Cool Concept: Gratitude Journal

The other day I was just chilling and chatting with one of my favourite humans in this crazy/beautiful world, Maresce, and we started talking about the concept of a gratitude journal. I don't want to come across as Captain Obvious but this is basically a journal where every day you make an effort to write down something/everything/a few things - you get the drift - that you are thankful for. It is true that sometimes in this life we feel super duper grateful for our blessings. It is also true that sometimes we feel as though there is nothing to be thankful for - and in my opinion, this is never the case.

I think the concept of having a gratitude journal is great because if done correctly, every single day (I guess ideally at the end of the day), you'd take a moment to think about and write down the aspects of your life that you are thankful for, instead of obsessing over those that you would like to disappear into thin air. To me, this practice is so very important; especially on days when it seems as though there is literally nothing out there to smile/shout (happily!!) about.

I'm not sure why I decided to write this blog post at 02:28AM on a Saturday morning. Just kidding! It definitely has something to do with the fact that I have these awful things called SEP exams creeping up on me on the 14th and 15th of this month aka in 4 days aka I'm super nervous and procrastinating like a boss and I also can't sleep because switching off my mind is not really working right now and I have to live up to my drama queen title! (Do you see how easy it is to focus on the bad?)

SO, here are just a few things that I am thankful for:

- My friends and family; near and far and their happiness and healthiness (always)
- My family is coming to visit me very very very very soon. MEGA YAY

- I unexpectedly got to spend some quality time with some great people today in between studying

- Eggs. I ate a lot of eggs today which was great because I didn't order food and I saved some money! A rarity in DXB.

Having a physical gratitude journal that you can touch, write in, and re-read is also a very important part of this cool concept because it allows you to go back and marvel at your work :). No but seriously, I think its also better than just *thinking* about what you *would write* in your journal because you actually DO it when you write it down instead of thinking "Oh I should really practice my daily gratitude". Eventually, day by day, it becomes the norm and you wouldn't even have to think about doing it any more, you just would. Ya dig? 

"There's an app for that!" (Of course). Just look up "gratitude journal app" and you should find it if you would prefer to have it on your phone.

I hope everyone enjoys their weekend! Hope you feel inspired to start a gratitude journal and always see the good in everything!

TBT to January

December was a homesick all day every day kind of month for me. Thanks to Skype, FaceTime and WhatsApp I managed to get through it (Drama Jess reporting for duty). When I saw my roster for January I was happier than Pharrel because I was lucky enough to be seeing so many familiar faces! My destinations were: Milan, NYC, Toronto and Singapore. 

I started the month with a multi-sector Milano-NYC trip where I was supposed to see Maria but she got sick like a dawggggg and couldn't fly for a few days, forcing her to stay in Barbados longer than planned (what a hard life she has, but someone's gotta do it). Obviously I was disappointed but that's life and thankfully the crew on this trip were absolutely amazing and I enjoyed it so much! The highlights for me were the food in Italy, unexpectedly seeing the Duomo when I was lost all by myself in Milan feeling a panic attack coming on, falling in love with New York from the moment I stepped into the streets, and just the crew in general because they were so great! I cannot wait to go back to New York; I really think I need to spend at least a month there to fully take it all in. I'm typing this post at the end of March and I still smile when I think of this trip which was at the beginning of January, just thought I should letcha know :D

Snowy Central Park

Times Square

Next up was the star of my month... TORONTO! When I saw that "YYZ" airport code on my roster I had to look at it for a very long time (and then some) to believe it was true.. I didn't want to get too excited, though,  because our rosters can change for any and every reason at all so I told myself that when the aircraft touched down in Toronto I was allowed to be excited. This trip meant so much to me because I was able to see sooooooo many people from home - it's like I was there - except for the fact that it was like -10 outside with a 100% chance of snow. I didn't do anything touristy in Canada because I used to live there so I just spent as much time with my home peeps for the short 53 hours that I was there - unless of course you count having Tim Hortons like 3 times as a touristy thing to do because I SO did that. NO SHAME!

