Start by leaving the country a few days before the event (not that you know it’s going to happen). About five days is good, say, around July 22, 1990. Make sure the place you’re going is far from any established West Indian community. Northern California is a workable option.
On the morning of the event (i.e. July 27, 1990), sit down in your friend Gillian Goddard’s cottage in Menlo Park, type up a television script on Gillian’s friend Dan’s Mac Plus, print it out and take it to a nearby copy shop, e.g. Kinko’s. From the shop, fax the script to your colleagues Walt and Danielle in Trinidad, who, later that day, will use it to shoot a segment of the television show you’re working on together. The act of faxing the script also inserts you—tenuously—into Walt and Danielle’s more heroic narrative related to the event, though of course you don’t know this at the time.
Take the train into San Francisco, trawl around the city like a tourist then in the afternoon meet up with Gillian in order to hitch a ride back to Menlo Park. While sitting in the car in rush-hour gridlock on US-101, fiddle with the dial on the radio and happen upon a National Public Radio (NPR) report about an attempted coup in your home country of Trinidad and Tobago!
Marvel at the coincidence of your landing, just at that moment, upon a news report about a nation that would otherwise receive scant coverage even on public radio, but exhibit incredulity. Await the jingle at the end of the report announcing that what you just heard was a comedy segment. When, instead of a jingle, you hear another report about something bad happening in some other part of the world, freeze for a few seconds. Then try to recall whether, five days before, there had been any sign or indication that something like this was going to happen. Decide that there hadn’t.
As it would be some years yet before either you or Gillian—or most of the world’s citizens—acquires a cell phone, sit patiently in traffic until you get back to Menlo Park, but once there, rush to the answering machine which is pulsating with voice messages. Be amused at Gillian’s Washington DC-based sister’s succinct “They had a coup! Call me!”. Wonder how all the Trinidadians on the west coast had managed to get hold of Gillian’s number. Return calls. Answer new calls that come in. Lament the fact that nobody has any real information.
Even though the phone lines to Trinidad are perpetually busy, keep trying to get through to family, but make sure you have a list of questions prepared, as long distance calls aren’t cheap and Skype hasn’t yet been invented, nor has the MagicJack. Lament the absence, in northern California, of a real West Indian community such as exists in New York or Washington D.C. or south Florida or even Atlanta, and discuss how this limits your access to the choicest rumours and to folks who know folks who had managed to get through to somebody in Trinidad who knows somebody who knows what’s going on. Experience feelings of profound isolation.
Keep the radio tuned to NPR. Make sure you tune in to an NPR report in which journalist Ira Mathur is interviewed from Port of Spain about the horrors to which your homeland is being subjected while sitting on the bonnet of the car in Stinson Beach, in the atmospheric Marin Headlands, looking out at the magnificent Pacific. Note it as one of the most bizarre juxatpositions of your lifetime.
Leave California for New York. Wait it out there for what seems like—or may well be, as you don’t yet record all your trips using as-yet-to-be-dreamed-of services like Dopplr and TripIt—weeks. Watch that single, worrying image on CNN of Port of Spain with a plume of smoke wafting up from the middle of the city over and over again; listen to the West Indian radio stations; talk to folks on the phone—but still feel you have no idea what’s going on in your homeland, except that the insurgents have surrendered and there’s now a curfew. Write letters (longhand, as you’re still five years from getting an e-mail account) to friends in various places announcing that you might end up staying in the US.
Be deeply envious of your friends Walt and Danielle, who were in fact shooting your script when news of the insurrection reached them, and who, with all other work brought to a standstill by the events, report that they’ve been venturing out with the camera to capture coup-related action.
Keep harassing the airline to put you on a flight back home. Settle eventually for one that connects in Miami, even though it means spending an awful night in Miami International Airport.
Return to Trinidad. Fail to remember, 20 years later, who collected you at the airport, what you saw from the car on the way home, what you felt when you finally walked through the doors of the home you weren’t sure you’d ever see again.
Wonder if 20 years is really that long or if there’s some other reason you’ve shoved those memories aside.
I could not live without lists. I make and keep them for all sorts of purposes: to-do lists, lists of items to take along on my travels (I keep three, separated by category), lists of talking points for presentations, fun lists, the occasional top [insert number] list.
