Yesterday, I went to Caracasbaai with a friend, to shoot some pictures. Some turned out quite nice! Next weekend, we’ll probably visit some other places around the island, just for fun. Hopefully, nothing will go wrong this time with the planning.. ;)

Also, word has it our container will ship from Tortola next Friday (the 25th). I don’t believe it until I see it happen, but hey, at least it’s a little good news, right?

More testing today, this time at a real customer. According to the account manager, “it’s no problem to get on the roof”. YMMV. Check this picture of how we got up there.. ;)

The last couple of days, we’ve been testing the new WiMAX setup. Though it’s only one basestation, the coverage seems pretty decent. Obviously, there are no customers connected yet, we’ll have to see how that works out in the end. Still, it’s fun to do. Having a decent car to do it would probably help though, the Suzuki I’m currently driving isn’t very optimal. Luckily we used a colleagues’ pickup truck Friday, which made the tests a lot quicker. No loading/unloading and hooking stuff up, just dump everything in the back and connect the ethernet cable when ready (read: parked on some hill).

I’ll bring my camera next time, there were lots of great shots waiting to be made.. Including one of Bonaire from Cocori, which rarely is visible due to the weather and distance. Oh well. Better luck next time, I guess! :)

With my new camera, I celebrated the beginning of 2008 at a friend’s place in Sunset Heights. Overlooking nearly the whole island, I was able to make some nice shots. Everything posted in the gallery, if you want to have a look :)

Too bad Soosh wasn’t here, though. Hopefully we’ll be back together soon!

Today the Suitcase Express ™ brought me my new Digital Camera, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3! It looks pretty cool, and hopefully it’ll make decent pictures too ;) Currently I’m charging the batteries, just a minor drawback.. Not to worry, gives me a little time to find a suitable case/bag thing to put it in.

Quite an upgrade by the way, it’s replacing my old Fuji MX-1500, which I bought in 2000. It actually still works, or at least it did when we left to Curacao. Soon I’ll make some pictures, and compare them, just for fun ;)

Anyway, check the gallery for pictures!

No container shipped just yet. Apparently, there are some payment issues. Now to sort that out, and smack some people.

Well, nothing really new here I guess. Soosh left the island, and went back home last Monday. And I’m still waiting for the damn container to arrive here, since we’re shipping it back to Curacao. BVI seemed like a fun plan at first, unfortunately, it wasn’t..

Hopefully the storage charges will be paid soon, so the container can be shipped back. First ‘available’ date is the 26th of December, but the agent might be able to push it a bit forward. Oh well, I guess we have to .. wait.

Right. The container holding all our stuff was supposed to be here this week. After some calling around, to figure out where the hell it was, we eventually found it being stuck in Kingston, Jamaica. Some more calls later, it was planned to ship to Caucedo (Dominican Republic), then onwards to San Juan (Puerto Rico) last friday. And indeed, I just checked, and it at least left Jamaica ;)

Now the next carrier has to pick it up in PR, taking it to the BVI (finally!). According to their schedule, they’ll be there on Thursday, arriving in Road Town on Sunday. Finally some progress, but unfortunately we’re flying back to Curacao on that specific Friday.. Oh well. I’m sure we’ll figure it out :)

Well, in a way at least. Today, we took the ferry from West End (Tortola) to Charlotte Amalie (St Thomas/USVI). Basically we needed to go off-island, as our visas were about to expire, and this was the cheapest solution ;) The ferry trip itself was pretty cool, with an open deck there were some nice views.. Too bad we didn’t have a camera :/

Charlotte is basically jammed with jewelers, about 200-300, all down town. Very cool to have a look around, and I even bought Soosh some gifts! We were lucky, since two cruise ships docked, and everybody thought we were tourists (and thus had tons of money to spend, resulting in free drinks \o/)

Anyhow, we had a very nice lunch at the Royal Dane Mall, and around 4 we took the ferry back to Tortola. Customs and immigration went smooth, unlike the US ones. Since my passport is still broken, they kindly requested me to “not travel to the United States again with this document”. But for just one day, they didn’t care ;)

We’ve been here for 10 days or so now. The house is still pretty much empty, apart from the beanbags, airbed and kitchen..
So far it’s been “different” at the least. The day after we arrived, there wasn’t a car for us, so we’re sharing one of the company cars. Which doesn’t always work out, for 2 nights we’ve been (nearly) without a car, leaving us stuck at the office until late. Very inconvenient, but hopefully “they” will fix it soon..

The work itself is not quite what I had expected, nor are some of the colleagues, unfortunately. But, I’m sure it’ll change pretty soon (one way or the other), until then I’ll just do the best I can :)

The appartment is great though, with beautiful postcard-style views over the Sir Francis Drake channel, Norman Island, Peter Island, and on clear days like today, even St John..