About Me

Created Feb 21 2007
last updated Sunday August 19 2007

So who is Fitzgerald Scott? I've wanted to write something like this for a long time but I never had a forum like this to put it together so I didn't. Anyway here goes. After I write all this stuff on this site I hope I don't lose it :P

I was born in Trinidad and Tobago in the Great Summer of '74 to Fitzgerald Irvin Scott and Patricia Phelps Scott. I was their first child and my birth was heralded by the moon being in the seventh house (that's a joke people). This was during the time they were still happily married :( . From what I'm told we moved around a bit. I know of one place in Morvant that my mom shows me.

Hmm oh yes, then one day sometime after my sister's birth my parents began divorce proceedings. I was almost three and from the way things sounded I have to be very grateful to them for recognizing how incompatible they were when I was too young to have any clue what was happening. Also since I have no real recollection of living together I never really missed it and in fact was even thankful that I didn't have to deal with another parent and worse yet another male adult who might try to boss me around.

So after all this begins my real life. What I mean by this is the times I can actually remember rather than being told. I remember the first day of big school, very scary, I remember throwing stones at my nemesi with my best friend at the time Dane and cub scouts and walking home with my sister trying to outrun other kids we called the bag holders because their bag had no straps so they held them under their arms.

I remember going to piano lessons with my sister and graduating to St. Mary's College. My teachers thought a lot of me at the time. I never really studied in primary school I guess no one does. What I did do was read almost constantly by the time I was in Standard 3 or 4. I didn't want to go for recess or lunch or anything. I would just stay in class and get books from the library and keep reading and reading. Why? Because it was completely exciting. on one page I was in India on the next page I was learning about magnets, the next page I was learning about the sun. To me it completely beat back almost anything else I could be doing outside.

Of course I realized I was missing things that other kids did. I felt like I lost another best friend because I was only reading. I lost out on social interaction and the ability and desire to mingle and small talk and lime to the degree that I might have but when I wasn't thinking about what I was missing which was most of the time I was so excited about finding the next book to read.

Actually one of the best times I can remember is when after a bunch of years I found one of the books I hadn't read from the Chronicles of Narnia at the Living Waters Book Store. I was ecstatic.

Anyway to hurry forward through time, I kept reading and trying different things like Sea Scouts where I learnt to swim and blow a bugel and a trumpet and row a boat and camp, Altar Boys where I helped the priest in the mass, Karate, Gymnastics, Piano again and the Chess Club. I pretty much liked to bounce around in life just like how I liked to in reading.

My academics at St. Mary's were strictly unimpressive at least in my opinion. Yes I was supposedly in one of the smarter classes then I came to a point where I could have skipped a year even (I didn't which my mom says was her doing I recall differently) but I was never first or third or whatever in class anymore like in primary school. Here I was completely middle of the road 20th-25th out of a class of 40.

One of the things I know now that I wished someone had told me is that everyone feels scared or nervous or uncomfortable. Back in the day since I spent so much time alone I thought it was just me and I suppose like any other teenage or perhaps more than some it affected me a great deal.

I eventually went to sixth form, I would say by the skin of my teeth again I was throughly unimpressive. I had stopped doing homework consistently back when they stopped checking in Form 4. I was still reading any and everything I could lay hands on at the school library and the Main Library in Port of Spain. I had made myself an idle promise that anything I started reading I would read until I was done no matter how boring it turned out to be. None of this really helped my grades but I think it had made me something of an odd creature. So much so that way back in form two someone who I rarely spoke to challenged me to a read off. It was funny, I went along with it but not wanting to lose for real I pretty much waited until he was finished and said I wasn't so he'd think that he had won. As long as I knew he hadn't really beat me who cared what he said.

Form six sucked quite a bit but like I said before I never really realised that it was all in my head. Whether or not people liked me was irrelevant as long as I enjoyed what I was doing and plus there were alot fewer people who didn't like me than I thought. Most couldn't have given a rat's behind just like I thought about them.

So by form six I was out of everything I used to do like Karate etc. but my great love aside from reading was the Video Arcade. I love Video games, I love them!!! Imagine my dissapointment returning to Trinidad after 7.5 years and finding they were all gone at least all the ones I used to frequent. From Ikari warriors to Dark Stalkers to Street Figter 1 to 3 to even dumb Pac-man sometimes. Dude some of my best times ever were in a Video arcade.

The one game I refused to play though was Mortal Kombat but boy was that big when it came out especially downstairs in Colsort Mall. I'm really feeling old now thinking about that stuff. Imagine thirty people hovering around a space as small as a kitchen or a bathroom straining to see two guys playing this new game.

Wow! When I think back I've done and seen so much and enjoyed and felt so many things its incredible.

