The Obsession Continues

The voting obsession that is. Now I'm obsessed with the ink. I posted a picture here of what our fingers looked like immediately after we voted. The evening after voting day that pinkish stain changed to a dark brown. The funny thing about the change is that it happened to the both of us at the same time! Now, four days later this is what it looks like:


It's soooo gross and skin-peely. Now I get why people go through such lengths to get the ink off as soon as possible (my aunt took a small bottle of bleach to work). At the time I couldn't be bothered so I kinda just let it dry. Learned my lesson.

Update: I just did a little research on the ink. Apparently it can't be removed and only comes off with the generation of new skin.

A Better Way to Use that Deposit Slip

Today at the bank I saw a little girl doing her little girl drawings on a deposit slip at the bank. When she finished each one, she put it into a little envelope sealed it and gave it to her dad. Adorable. She reminded me of myself at her age, my mumz would always use those slips to keep me occupied while I waited for her at the bank. I wonder how many people do that? Why don't banks include a little stack of colouring pads for the kids?

I'd like to say that I've outgrown this little pastime but that would be a lie. I still draw little flowers on mine whenever I'm in line at the bank. If they started making colouring pads I'd totally use it. No shame or hesitation whatsoever.

A Beverage Post

In a recent post I mentioned that Trinidadians tend to put more sugar in their beverages than other countries. But I've also noticed that while Trinidadians prepare their drinks differently, pre-packaged beverages like Gatorade and Coca Cola also differ in taste when compared to versions sold is the US and the UK. During a high school field trip a worker at one of our local factories explained that these companies often change their recipes to suit the taste buds of their foreign markets. I did a little research and found this article from the San Diego Tribune on Mexican Coca Cola vs. American coca Cola. Although it doesn't state that differences in the flavor of Coca Cola are influenced by local taste preferences it does state that they can come as a result of the use of local ingredients, specifically cane sugar in lieu of high fructose corn syrup, to cut production costs. The article discusses some of the complications that arise when you have different versions of the same product and the fear of having these versions come into competition with each other.

After reading the article these are some of the questions that I'd like to ask: Are Americans aware that Coca Cola is sweetened with cane sugar for other markets? If the answer is no, why isn't this more of a scandal? If the answer is yes, why don't they care? Why aren't they putting more pressure on Coca Cola to produce a higher quality beverage for its home market? I mean who knows, maybe it doesn't matter because Coca Cola rots your insides anyway? Maybe Americans don't like the taste of Coca Cola sweetened with cane sugar? The article made it seem like drinking the cane sugar version is akin to drinking the tears of God but personally I hate it. I constantly thank the beverage gods that Coke Zero (my favorite of the Coca Cola offerings) tastes the same wherever I go. For now anyway.

Voting Day

You know those days when you just don't feel like doing anything? Yeah that was yesterday. Yesterday I didn't do shiet. But not today, today I was super productive. I voted! Here's a pick of our fingers stained with voters ink.


So... about the voting. I was a complete fool. I giggled the entire time, I followed the red line when I was supposed to follow the green one and I simply couldn't process the instructions on how to accurately fold my ballot. By the time I got to the final table the official must have been so convinced that I was a special needs voter that she gave me a little round of applause for not failing at dipping my right index finger into the tiny tub of voters ink. I don't blame her, I think my brain was on vacation that day. Throughout it all my sister pretended not to know me. Oh the shame.

Fun Times at the Supermarket

It must have been tea time at the supermarket today. The sample stations offered Lipton tea, toast with Flora unsalted butter and some kind of coffee. I skipped the toast but went for the coffee and tea. Both were delicious, the Lipton Chai tasted a lot like a popular Trinidadian tea that we make from the leaves of the Bay Laurel tree. The only downside is that I forgot how much sugar Trinidadians tend to put into their beverages. I'm bouncing of the walls a little bit which is fun for me but sucks for my my mom and sis. Anywhoooo the real find was the set of stickers that I found in the disposable diaper aisle. I think I'll use them in my room to add some kitsch those cringeworthy red walls.

Gen Art Closes After Sixteen Years

Today I found out that Gen Art has closed it doors. I'm a little late, they closed on May 5th, I didn't notice because I was in the midst of moving drama. I'm crushed by the news because I loved Gen Art and the goals that they represented. Gen Art was a nonprofit geared towards exposing young talent in the fashion, art, and film worlds. It had a bit of a bad reputation as a party charity but I have interned for a young designer whose career was launched by the Gen Art team. I've also had conversations with some of the Gen Art staff and they have always impressed me with their genuine passion for the arts and for giving young artistic talent a much needed lift. It's a shame that they've closed, but I do not doubt the rumours of mismanagement. I witnessed their lack of organisation first hand when I briefly volunteered there.

Some bloggers have tried to make light of Gen Art's closure, Gawker for example asked, "Why not give your 'Charity' money to, ya know, UNICEF?" I'm not surprised by that, a lot of people tend to assume that interests in the arts and humanitarian issues are incompatible. The former being pointless and the latter relevant. I think this is a misguided approach, both are important and both are necessary. A person who devotes their life to creating art is no less than a person who does the same for humanitarian work. This is coming from a person who has been engaged in non profit work for almost ten years while nurturing a love of art for a short lifetime.

