Dreaming

I have a dream. Nah. Not the type the late, great MLK had, but ordinary every night or almost every night dreams.

You know there was a time when I knew I had dreamt but could never remember anything about my dreams. Now I remember a number of them. Problem is though, I have been trying to understand the significance of dreams, but can't figure it out....I canna cross it!

In the past, I  have followed some gamblers who said I should buy cash pot when I remember my dreams. Twice I did that madness and lost a total of Ja$200, so I will never buy cash pot again!

Some of my dreams are very stark, but I just don't know what to make of them.  So out of curiosity, I have decided to start recording my dreams right here and maybe one day when I get old and have nothing to do, I will buy some dream books and see if there is a pattern or something.

Of course I have to figure out how to separate actual dreams from my subconscious playing games with me. This  happens often as I always go to sleep with a radio blaring in my ears (usually BBC) and sometimes when I get up thinking I had an exciting dream, I hear aspects of it on the same station in their news.

I remember a terrifying experience I had as a child with this same outside infiltration of my subconscious. You see, I had this grandmother who was such a devout christian that she was addicted to preaching on the radio and would even  endorse the back of her pension cheques and send them straight to Oral Roberts and Billy Graham!

One morning, I was having a nightmare about being in hell. Everything was hot and blazing and as I tried to escape my feet were being burnt up as I was running on red hot, searing coal. At the same time I was being chased by a terrifying monster with a fiery spear. It felt real and unbearable. I was so happy when I woke up and realised it was just a dream or rather, a nightmare. But guess what?  I  realised that what I had been living in my dreams was what I had been hearing on my grandmother's radio in the next room,  for she had been listening to some loud, firebrand preacher shouting about the trials and tribulations of life in hell!


So that is how external forces can play havoc with what we think are our dreams. Then there are the instances when you have too much vodka and have very confused and muddled dreams. However, I can recognise these and eliminate them.

So yea. I have decided to start recording them, but guess what, I know I dreamt last night but have been unable to remember anything about  that dream although I have been trying all morning!

Anyway, even if I can only remember one dream per week and record it, it will give me something to do in my idle years ahead! lol.

15th December 2011.

How ironic, now that I have decided to record the dreams which had been coming regularly and which I had been remembering clearly, I have almost stopped dreaming! In fact, I have only dreamt once since recording this decision and I forgot what I had dreamt about by the time I woke up!

Anyway, there is time yet.

A Petty Bureaucrat

I had to reply to the Public Defender's letter in the Jamaican Observer, since his personal attack on me just confirmed what I always thought of him, ie. he is nothing but an ineffective petty bureaucrat.
The letter is below,.

I refer to the public defender's letter of December 5, "Public defender in his ackee, takes on Joan Williams, Al Miller". I won't bother to comment on his defense of his office, but with regard to his childish, unthinking and spurious suggestion that I provide employment for Mr Junior Christie (the man sentenced to three months for stealing 45 ackee) I have no vacancy at this time!

However, I live on the periphery of King's House and have often commented on the state of what appears to be hundreds of acres of idle land overgrown with weeds. Since King's House receives millions of dollars per year for the upkeep of the property from us taxpayers, may I suggest that the public defender Mr Earl Witter put a proposal to the governor general for the development of that vast property to provide employment for Mr Christie and so many others in need of work.

Kudos UTECH

The University of Technology has always been my favourite local tertiary institution and they have risen further in my estimation with the announcement  in today's Jamaica Observer, that they have been operating of a Legal Advice Centre "......to provide legal advice for members of the public who are socially, economically and otherwise disadvantaged" since July this year. And to think their legal department is fairly new!

KUDOS UTECH, as usual you fill a need.

Kudos too to Legal Aid for jumping to take the excessive sentence of 90 days in jail for stealing 46 ackees which was handed down by RM Pusey against Junior Christie, to appeal and getting bail for him in the interim. One would have thought this role would have been undertaken by the Public Defender's office,  but with  their poor performance record, it is as well.

