If ever

If ever you were mine, 
I would change like the hands of time.

Forever changing while remaining the same

If ever you were mine, 
This poem,  I would not write. 

For my time would not be mine

And my desires would not coincide with ink and scribe

If ever you realized
That you i idealized,

would you be able to live up 

to the fantasies I fantasize?

Would i be able to proclaim all the feelings that have spun this tight knit web? 

If ever you were mine, 

Oh the feeling would be divine

But alas you have no price

And i have no means with which to acquire that which is without 

So onward little soldier, 

Onward with your stride. 

Someday lady peace will come 

and kiss you like the sun

Poetic Justice

Many moons ago, in my teenage years my brother bought the video cassette of a movie called 'Poetic Justice'. The stars were Tupac and Janet Jackson. At the time I only knew this because I secretly read the summary of the movie on the back of the cassette case. I read it in secret because my mother had forbidden the movie to be watched in the house. Honestly, if she hadn't highlighted the presence of the movie I wouldn't have been interested in it, given that we had heaps of video cassettes and membership at a video shop. However, as we all know, once something is forbidden, it becomes more attractive. So I read the summary in secret and got intrigued.

To cut a long story short, I eventually watched the movie in secret. I didn't watch it all at once though because my mother never left her children unattended for more than a few minutes. Even as teenagers, my mother constantly checked in on us. So we had no real privacy.

Anyhow, I watched pieces of the movie at nights and when we were left in the custody of my father and he spent most of day outside I watched pieces of it. To my innocent ears the movie was filled with profanity, music to my virgin ears (lol). I really liked the emotions in the movie and the characters were so alive. My favourite character, however was Janet Jackson. She was a Poet / hair dresser, who had endured a hard life filled with loss. She was essentially all alone in the world. She had a few friends and co-workers but she was really alone. So one day, in her state of loneliness she wrote a poem about her loneliness and it has been in my head ever since I watched the movie. The poem actually belongs to Maya Angelou, but at the time, I didn't know that, so in my mind there is always a connection between the poem and the movie.

The first verse of the poem goes:

Lying, thinking last night
how to find my soul a home
where water is not thirsty
and bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
and I don't think I'm wrong
That nobody,
but nobody
can make it out here alone

On nights like these I lie and think about the homelessness of my tired soul. Many moons ago, it had a home, but over the last couple years, my soul has started feeling at odds with the rest of me. My soul has hit a place where water is thirsty and bread loaf is stone. I don't quite know how it got there and I don't quite know how to get it back home. 

My Education is Useless

As a child, I've always heard that education is the key to success. So I made sure I got as much education as possible. Along the way, it dawned on me that the quality of the education is important as well. Therefore, I refused to go to the resource scarce schools in my community and opted to take a farther journey in exchange for a richer high school experience.

That realization paid off well. I sailed through school afterwards. Then it was time to get a job. Getting my first job was relatively effortless. I started working a week after my last exam in school. The job only required a Bachelor of Science degree so I was underemployed given that I had a Master of Science degree. However, I had no work experience so that did not bother me.

After working in positions that only required Bachelors degrees for about two years, I decided to start a PhD. I guess I never really thought about the job market for PhDs in Jamaica. I thought of the ease with which I would be able to enter an international organisation. Little did I know that it would still be difficult to get a foot through the door.

Anyhow, I've woken up from the dream of getting into an international organisation easily, so I started looking at all the job postings around me. It turns out that 90% of the job postings I've seen so far only require Bachelor of Science degrees. This is usually coupled with many years of job experience. So it turns out that post graduate degrees are useless in the Jamaican market, unless you become a University lecturer or consult on a rare high level project.

Therefore, for those persons thinking about graduate studies, I would advise you to do it while working. If you take time off to pursue education in Jamaica, when you get back to the job market, you will be back to square one, qualifying for the same jobs as those with only first degrees.

If I were a stamp...

Have you ever imagined that you were an inanimate object? Probably we have all done it as children. Thinking of ourselves as inanimate objects is possibly one of our greatest imagination boosters and I want to bring my imagination back to life. So, here goes,

My name is Jamal and I used to live with my family in Barbados. We were always together. We lived in the top drawer of the big cedar desk  in Papa's room. From time to time Jamila would open the drawer and play with me along with other things in the drawer. However, we never went very far. Usually she would just play with us on top of the desk. So, as you can imagine, I longed for an adventure. I wanted to go on long trips outside the drawer and meet new people. When stamps from other places visited they usually tell very interesting tales about their journeys. Tales that sound so amazing. 

I wanted to be able to tell a tale of my own one day too. So one day I changed my outfit, from a hibiscus to a mango in hopes that as a mango faced stamp, I would be luckier and someone would want to send me somewhere exotic.

Last week I woke up to something wet on my backside. It was a tongue! I was being licked :). Soon I would be off on a journey of ecstasy. One that would undoubtedly end with me being in a different part of the world.

After days and days of being shut away in the dark abyss of airplanes, I finally reached my destination. The only problem was I couldn't understand the language that the other stamps were speaking.

 I found myself between a strange looking man with a funny hairstyle and an unbelievably pretty woman with a face to be called innocence reincarnate. They both looked like the definitions of exquisite. Oh how small and insignificant I felt lying between them.

The pretty lady then looked at me with admiration in her eyes and began to speak to me in broken English. She exclaimed how privileged I must be and stated how expensive mangoes were in Japan. The funny haired man chimed in that the person who received me will undoubtedly keep me as a prized possession and show me off to all his friends and family. How wonderful it must be to be from the Caribbean. How rare and lovely. 