So I got out of St. Mary's and decided I didn't want my mother to have to pay a cent to send me to UWI so after applying to both UWI and John Donaldson Tech now called COSTATT and getting accepted to both I chose the free one :) maybe it was dumb but trade-school didn't seem so bad. Actually no one told me it was a trade school otherwise I might not have gone. In retrospect if I'd gone to UWI I don't think I'd be half as satisfied with myself or have gotten to see half the things I got to see and do.

John D was a stepping stone for me socially. I still felt inept but without a history I could make myself anyone now. So instead of being Fitz (funny enough it seems strange and endearing after so many years not hearing it, that'll wear off as soon as someone says it though), Fitzroy, Scott or Scotty or Beam me up Scotty (I never got that even though I loved Star Trek) I became Gerry fulltime. Previously I was only Gerry outside of school. Unfortunately at John D I ran into jeaslousy hardcore.

Almost everything I was taught at John D I had learnt at St. Mary's already plus I was still reading and going to the Arcade so I became the class clown. Unfortunately there were too many people in my class with class clowning experience (I guess that's how they ended up at trade school lol I am rather evil aren't I) so in the ensuing Great War of the Class Clowns I bowed out of the running allowing other clowns to reign uncontested.

While I was a clown I was by no means obnoxious at least I think so. I was never rude or mean which was probably why I lost the Great Class Clown War. On one occasion, which I was in no way responsible for, a young female apparently teacher went crying back to the staff room. When she left she wasn't crying, I wasn't rude or disruptive at the time but the next teacher for the day assumed it was all my fault and on entering said "Are you the f***er that made Lana cry?" Ah back in the day.

So anyway some teacher not knowing my past thought I was smart and suggested I go to UWI. So when I left John D and after I wasted a year tutoring Math and Add Math and working at a completely bogus job the electronic equivalent of Burger King, I applied to go to UWI.

Unfortunately I applied too late for Physics or anything else except Psychology so I figured I'd do that. Meanwhile or rather previously between St. Mary's and UWI I got the dream of going to university in the US from a friend of mine. I learnt about the SATs from him and about the USIS and the list of top universities in America in the US News & World Report magazine. I went and took the SATs in the year after John D and again I was dissapointed at least from my point of view but my score was fair from an objective standpoint.

It was really funny though when I went back to St. Mary's to get some advice about what to do with my scores in terms of getting a scholarship or something. The Dean looked at the paper and then looked at me incredulously then asked "You got this score??" Actually I think he asked twice lol!! Like I said school was never my thing so he was surprised.

I decided not to take the Dean's advice about looking for small schools and I picked the five top schools in the US to apply to. I figured my scores were higher than all of the median scores for people attending their schools so I was a shoo in. I had no money and requested scholarships from all of them.

As it turned out, like Dale Carnegie said in one of his books, they each decided that they would try to manage without the benefit of having me as a student. What a euphemism!

Maybe I was a tad over confident. As I told one of my interviewers, a Princeton or Penn State graduate, whatever the outcome of all my applications I was going to get a university level education. Having been to university I think I meant a post-graduate degree :P lol

Right, so next...Oh yeah this was funny to me too, I used to hang out with this guy who thought he was soo smart. One day he was boasting about what he scored in his SAT's and how he didn't have to study. I thought to myself

They always tell you that studying doesn't help. SAT's are supposed based on years of experience
Your score is like 100 points below mine and I didn't "study" either ha!!!

I never did tell him what I was thinking. I just stared blankly like I was amazed by his results.

Hold up I don't want to come off as some stuck up person that thinks I'm so smart and everyone else is so dumb. I don't believe for an instant that other people aren't as smart as me. There was a guy I knew seemed as dumb as a post (not really) only interested in weapons, porn, video games, comics and food. He knew and cared little for anything outside of that. What he did care about though he new intimately and in depth. I was constantly amazed at how much he knew about the things he liked.

What I do think is that for what ever reason most people are not motivated to read as much as I was/am. I wish I could figure it out and give it out to people who wanted it. Maybe one day. What I do know is that I wasn't allowed to run around the neighbourhood like I wanted to and everyone else seemed to be able to and that I loved tv. It wasn't like my mom or extended family were sitting around answering my questions all day long or reading or telling me the stories that I constantly wanted to hear. I think it may have been the combination of not being able to run around the neighbourhood plus my mom taking me to the children library, plus piano lessons (my music teacher was always saying it was good for the brain. It wasn't good for her brain though she got Alzheimers and couldn't remember me when I saw her again after leaving John D. You think I'm mean don't you lol. Naw it's a curse of being socially unattuned :P Actually why do I feel bad for simply relaying the truth?)