Thank God, we are finally seeing a trickling of institutions that are working in the interest of the poor and dispossessed in this country. If only the myriad of other publicly funded institutions mandated to perform similar functions would resolve to start giving taxpayers value for money, 2012 could be a great year.


Yes, I am a dreamer!

Cabinet ministers? No way.

I wonder if the Peoples National Party (PNP) wins the next election if we will see Anthony Hylton being appointed as a minister?

I ask, since over the past few weeks, Mr. Hylton has displayed a level of dishonesty which even brings Mr. Picklersill's doctrine of doing "anything" to gain power, to a new low. Firstly, in early November, he tried to whip up a firestorm by claiming  that companies had been banned from exporting under the new US Food Safety and Modernisation Act (FSMA). It took no less than the US Embassy to put out a statement refuting this. 


Then two days ago, he called a press conference to claim ganja found in Miami had been shipped from Jamaica as scrap metal. Another story of his that has been refuted.


Mr. Hylton  may have earned himself the much desired publicity he sought by these forays, but all he has proven to the public is that he is very careless with the truth and totally irresponsible.


And since I see were Mike Henry has stepped down as a minister because of his handling/mishandling of JDIC, but remains a candidate in the next election, it will be interesting to see if he too will be put back in the cabinet if the JLP wins the next election.


Whichever way it goes, the makeup of the next cabinet will tell us all we need to know as a young nation. But what the heck, we live in Jamaica so we could very well see Patrick Roberts being appointed a senior minister some day!

That's Justice?

Sometimes I have to wonder whether Jamaican judges live in Wonderland. Not all  by any means, but most.
For so often we see sentences coming out of the courts which make no sense at all.

The recent  instance when Justice Fraser sentenced a man who raped  a I2 yr old girl and  buried her alive to  just I2 years in jail, worse after the probation report on the criminal showed he had nor remorse, since he claimed "She Wanted It" was incomprehensible to say the least.

Now we see  a sentence of 3 months being  handed down to  hungry man who stole 45 pods of  ackees  from the governor general's home at king's house.

By no means is one  condoning praedial  larceny which is far too prevalent in Jamaica. In fact I think the laws surrounding praedial larceny are far too mild. But this case is a bit differnt, for the Governor Generals huge unused property belongs to the Jamaican people. So whereas wandering on to the property when one is hungry to ease the terrible pain in the belly, may be wrong, it certainly does not deserve 90 days in jail, an average of 2 days per pod of ackee?

If  I 've ever heard of  a wicked sentence, its got to be that handed down by justice Pusey.

I hope the Governor general who is supposed to be a  highly religious person, will pay the fine so the poor, hungry man does not have to spend Christmas in jail.

Riding to YS Falls

Yesterday, a lifelong dream finally came through. It wasn't really one of those serious, earth shattering dreams, but just one involving trying to re-live the childish exhilaration of speeding on a bike down a really steep hill and Spur Tree Hill in Manchester was the ultimate challenge.

Boy, did I ever enjoy those wonderful days as a child, speeding off the hills in Malvern, St. Elizabeth, despite the numerous falls and scars that still remain to remind me that nothing  nice comes without pain! But falling was the furthest thing from my mind as I let go off the hill yesterday, only braking occasionally as the breeze threatened to get the better of me. It was absolutely exhilarating, just as I had always imagined it would be.

The opportunity for this ride came as a result of some  mad person from Fun and Thrills MTR, suggesting some months ago that we do a moonlight ride to YS falls in St. Elizabeth, one of the most beautiful natural attractions in Jamaica. These falls are about 100 miles from Kingston, sitting on the periphery of our most important rain forest, the Cockpit County which abuts the parishes of St. Elizabeth, St. James and Trelawny. I certainly had no intention to ride in the night but the proposal was overruled and instead a normal daylight ride was agreed on for Sunday 20th November 2011.

