Great Blogs you never Read
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 06/Nov/2011 16:20, 34 days ago
Health considerations unexpectedly ended our stay in Jamaica so this blog will end too - except for in our hearts where it will go on.Unpredictable events throw off the best made plans. History abounds with examples where tragic figures with iPads and laptops were ready to record incredible blogs for posterity. Sadly, bolts from the blue struck and derailed their best-laid plans. After that, the world had to wait centuries for third parties to recreate fictionalized, and usually not as good, versions of what happened.For all we know, just before Juliet's sleeping potion took effect she smiled happily to herself that she would fool the Capulets and Montagues and be able to stay married to Romeo even though her family treated him as an accursed Montague.Here is Juliet marrying Romeo at the start of her short-lived marriage, even by modern reality TV standards.Later on in Jamaica, Nanny of the Maroons could have produced a great blog on guerrilla tactics for posterity - she was one of the few to beat the British army. Unfortunately the Blue Mountains were out of Wi-Fi range so we will never know how what her tactics were. Although she died of old age she never bequeathed a blog. I would suspect that she was too tough a character to ever have tweeted.Men can write great blogs too, given a chance. The main roadblock is that they procrastinate and miss their deadlines. Jack on the left in the poster below could have composed an enthralling blog about Rose.We are all the losers because he chose to hold off for just one day. If he could have, I am sure he would have told us that the fog over the water meant that he could not take the digital photograph up to the standards he wanted and he hoped for better lighting conditions tomorrow.Tragically, the next day the Titanic struck an iceberg and passengers and crew had to abandon the ship and chance their souls to the icy cold ocean. As he succumbed to hypothermia, his last view could have been of his laptop lazily zig-zagging down into the abyss of the two mile deep Atlantic ahead of him like a Swedish cod jigging lure.However, there is an exception that proves the rule. I had no in-law problems, at least none that anyone told me about, I did not operate out of a rugged internet-free Blue Mountain location and I did not sink down to the bottom of the North Atlantic 99 years ago. So here is the end of my blog - not a grand finale, but business as usual, or so I thought.First a few sample photos from my CUSO-VSO farewell dinner.Practically all the volunteers attended so it wasn't possible to include everyone, unfortunately.Here is Arthur the wicker man, and yours truly without fancy headgear.We all know that the blog unlike the heart in the Titanic song will not go on, but Jamaican dispute resolutions will. Here's how.The first stage in dispute resolutions is for the aspiring mediators to embark on the basic mediation course. Here are a few photos from the course I attended just before I left. Not as Hollywood or as epic as the previous images, but more real and reality is what counts in the real world.Our trainer.Most, if not all, of the group.One of the graduates graduating.Later on back in Canada by the Niagara Escarpment. Note how you can escape the crowds by going to Canada in November and dressing warmly. Actually it wasn't that cold by Canadian standards - we may have had our hands in our pockets but we were not wearing gloves.Thanks for reading. Goodbye.