Singapore was awesome as well and it was another "insta-love" destination for me. We (the crew) had a very long day of work operating first a flight to Colombo in Sri Lanka and then continuing on to Singapore. I think by the time we checked into the amazing hotel in Singapore we had been on duty for 14 hours or so. Any normal person would want to go straight to sleep after such a long day but instead we ventured to the 73rd floor of the hotel to the bar for some drinks with a stunning city lights view. It was the first and up to now, only time in my experiences that all 7 of the crew from economy class went out all together and it was so nice!  I checked my phone around midnight/1 AM to see a message from a close family friend, Charissa, who I was planning to visit the next day. In the message she said that she was downstairs and that we were going for foot massages. Um, okay! Do you think I was going to say no to that after the kind of day that I had?! Apparently its normal to go for a foot massage in the middle of the night in Singapore. It was so great, I fell asleep half way through and woke up to a cup of tea next to me - heavennnnnnn. The next day I spent with Charissa and her two daughters - more familiar faces = Happy Jess!

At the end of the month I had two more Milan flights and this time Maria was there, so I managed to see her and meet her awesome friends! My flight landed late and I missed the first train to the city so by the time I got to the station I was very frustrated and to add to everything, the ticket machine refused to take my money. Thankfully, the kind and patient man behind me informed me that I was trying to give the machine Canadian dollars - no wonder it wouldn't take my money #CabinCrewProblems. That moment made me smile and changed my whole entire mood. On the train, I had all my makeup sprawled out in the seat next to me and I spent the entire 45 minute journey getting myself ready for the night (because I was so late). The conductor kept coming out to chat with me and he only spoke Italian so we tried to have a conversation with my out of practice Italian, and to say the least, it didn't really work. I gathered that he liked my perfume and that he has no idea where/what/who Barbados/the Caribbean/Rihanna is.

Thanks so much for wanting to share and relive my moments with me by reading this far! I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing :) I will try to update about February soon.. so that I can get around to writing about March!

Have a great day/night/weekend/week/month :)

Lots of love and smiles!

I think I found a minute!

Hello and greetings from my wonderful bed in Dubai! Happy New Year!! And Happy Easter since I probably will post again after that hahaha. I'm on a day off and I decided to show some love for my totally neglected, starving, (dying) blog! I won't even bother to say that I will try to post more often this time because clearly that's a task and a half. Life is fast paced for me and it involves flying, sleeping, preparing for flights and somewhat of a slight-ish-kinda-sorta-sometimes-maybe-not really social life in between (sleep always wins - sleep is queen). 

Flying has been an experience for me and I'm sure some of you out there are so very curious as to what really goes on up in da sky where I spend so much of my time. The truth issssss... any and everything! I could never really walk you through 'a day in the life' because each day is different and I think that's what makes this job so interesting... because the job itself is repetitive but the situations on any given flight can be so different. Another thing that is pretty cool is the fact that you meet new people - customers and crew alike - on every single flight; that's because you never fly with the same crew twice and well, I hope you can figure out why there's new customers on every flight :).

It is awesome that I've gotten to see so much of the world in such a short space of time and it is equally amazing that if you asked me what I wanted to do this time last year I would've told you "I'm not sure yet - before I settle into anything I just know that I really want to travel a little bit first." I can't tell you how much time I spent Googling and researching different ways to go about seeing the world. Funny how life works out, hey? As with anything, its so easy to take this opportunity for granted and I can admit that sometimes I do - but in the moment, as I type this, and reflect and all that jazz - I truly am so grateful! I really do miss home a lot, sometimes more than I ever thought I could, but I know that its normal and that this is what I really wanted.. home will always be there and so will the people that love and support me. In saying that, I may shed a tear or 10 when I touch down on Bajan soil again - whenever that will be! 

I guess this is my way of catching up since I don't have time to individually do so with as many people as I'd like to. I hope 2015 will bring you happiness, health and success. Work hard and play hard! To all my peeps who are so far away.. AH MISS YA more than you know! XO

Oh and here are some photos from my travels to make the post pretty :)

Pretty colours. Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul, South Korea (one of my favourite destinations!)