There was however some last minute concern about that date since it was also the date of the Jamaica Labour Party's (JLP) annual conference and the bus drivers who transport the thousands of ardent supporters to such events are not known to be careful on the roads. However, although we saw hundreds of buses full of supporters racing to Kingston as we headed west, God is good and the quest by us cyclists was uneventful.

The buses  with JLP supporters were full and frequent

We decided to make the trip from four different points. Firstly there was the A team of MTR's made up of people like Howie, Michael , Alrick, Johan and Michel Smith who decided to take it from Kingston and ride all the way. Only Michael Smith accomplished that feat, due to time constraints as the falls closes early.

Then there was the Charles (ayatollah) group which decided to ride to Clarendon park and drive the rest of the way. They  did just that.

We who opted for the ultimate excitement were the two groups that left from Clarendon park. First there were the adventurous ones such as Sheriff, Sparkles, Pat, Moshe, Donovan, Shakira and Orrell (who provided mentoring) who bravely took on Melrose hill and Winston Jones hill, two daunting inclines. Then there were the really smart ones, Michael Chuck and myself who opted to skip the gruelling uphills and go straight for downhill riding only, declaring that we were going to ride from the top of Spur Tree Hill. I guess Chuck felt a bit badly, seeing the young ladies courageousness taking the hills, for he did manage to persuade me to give up my air-conditioned comfort in the support vehicle being driven by Christine and start the ride just past the Hatfield turn off in Manchester, thus collecting some minor hills under my belt.

Fixing Sheriff's puncture at Spur Tree 

As we started to descend Spur Tree Hill however, Sheriff got a puncture, but the chivalrous ones, Chuck and Donovan, soon had that sorted out. Halfway down the hill, we were overtaken by Orrel, the great one, who had arranged with this brother, who lives just above Gutters in St. Elizabeth to pick some jelly coconuts for us. That was really wonderful of him and we had a ball with Moshe having a jelly for the first time and enjoying it.(He is an Israeli working in Jamaica)

The rest of the ride was almost all downhill or gently undulating and we were not caught up by those who drove from Clarendon Park until we got to Lacovia, where we had stopped at the gas station for refreshments.

After that it was easy riding though the picturesque Bamboo Avenue to Howie's at the turn off to YS falls. There we stopped for some delicious food, at least my curry goat was wonderful, topped off with delicious sweet potato pudding compliments of Pat.(Sparkles jealously claimed that I find all food wonderful but that is becuase she opted for the boring chicken which was apparently not up to scratch!)

As we lingered there, up rode Michael Smith who had made it all the way from Kingston on his own, and we were told that the rest of the group that had ridden from Kingston had been picked up by support vehicles outside of Santa Cruz ( the hottest town in Jamaica).

The rest of the day was absolutely wonderful as we frolicked at Ys falls, first in the rushing waters under the falls itself, then later by the heated pool which was apparently recently added as an attraction there.

It was really an absolutely wonderful day all round....... the riding, the food of course, the camaraderie.

Ride on F&T!





For more photos see;  https://picasaweb.google.com/114828585796685227607/DropBox?authkey=Gv1sRgCJuTuZGztcbjtgE

Policing in Jamaica

I am in total agreement with today's editorial in the Jamaican Observer but was inspired to write because of this one statement, ".....who from this distance seems hardly to have put a foot wrong since he took over leadership of the constabulary...", in reference to commissioner Ellington.

I am still puzzled how we made so many poor choices of commissioners over at least a decade, while there was someone of commissioner Ellington's apparent competence was right there in the force. In the meantime, hundreds of lives were lost because corruption reigned supreme and no sensible crime fighting strategy was developed or implemented for such a long time.

Now for the first time in years, we see the polls indicating that crime is no longer the main concern of Jamaican citizens.

It is indeed a breath a of fresh air and while crime and especially murders continue to keep us in the top five in the world, at least we are seeing good progress.

Congratulations to Commissioner Ellington who is demonstrating that with proper leadership, any organisation is capable of transformation.

Hopefully the kudos and awards that he is receiving will only inspire he and his team to do even better rather than allowing it to go to their heads.