Front Page Jamaican Grille

A bunch of us from work headed up to Manchester today for a spicy Jamaican lunch. I haven't had lunch outside the office in a while, let alone with co-workers, so I thought this was a good way to break up the work day and try some new food. Front Page Jamaican Grille is in a little nondescript strip mall on Manchester Blvd.



And it was AMAZING. I had the jerk oxtail which was served with rice and fried plantains and a side of vegetables. She also gave us a sample of the homemade ginger beer which was a little too strong for me so I opted for the fresh watermelon juice. We all shared a reggae chicken wings appetizer which was way too spicy for me. I loved the home-cooking atmosphere of the place and the owner's wife who served us was very laid back and friendly. She even gave us some bread pudding and rum cake to finish off our meal. Needless to say I was stuffed after eating every last bite of food on my plate.

And now my cube neighbor Phil is playing spa music from his cubicle and it is slowly putting me into a deep food coma...

Where have I been the last 5 years?

I found an old post that mapped out all of the states I've traveled to. Very sad map indeed, as it showed only 7 states including the state I live in currently. So, I decided to do a new one.



I'm happy to say I've done a little better in the last 5 years, almost doubling my states visited to a whopping 12. This includes a visit to my mom's place in Indiana, a short trip to Chicago and New York, and two business trips to the east coast. I'm feeling more cultured already.

Old map from September 2004:

G'day Mate!

So, before today, I thought that no one read this blog. You see, this blog was always meant to be a private, personal blog, appearing only those who knew the super-secret URL. I started it a long, long time ago as an online journal and it morphed into a weekly log of activities for the purpose of updating my sisters when we all lived in different corners of the world. I've carefully set all of my settings to avoid search engines, crawlers and the like and I'm careful not to disclose the URL or alias to anyone other than my sisters.

So imagine my surprise when I see that it has collected 57 absolute unique visitors (according to Google analytics). This is a lot considering I've only published this blog at its new domain for about 2 weeks now. Also considering that my target audience is 4 people.

So who are you? I may never know, but at least I know where you are.



So, g'day mates, selamat datang and zdrastvooyte, I hope you enjoy your time here.

Quiet

Funny. I don't ever notice how much I like to talk, or how much I have to say, until there is no one around to talk to. Max left for Ireland at 5AM on Monday morning and Vina has been staying in LA for school/work. So for a full 2.5 days I had the house to myself. And Lulu and Cora (who make pretty good listeners, actually). It's embarrassing to admit but I end up going about my day with a mental checklist in mind. "I have to tell Max this. I have to e-mail him this. I have to text Yona now. I better tweet this. Oooh, I'll e-mail this to Aai and Vina. I better text Aai so she'll open my e-mail. Oh this and this is interesting, but my family will think I'm stupid for e-mailing it to them, I'll blog it instead."

Do I have that much to say? Or is it out of habit that I have to share everything I experience with someone? I mean, it's not out of coincidence that when I have less people to talk to, I tend to blog more. Which is actually interesting to note about the years when I started both of my blogs. I must have had nobody around to really talk to. So am I replacing human contact and attention with my online soapbox where I can freely communicate the thoughts in my head that are directed towards no one?

The concept of blogging, tweeting and Facebook statuses is interesting. Everybody dubs it as "social media" or "social networking" which implies that there is an exchange of communications or a two-sided interaction but if you think about it, it's actually a one-way communication. It is not any different than broadcasting. You expel information outwards, but just provide a feedback loop in case (1) someone reads it and (2) someone finds it compelling enough to reply.

So if this one-way broadcasting has taken over the way people socialize online and real-life (I know some of you have tweeted or read tweets while in the company of another tweeter) then how does that change the way we look at socialization? In theory one could live in isolation, void of any real-world human contact, but still remain perfectly sociable through these online networks. And no one would know the difference.

So then that raises the question, what does it mean to be popular these days? Is it the person with (a) a lot of Facebook friends, (b) a lot of twitter followers or (c) the person with a lot of comments/wall postings? In other words, the person with the most consented friendships, the most admirers or the one that engages more people in conversation?

Sigh. I need someone to talk to.

Oh, puppy shenanigans.

Spent the morning with the pups today. And by morning, I mean 5:30AM to 7:30AM. Who knew that I could be up and about in the wee hours of the morning? I haven't slept in since... well, since we got Cora.

Lulu is definitely warming up to Cora now. She lets Cora snuggle up next to her and is pretty tolerant when Cora climbs on her to chew on her ear. Also they playbite for a good 30 minutes straight in the mornings. I've even caught her wagging her tail a couple of times! It's interesting to see that Lulu uses a soft bite when playing with Cora -- I put my hand in between the "my mouth is bigger than yours" biting exchange once and noticed that Lulu is very gentle whereas Cora's bites are super sharp.