So this has been a particularly crappy month for me. It started out with getting in a car accident in a shopping mall parking lot. The guy ran a stop sign (well a rolling stop, but that's the same as not stopping at all) and we hit each other corner to corner. I was looking the other way, because that's where I was turning, and he came from my left and our cars touched corner to corner. My lowest estimate was $900 damage. new front bumper (ot got ripped) new turn signal, corner lamp and a couple hours labor & paint. The insurance company said it was 50/50 fault, so they gave me HALF of my lowest estimate and half of his lowest estimate, and took ALL of both our no-claims discounts away. I saved a few hundred dollars by buying the parts myself at www.discountautoparts.com and shipping them down on Cayman Airways Cargo. It still came out a couple hundred dollars more than what the insurance company gave me.

Last weekend Jenny and I broke up. We've been together about a year and a half, and living together for about a year. The silver lining to that big, black, dark cloud is that we broke it off before it got to a breaking point. We're still good friends (we're actually still living together til the end of September when our lease is up) and that's a good thing, because this can be a really small island and it really sucks if you have animosity with an ex and are always running into each other at bars and restaurants and functions and share a group of friends.

Just when I was looking forward to recovery, both my bank account from the accident, and my newfound-best-friendship with Jenny, I found out on Friday that my work permit was denied by the Immigration board. Since my temporary work premit expires right... about... now at midnight that effectively gave me about a day's notice that I was out of a job. I stood in line at Immigration this morning (what a horrible experience that was) and was able to get a Visitor's Visa for a whopping SEVEN DAYS. I can get that extended next week if I stand in line again, and drop $50 bucks on it. I should know more tomorrow morning. Depending on the outcome of the next couple days, I'll have some tough choices to make coming up. If it looks promising, I'll stick it out here and try and support myself on my last paycheck. If it's a lost cause, I have to start making preparations to move out of the Cayman Islands.

I started going through my belongings today, just in preparation and came up with a huge long list of stuff that I need to sell before I leave, if that's what I have to do. From little things like cell phones and accessories all the way up to my car and computers and wireless networking gear and some diving equipment.

Hopefully there's a happy ending to all this in a few days, or at least some reassuring news that I don't have to leave. It's ironic that 6 months ago I was so ready to move to the US or back to Canada, but now that I don't have a choice in the matter, I don't want to go. I keep thinking of the short spikey-haired blonde in the first Matrix movie who's kinda intoning “not like this.... not like this...” right before her plug gets pulled. Friends are more like family when you're in an expatriate community so some of my extended Cayman family: George, Inaki & the boys at The Ranch have all offered me space to store my crap if I have to go home for a few weeks or a month or two to get my work permit straightened out.

I'll post more tomorrow when I hear from HR & my boss.