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

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...

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 ...

Week 2 - Part 1

So when last I posted, it was the weekend we told my dad about my diagnosis. Good grief, that was just last Saturday! Sunday 12th June : Told my brother and his wife the news.  We also planned to go out for brunch since my dad was in town, so we did that, after we all went for hair cuts (mine shocked the kids a bit).  They are not sure they like it.  That evening, a friend of ours was celebrating a milestone birthday, so we did go out and tried to forget about the week ahead, and enjoy some time with friends. Monday 13th June : No food - surgery Monday morning to insert a port-a-cath. This is new technology where they setup a catheter directly to the large vein under your collarbone to allow for easy access to do the chemo infusions (since it is very hard to do an IV each time). It remains under the skin so the nurses can access it each time.  As soon as I was sufficiently recovered, we headed off to do an Echo cardiogram (since the chemo drugs could affect the h...