Right so I was studying Pyshchology at UWI after having been brutally dismissed by the elite american institutions of higher learning. UWI was pretty cool. I hadn't been around so many girls since primary school. Hubba-hubba what a bountiful cornucopia! Close to mid semester I realise that this "bogus" tiny school in Miami that I almost applied to as a joke has offered me a full tuition "Presidential" scholarship. I had given up on foreign schools even though my sister was attending another one in Miami.

Yeah that one caught me by surprise too. Here it was my dream, contracted while talking trash with an odd friend, sought and then forgotton and blam my "baby" sister is living it. Thousands of miles away from home, free!!

I didn't want to just forget the finals and play the field and put everything into this new Miami basket. I mean I wanted to study stuff like astro-physics, physics, astronomy,robotics,engineering and this school didn't offer any of that. Not like UWI did either. Turns out I should have played the field. If I had stayed I'd have had to repeat a couple classes. It definitely wasn't my best but whatever it was it wasn't good enough.

Next comes Barry University, defintely no UCLA or MIT but decent. They had obviously employed a very skillful photographer for their brochure. The main campus was about two blocks square.

I went undecided for a bit cause in America you get to do that. Then I figured the closest thing they had to physics was Computer Science so lets try that. I met my ex-girlfriend. The relationship taught me things I already knew like. Girls and relationship cost money and or lots of time.

I graduated in four years, yeah I could have done it in three maybe. Once again sixth form gave me a bunch of credits but I wasn't in a hurry to leave the place where I had a place to live and a car and no one back seat driving me to come back to a place where I was under someone else's roof and back to public transportation.

I became really and honestly homeless for a bit. I couldn't get a job in my field. I had grossly miss quoted a project so I was basically finishing it to keep my word and gain experience. My landlady tricked me. I was renting a room from her and she moved a week and a half before the end of the month. Which meant since she was renting I had no place to be.

Yeah I had fraternity brothers and friends but I felt like Mary and Joseph, there wasn't any room at any inn. One friend had his housed packed up like a Mexican illegal immigrant safehouse he said. He wasn't illegal or Mexican by the way just an expression. My other fraternity brothers seemed to bristle everytime I came over at night to try and grab some space on the ground. Another friend was having a family feud with his roomate that I caught a little of and my car kept breaking every other week.

It was the best of times it was the worst of times. Anyway I took an internship at the Division of Information Technology that came with a Graduate Assistantship cause I needed a job. I didn't care about an MBA I just needed money. As soon as I got a good job offer from someone who would sponsor me I was gonna leave that MBA in a heart beat. I came kinda close once but not really. In the end my pride got the better of me I made a decision I knew could affect me negatively and then when the time came I didn't cover it up, which could have helped but I guess sometimes I'm good and sometimes I'm just silly. It wasn't something criminal or with a victim aside from me.

So I came back to Trinidad after being away for 7.5 years what a shocker I had only been on a plane once in the whole of that time I forgot what it was like. Nothing had really changed but I had changed a little. The sights, the smells, the lack of hot water, no more cable, no more freedom, no more good looking chicks to check out at school.

After a couple desperate months waiting for that job I tried an employment agency and then just cold calling. It worked to the extent that I got money but neither the amount nor the circumstances I was expecting.

I had come back with skills I never thought I'd have and a world or Miami view that one job was not the definition of who I was. I knew that I could suceed no matter what, but then even before I left St. Mary's I knew that.

So now after some years with the government and private sector and free-lancing I know enough to try things again and see if I can make some dreams come through one step at a time.

Am I a success? I live at home with my mom and uncles not really my ultimate definition of success. We need or rather I need a bigger house to at least avoid stepping on the toes of these old people :) and having them step on mine. I'd like a car but just like in Miami I know there is and was a trade off once I got a car.

After carving out some space for myself here in between infrequents and not so infrequent scraps with my mom and uncles I keep learning what works and what doesn't work when it comes to trying to bring change to a system. I'm really proud of the little things I've accomplished at home. They're small but they give me the most satisfaction.

So what do I want to accomplish before I leave this mortal coil. Well I want to be a has been. Yup no typo I want to scream my way to the top of some scene and then leave the lime light. And then depending on how much I like either I may try for the top again kinda like John Travolta or Eddie Murphy. So I want to write some banging stories. I want to make a great movie (I 'm positive I can make a better movie than "Rainbow Ranee". My God don't get me started even though all I've ever seen is the preview.) maybe design a line of clothing, perform some horrible singing etc

I think I'm on my way to making a rad website system though. I'm probably full of it and will fail miserably once again :P Least I'm doing it. Wish me luck bitches (a la Nicole Richie from "The Simple Life")