Umberto Eco, himself an inveterate list-maker, recently described lists as “a way of escaping thoughts about death”. Practitioners of GTD, even half-baked ones like myself, know that list-making is also a way of escaping thought. Or, more accurately, having to think—having to hold the contents of the list in your head, a receptacle not optimised, in most cases, for holding lists of items (unless the list in question is a mental list, which is another matter altogether).
Lists are a key ingredient in any kind of planning, of course, and I was struck by two lists I came across today relating to the Haiti earthquake relief efforts.
The first comes off Bob Corbett’s Haiti mailing list, an e-mail list for Haiti-watchers I’ve been lurking on for years, and which has proven an invaluable source of information over the past couple of days. It was posted by Alan Woolwich, a community planner in Florida:
On acting locally in country. Get word to all local mayors and community leaders/orgs that you know, via internet, cell phone, twitter, AM/FM/TV (Satellite TV) radio stations in country and those powerful enough to broadcast in, ask them, the mayors and local leaders to get a few key people together, focus and start making specific written lists of what their damages are, rescue and medical needs, equipment and additional communication/equipment needs. This will help the mayors/leaders stay focused when they are contacted directly in person or by radio/phone by responders. They need to be collected and ready. There needs to be a central, controlled and accurate response from each small community who may not get outside help for awhile. Also have them list what resources they may have, no matter how small, available to help others outside their immediate community if and when possible.
They removed the ceiling boards yesterday, so this morning I had a glimpse of what my house will look like from the inside when the new roof is done; as that relates, as least, to the slope of the new ceilings.
Sadly, I will be losing much of that glorious view of the sky.
I wish it were possible in this climate to install a glass roof that wouldn’t turn the place into a green house. Or that roofs weren’t necessary at all.
This is the living room after the first of several rainstorms we’ll be having today. The water on the floor, warmed by the sun, was very pleasant to wade through. But that poor little parsons table should have been rescued long ago.
I’ve had the iPhone application Audioboo for some time, but it was only today that I finally got around to using it for the first time. It’s a slick little microblogging app that lets you use the iPhone to record audio files of up to three minutes and publish them to the Audiobooweb site, where others can listen, comment and indicate their favour/disfavour by clicking on the thumbs-up/thumbs-down icons.
Because cell phones mics are optimised for capturing the human voice, the files Audioboo records are of pretty good quality. The app’s truly winning feature, however, is its simplicity: hit “record” —> put phone to ear and speak —> garnish with optional title, metadata, image —> hit “publish”. The other audio microblogging services I’ve played with all involved dialing in to phone numbers (that were usually international long distance for me) and other rigmaroles.
The downside to Audioboo is that in order to record a “boo” you need an iPhone, at least for now. (Another downside is that the recordings are called “boos”, though who would ever have dreamt that the word “tweet” would come to roll off the tongue in as it does today?)
Will Audioboo rekindle the podcasting fire in me? Hard to tell. But here are my first two boos, and two images to illustrate them. If I decide to boo further, you’ll find the lot archived here.
I’m in the mood to post something on this blog, but not in the mood to write, which is a shame, as there are so many things I would have posted had the situation been different. I might have written about the crime watch service I’ve set up for my neighbourhood, for instance (thank you, Ken Banks, for helping me out with that one); about Salvador, Delphine’s adopted brother who left the shelter on November 28 last year to begin his new life in Blue Range; or about the renovation exercises that began my home at the beginning of this year. But no—all I seem to be able to do these days is take pictures.
But if it’s one thing I’ve learned over the years it’s that the path of least resistance is usually where it’s at. I’ve never seen myself as the diarist sort of blogger, but as my main preoccupations these days are very close to home, here goes: below is the latest of the renovation photos from the “Don’t try this at home” photoset, accompanied by a fairly substantial caption.
Mixing cement, along with pumping gas at the gas station and filling a brown-paper bag with loose flour or sugar and neatly folding the top, was one of the activities that fascinated me as a child.
I can now vouch for the overrratedness of gas-pumping, and wrapping thousands of presents over the years has erased a good part of the wonder involved in folding paper of any kind (maybe I should take up origami?). But I'm yet to mix cement, though it's an activity that takes place almost every day around my house these days.
