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.

I wish...

This post is my one rant to looking back (I've been told by my doctors not to), but I've justified it to myself by deciding if it makes one person make a different choice, then that's fine with me. So now that I know what I know, what do I wish? I wish I understood that when a mammogram comes back negative, it does not necessarily mean that they examined all the tissue and they were able to see clearly that nothing was there (a true negative). It could also mean, they've looked and they cannot distinguish normal from tumour tissue (inconclusive). So ladies, when the radiologist tells you "Ma'am you've got dense breasts", know that it means they can't see a darned thing. If you think something is going wrong, press for an alternative diagnostic tool or monitor yourself more closely in the coming months knowing that the mammogram you just had that said negative, really said, "We don't know". Oh..and enlist the aid of a specialist ...

Fitness Photo Shoot

Fitness after stage III breast cancer Plank on ball in silhouette Why a fitness shoot? I am not a fitness model, nor am I ripped like one, but I wanted to do a fitness shoot for a few different reasons: 1. As a reminder of how far I have come At the 5-year anniversary of my diagnosis of stage III breast cancer, it seemed a good time to remind myself how far I have come since I went through the trauma of diagnosis and treatment. That no matter how low I felt at the time, I came through it. Not all my sisters made it and many are still struggling today (shout out to my IV-leagers - those living with stage IV, EVERY DAY). 2. As a reminder of how much the body can do It is a moment for me to acknowledge that while there are things I still cannot do, there are things I could not do when I first started lifting weights, that I can do now and THAT is amazing to me. When I first started weight lifting maybe I could do shoulder presses with 7.5 lbs, now I can do more t...

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...

Cancer Survivor, writing about Health and Fitness as you age

Search This Blog