Jamaican Society today – Here's What I Think…

James “Jimmy” Moss-Solomon: His Thoughts, Ideas & Perspectives: A Book Review

James “Jimmy” Moss-Solomon: His Thoughts, Ideas & Perspectives is a collection of Jimmy’s writings which were first published in Public Opinion (publicopinion.news, Jamaica’s first online newspaper founded by Walter H. Scott) between 2017 and 2021.

James “Jimmy” Moss-Solomon: His Thoughts, Ideas and Perspectives

Life In The Time of COVID Jamaica style: AN UPDATE

In my last blog post, I took the pulse of members of my immediate family in terms of how they were coping with the pandemic and their thoughts on the predicament that planet was plunged into. This was 6 weeks ago, and we had reported 469 cases of COVID-19, 9 of which had died from the disease. We were under lock-down, working from home, unable to go to the beach, and not certain as to what “normal” would look like. I decided to check in once again as more time has elapsed, and here in Jamaica, as with countries all over the world, we appear to have entered a new phase in our response to COVID-19. People are still getting sick, people are still dying, but the restrictions imposed here in the west as at end March are being loosened. Heck, Jamaica welcomed tourists June 15 for the first time in months! So I wanted to see how my people were feeling, what their thoughts were with respect to this impending “new normal” and just how they’re coping as at now.

Life in the time of COVID Jamaica Style: A snapshot.

Who would have thunk that we’d be here as a planet today? The entire world is grappling with a pandemic which is killing people, decimating economies and baffling scientists. When China first reported this new virus impacting parts of its population earlier this year, I don’t think many of us thought that it would touch us at all. It was a virus, all the way over there. Yet here we are…locked-down, quarantined, working from home, masking up and asking how will this end and when will it end. And guess what? Choose a country, any country anywhere in the world, and someone there is asking those very same questions. It feels as if everything has happened so fast and many of us are just trying to catch our breath and COPE. While I’ve been doing my best to cope, I’ve also been concerned about our children and how they have been coping with this upheaval. So I decided to check in with them and document it as a sort of personal snapshot of COVID-19 in Jamaica. For posterity.

Why aren’t you working from home right now? Life in the time of COVID.

Are you an employee working from home right now? If you are not, why is this so? Are you working on a production line? Are you delivering a tangible to a customer? If not, why aren’t you working from home?

Many years ago I was employed to one of the more forward thinking organizations in Jamaica. I was part of an initiative that saw several of us being trained in forming Business Continuity Plans. This plan was formed in order to keep business running in the face of any kind of business interruption (natural disaster, civil unrest, etc.) We also had to test it, and it was in executing these simulations and tests that I designed that I came up against what I consider to be the biggest obstacle to so many in the work force being able to work remotely: management attitudes. Sigh.

Meaningless Guaranteed Standards: My Interaction with JPSCo Ltd.

We had a power cut at our residence on Sunday March 8 2020 at 5:00pm. Service was restored some 17 hours later on Monday March 9, at a little after 10:00am. This was the second such extended power cut in only weeks. In following up on this particular outage, I called JPSCo’s 888 Customer Care line at 7:00am on the Monday morning. I provided the requisite evidence of our initial report the evening before and the response that I got on Monday morning from the customer care agent compelled me to document the entire ordeal and it got me thinking…

Public Transport Woes in 2020 Jamaica

Public transport in and around Jamaica takes various forms depending on where you’re located and where you want to go. Three people close to me have been sharing their experiences using public transport and it got me thinking. I compared their stories to my own experiences back in the day (3 or so decades ago) and asked myself: Have we progressed? Are our citizens & school children able to move around comfortably and safely at a reasonable cost? Why even contemplate these issues, Kelly, I hear you asking. Get a car! But aren’t you the same one complaining about the horrendous traffic in Kingston? And stressing out in your car when New Kingston becomes a parking lot evening after evening? What is the inevitable result if we all move around in private cars in order to avoid the public transport system?

“Lest We Find Gold” A book review

Domestic violence is not a novel theme at all. There have been many movies and books that deal with this painful yet very real theme. Melanie Schwapp’s newest book “Lest We Find Gold” tackles this awful reality. But her treatment is anything but trite, tired or trivial.

FLOW Jamaica: PR & Marketing Shell. Nothing more.

We lost internet service at our residence on the afternoon of Thursday June 6. We got it back on the afternoon of Thursday June 13. What follows is an account of the extreme effort on my part to have our service restored and a tale of a huge service provider that appears to be nothing more than a PR and marketing shell. Harsh? You decide for yourself.

Advice for Securing Justice in a Domestic Abuse situation in Jamaica

Last year, prompted by a woman in distress seeking to escape an abusive and potentially dangerous domestic situation, I did a blog post entitled: “Domestic Abuse in Jamaica: Where are the safe houses for women seeking refuge?” You see, I was trying to identify where she could get safe harbour immediately. I came up empty. Since then, the government has announced plans to establish 3 national shelters and I’ve received confirmation that the Woman Inc crisis center is up and running. However, another recent encounter with a woman seeking to escape and resolve a violent domestic situation caused me to revisit the issue of resources and advice available to women in similar situations.