Exploring life... Exploring this web site right now... Exploring the possibility of creating a community in each category here on Frooler.com to showcase Jamaica and/or the Caribbean/West Indies...

Myers-Brigg would tell you that I am an INTJ (Introverted, Intutitve, Thinking and Judging) personality but who I really am though is someone who enjoys being a Jamaican... Life is rich here and it treats me very well. I have prepared a little slide show for you that seeks to capture my main interests: The arts, sports, music, animals and the beautiful scenery of my little island... Do enjoy...






If you're still interested in knowing about me after all of that please visit any of the 124 (the last time I counted) communities that I have created here. They are posted in the Mary_Aranxia, Cinnamon and Caribbean_Queen39 (my clones) and durrantp (a friend) profiles. They tell about the things that really interest me in this life... Please note that even where I didn't create a community myself (e.g. How U Doing... or Eminem) if I've joined it then it has some emotional resonance for me so you can take it as yet another expression of my personality...

The first thing that you will notice about me is how curious I am. I am always exploring something either by reading about it or dismantling it to see how it works or looking it up on the internet.

Next, you will notice that I don't have much patience when the thing still won't work for me...

Anything that causes me to think... e.g. I came to this site while doing an online quiz that asked me to rate it... I wasn't familiar with Frooler so I came here to check it out... So far it is a little different from the other social networking sites that I've seen recently... at least the layout is... The information being sought about me seems standard for this sort of thing... No, I am not a researcher studying social networking sites...

Elsewhere I've said that I'm into music, art (paintings, pottery, sculpture, tapestries, floral design, literature, dance), surfing the Net and watching sports... I've been thinking about indulging my other interest here though - my passion for re-branding and marketing my first love: my island home, JAMAICA...

Violence/cruelty; The excesses of economic privation; Religious and Social intolerance; Discrimination against any group; The international trade and military policies of wealthy nations; Crudeness and vulgarity; Environmental degradation; Greed; People who tell lies and those who steal.


With this in mind I've created three new communities and I invite you to join them now and take a stand with me against repression and violence...These new communities are Christianity;�Eradicate World Poverty NOW!�and� Stop Child Abuse Immediately... Thanks much for your support...

Collecting - art (sculpture, paintings, ceramics), coins, stamps and books (I now have a nice little collection of books signed by their authors);

Music - playing it, listening to it, going to live concerts;




Reading - Fanfics, crime and mystery novels, classic English and French novels (in the English translations folks...), foreign books translated into English, biographies and autobiographies, books on business strategy, operations management, entrepreneurship, leadership, social and abnormal psychology, mathematics and statistics;

Attending movies, sporting events and book signings, readings and launches;

Visiting museums and galleries;

Helping people - playing the "Pay it forward" game is one of my favourite things in this life;

Arranging flowers and tending to my fishcactus garden;

Daydreaming :-) and strategising about Jamaica's and my future :-) :-)

Surfing the Net...


Free Word Search Puzzles

I haven't appeared in any... :-) not yet anyway... :-) So I watch from the sidelines... Right now, I'm losing my interest in romantic comedy of the "Wedding Planner" type (though I'll watch "Love Actually" whenever I see it on) but I still like to be inspired by the triumph of anything over adversity; so I'll watch things with that theme... I saw Hilary Swank's "Freedom Writers" most recently...

Traditionally though, I have liked everything from "Batman Begins" to "Howard's End"... I tend to like minimalist but highly symbolic work, I enjoyed "Sleuth" because although it had only two characters to carry the storyline, it got MORE intriguing by the minute...

I'm ashamed to say that I am becoming addicted to comic book inspired movies... especially where these were the comics and cartoons that I loved as a child... so you'll see me watching things like the Spiderman series, Batman, Fantastic 4, Transformers... on cable when no one else is around... :-)

I find that I tend to sympathise with the villain in any piece more than with the hero(ine) - something about my personality (or those of the people who produce movies) that I need to explore... and I love it when the villain is the hero as is the case with Julien in "Charlotte Grey"...

Elsewhere I have confessed to being a pyrotechnic junkie... especially if that is married with mind-blowing stunts and pulsating rock music... so although I am a classically trained musician and connoisseur of the arts I do go in for the more culturally bankrupt forms of entertainment as much as anyone else... :-)

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Pretty much everything... though polka is very low on the list... The music here is "Caribbean"... Naturally most of it is reggae and dancehall because I'm Jamaican... UB40 and Maxi Priest are British acts but they are British REGGAE acts and I like their sound so they merit an inclusion here so that you can get to like them too if you haven't heard them before...

Cheers...

I've read the new Harry Potter and it's now my favourite in that series...still followed closely by Goblet of Fire... Beyond that I'm just about to begin reading the over 700 journal articles that I've collected so far for the lit review for my Ph.D. dissertation. I am trying to describe a fifth (situational) dimension for elucidating Transformational Leadership theory... I think I can, but I still need to do some more work... The first step toward that might be to break this addiction to the Internet...

In recent weeks I have also become more serious about my research in general and I will also be reading in the areas of Agency Theory, Ecological Theory, intrepreneurship, access to higher education, productivity, organisational culture and human resource selection.

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I have one main passion and everything else feeds into that. I want to make Jamaica the centre of the universe... At least I'm honest about my ambition even if a bit deluded that it's a worthwhile and achievable goal...












The truth though is that I really care about my little country and it hurts to see that so many of my compatriots do not share my passion for our homeland. By doing things like researching the things to show you in my communities and on this page I discover things that I share with others here in Jamaica in the hope of spreading the love.