Surfer's Paradise. The Gold Coast, Brisbane, Australia

Milan Palace

Paris

Beautiful European Architecture. Lisbon, Portugal

Times Square, NYC

River Seine. Pairs, France

Souvenirs in Seoul. South Korea

Sky Bar. Bangkok, Thailand

Eiffel Tower. Paris, France

Beautiful Duomo. Milan, Italy

Shanghai's Skyline, China

Roller coaster

Time flies. Wow, that phrase really defines my life right now. I'm about to start my 7th week of living and working in Dubai. Of course I planned to post regular updates about all of the exciting things I have been doing, people I have been meeting, and most importantly......food I have been eating (duh)! Then I realized that waking up at 4 or 5 in the morning, studying, and dealing with general situations in life that my angelic parents used to handle, leaves little to no room for writing about my new life. 

The good news is that I've managed to catch a small break, so now I'm scrambling to summarize everything I've been wanting to share. I'm thinking that a good place to start is with the title. Why roller coaster? Well because that is exactly what this whole experience has been for me. Before I arrived in Dubai I was on a high about getting here... but I was so focused on getting here that I didn't really consider what was going to happen when I actually GOT here. As you can imagine I had a minor (major) meltdown in classical Jessica style. Thankfully, this unsure, unconfident and frightened feeling disappeared within the first 2 weeks and now the roller coaster is moving really really really quickly with lots of ups, downs, loops and twirls along the way.

My most favourite part of my experience so far has been the amazing people I have met along the way. I can honestly say that I have made some lifelong friends since I've been here. Not much else to say on that.. my batchmates are awesome, my trainers have been outstanding and most of the people I've encountered in general are so very nice. Obviously there are some exceptions to the rule, but there must be in order to keep things interesting :) I haveeeee to shout out my lovely Costa people. Costa is a cafe/restaurant that we have at training college and I go there so often (cough like many times a day cough) that the people working there call me Miss Jessica!

The training has been one of the most intense things I have ever been through. I have so much respect for my batchmates whose first language is not English. They are truly stars! Let's just say the rate at which information is presented to us, along with the new terminology makes things quite difficult, which is why I'm so so so so so so thankful for the wonderful trainers and the amazingness that is my batch. It really helps with the whole waking up before the crack of dawn every day thing I have going  on! A few situations that we have been trained to handle on board are turbulence, decompression, planned emergency evacuation/ditching, unplanned emergency evacuation/ditching, fires on board, medical emergencies, disruptive passengers, child birth on board, how to handle a hijacking situation and how to perform basic life support (CPR) - to name a few.

Dubai is a really nice place. When you Google search it, all you will see is skyscrapers, fancy cars, artificial islands, and the Burj Al Arab. All of this is totally amazing and it is the first thing you will want to experience when you come to this place. One of my South African friends and I always say that everything in Dubai is so "grand"... literally everything. If you go to Tim Hortons in Dubai Mall its like the fanciest Tim Hortons ever. But there is so much more to Dubai than the skyscrapers! There are the souks, the beautifulllll mosques, the abra rides, the majilis, arabic coffee and ah-may-zing dates, food from all over the world, and I have to mention this...lots and lots of taxis. There are so many options when it comes to things to do here.. I really do think that there is something for everyone. Also as a side note, Dubai has a very obvious smell.. I call it the Dubai Smell (through long creative thinking). Sometimes I think its gross and other times I don't mind it but I'm pretty sure that like with everything else, I will be used to it soon. 

I'm supposed to finish training in about 2 weeks and then my life is going to change again. Sometimes (almost always) I still can't believe that I am actually here. I didn't want to make the post toooo long, so I hope that I didn't do that and I hope that I can make the time to update this more regularly. If you read all of my babbling until the end you are AWESOME (!!) and I hope you have a nice day/night/evening/morning/afternoon (time difference problems).

XO

Reverse Inspiration

I have been MIA, main reason being that I've been swamped with school in an unreal way. I like to give the things that I care about my all, so in giving school my all, I can't find the time to give my baby blog my 100 (and 10), so I just put it on the back burner till I have time to do a proper post. This got me thinking about deeper things because I am guilty as charged when it comes to over-analysing e v e r ything! 