The demise of Gen Art is not an indictment on the art charity but on the mismanagement and lack of organisation that is common to many nonprofits regardless of their mission. Hopefully when the economy recovers we'll see a revival of our nonprofits too. We need them!

World War III: The Squirrel Edition

SQUIRREL WANTED ON 8 COUNTS OF LARCENY.
SUSPECT AT LARGE. LAST SEEN
WITH 2 MANGOES CONCEALED IN HIS CHEEKS

My mother is currently waging a battle against a 2 pound squirrel that has recently decided to make our backyard his home. At first relations between the two were fairly cordial but things started to fall apart after our squirrel friend began taking huge bites of our barely ripe mangoes forcing our mumz to pick the fruit well before it was ripe. To protect it from the squirrel. Of course.

Now that the mango season has been ruined by the squirrel war, said squirrel has recently been spotted on the cherry tree. This was a surprise attack, we didn't know that squirrels like cherries. But then again why wouldn't they? Cherries are delicious. My mother has retreated for the moment to re-assess her plan of attack. Never has the world known such a conflict.

My guess is there will be a war and it will be bloody. Squirrels bite don't they?

EuroPopDance

So I guess this is the "boredom" part. I'm putting off a phone call that I don't want to make and I have absolutely no idea what to post about today. I figure this is as good a time as any to practice posting a music video. Since no one reads this thing anyway I feel like I can share my cheesetastic taste in music without shame. See? I'm all about the silver linings.

Last week I read an article about the Swedish singer, Robyn in The New Yorker and since then I've been having a throwback to my euro pop dance (is that a genre?) phase. Since the nineties Robyn has continued to release great music, she just released a new album called Body Talk Pt. 1 which The New Yorker described as "near perfect pop songs embedded with a casual kind of feminism." Oh yeah and she also managed to do this while keeping her bits and pieces covered in what the article describes as a "small but significant comment on her status as a sexual object, she typically wears outfits that, tight as they may be, usually cover her from head to toe." Remind me, why are we listening to Lady Gaga? Or is the fact that Lady Gaga has been able to distract the world from her lack of talent a talent in itself? Well played Gaga. Well played indeed.

Anyhoo! Clothed or not Robyn and her new album are definitely going to be regulars on my Ipod. I like to listen to her when I'm in the final stretch of writing a paper, usually at the editing stage when I need that extra push of energy. Who could forget her late 90's classic 'Show Me Love' it's such a good driving in the car song and the video is pure 90's cheese. In other words I love it! I'm pretty sure one of my aunts started wearing a single earring in her right ear like Robyn and my cousin definitely had that haircut. Ok I'm going to try to add the video...




Sweet! Success! You can read the entire article from The New Yorker here.

Mrs. Prime Minister

I just overheard a family discussion at my grandmother's house. Our Local Government Elections are coming up and we all got our polling cards today. I tuned into the conversation just as they started talking about our newly appointed Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar who my sister and affectionately call "Kams". The consensus was that Kams is doing a great job and the changes in our country are evident. Trinidad is known for taking the "lazy island lifestyle" to extremes usually resulting in an embarrassing level of inefficiency and corruption on all levels. But Kams is setting out to change all of that and my aunt noted that it's the first time in a long time that she's excited to vote. On the other hand, my grandmother isn't a supporter of Prime Minister Bissessar's political party but regardless of our political affiliations we'll all be heading out to the polls on Monday July 26th to exercise our right to vote.

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to have grown up within a society and among a family that recognizes and celebrates the freedom that is denied to so many other people around the world. I've always been encouraged to follow the news, to express my opinions and to form my own views about the world around me even when they were in direct conflict with everyone else's.

As for Kams she's already an inspiration to me as the first female Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. If she can maintain the momentum of positive change that she's established over the last two months, she will be well on her way to becoming one of the great leaders of our time.

Oh Happy Day !!!!

One of the greatest drawbacks of moving back home to Trinidad from New York is the relatively high cost of magazines in Trinidad. Magazines are already pretty expensive but here they can cost up to twice as much before taxes! For a magazine nerd like myself the idea of paying US$12 for a copy of the New Yorker was pretty devastating and over the last couple of weeks I resigned to make do with the dreaded online version. Just as I started to exhibit withdrawal symptoms from living without the touch/smell/look of a real life glossy, I discovered the new and improved magazine section in our local library! Four years ago when I left for college there was at least a six month gap between the current date and the most recent issue of ANY of the mags on the shelves. But now, although the fashion mags are still shamefully out of date, my babies The New Yorker and Time are pretty damn current. It truly was a moment for tears and I captured it with this really crappy pic taken with my phone.


If they keep this up I might just have to forget about the fact that they closed the ENTIRE hardcover section for a month. Really, who does that?