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You should probably check my Orkut account to see the list of sports that I have watched live. I actually thought about it while writing that and so although I will make an attempt to list them here I may forget something. I have participated as a spectator at dog shows :-), track and field/ athletics events, tae kwan do, karate, football (soccer), cricket, chess, basketball, volleyball, netball, swimming, field hockey, show jumping and motorsport here in Jamaica.

As a participant my participation is much less spectacular. I competed in shot put for my high school house - Neptune. I was down for discus but, shamefully, was a no-show... :-( I also played tennis, badminton and chess in high school, comm college and at university. Now I only play the fool.

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Mostly escapist stuff on the internet when I'm not preparing for a class or working. My last check showed that I had about 28 different personalities on the net although I use only about three of them regularly... Life just seems more interesting if you can see it from different perspectives. It is also VERY interesting to compare the types of friends that each of these personalities attracts on the Net.



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I like the ones that Cinnamon mentioned and for the reasons that she gave :-) What else do I like? I enjoy Whose Line is it Anyway when I can catch that, many things on Animal Planet and HGTV when I can catch those and some of the crime shows on BBC America when I have the time and energy to turn them on.

Whose Line Is It Anyway deserves a special mention and recommendation for those who haven't seen it. It is a show that operates on improvisation - the jokes, sketches, songs etc. I think that Wayne Brady is a genius.

Of course I try not to watch too much television because it does waste time but every now and again I binge on it.

Anything with nuts, peas and beans, vegetables, pastas... I have been a vegan in the past (I managed it for about two years and then just gave it up) and could be considered a vegetarian now but I do eat meat about once or twice a week. I imagine that with time I really will embrace the vegan lifestyle full-time... I seem to be trending in that direction.

I think that my eating like everything else about me is an expression of my trying to understand myself.

The one I had with Stan nearly 10 years ago... :-)This may explain why I am still with him after all this time... :-) :-) :-)

He managed to both shock and delight me during the evening. How many people have dinner then go to a construction site to discuss plans for a building with an architect, then miss the movie because that meeting was so long and then spend five hours by a poolside, drinking Ting and eating popcorn while listening to music and chatting about almost every topic under the sun with an extremely interesting and extraordinarily handsome man.

I found him fascinating then and I still do so now...

Again, I think I answered this somewhere else... LoveHappens perhaps?

I have learned to be VERY specific about saying what I want so that there can be no misunderstanding about where I stand in the relationship.

Check my LoveHappens profile for this too... My God, my family, my art and music, my laptop and high speed wireless internet connectivity although I installed a non-wireless connection in my apartment only this morning (15122K7) because I didn't want to be supplying the neighbours with internet services there. At my home where I sleep at nights though I do have wireless so that my Dad and sister can use it to their hearts content as well.

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My walls are decorated with a few pieces from my Jamaican art collection. I am proud to say that I have acquired some very nice pieces over the years... Additionally, you'll spot some of my pottery, my violin, music stand and sheets, my shelf with my books, my empty aquarium and terrerium (the fish and turtles died) and, most important of all, my laptop probably on and awaiting me on my bed...

I like arrogantly intelligent and talented men. So men who are very well educated, play instruments and sports, speak several languages, know about wines, can cook, dress reasonably (at least in their most flattering colour palette), wear an earring, a beard and a shaven head (or hair long enough to have a ponytail) will turn my head...

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I went to St. Hugh's High School for Girls as did my mother and aunts before me. When I was there I was there with my sister and six of our cousins... :-( At the time I thought it was fun...

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I have found that the University of Life is by far the most important and I have learned much there. I am a work in progress and for years I have been trying to embrace the principles of Kwanzaa as my guiding prescription for healthy and productive living. I haven't got it yet but I will share it with you nonetheless:

Kwanzaa, which will be celebrated for the 42nd time in 2007, was established by Dr. Maulana Karenga. The seven-day festival (December 26 – January 1) is secular, not religious, and aims to strengthen African cultural identity and community values while providing a spiritual alternative to the commercialism of Christmas.

Kwanzaa, which comes from the Swahili phrase "matunda ya kwanza," meaning "first fruits," is celebrated by:

Decorating the home with the colors of the African flag (bendera): black for the people, red for their struggle, and green for the future and hope that comes from their struggle.
Laying out a straw or cloth mat (mkeka) in a place of honor in the home. Upon it are placed: a candleholder (kinara) with one central black candle, three red candles to its left and three green candles to its right; crops (mazao), including bananas, plantains, mangoes or whatever the family favorites are; ears of corn (muhindi), representing the children; and a unity cup filled with water, grape juice or wine (kikombe cha umoja). Other objects of African heritage may be added.
Lighting the kinara: the black candle on the first night, the black one plus the leftmost red one on the next night, those two plus the rightmost green one on the next, etc. Each candle represents one of Kwanzaa's seven principles (nguzo saba).
Pouring libations from the unity cup in the corners of the room to honor the African ancestors, then passing it around for all to sip.
Holding a communal feast (karamu) on December 31, with food and an educational program.
Exchanging enriching and culturally significant gifts (zawadi).
The traditional Kwanzaa greeting is "Habari gani?" The answer is the principle for that day: umoja (unity), kujichagulia (self-determination), ujima (collective work and responsibility), ujamaa (cooperative economics), nia (purpose), kuumba (creativity), and imani (faith).


Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/kwanzaa


The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus is my alma mater - having done three degrees there. I have also done courses at the University of Technology and what is today the University College of the Caribbean.

UWI (Mona) where else? There is really not much choice in Jamaica... but we're all working on that... Right now we have six local universities with more on the way... and several off-shore ones... (hopefully no more on the way...)

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