Anyway, I decided that I wanted to write a little something about quitting. Hence the title, since quitting isn't really inspirational and we are never really encouraged to quit. But some experiences that I had earlier this year taught me that sometimes quitting/giving up can be an option, no matter how much you'd like to think that you are the furthest thing from a quitter.

To make a looong story short, I entered a competition for all the wrong reasons and after some time, I knew that I was not enjoying it in the way that I should be. We were always reminded to "have fun!" with everything that came with this experience and I couldn't help but cringe every time I heard those words because I was having anything but fun. This was no one's fault but my own, because I had gotten myself into something that I knew I couldn't handle, but still took on, because I figured that it couldn't be thaaaaat bad.

When I realised that I was turning into the kind of person that no one wanted to be around I knew it was time to do the one thing I pride myself on never doing: quit. It was the kind of decision that took a long time to make, but I knew what the final verdict would be from the time I started weighing the options, the problem was that I had to face the fact that this was the verdict. It didn't help that I would disappoint a lot of people in the process, but I knew that I had to put myself first in this particular situation. 

So I have written this post to say that sometimes quitting can be good. Sometimes, as a person, you are in a circumstance/situation/competition that isn't for you, and deep down you know how much happier and complete you would be without it. It is in those situations that quitting isn't so bad and you can just be thankful for the learning experience of the whole thing. Life is too precious and fragile to do things that you really don't have to do for reasons that aren't even good ones to begin with. Do what makes you happy, it really is that simple.

“Quitting is not giving up, it's choosing to focus your attention on something more important. Quitting is not losing confidence, it's realizing that there are more valuable ways you can spend your time. Quitting is not making excuses, it's learning to be more productive, efficient and effective instead. Quitting is letting go of things (or people) that are sucking the life out of you so you can do more things that will bring you strength.” 

- Osayi Osar-Empokae, Impossible Is Stupid

Some Pretty Amazing Cinnamon Rolls

This post is long overdue and I'm sorrrryy! But I promise the wait has been worth it and this is why:

"Any word I use would be an understatement because that's how good they were…too good for words!" 

Some people don't like being in the kitchen.............................................well, I think you're cray but I also respect that everyone is different :-). For me, cooking/baking is relaxing and almost therapeutic. I love when things come out just right and when something doesn't, I just rack it up as a learning experience and try again. 

You know those kind've people that will slave all day in the kitchen and then when its time to eat all of the yummy stuff, they just don't feel to? Yeah, I'm not one of "them" in any way…at all…like ever. Well, the first time I made these I turned into one of "them". When the cinnamon rolls were ready, I didn't even try the icing! Instead of eating 3 like I usually would, (for quality control purposes of course) I just took them to the lime - Caribbean slang for get together/hang out - that I was going to unknowing of how good/bad/ugly they were.

Thankfully they were great (!!!!!) and I have made them a couple of times since and I hope that if you try to make them you enjoy the long process as much as I do and that your tasters are as impressed as mine were.

So I just said that this is a process and it is definitely that, not a difficult one, but still a process nonetheless. So if you don't have about 4 hours to spare then you should probably save making them for when you do have that kind of time. Rushing and cooking is not a good combination and only results in a bad mood when you inevitably make silly mistakes.

So here you go. Cinnamon Rolls that I got from Sweetopolita. She called them "Cinnabon-Style Gourmet Cinnamon Buns". I didn't change much if anything at all but I want to go through the steps with photos because visuals make everything seem a little more possible. I know, I'm the best :D.

