Glimpses of Trinidad

I thought I'd post out a few pictures to give everyone a flavour of Trinidad from my whirlwind visit. Click the links to enjoy the full experience!

While I was there I heard more soca than parang since everyone is now gearing up for carnival 2013. You can hear the 2012 Road March winner (soca). Road March is the tune that is most played by the steelbands/DJs on the road for carnival. I can only imagine the winin' going on to the speed of this tune.

What? You don't know what is winin'? Well take a look here - as you can see, no men required. (Did I just pump up the interest by a factor of 10 for the guys out there?)

On to the pictures!

On the way to Maracas Beach.

On the beach, looking like my foreign self.

Picture of the Debe market. I even found they were selling a fleece jacket there. Really.

Wha's the price of cucumber dey Uncle? 3 for $10.

Double rainbow. It rained a bit every day I was there.

Well, what is this picture below you ask? And what are they doing? This is CEPEP (Community-Based Environmental Protection and Enhancement Programme (Trinidad and Tobago). One person is cutting the grass between two lanes of traffic with an edge trimmer and there are 2 people on each side holding up a blue tarpaulin to prevent stones and other debris from hitting the cars. I imagine my American friends are going WTF??! right about now.

Yes really. An ad in a local newspaper.

Mosquito bites.

Pointe-a-Pierre Oil Refinery at night. I showed Lucas how they burnt off the excess gas.

But no post would be complete without a few words. Here are snippets of some of the ridiculous and funny things that Trinis say.

"Yuh know how much people tell me to put 220 volts or someting like dat and charge up de fence to stop dem bandits an' dem? But I 'fraid - you know it only take one night for meh to come home wit meh head bad (drunk) and touch de fence. So ah cyah do dat. Besides, if any ah dem bandits get hurt is me de police coming for yes."

"Wha' yuh doin' dey boy, why your belly looking so big?"
"Well, ah growin' it so it could roll wit de tassa better"

So what is tassa now? Well look here - and yes, it has winin' in it. This clip is at a wedding (common to have tassa), and it so happens that the cousin who said he was growing his belly, did in fact get married the week before and did have tassa at his wedding.

A snippet of either an ad on the radio or a new soca hit for 2013:
"De doctor prescribe for me
Ah bottle ah rum ah day
Two bottle ah rum ah day
Tree bottle ah rum ah day "

I hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as I liked writing it! Feel free to leave your comments here.

10 things I have learnt about my teen and language

I have just been thinking about how my son speaks and what he says. He is 13 now and here is what I have discovered: 1. He does know some curse words, although he does not use them (at least in my hearing). I know this because he knows to switch the YouTube video he is watching when he hears one. 2. His language is tempered by having a younger sibling around (and he knows he will be in big trouble if he forgets that). 3. He gets more animated when he is around his friends and especially when he is gaming with them, and he uses a different vocabulary than regular speech (see #5). 4. I should not be annoyed if I am speaking to him and he shouts back "What?!!" The decibel level gets really, really high when he has his headset on AND he is gaming. 5. I am grateful that he uses expressions like, "What the fudge?", "Crap" and "YOLO". Usually these are followed by the terms "Die!" or "Hackers!" or "Destroy" , bec...

Job Search2: Networking etiquette..

On which I have a few ideas. As my husband keeps telling me, I won't get a job by spending hours in front of the computer submitting applications to online job postings. The best use of any job-seeker's time is spent talking to friends and acquaintances and letting them know that you are looking for a job and what your skills and interests are. So here is what I found tricky about networking: How hard to push? Working parents are busy, so if I asked a friend, who is a working parent, about a position I had seen at their company, do I ask a second time? How soon after? And what if there is another position - do I talk about that too? If that friend is very enthusiastic about getting more information for me on a post then I hear nothing, what then? Is it realistic to think they'll get back to me? I find it difficult to broach the topic again. I might ask a second time but for me there is no third time. What do I trade in return? In the net...

What is your 'bread & butter' conversation?

I am anxious to get back to the playgroups with my Moms group, and talk with some of the other moms because I want to know what they talk to their husbands about at the end of the day. If I were to truly tell my husband what goes on with my day? Well, the conversation would be inane and irrelevant. Gunnar: "How was your day honey?" Big smile. Me: "You know the usual. Lucas got up late this morning and was crabby because he didn't have enough time to play before breakfast and Liam pulled off my tiny earring, you know, the one I was so excited about getting because I thought he wouldn't notice it, and I could wear earrings again? Anyways, he pulled it off, and I grabbed it from him and set it down so I could deal with him appropriately, and I forgot about it, but when I went back to look for it I couldn't find it. It might have gotten wiped off the table when I was cleaning, so I spent part of the day sifting through the garbage looking for it, then I looked ...

Cancer Survivor, writing about Health and Fitness as you age

Search This Blog