Of course, that all depends on where you are. At the moment, I happen to be sitting in a hotel room in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. I’m just chillin’ a bit before I check out and head off to the airport to catch an afternoon flight that will be the start of my journey home.
So what am I doing here? Well, I’m not here on holiday. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I’m here for work. There’s a project that’s been ongoing and what I am doing is a small project that is part of this bigger project. Essentially, I am suppose to gather data and information that will be used as input in dimensioning and the eventual integration of a new node in the network. I know, I won’t go into too much details.
As a result, I really don’t get to go outside much other than for lunch. That’s the only time I get any sunshine and feel the warm 30C weather here. By the time I am done with work, it’s around 6PM and it’s starting to get dark. When I get back to the hotel, I’m pretty knackered from staring at a computer screen and figuring out numbers and calculations. All I end up doing is order room service, surf the net (when the internet connection was behaving), read a little and maybe watch some TV before I crash around 11PM. Hmm, come to think of it, it’s not that much different than being at home. I guess one big difference is that at home, I’m not totally confined to the space of one room. At home, if I wanted to go for a walk after dinner, I can without worrying about getting lost or mugged. Given that I am a rather visible minority, I think I would stick out amongst the locals. I did read somewhere that there’s about 15K Chinese living in the Dominican, but I really didn’t see any other than a few hotel guests.
So what else have I been up to since I last wrote anything significant? Well, I wish I could say that I was involved in something really exciting, but I haven’t. I have been rather busy with work. At times I was dealing with more than one project at a time. Occasionally there will be those valleys when I’m not sure what I’m doing. I guess I need the occasional valley to regain my bearings and clear my head. When I get back from this trip, I will be working on finishing off this work and starting some other stuff for a different project. Don’t think that I’m complaining here. It’s actually good to be busy!
Yesterday, my manager IM’d me. He wanted to let me know that with some forecasted work in the new year, he threw my name into the ring as someone to train up in PCN. Wooo! This means I’m being registered for a training course the week after. This is actually good. I get to learn something different! I’ll have to look into doing some reading before the training course starts. Uhm, yeah, I need to find the time for that!
In the meantime, there’s this guy. I think he’s rather special. We seem to get along quite well. And, as strange as it may seem, I’d like to try to keep him. Now, the whole deal with this is that it seems a little complicated in some ways. Without going into too many details, we’ve only seen each other a total of 3 times. Each time, we had a really great time together. In between the times we’ve seen each other, we’ve been emailing each other. He’s very busy with his work, so I think I end up emailing him more, but he doesn’t seem bothered. In fact, he’s apologetic about not writing back in a timely fashion. At some point we’ve exchanged some rather “serious” email. I think there is an understanding between the two of us. Let’s see where it all leads.
After Jum’s passing, Blue Sh*t became depressed. About 24 hrs after he noticed that Jum was not around, he stopped eating and became clingy and needy. Now when a cat decides not to eat, that’s usually not good. Boo has always been with other cats. I don’t think he’s used to being the only cat in the house. I ended up taking him to the vet where they put him on IV fluids and gave him an appetite stimulant to get him kick started again. In the meantime I started to think seriously about looking for a companion for him.
The following weekend, I found that there’s an adoption clinic at a pet supply shop in town. So I figure I’d go and see what animals they had. When I got there, they were a bit late in arriving to set up. So I just hung around and got to know this young Rottweiler that was up for adoption. She was a sweet dog that needs a bit of training. Anyway, once all the cats were there, I was drawn to this cute, friendly calico. She was the first cat I checked out. She was just all friendly and affectionate with me. It makes me wonder who was doing the adopting here! In any case, next thing you knew, I was going home with a new cat! I named her Cleo.
I kept Cleo confined to one of the bedrooms before slowly introducing her to Boo. Boo wasn’t sure what to make of this newcomer at first. There was a little bit of hissing and posturing, but eventually he warmed up to her. Cleo didn’t seem to be bothered much with his hissing. Cleo still needs to get use to the fact that Boo likes to snuggle up next to other cats to nap. Boo has to get used to the fact that Cleo is much younger (about 1.5 yrs old) and more full of energy than he is these days. It’s been about 2 months and they seem to be getting along rather well. They are both currently being boarded together at the vet clinic. I’ll be picking them up on Sunday morning.
Even though I brought my P&S camera on this trip, there was very little opportunity to take much in the way of shots except for maybe out my hotel window. I’ll post them somewhere when I get a chance to download them.
In the meantime, I think I have written enough for now. I might take a short nap before checking out.