Ingredients

Dough

1 (7g) package of instant dry yeast

1 cup whole milk, warm (not boiling hot!)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup margarine (I use Sunflower)

1 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

3 1/4 cups all purpose flour

3/4 cup bread flour (I use Waitrose)

Filling

1 cup packed light brown sugar

3 - 4 tablespoons of cinnamon (depends on how cinnamon-y you like it)

1/3 cup margarine, softened

Frosting

1/2 cup cream cheese (used both Philadelphia and IGA - both worked fine), softened 30 mins

1/2 cup margarine, softened 30 mins

1 1/2 - 1 3/4 cups icing sugar sifted (depends how sweet you like it)

I teaspoon vanilla flavour

1/8 teaspoon lemon flavour

Instructions

The first thing you're going to do is get 1 cup of milk and put it in the microwave for about 30-35 seconds, when you touch the milk it shouldn't burn you but it should definitely be warm. 

Pour the milk in a large bowl and add the yeast. This is what its going to look like when you give it a stir:

After about 5 minutes it should look like this:

Next up you add the sugar, margarine, eggs and salt. Mix it up until it looks like this:

(Not very appetizing at all)

Now you're going to add the flour. I sieve my flour while I add it because it will make the finished products even more light at fluffy. When everything is combined, dust your hands with some flour and knead the dough into a large ball.

Remember you're just bringing the dough together. You do not want to overwork it. Now this is the part where you cover the dough and let it rise for about an hour. This hour is a great opportunity to clean up a little and check Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and your phone. Oh and its also a good time to prepare the filling. To do this you just combine the brown sugar and cinnamon until it looks like this:

When the hour is up and your dough has gotten a little bigger its time to get rolling! Roll your dough into a big rectangle on a lightly floured surface. It should be about 1/4 inch thick (approximately). Be patient when rolling the dough and really try to maintain the rectangular shape. It can be kind of frustrating at times but once again, beee patient!

When you've finished rolling the dough its time to start assembling the rolls! The first thing you're going to do is spread 1/3 cup of softened margarine over the surface of the dough. Then, sprinkle the brown sugar and cinnamon mixture on top, leaving about 1 inch untouched around the edges.

Gently roll the dough and make sure its tight!

Get a sharp knife and slice the large cinnamon roll into pieces that are about 2 inches long. You should get about 10-12 rolls based on how your big rectangle came out. Place these on a prepared cookie sheet about 2 inches apart and let them rise for another hour.

While the cinnamon rolls are rising, you can make the icing! 

In a medium sized bowl, using a hand mixer, blend the cream cheese and margarine for 6 minutes on a low speed. Change the speed from low to medium-high and blend for another 10 minutes. This is REALLY boring and I usually put some headphones in and listen to some music until its over.

Next your'e going to add 1 cup of the icing sugar and mix for 1 minute on a low speed. Add the remaining icing sugar and  mix for another minute. Add the vanilla and lemon flavours and mix for one more minute on a medium-high speed.

Transfer the icing to an airtight container and refrigerate for at least half hour before using.

Now your rolls have finished rising and the end is near!! Place the prepared cookie sheet in an oven at 400 degrees F and bake for 10 minutes or until the rolls are golden brown. 

Let the rolls cool on a cooling rack for a few minutes and top with some icing and enjoy!

The Little Things

Sometimes life seems dull. The keyword in that sentence is "seems" because even when things aren't as glamourous and fabulous as we'd like, I'm sure you can still look back on each and every day and pick a moment, an event, a conversation or something else that made you smile.

The reason why I said (typed?) what I just did is because recently, life has been feeling pretty dull. But I want to show you some little moments since my last post that were not dull at all, as small as some of them may have been.

Sunset
For me, glancing at a beautiful sunset or sitting and watching the whole thing if I have time can really make my day. Sunsets can be sooo beautiful and the minutes right after the sun has set are even better. When everyone starts turning on their outside lights and its dark, but not so dark and the sky is about a gazillion colours. Yep, you know what I mean, I think its breathtaking.

We also went to Naru on the South Coast recently and the sushi was amazing as always, and after much debate, we had the donuts which were so worth it (as always).. maybe one day we will forget the debate and just embrace the gluttony from the start. 

Baking always makes me smile, some people can't relate but those that can... go you!

(This recipe coming soon)

And finallyyyyy, selfies are always fun.

So there you have it. A few small moments that weren't so dull after all. I hope that after reading this you feel inspired to think about your "Little Things".