I was lucky to have checked on the goings-on in the back yard just as Ronald had finished carting several wheelbarrowloads of gravel there in preparation for a marathon round of cement-mixing, and found these neat peaks resembling a mountain range in a child's drawing.
It was only after reading the commentRenata left at Flickr that it occurred to me to look into the science behind why I felt compelled to take a photo of the full moon last night: at this time of year (though more so in October) the moon is at its perigee, or closest approach to earth, and therefore appears larger and brighter.
J9 will probably also be wondering if this photo was taken with her 18-250mm lens, which I took for a test run yesterday. She’ll be happy to know it was.
Pictured above is the South African visa as it looked in 1998 (top), and as it looks today, ten years later (bottom). To acquire one back in ’98, I had to route my flight through New York and pay a visit to the South African consulate on E 38th Street. To get one for an upcoming trip in September, I was instructed to send my passport to the South African High Commission in Kingston, Jamaica, along with a prepaid Fedex form. The process took 11 days and cost me about US$140. I can travel freely in and out of South Africa until November 11, 2008. Spontaneous travel, the kind where you wake up one morning and say “Damn, I just need to see a giraffe” or even “My cholera-combatting skills would come in really handy in cyclone-ravaged _____” , hop on the internet, buy yourself a ticket, pack a bag and dash off to the airport, is clearly not for the likes of me.
I needed a visa just to pass through Croatia on a train.
I also have a suspicion they alter your photo–I’m certain
the one I gave them didn’t look that lame
By visa acquisition standards, however, the South African process is a breeze. To apply for a visa to travel to North American and most European countries people like me need to visit the embassy or consulate in person, armed with bank statement/s (preferably showing a positive balance); hotel reservations or other proof that you won’t end up sleeping in a subway or public park; health insurance; evidence of return travel to home country; names, addresses, telephone numbers and astrological signs of sponsors in receiving country; umbrella or sun hat (to protect yourself from the elements as you stand for hours in a line outside the building); reading matter (to entertain yourself as you stand for hours in a line outside the building–cell phones, radios, iPods etc are prohibited by many embassies); and picnic basket (to prevent yourself from starving as you stand for hours in a line outside the building). If you’re young, or poor, the embassy may ask you to demonstrate that you have sufficiently strong ties in your home country, like a spouse, so it may be advisable to bring along a wedding album, preferably your own.
The country I plan on founding one day (working title: “Gapland”; “Georgia”, sadly, being already taken) will issue visitors’ visas on arrival at the airport (as some countries already do). These will take the form of adhesive stickers so gorgeous as to be coveted by discerning travellers the world over. Just as well, as every visitor will require them, regardless of nationality (though you’ll have the option of affixing them either to a page in your passport or the lid of your laptop). For a few extra GPDs (Gapland dollars), visitors will be able to receive their visas in the form of a tattoo.
The Egyptian government’s attitude leaves much to be desired
on several counts, but at least they’ll issue visas (to nationals of some countries)
at Cairo airport, in the form of adhesive stickers you affix to your passport yourself,
before proceeding to the immigration line. Once there, of course,
you may well find you don’t pass muster and be refused entry
While standing in the (short) queue leading up to the visa distribution kiosk, arriving visitors will be plied with local delicacies, including organic fruit juices and wines from the national vineyards. Massages will be available on request. Visas will be issued to anyone of reasonably sound mind who is not a convicted felon or war criminal and who is revealed, via a Google search and detailed scan of personal blog and Facebook/MySpace accounts, to be free of intent to harm others or use Gapland as a base for nefarious activities. Along with their visas, visitors will receive a Gaplandese phrasebook, a copy of the most recent Gapland Book Prize-winning volume, and a Gapland-developed and manufactured wifi-enabled mini-computer/mobile phone filled with Gaplandish music, including the country’s ultra-cool national anthem (chorus sung by indigenous animals!) and GPD$100 in airtime.
At certain times of year (Gapland Carnival, the week of my birthday, mango season, the Zaboca Festival, Pothound Appreciation Week etc) Gapland will issue specially designed limited edition visas (designs to be solicited via competition from students of the Gapland Art Academy and other talented locals). Sophisticated travelers will make pilgrimages to the country just to have the pages of their passports graced by one of these beauties.
