Skip to main content

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.



Comments

Austin Trini said…
Now this is sweet sweet soca

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lfPZyIlrZUk
Neil said…
Well I certainly enjoyed reading it - you have a way with words! Great photos too. Makes me feel nostalgic - I haven't been to Trinidad since 2004 and don't know when I ever will be back because all my folks are in Canada now...

I don't miss the mosquito bites though!

Savi (not Neil!)
Austin Trini said…
Hi Savi,

Thanks for your comments! I too get nostalgic, but having lived so long abroad now, I enjoy a quick visit home, but for am happy to be back, to my new home.

Popular posts from this blog

Week 20, Cycles 11,12 of 12: Not Happening

This week the oncologist felt that I had done enough chemo- I was not going to get Cycle 11 and Cycle 12.  I've talked before about the effects of the chemo on my fingers, but you know it is a sad situation when you knot your pyjama bottoms and then can't untie it to go to the bathroom. No more chemotherapy for me. Yay?  Yes, a bit of an anti-climax, but I still get to ring the "end-of-chemo" bell and get confetti thrown on me by my chemo nurses. My doctor also had in her hand the results of my post-chemotherapy MRI and it showed that there was a reduction in the tumour, it looked less dense than before and above all it looks like the volume of the tumour decreased by about 75%. Yay to that for sure! Considering I didn't feel that anything was changing I was very happy about the result. Next on my list: surgery. She said that although my blood counts are low in some areas, she felt that if I wanted to have surgery that day, I was well enough to do it. Me? We

Talking with Lucas on climate change

This is my post for Blog Action Day . This is an annual event where bloggers everywhere in the world post about the same issue on the same day to spark discussion around an issue of global importance. This is part of a conversation I had with my 8-year old. Mama : Do you know what climate change means? Lucas : I think it means when it is like 90F and it is hot.   And the change? It's when in the daytime it might be 90F and sunny and hot, and then you go inside for dinner and then right after dinner and it might have dropped to 70F Well, yes it is that in a way.  That describes what is happening in your area, but when people use the term "climate change" they really mean something more global, like affecting climate around the world Have you heard of the team "global warming"? What global warming is that it is made up of CO2 (carbon dioxide) and when they burn stuff the smoke releases CO2 and it's like a blanket covering the earth and if it k

Cancer by the numbers 2 of 4: That grocery bill

This is the second "Cancer by the Numbers" post, the first was about blood counts . We have been trying to eat organic fruits and vegetables as much as we can, to reduce the pesticide levels we injest. I will publish another post about cancer and food, but for now I thought I'd share the cost of organic vs not organic based on a quick poll of my local grocery (HEB).  We had cut out meat prior to my diagnosis of cancer (ever since reading The China Study ) so perhaps the decline in spending in meat is offset by the more pricey organic items! The graph below shows the increase, as a percentage of the non-organic price, that I pay for common items that I buy. While the actual dollar amounts may not be significant individually, I can tell you that I really feel it on my grocery bill when I buy blueberries! If you feel you want to buy organic, but want to spend the dollars on those items where it makes a difference, take a look at the  Environmental Working