Chinese Market

I came across some pictures of my family shopping at the Chinese market and I had an instant craving for salted prunes. I like the really unhealthy ones with orange food colouring and enough salt to send your blood pressure through the roof. Ohhhh I can almost taste them! There's a complex art to prune selection because some of them look exactly the same but taste radically different. The pic below shows my sister, wearing a confused/distressed look on her face while she tries to decide which bag doesn't taste like feet. Go for the salted ones!!!!!

Never Let Me Go

I recently posted about my eagerness to see Farewell, the French spy thriller staring Guillame Canet. I'm also looking forward to seeing Never Let Me Go, a sci-fi movie based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. I can't wait to the novel, I'm currently speed reading through a book of Hemingway's short stories (love Hemingway but not a fan of short stories) so that I can get to it. I'm not usually into sci-fi but the trailer looks promising and I love the costuming already. I'm definitely a judge-a-book-by-its-cover kind of person. I'm ashamed to say that I've bought several books just because the cover looked interesting and I will most certainly sit through an awful movie if the wardrobe is good. This isn't always a bad thing. I watched The Brothers Bloom because of Rachel Weisz's pretty orange umbrella and it was one of my favorite movies of 2009. I also read The Prophet by Khalil Gibran because of his beautiful illustrations and that novel has had a firm place on my top ten list for the last five years.

The only grey cloud on my movie going horizon is that there's a strong chance that these films will never be released in my country. Our local cinemas tend to favour the big blockbusters, so while Step Up 3-D and Resident Evil Afterlife are already on the list of coming attractions, Farewell and Never Let Me Go are nowhere to be found. Le sigh .... we desperately need an art house cinema in Trinidad. In the meantime I'm praying to the movie gods and keeping my fingers crossed.

Riverside Pholourie

Spent the day with my Granny and later went with my mumz to buy Pholourie at a nearby shop. Pholourie is one of my favourite treats, it's made of fried balls of pea dough and served with a mango or tamarind sauce (today I had mango.) While my mum was busy chatting with the shopkeeper I took some pics of the stream that winds around our neighbourhood.

Our stream actually used to be a beautiful river but it's slowly disappearing due to the deforestation of our surrounding hillsides and the corresponding erosion of exposed soil. Because of soil erosion the river bed is now extremely shallow and each year during the heavy rain season our neighbourhood is hit with devastating floods. Sadly, the stream that my sister and I know is nothing like the river my mother swam in as a child and by the time we have kids of our own it may not exist at all.

I'm Taking the Challenge !

The NALIS reading challenge that is !!

Our National Library is hosting a reading challenge. All I have to do is read ten books within the next month or so, submit a short review for each (which is what I do here anywayz) and huzzah! A super special NALIS eco-tote bag will be placed in my eager hands. My sister is doing it too because I BEGGED her. She doesn't get the excitement over the flimsy tote bag. I can't explain it either but the excitement is almost overshadowing my 'Farewell' fever. Almost.

Lolita

I have a pretty sweet crush on Russian Literature. It started with a little Tolstoy and then it got more intense when I started exploring Dostoyevsky. For the last couple of years I've been prompted by one person or another to read Lolita by Vladimir Nabkov. For why? According to the friends, acquaintances and complete strangers who've tried to turn me into a little Lolita lover, my thing for the Russians meant that I absolutelypositivelymust LOVE Lolita. This hyper enthusiasm is of course the main reason that I've been avoiding it for all of these years.

I started to give in after it was recommended to me by Sarah D. I call Sarah D. my lit twin we like the same books and we share the same weird habits like reading two books at once and judging books by the attractiveness of their covers. Anyway I respect her opinion immensely so I brought Lolita home but continued to avoid reading it. I caved a few weeks ago and finally read Lolita, not my fault, we can blame Virginia Woolf for that. We're "frenemies" Woolf and I. I've been trying to love her work for years, I want to love her work SO BAD but... I just can't focus on it. I fought my way through To The Lighthouse a year ago and I've been reading Jacob's Room but I had to put it down because I just couldn't. So I picked up Lolita instead.

The truth is that I really did enjoy Lolita but not for the reasons touted by my Lolita lover friends. I did not love it for its "Russian-ness". It does not depict Russia, it is not written about Russia and it does not feature Russians. Correct me if I'm wrong but the only thing Russian about Lolita is its author and so i would NEVER compare this particular Nabkov work to that of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky or anyone in that vein. That said, I DID enjoy Nabkov's alliteration obsession and his frightening command of the English language. I've been speaking English all my life and I will NEVER be half as good as he is.

I'd recommend Lolita to anyone, it's hilarious and Nabkov's beautiful use language protects his perverse masterpiece from being misunderstood as sordid or pornographic literature. My only regret is that I waited this long!

Worldcup Blues

I was really sad to see Brazil and Argentina leave the World Cup. I'm rooting for Spain now. But almost everyone else at home is anticipating a German win. Germany may be playing well but for me there's no fun in watching the German team play. There's none of the spirit that I saw from the Brazilian, Argentinian and Ghanaian sides. Ah le sigh ... I'll miss them.