The Gapland visa will usher in the era of the visa as collectible. From a passport page-hogging stigma signifying “our country deems people from your country deeply suspect and liable to violate immigration laws”, the visa will evolve into a badge of well-travelledness and sophistication. Americans and Europeans will rush to get them. People (more than likely the same ones who choose wines according to the label) will choose the countries they travel to on the basis on the attractiveness of their visas. Visa geeks will travel just to amass visas, sheath them in plastic and show them off at conventions, wearing the national dress of their favourite visa-producing country. Entrepreneurs will travel in order to collect visas to sell on eBay. Visas from countries which receive few visitors will become rare and valuable commodities, perhaps prompting more powerful countries to resort to dastardly artificial methods of increasing the numbers of visitor arrivals in those countries in order to drive down the value of their visas.
The power went about an hour ago, so here in the depths of the Diego Martin valley we’re experiencing a rare moment of utter darkness. A fellow Twitter user asked me the other day how much of the southern sky we were able to see from Trinidad. The answer is quite a lot of it, though it occurred me then that, for some odd reason, I rarely look south.
Tonight I did, though. The image below is the view looking south. The one above is looking north-west.
First it was just the hot water, when my water heater sprung a leak which the technicians took three days to come and repair. Then it was running water period, when the electric pump that drives water from the storage tanks into the house (a necessity in these parts when your house is on a hill) was taken away for servicing for a 24-hour period that morphed into five days.
As desperate as the situation felt at the time, I always knew I’d eventually get my running water back, so it would be churlish of me to compare myself with the thousands in this country who don’t ever have running water in their homes, not to mention the 1.1 billion across the world who lack access to water that’s even clean. I also had a number of options, including borrowing showers at friends’ homes and forgoing personal hygiene altogether (which, for the record, I did not do).
But filling buckets from a storage tank is tedious work, and a bucket full of water is heavy, especially for a weakling like me. In many parts of the world, of course, it’s women and girls who ensure that their families and communities are supplied with water, often walking great distances to and from water sources carrying vessels filled with the precious commodity (which is why developments that improve the water supply in communities–for example, the roundabout play-pump–often improve the lives of women and girls as well).
The reason I have water on the brain today is that yesterday was World Water Day. No doubt netizens throughout the world would have been quoting World Bank VP Ismail Serageldin’s famous statement that the wars “of the next century [meaning this century, of course] will be over water”, linking to websites like 1h2o.org and wishing films like Sanjeev Chatterjee’s “One Water” and Shalini Kantayya’s “A Drop of Life” were available for viewing at their local cineplex (Sanjeev’s film will be in a few weeks, if you happen to live in Miami or New York City). Or maybe even that other great film about water-related conflict, “Chinatown“.
It had to happen sooner or later. A band of “Carnival stakeholders” putting forward the suggestion that Trinidad and Tobago’s age-old pre-lenten Carnival be moved to a more “convenient” date, in this case, “a fixed date in April”. At this point it’s simply an idea that was tabled at a meeting yesterday, and they say it will be debated at a symposium which is supposed to take place after this year’s Carnival. But they should save their symposium-organising money and use it for something else, because the idea is just plain absurd. Here’s why:
1. Messing with history is a bad idea. While the people who came up with this idea might not be aware of this, the thing that ultimately gives out Carnival its uniqueness and value and meaning are its historical roots, which also has to do with the time of year it’s celebrated. Without that we’d be indistinguishable from any other of the other latter-day Carnivals. (Also see Reason #4 below).
2. Whose decision is this to make, anyway? While the “stakeholders” who attended the meeting might represent some of the key players in the festival (ie Pan Trinbago, the National Carnival Bands Association, National Carnival Development Committee), and while the idea is allegedly to be debated, they couldn’t possibly believe they could ever be in a position to make a decision like this. Who owns Carnival? Whose festival is this to move? Who has a bigger stake in Carnival than the people of Trinidad & Tobago? That debate had better be thorough, genuine and completely transparent.
