Audia Granston, Jack Abaramoff and the Spirit of Creativity and Innovation in Jamaica

{1:9} The thing that hath been, it [is that] which shall be; and that which is done [is] that which shall be done: and [there is] no new [thing] under the sun.

{1:10} Is  there  [any]  thing  whereof  it  may  be  said,  See,  this  [is] new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us.

{1:11} [There is] no remembrance of former [things;] neither shall there be [any] remembrance of [things] that are to come with [those] that shall come after.

Ecclesiastes 1 vs 9 to 11

Audia Granston died of Deep Vein Thrombosis, due to complications arising from cervical cancer due to having children early and heavy metallic poisoning acquired when she lived in the United States of America as a child and persisted with a diet that was not conducive to recovering from her condition, as cancer patients are supposed to change their diet to exclude heavy metals to inhibit growth of the cancer.

I was the person who originally diagnosed her using my medical gen-juitsu (I shall explain that in another latter time) carried her to be examined in May Pen to diagnose her condition and then later followed her to the University of the West Indies hospital during her initial treatment. Audia Granston is now dead. This very last statement is in itself a contradiction, as when she was still healthy, she was anything but.

I knew her via the paparazzi (that’s a UWI reference to YouTube and Bluetooth phones and how young people get their news!) who had made a report of a crazy girl from Toll Gate, Clarendon who had mounted her own roadblock in protest to a construction of a culvert that was creating a dust nuisance to her business place, a rather simple yet busy cosmetologist salon along the main road near the turnoff to St. Jago Road. 

Hence my desire since Glenmuir High School and then while at UWI when she appeared on YouTube for me to get to know her better, which I am happy I did, as we are more alike than I realized. As a visit blogspot Publisher, writer, technology historian, International news follower as well as a former Telecoms Technician (notice that is last!) I place little importance on secrecy of company information.

I have discovered that this does not help, owing mainly to the fact that like my girlfriend, I fail to see why internal company information should be secret in the first place. After all, I recall while working at Telecom Provider C&W (now Telecom Provider LIME) that it was because of this very secrecy that I had to constantly be asking questions.

If you asked the wrong ones, you get suspicion and nothing.

I even gave away information to the competition, and got one interview with Telecom Provider Digicel and then Ericsson in 2002 for my troubles, but was unable to get a job as I do not use “links” as is the Jamaica vernacular to get employment

All that I told them they already knew which was a surprise to me, owing to the way Technicians and Management at C&W apparently hugged information to their chest as if it was the writing of God himself, of whom proof has yet to emerge of his existence, another fact to which Audia Granston agrees rather grudgingly, owing to her Seventh Day Adventist roots, agreed was true.

So this knowledge that companies hide about themselves has no actual use for anything and may in fact be merely tradition or just to simple avoid litigation. Curiously enough, the proposal for a SMS (Short Messaging Service) based Mobile Social Network such as Brown Dawg as detailed in my blog articles entitled:

1. “Brown Dawg, a Mobile Social Network based on Mobile phones”
2. “Brown Dawg and A So di Ting Set - An API tool for User preferences and avoid backlash”
3. “Brown Dawg and I spy Rewards - Geo-Location rewards system for Mobile Social Networking”
4. “Brown Dawg and Se'et Deh - Behavioural Targeted Marketing Ads”

I also gave away some other basic ideas which I gave away after the interview via the internet that laid the basic foundation for the phenomenon we now call Social Networking was based on my observations on how people form friends at Telecom Provider C&W.

For the record, I believe Jesus did exist, as he was like more people I met in my working years. Jesus was a downtown man born of relatively impoverished yet well connected parents who wanted the best for him from Nazareth who was popular with females and respected by rich people who would often invited him to their shindigs; worked wondrous miracles and spoke in confusing parables; died due to “badmind” people despite the Pilate being unable to find anything against him and when he died he was buried in a borrowed tomb.

Somewhat like Vybz Kartel or even the arrest or Mark Myrie, otherwise knows by his nom de guerre as Buju Banton, now held by Federal Agents on charges of dealing in and attempting to smuggle cocaine as stated in the article “Not an easy road - Buju Banton held for cocaine possession in the United States”, published Sunday, December 13, 2009, Sunday Gleaner, Livern Barrett, Gleaner Writer

However, the expatriate people were on the other hand, most encouraging, and it is thus because of them I was able to learn anything at all, thus allowing me to not only defend myself against attacks but feign off people and their false friendships, as Jamaicans have this odd habit of using information as a means of befriending people and controlling them, which in itself is a form of Social Control as stated in “Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective”, authors Peter L. Berger, published by Doubleday and Company Inc, Garden City, New York (1963), p 68 to 92.

Couple this with my ability to copy things like Kakashi –sensei, the book reading ninja from the Hidden Village of Konoha from the popular YouTube series Naruto, which I was introduced to while at UWI between the years 2005 and 2009 while I undertook in my spare time an anecdotal study on how young people consume media, I now possess the ability to learn anything after seeing how it works a couple times.

Hence my fondness for Audia Granston, as despite the polar opposites we are both the same on at least one thing: we fail to see the need for hidden information, as it results in a society of sheep and a lack of innovative thinking.

Thus I remember her and the fact that her existence reaffirms my own, as we are one and the same. Thus on the day of her burial on Sunday April 9^th, 2010 A.D., I am still at a loss for words, as a part of me has died with her and I am left wondering: why do the good die young?

One of Audia’s complaints and also my own due to my experience over the years, is that at most workplaces, even pre- recession,  the lack a culture of creativity and innovation as stated in the article “It's not the Economy Stupid - Focusing on unemployment isn't the key to fuelling innovation and job growth” published August 17, 2009, 12:13PM EST By Krisztina Holly and Jim Clifton, BusinessWeek.