Hanami, the spring coloured stamp overheard our conversation and looked over to see what all the excitement was about. The sakura on the fringes of her dress were so delicate and elegant and Mount Fuji looked so inviting. Excitedly, with a breath of fresh air she extended an invitation to a picnic under the cherry blossoms. "Oh how lovely it would be to have a Caribbean mango stamp with us for this year's spring picnic next week" said Hanami. Oh what a lovely feeling to be welcomed into this new and beautiful place by all these beautiful stamps. 

You never know just how rare and lovely you are until the other beautiful stamps around you shower praises upon your head :). Oh what a lovely feeling indeed.

Source of pictures:

Hibiscus Stamp

Mango stamp

spring stamp

Caribbean Stamps

Sunday Living

The best Sundays are like today, peacefully bliss, meals with family and friends, chill time after dinner on the veranda while occasionally browsing the newspaper. It's a special day, the beginning of a new cycle and the end of an old one. 

If ever I were asked to choose just one day of the week to be my favourite, it would definitely be Sunday. As Lionel Richie once sang, I'm 'easy like Sunday morning'. It fits my personality, easy going and cool like a cucumber. 

In traditional Jamaica, church is usually a staple on Sundays, however for the non-traditional ones, it has become the norm to sleep late then have brunch. My newspaper vendor recently introduced me to another type of lifestyle for those who work on Sundays. Apparently there is night church for those who work on Sundays during the days but still want to attend church. 

In the future, I think I would like to visit night church to ascertain if the services are similar to the Sunday morning sermons or more relaxed. Sometimes the day services can go on for quite some time and after church there is usually a lot of things to be done, well a lot of talking among church members :).

Onsen Town, Kinosaki

There is a quaint little town on the Northern Hyogo coastline in Japan, called Kinosaki. It is both strange and lovely at the same time. People go there for one reason and one reason only, they go there to soak in expensive public hot baths. In Japan, public hot baths are called 'onsens'.

During winter (and in other seasons as well), many Japanese people prefer to bathe in public bath houses instead of using their private bathrooms. In these public bath houses, there are usually a few Jacuzzi type baths where naked people of the same sex sit in very hot water (40 degrees celsius or more) in absolute silence. Before sitting in the tub though, each person has to stand in the open and take a shower in front of everyone in the room. At the Onsen, there is absolutely no privacy.

Upon first learning of this cultural practice, one might wonder 'who would forsake their private bath tub at home to go shower naked in front of others then share a bath with absolute strangers?' I still don't really know the answer to this question, but since children are brought to Onsens from a very young age and are taught to love it, they grow up and go to places like Kinosaki :).

So, back to Kinosaki.

The town is filled with onsens. That is the only form of entertainment in the town. It is possible to eat eggs boiled in onsen water and stand around this special rock that brings forth water and steam from the underground.

Master or Jack of all trades?

A friend asked a question recently and since then I have been turning over the question in my mind without a solid answer. The question was 'Is it better to have a lot of knowledge about one field or is it better to have knowledge about a lot of fields?'. In essence, is it better to be a 'jack of all trades and master of none' or a master of one field?

Love the money (Dexta Daps)

So Dexta Daps got really popular after his 7eleven song - the one in which he wanted to be  her 11th boyfriend. Now he has a song called 'Love the money'. So in 'love the money' he says the lady knew he had a girlfriend and he knew she had her man, but now he's upset because she didn't love him. Like seriously?? Really?

One interpretation is that the two persons became each others' lovers knowing that they were both attached to other persons. They decided to pursue a relationship on the side, then the woman decided to change the rules of the game. Now she threatens to tell the man's spouse about their illicit relationship as a way to blackmail him into giving her more money. So he's not hurt because she doesn't love him. He's hurt because she wants to blackmail him into giving her more money for keeping his cheating a secret.

What I don't get however, is why he is bringing love into it. There was no love in the beginning and there is no love at the end. It seems maybe he started catching feelings for her along the way and now he's upset that she didn't catch the same train to 'pointless land'.

Anyways, have a listen to the song, after all, Dexta Daps, controversial as he may be, is one of Jamaica's hottest dancehall artistes at the moment. The translated lyrics are provided below.

WARNING: It contains explicit language. 

The more things change the more they remain the same

My driver’s license is nine years old and I am still learning new things about cars to this day. This week I drove a friend’s car and upon moving off I realized that there was no hand brake. Now, this is a car I’ve been in several times in the last few weeks but I never realized that something as common as a hand brake was missing. He kept telling me that the brake was on but I couldn’t, for the life of me, find the hand brake. He laughed at me and said he was rethinking whether or not he should allow me to drive his car.

He then turned on the ceiling light (since it was night) and pointed to the ‘foot’ brake, located to the left of the regular gas and brake pedals. He instructed me to step on it in order to release it. That’s when I realized that my license was old and so was my knowledge of modern cars J. Anyways, apart from the ‘foot’ versus ‘hand’ brake in that car everything else was pretty much standard.

The next day I told my brother about the interesting ‘foot’ brake and he laughed and said, ‘nothing is new under the sun’. He then explained that back in the days when my father drove a Colt van, there was no hand brake. Instead there was a foot brake, pretty much like what I was describing to him.

I know fashion has a way of coming in and out of style, but does that also apply to car brakes? Why was the ‘foot brake’ making a comeback? Is it really making a comeback or was that car just strange?

Just from my experience, I think the hand brake would be easier to access, given that your driving foot will be occupied with the regular pedals. However, since the hand brake is usually just used as an emergency or precautionary brake, maybe its position is not really that important, as long as it is accessible.