3. The newer aspects of Carnival that this proposal would benefit are of dubious benefit to the nation. I do feel sorry for the steelband movement. The leadership of Pan Trinbago (the organising body for T&T steelband movement) seems to be behind the idea, but they should know that they’re far less likely to benefit from the moving of Carnival than the people behind the numerous Carnival fetes, all-inclusive and otherwise, the leaders of the 6,000-person, $4,000-costume Carnival bands and the producers and performers of cookie-cutter soca music. Carnival in its present incarnation has given us a disposable music form, cheap, overpriced costumes, segregated Carnival bands, encourages misplaced financial priorities and very likely lowers the overall productivity of the nation during the first quarter of every year. And it will continue to do that whether it remains on the two days before Ash Wednesday or is moved to “a fixed date in April”? Short Carnival seasons like this year’s are probably very, very good for this country, as they give us the opportunity to spend a greater portion of the year focused on developing, thinking about and exercising our creativity in other areas (eg creating an education system that actually educates, reducing crime etc).
4. We already own the Carnival niche, it would be extremely foolish to throw it away.With a couple of exceptions, like between 1942 and 1945 (because of World War Two) and 1972, when it was postponed to May because of a polio epidemic, Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival has always taken place on the two days before Ash Wednesday. A pre-lenten Carnival in T&T is an entrenched idea that Carnival visitors keep on their calendars. (I’ll also point Pan Trinbago president Patrick Arnold, quoted in the Trinidad Express article as saying that “the shifting date often created problems for fixtures and other organisational headaches”, to the numerous web sites that list the date of Ash Wednesday for the next million years. He could also ask any religious minister). Now what’s to stop some other country from organising a competing festival on the proposed “fixed date in April”? Moving Carnival would be comparable to an airline giving up a valuable berth at Heathrow airport and a lucrative flight route. And that makes no sense at all.
5. Other places manage their pre-lenten Carnivals just fine. Are we so much dumber than people in New Orleans, Brazil, Venice etc that we can’t figure out a way to make this work?
Brainy and dirty-minded is a lethal combination, as I (being able to lay claim only to the latter) discovered when my friend Judy pounced on the quite innocent Facebook status message I posted yesterday (see image above) and accused me (publicly!) of autodermaphilia.
I truly and honestly believe the body’s largest organ to be a beautiful and marvelous thing, and I’m not alone. The BBC agrees with me, as does the US News and World Report‘s Health Editor, who says, perhaps a bit gender-insensitively, that “man has never made anything better as sensor, shield, and communicator.”
Anthropologist Nina Jablonski praises us as an audience for being, “an exceptional and alert group of primates.” (I will be more exceptional and alert with a bit more coffee.) She invites us to begin her talk by being quite primate and spend twenty seconds touching the skin of someone else in the room. She’s unsurprised when many people don’t participate in this activity - we’ve moved away from this behavior in human society, but it’s incredibly important to our primate ancestors.
Humans encounter the world primarily through our vision, followed by our touch, hearing and, least, from our sense of smell. There’s a huge amount of our brain dedicated to processing touch information. She points out that our skin is quite remarkable - it’s very sensitive, mostly naked, comes in a range of colors, is often sweaty, can be decorated and adorned.
“We gather an enormous amount of information about our environment from our skin,” especially the skin of our hands. Hands are equipped with an amazing range of nerve endings that interpret pain, deep touch, temperature.
So there you have it, Judy. Science says I’m not a pervert, but merely a self-decorating ape.
- That American Airlines (AA) does not suck on every, single level. After delaying my flight out of JFK on Monday (fuel leaking into the a/c of the original aircraft, (unionised?) crew claiming illness as a result) and causing me to miss my connection out of Miami, I received an e-mail this morning from AA customer service apologising abjectly for the screw-up and offering me 5,000 bonus miles. This doesn’t quite make up for the fact that the meal vouchers they gave me could only be used at the hotel where they put me up, and where US$15 covers the cost of a cheeseburger and a cup of coffee, but it’s better than nothing. Now that I have enough miles for a reward ticket, I guess I’ll be forced to break my vow of never flying AA again.
- That there’s another pilgrimage to Mecca besides the Hajj. (Thanks to Amira for this one, or rather to Amira’s mother, who’s Umrah-ing in Mecca as we speak).
I’m hoping the fact that American Airlines left my luggage in Miami last night will net me some sympathy. And be thankful that your dog is probably not the Fake Steve Jobs either.
