Random Thoughts by Ktownbuddha

Ok so this is the story of today's adventure.  This actually has nothing to do with work and I could see something similar to this occurring in Canada. It actually started yesterday, when me and a co-worker decided to head to Baracoa on Sunday.  We needed to get out of town, and the weather looked crappy so we figure the beach wouldn't be that good.  My coworker knows a guy that owns a small rooming house with a restaurant in it so we arranged to have lunch there.  He asked if we would be able to give his daughter a ride from Baracoa back to Moa as she is going to school here. We said that wouldn't be a problem. So we wake up around 8 and have some breakfast and take off for Baracoa.  We were trying to get there early to buy some wine and look for some rum.  So we wander around and enjoy the sights of the town and then make our way to Alberto's house for lunch.  We weren't able to find the rum we were looking for so Alberto hooked us up and we found what we were

Well that was until last night.   I got home just after dark and there were a few expats standing around so I got out of my truck and went to talk to them.  Yes I have a new to me vehicle.  It's a 2009  Mitsubishi  truck.  2L turbo diesel with lots of power.  It was in a major accident in 2009 and has finally been fixed now.  It's still missing some parts but still better than my old on.  Picture to come.  Anyhow back to the real story. Seems that somebody had broken into one of our guys rooms and stolen his safe out of his room.  They didn’t break into it, they ripped the thing out of the wall.  It is screwed in really deep and would have taken some time and effort.  Unfortunately he had his passport and a bunch of money in different currencies.  He lives in Wales so he carries, Cuban money, Canadian, Euro, and the British pound.  So I think he said they took about 1,200 – 2,000 dollars.  Not sure why he is carrying that much around with him but I’m sure he has his reasons. 

So the devil won out and I went to Holguin this weekend.  It was my first real trip to Holguin.  We fly in and out of there all the time but all we see is the airport and the hotel.  My planning for this trip sucked and I forgot my camera so unfortunately I don't have any pics.  One of the guys did and if I can get a copy I will post them. We got there around 5 and went and hung out at the airport with a couple of the expats who were flying out.  For this portion of the evening I played DD.  The others drank at an expedited rate.  One of the guys who was just finishing his 6th week, and still has 1 more to go, tied into the cerveza pretty hard.  I think he had about 5 which might not be a lot for some of us, but for him it was a lot. He then proceeded to pass around a bottle of rum in the parking lot of the airport.  Needless to say he got the worst of it. As we were driving from the airport to the hotel, you could hear the alcohol hitting his blood stream.  He was hammered.  W

So I haven't posted since I left Cuba.  Excuse me for my rudeness but I was a tad busy when I was home.  After having spent 6 weeks in Cuba I had lots of friends to catch up with, and a cat who needed some attention.  Plus I needed some sleep.  The trip home was a little rough on my system and it took me a few days to recover. I may have mentioned to some of you that I was escorting two Cubans to Canada for training.  They were from my department and the training was much needed and I was looking forward to seeing the rewards of their time there.  Well much to my surprise only one of them made it back.  The other one decided he didn't want to come back and defected.  Good times.  We are now down another key employee and its going to be even harder to accomplish what we need to over the next little while. Anyhow the Movember madness party was a success as most of us have little recollection over what happened. That's what happens when you start drinking at 5pm and don

Most of you are still probably a sleep as I write and post this.  Today is Remembrance Day in Canada.  Some of us probably hardly think about it.  I've honoured and or celebrated this day in my own way since University.  It was always a holiday so you have the freedom to do what you want.  Now I could get all philosophical about the use of the word freedom and how it relates to this day but I won't. Not today anyways. Post university I have had to work on this day even in Canada.  It may have been a holiday but I had work to do.  For some reason the weather on this day was always grey and gloomy.  Some years when I could, I would golf.  The weather wasn't great for golf but it was nice to be alone with your thoughts on this day.  I think the grayness and the wetness that would be part of it made it more enjoyable. So what's the point of this post?  Today is a truly Canadian holiday.  It is ours.  It was created by us for us.  It doesn't set out to honour the Mon

Ok so I have been trying to take as much rum as possible back to Canada on my return trips.  The thing is I don't want to keep wrapping the bottles in my clothes and stuff because that means I have to bring the clothes back down here with me and as space and weight are at a premium I'd rather not. So what to do?  Well I asked the other expats and they weren't much use.  So I started thinking.  I was looking around for things I could pack it with and then either recycle or discard once I was in Canada.  Well I swear it came to me in a dream.  We have to drink bottled water while we are here or else we get sick.  So we have a ton of empty plastic water bottles around.  So my idea was centered around wrapping the empty water bottles around the rum bottles and taping it together with duct tape.  So that was 3 or 4 weeks ago that I thought of it, and yesterday I gave it the dry run.  Turns out you need 12 empty water bottles to secure a bottle of rum.  It looks pretty secure a

Ok so the hurricane was a big to do about nothing.  I really wasn't worried, and as it turned out I was right.  Yeah it rained pretty hard on Friday morning.  I'm not sure when it started but sometime before 6ish.  It stopped by noon.  As the City was still on Hurricane Alert from the Cuban National Defense we weren't allowed to go to work.  That was probably a good thing as the river that we cross to get to work was almost up to the bridge. So what did we do instead?  Well we played crib for hours upon hours, and drank copious amounts of beer.  Were we supposed to work?  Yeah we were, but you can't really work when you are watching storm updates on CNN and hearing news about a plane crash. That's right I said plane crash.  Not sure if you saw but a plane went down between Santiago de Cuba and Havana on Thursday night before the hurricane was even a factor.  68 people on board, all dead.  Thankfully no Canadians, but 28 foreigners.  The plane is a French version o