This seems to be endemic in the Jamaica workplace, where companies are most likely to promote people as a rewards for creative thinking as opposed to just giving them stuff that is more important to them, like a pair of alligator boots (Clarks if you please!!) or a custom Apple Mac PC and encouraging people to submit their ideas via any means as simple as a suggestion box or a website.

Believe it or not, not everyone is a go-getter who likes to be in management, especially if like Audia Granston and myself, as we spent the majority of our high school days “fighting the power” so to speak and see nothing in it more than evil people who’s thinking is driven by greed and control as opposed to fun and experimentation with technology, which is how both of us learned anyway.

Thanks to a Jamaican economy that had stopped moving, older people (read 30-65 year olds) began to cut back on their spending, leaving only the young (read 14-18 and 18-30 year olds) who like gadgetry to spend on such things, and a generally true fact with economic spending.

People, however, instead of innovating their way out instead find it simpler to complain about the politicians and the economy, not realizing that they have been handed a golden opportunity in the form of the JDX (Jamaica Debt Exchange) and that progress is ongoing in the island, both in terms of the Energy Sector, construction of hotels and investment in Bauxite by foreigners, who see opportunity where locals see scant returns.

Even the 117-year-old Indian powerhouse, Tata Group, responsible for India’s first airline, steel mill and power plant, and the developers of the Tata Nano, a slimmed down budget car, have benefited from the use of innovative thinking and contribution from workers.

How all of the ideas are evaluated and funding being of lesser importance than the fact that Tata Group employees know ideas are welcome and that good ones won't die in a pile on someone's desk as stated in the article “How to Build a Culture of Innovation”, published August 19, 2009, 1:11PM EST By Jessie Scanlon, BusinessWeek - HOW TO INNOVATE.

Thus, one would thus notice from my work experience that I have worked in so many jobs that had absolutely nothing at all to do with my previous experience thanks to my proposal writing skills.

I have found that Jamaica, which seems to run on friendship with people, is a very backward, as this means if you have no connections or worse, you live in the wrong address, you are basically unable to be employed, a fact that Audia Granston exploited by simply stating wherever she happened to be staying as her address.

Amazingly that is the same thing I did. She also would travel with her relevant documents as well as always keep copies of emails, thus she would have a listing of people she could contact to keep informed.

For the record, Audia has approximately five thousand (5,000) email accounts in her address box, which while not impressive, is nonetheless noteworthy as she also had the same habit as I did, collecting emails of chain letters albeit I am yet to invite all of the eight hundred million (800,000,000) people who are my online friends collected mostly via chain letter and email harvesting using my knowledge of Visual Basic.

On this too we have common ground, and in the past I have used this massive “friends” network of emails to lobby people with ideas, proposals and future concepts which I spot as trending and which I know people will like in the future, although of late I have become more interested in the technical aspects of how these ideas of mine work. Audia’s creativity in hairstyling was obvious from those who knew her and is resplendent from her works posted on my FaceBook page.

Most amusingly, I discovered with the help of the expatriates that most of what I needed to know was actually searchable on Google, which back then as a Network Maintenance Technician at Telecom Provider C&W was a surprise to me, as I had only seen search engines as only being good for doing schoolwork back when I was a student at UTECH in the years 1997 to 2001.

Were I to start listing out most of my ideas that I have give away using mass mailing (made popular in the 90’s) under various pseudonyms and email accounts (key loggers are also from the 90’s), this letter would have no end as people use them and do not even realize it, proving more than anything to me over the years the power of a JA$10 idea, which is the charge I usually set for my ideas, as it is my belief that there is nothing new under the Sun.

This is what impressed Audia the most, that for the price of just JA$10, I can change entire companies and lobby for the adoption of concepts and ideas just by lobbying people using email as did Jack Abramoff, otherwise know as Casino Jack, who is currently servicing a four (4) year prison sentence for bribing high political figures and has recently sold his story to Hollywood, which has a movie coming out about him soon called Casino Jack and the United States of Money (2010).

However, in my case, unlike Casino Jack, I just did it for fun and basic employment and as Audia Granston would assertively say “pursuit of happiness” with no regard for holding positions, (which we both abhor) and which neither of us saw as relevant, which as far as we can see, would explain the high level of white collar crime, a most Jamaicans do not think like Audia Granston and myself.

To us, it is literally “all about the fun” and money is something for people who worry about being seen in high standing in the eyes of others, hence Audia and my habit of “talk up de ting dem” to show the pointlessness of hidden company information, which creates user backlash when people are made aware of the truth, especially if it means that they were getting the bad end of the deal.

In case Telecom Provider C&W is wondering, this is the reason why they still cannot achieve success as although they have change names and relaunched with 3G as people do not like being deceived as even their 3G service is a deception in how it charges people.

Thus Audia Granston has had a deep impact on my life and she will always remind me of the fact that “spilling the beans” [American Colloquial] or “talk up de ting dem” [Jamaican Colloquial] helps society and companies that sell products and services to come to terms with the fact that people are more appreciative when your company as the MTV Real World tagline states “stop being polite and start being real”.

Which in case Telecom Provider CLARO is wondering, is the reason why people are now buying into the idea of having a Telecom Provider CLARO phone or even a Telecom Provider CLARO modem. The only grouse being that the coverage is bad and their new email service is in need of a SERIOUS makeover, which I will address in my next article.

Until then it is goodbye Audia Granston (1981 to 2010), may you sleep in peace and we meet again in the hereafter………..assuming it exists of course. May the Gods Thoth God of Justice and Anubis, God of the Underworld and the demi-god Bastet and her cats guard her crypt and bless the Cosmetologist, a trade that traces its roots back to ancient Egypt.

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