Daviot Kelly, Staff Reporter

The energetic Dwight Richards makes his grand entrance to the ballroom.

Try as she did, Hurricane Paloma just couldn't stop the festivities, because Jamaicans simply love a good party.

So neither wind nor rain from the then tropical depression could prevent the 27th staging of the Grand Charity Ball of the civic affairs committee of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce. The Jamaica Pegasus ballroom was packed, easing any fears the economy would slow ticket sales.

So with MC Dr Aggrey Irons joking about why they are called 'cocktails' and saying adults didn't need to dress up to have a 'ball', the entertainment was top-class. Mixing jazz and razzmatazz, Keisha Patterson belted out her selections (At Last was an especially goose-pimply number), before showman supreme Dwight Richards did his energetic stint. Fab Five (with a cameo from Lloyd Lovindeer), turned the stoic, seated partygoers into Saturday Night Fever-type dancers as their mix of soca, rocksteady and disco had everyone dancing off the pounds.

Among those out partying were Lascelles and Eileen Chin, Omar and Lezanne Azan, Michael and Angie Ammar, Glen Christian, Noel and Jackie DaCosta, Madai Hernandez and Marcelo Munoz, Mexican Ambassador Leonora Rueda, Canadian High Commissioner Denis Kingsley and wife, Jo Ann, Diego and Melissa Avaria, Ann-Marie Stewart, Anthony Chang, Anya Schnoor, Sherry-Ann McGregor, Mark and Sandra Golding, David Hall, Camille Facey, Chris Hayman, Patria-Kaye Aarons, Marlon Davis, Nikolaus Price and Anna-Kay Chisholm, Richard and Diana Stewart, Ed Khoury and Alison Barnett, Llewelyn Bailey, Andrew Issa, Sean Lyn, Igor and Elena Dorofeev, May Lawrence-Evans, Pablo Hoilett, Major Hugh and Judith Blake, Yulit Gordon and Hugh Morris.

Chairman of the civic affairs committee of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC), Sameer Younis (centre), jokes with JCC president Milton Samuda and Karlene Williams, a graduate of the JCC's youth leadership programme. Williams has since started her own business and is sponsoring two teenaged boys, to improve their lives.