, they had to put up with us being joined at the face entirely too often for what they probably considered healthy. 6 and a half years after that, I managed to get around to proposing and now, a full 20 years and 4 kids after that special night out, I have to say, the patience and perseverance was most certainly worth it!
One of the friends that I was going along with was an attractive young lass that I had developed a certain level of desire lust attraction for. In the time leading up to that, I had allowed that level of attraction to lead me to make a couple of (admittedly somewhat drunken) attempts to make known my level of interest, though they had been deftly deflected.
There had been some confusing signals, like the rather excited phone call I received one night informing me that this girl had broken up with her boyfriend of the time, but ultimately whilst the friendship continued unabated, it seemed that this poor boy’s intentions were ultimately to be thwarted.
And so, as this particular Wednesday night wore on, I steeled myself with a couple of handy schooners of courage and wondered just how on earth things might proceed on this evening when she would be dropping me home (along with another of her friends). Not exactly Casanova, or even anything resembling a silver-tongued wooer of women, towards the end of the night I made a bold a dashing move to once again make my intentions known.
I placed my hand upon her knee.
Yep, wasn’t that just the masterstroke! Too my utter delight though, there was no shrinking away of the leg, no slapping of the hand, no discouragement what so ever. In fact on the way home that night, the car was actually stopped and the friend shooed off for a moment and we actually kissed!
Well, from that moment on, I was a happy little boy and to our friends’ mortification, they had to put up with us being joined at the face entirely too often for what they probably considered healthy. 6 and a half years after that, I managed to get around to proposing and now, a full 20 years and 4 kids after that special night out, I have to say, the patience and perseverance was most certainly worth it!
Smemory
Yesterday, we dragged the kids out to the local ski hill for a bit of skiing action (though Michael and Sam opted to sit in the ‘chalet’ whilst Caroline, Thomas, Emily and I did the actual skiing – Michael because he has a cough and Sam because he just couldn’t be faffed).
It was going to be a hectic afternoon because after skiing we had ringette for Thomas and Emily immediately followed by my indoor soccer and possibly Caroline’s ringette if she opted to go out.
As we left from the ski hill Emily started to tell me that she didn’t feel all that great, but of course I thought she was just trying to get out of having to do ringette. She quieted down on the way there as well which I thought gave credibility to my suspicions. Turns out that it had more to do with the fact that she’d fallen asleep!
When we arrived at the ice rink she was still asleep and I wasn’t that keen to have to go through the trouble of waking her up and getting her kitted out and so waited for Caroline to arrive (we were in two cars because of all the equipment we were lugging around) to make a recommendation that we just head home. With that done, off home it was.
Sadly I only managed to get about half a kilometre down the road before Emily reiterated that she wasn’t feeling well and thought that she was going to be sick. I think the delay between making that statement and hearing that horrible bubbling sound that is a child vomiting in the car was approximately 1.73 seconds. Certainly not enough time to do anything like pull over and get her to eject her stomach contents outside the vehicle.
Of course Thomas was with us as well and he was quickly out the car and elsewhere so that he didn’t go off in a sympathy spew. I of course, being the parent got to deal with the mess in my car. Yummy.
We managed to get home without either Thomas or I joining the fun and without Emily throwing up again. I assure you, cracking the windows to let the smell out when it s-20-C is not fun. I swear for the rest of the day, all I could smell was the faint remnants of regurgitated hot chocolate.
And at 2am this morning, when Michael came in to tell me that he’d been awake coughing for an hour and a half and couldn’t sleep, I had a smemory. A strange and random recollection of the smell of vomit … even though there was nothing to generate it. I can do well enough without remembering some smells thank you.
It was going to be a hectic afternoon because after skiing we had ringette for Thomas and Emily immediately followed by my indoor soccer and possibly Caroline’s ringette if she opted to go out.
As we left from the ski hill Emily started to tell me that she didn’t feel all that great, but of course I thought she was just trying to get out of having to do ringette. She quieted down on the way there as well which I thought gave credibility to my suspicions. Turns out that it had more to do with the fact that she’d fallen asleep!
When we arrived at the ice rink she was still asleep and I wasn’t that keen to have to go through the trouble of waking her up and getting her kitted out and so waited for Caroline to arrive (we were in two cars because of all the equipment we were lugging around) to make a recommendation that we just head home. With that done, off home it was.
Sadly I only managed to get about half a kilometre down the road before Emily reiterated that she wasn’t feeling well and thought that she was going to be sick. I think the delay between making that statement and hearing that horrible bubbling sound that is a child vomiting in the car was approximately 1.73 seconds. Certainly not enough time to do anything like pull over and get her to eject her stomach contents outside the vehicle.
Of course Thomas was with us as well and he was quickly out the car and elsewhere so that he didn’t go off in a sympathy spew. I of course, being the parent got to deal with the mess in my car. Yummy.
We managed to get home without either Thomas or I joining the fun and without Emily throwing up again. I assure you, cracking the windows to let the smell out when it s-20-C is not fun. I swear for the rest of the day, all I could smell was the faint remnants of regurgitated hot chocolate.
And at 2am this morning, when Michael came in to tell me that he’d been awake coughing for an hour and a half and couldn’t sleep, I had a smemory. A strange and random recollection of the smell of vomit … even though there was nothing to generate it. I can do well enough without remembering some smells thank you.
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