After this appeared, a few of my crueller friends suggested I should have Delphine’s tongue removed. I had to remind them that she’s just a pothound, after all, and you shouldn’t read too much into her expressions (not to mention, of course, that removing an animal’s tongue is just plain barbarous.)
Looking at the image above, however — the glint in the eyes, the expression of utter disdain — especially in the context of her Garbo-like attitude towards being photographed lately, you do begin to wonder. . . .
Woman: Hi, I’m trying to reach Georgia Popplewell.
GP: This is she.
Woman: I’m calling about an e-mail sent to you by Jane Doe [who, for the record, thinks GP is a bit of an upstart]. Will you be attending X event on Tuesday?
GP: Sorry, but I never received an e-mail from Ms. Doe.
Woman(with considerable attitude): Well, she sent it.
GP(not without a bit of ‘tude herself): Well, that is one of the problems with e-mail, isn’t it. Just because something is sent doesn’t mean it was received. I’m checking my mail now….
GP types “Jane Doe” into the search window of her e-mail client.
GP: Nope. Nothing. In fact, I haven’t received any mail from Ms. Doe in ages.
Woman: Well, it’s on Wednesday. Can you attend?
GP: What’s this event again?
Woman: The official opening of X [the same X that's been in operation for over a year now].
GP: Could you e-mail me the information again? I’ll give you another address.
On the other end of the line GP can discern what she’s almost certain is the sound of pins piercing the fabric skin of the GP-shaped voodoo doll (loaned to the woman by Jane Doe) she’s convinced the woman has on her desk.
GP: Are you still there?
Woman: Er, yes. Let me get a pen.
GP: Why don’t you simply use one of the pins and carve it into the surface of your desk?
Woman: I beg your pardon?
GP: Sorry? Did I say something?
Embellished a bit, perhaps. I’ll leave you to guess which parts are genuine.
Pictured above is one of two (or three, if you count the orange shawl someone handed to me, just like that, in a restaurant last night) delightful gifts I received yesterday.
José Gregorio joins Babe the Blue Ox and others in one of my own personal pantheons — that comprising lovely and unusual gifts given to me by close friends.
Jonathan and I didn’t end up going bobolee-hunting as planned on Good Friday, but during a drive out to Tamana this afternoon I came across the remains of this Good Friday bobolee hanging on a lampost along the main road in Cumuto. The bobolee is an effigy of Jesus’ disciple Judas Iscariot, and its role in life is to have the crap beaten out of it with a stick, hence the reason this one has only his trousers left. This is both to punish Judas for what he did to poor Jesus and also because bobolees are usually also stand-ins for local miscreants (e.g. politicians). As this bobolee has lost his shirt–and as so many people (still) wear cargo pants–it’s difficult to tell whom he was supposed to represent.
In searching for information about bobolees after I mentioned the word on Twitter, my Twitter contact Coty Rosenblath found this 2006 post by Guanaguanare: the laughing gull. And earlier this week, over at the Rights Action Group T&T blog, the Dread posted her own bobolee pic and put out this call:
This Good Friday we’re inviting all communities to dedicate their bobolee to one of the traitors of our national environment. Take your pick and send us a pic of your portrayal of any of the Judas Iscariots who’ve sold out our country for thirty pieces of aluminum.
UPDATE: And this just in via e-mail from Nikipedia, who’s been travelling in Venezuela: “In Venezuela they burn Judas effigies instead of beating them. We saw a big one being constructed on the outskirts of Santa Elena but we missed the burning.” Next time, we hope.
A FURTHER UPDATE: Left on my Flickr page by Luis Carlos from Venezuela: “We burn a Judas too. Always it’s a politic. This year was the minister who prohibited the alcohol for three days.”
This is the sort of thing Vernon would know. What’s the name of the tree the object in the photo was once attached to? It’s a long, flattish pod, possibly green when it’s young, but dark brown when it ages and falls off the tree and dries and curls into this lovely coil. I cannot for the life of me remember what it’s called.
I took this photo last Sunday in Cumuto, with the new camera that Delphine’s not so crazy about. Next time I’ll take a picture of the tree as well. (See more Cumuto photos here).
