Sidi Mansour vs Ma Baker

Friday, July 18th, 2008

Life in Kingston, Jamaica was sometimes like living in a war zone: occasional bursts of excitement — driving after dark through a ghetto zone, boarding up the windows as a hurricane approached — interspersed with long periods of boredom, for the city does not offer much in the way of amusement for a young family […]

Daiquiri virgin

Sunday, August 27th, 2006

We followed Ernesto’s trail online hour by hour but by early morning it had become clear that he was turning away from Jamaica and moving north. So we feel pretty silly sitting in a house with boarded-up windows (actually only four windows – that’s all the plywood we had).
We also tried to follow local reports […]

Ernesto has a problem

Friday, August 25th, 2006

Music while you read, probably written by Winston Jarrett, but most definitely produced by Lee “Scratch” Perry.

Ernesto has an identity crisis: he doesn’t know if he’s a tropical storm or a hurricane … yet. On this cool flash tracking map, he hasn’t even reached name status, just “Tropical Depression Five”. Oh the shame of it! […]

Shopping for hurricanes

Thursday, May 11th, 2006

Hurricane season is fast approaching and the signs do not augur well. Everyone has become a seasoned climatologist, foreseeing upcoming catastrophe in each new hot, dry day. This is how it was before Ivan, they tell me, even before Gilbert. And after the predictions come the heroic battle stories of surviving previous hurricanes – […]

Waterbeds III: the pics

Monday, December 12th, 2005

Apologies for the quality of the photos, but given the circumstances they were the best I could do. Next photos will be back to my usual high standards ;-D

This part of the hotel had just been renovated. The force and volume of the rain was such that water seeped through the window frames (?) and […]