Inspiration in Many Ways

I was most impressed by the life and work of Guyanese fashion designer Donna Ramsammy. She was beautiful, confident and full of stories from a lifetime of worldwide travel. Each city she lived in or visited influenced her distinctive clothing designs, samples of which adorned three models also from Guyana on our set. The designer, her designs, and the models will give a full showcase at the Classic El Dorado event presented by Bishop Gibson High School poolside the Senior Common Room at UWI this Saturday at 5 PM.

I was equally impressed by the talents of little Jamielle Gilmon, former JCDC Children Gospel Competition winner. That little girl has an amazing set of pipes. At the finals this Saturday at the Ranny Williams Entertainment Centre starting at 6 PM, young contestants will be judged on several criteria under the theme ‘Celebrating Children in Ministry’.

In keeping with the theme of exceptional individuals, I had a chance to chat with Courtney Murray and his mother Joan – Observer Business Leader Awards nominees. In their brief interview, the Murray’s alluded to the long struggle the family endured before achieving success and their commitment to enrich their community as they achieved their goals. The family diversified from the core fresh water fish retail business to a restaurant, to a sports complex, to a turf management entity, to sheep rearing, to coconut water production – diverse may be an understatement.

Mixed in with all these inspiring stories, we made time for fun. For busy people who don’t have a lot of time to shop around, we were introduced to Michi Super Centre which opened today. Michi is described as a superstore with free membership shopping. Desmond Ellis of Pet’s Unlimited tried to teach me how to feed birds and D’Lynx delighted us with entertainment.

But then it was back to serious issues, like the growing incidence of credit card fraud or the need for health insurance. Senior Product Manager ABM and Internet Banking at NCB Horace Sinclair gave Neville and I some pointers on how to protect ourselves from falling victim to debit and credit card fraud. He provided tips to merchants too, “if due diligence is not followed, the merchant will have to stand the loss, in effect the tips will save merchants money”.

Carol Hibbert, Vice President of Health Operations at Guardian Life, advised us that all Jamaicans should consider getting health insurance – after all, we all get sick sometimes. She added, “there are lots of affordable options available, so there is no need to put off getting health insurance”.