June 22, 2008 at 16:10 · Filed under Trinidad & Tobago by sinistra
There is much about the local media that raises my blood pressure, but today’s feature in the Sunday Express on the origin of the word ‘badjohn’ is a beautifully-written exception.
I’ll cite only the beginning, but the piece - written by Kim Johnson - is worth reading in its entirety:
Of the countless jailbirds to tread this island, none has cast a longer shadow than John rcher, who set the local, probably the regional, and - who knows? - maybe even a world record with 19 criminal convictions, and whose very name would come to mean a ruffian and a bully.
—
This evening, Trinidad & Tobago will play Bermuda in a do-or-die qualifier for the 2010 World Cup. I will not comment here on the heartbreaking state of Trinbagonian football, but I will comment on Brent Sancho’s Q&A with the Express.
Which is to say, Brent Sancho turns me into a giggling school girl. No joke.
Express question: biggest turn-on in a woman?
Sancho: Nice long legs!
Me: Aha! I have great legs!
Express: Biggest turn-off?
Sancho: Smoking
Me: Woohoo! Don’t smoke!
Express: Best book ever read?
Sancho: The long walk to freedom, Nelson Mandela
Me: OMG, he reads? FTW!
Express: must visit before you die?
Sancho: Japan
Me: Dude! We were clearly meant to be.
Etc. Tsk.
—
Things are not going according to plan, where plan = move back to Trinidad, do MSc at UWI, sort country out. Not necessarily in that order.
Moving back to Trinidad is harder than I thought it would be, because I’m in housing limbo, the work about which I am most passionate demands that I be either in New York or London and UWI hasn’t even bothered to let me know whether I’ve been accepted into my hoped-for program.
That, and I’ve been here almost two months and have totally failed to engage with the country - I’m still working full time for my overseas employer, I’m not doing much any liming and I’ve switched from behaving like I’m moving here to acting like this is an extended holiday.
Except it’s not so much a vacation as an exercise in daily frustration.
So it go. As may I.
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June 18, 2008 at 22:27 · Filed under Trinidad & Tobago by sinistra
I'm always fascinated (and sometimes irked) by outsiders' perceptions of Trinidad and Tobago. In this video, which I rediscovered while trawling through my inbox, Andrew Zimmern chronicles his encounters with dasheen, pig tail, callaloo and "baconshark".
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June 13, 2008 at 0:19 · Filed under Media, Trinidad & Tobago by sinistra
For the sake of my blood pressure, I try not to read the local newspapers. This is difficult, given my obsession with news and media and my day job as a reporter, and more often than not I succumb.
And each time I pick up a copy of the Trinidad Express, or the Guardian, or the Newsday, I am disappointed, embarrassed, infuriated by the spelling and grammar mistakes, the obvious lack of editing, the flagrant plagiarism and copyright infringement, the errors and the inaccuracies.
Which brings me to the Guardian’s redesign. Aesthetically, the new design is a significant step up from the monochromatic drabness of the paper’s previous incarnation. But the changes are all superficial - in terms of content, it’s business as usual.
Take this gem from the editorial on Tuesday June 10 hyping the redesign:
“…readers will notice the introduction of new typography (called fonts) which should make the reading experience more enjoyable.”
New typography called fonts eh? You couldn’t make it up. But this is a minor quibble, compared with the delicious irony of an error in a story printed just above a blurb outlining the paper’s corrections policy on page A3.
(And now that I know the Guardian does have a policy of correcting “significant errors as soon as possible”, I intend to keep them informed of the many mistakes that litter their pages. I will report back on how that goes, so watch this space.)
The Media Watch blog also picked up on the error, noting:
On page A3 there’s an interesting story about a young man who appeared in court charged with turning off a computer in the Register General Department.
And would you believe directly below that story is a section called Getting It Right, which says “It is the Guardian’s policy to correct significant errors as soon as possible.”
Directly below.
You might say that was not a significant error since the writer of the story really just meant to say Registrar General’s Department…
There were some errors of transposition - is the name of gentleman referred to in the story “Man left to die on hospital bed” (story by Radhica Sookraj, photo by Rishi Ragoonath) Anthony Atlo or Anthony Alto?
And quite a lot of editorialising. Michelle Loubon’s report on a promoter “fuming” over the $200,000 he is being asked to pay to rent the Jean Pierre Complex for a Learie Joseph concert provides one example of this widespread practice: “[Glasgow] flatly refused to pay the exorbitant price.” (emphasis mine)
You may think $200,000 is exorbinant, Ms Loubon, but no one asked for your opinion. This is a news story, not an editorial.
And of course, my favourite bug bear, an absolute outbreak of pieces without bylines. Media Watch highlighed two of the more pernicious examples:
On page B34 there’s a story on sleep titled ‘How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?’. We thought it looked familiar, but there was no byline in the Guardian so we searched the net and found it - the same story we read last week at Time.com.
The story on page C16 on hearing loss also looked familiar. Ah yes. We read it on the BBC website on Monday. They copied down to the picture of the ear.
Come on editor, where is the attribution? Why can’t you stick in somewhere in the story where it was copied wholesale from? This is not the first time you’ve done this and it’s not a habit you should be happily repeating. What about copyright issues?
None of the financial market reports had bylines either, while the oil report on A11 was lifted - without attribution, of course - from a Reuters story. Separately, in the salmon-coloured Business Guardian, the Commentary on page 26 - “Apple to unveil faster IPhone [sic]” showed either a complete lack of news judgement, or a studied laziness on behalf of the editors.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Guardian, Apple unveiled a faster iPhone on Monday. This Bloomberg story, to which you devoted a whole page and an ad for West Indies Stockbrokers, is four days old. Four days. Please, get out from under that rock and sort your paper out.
Moving on.
Then there’s the blurb in the classifieds section, which blithely states: “you can place your ad by phone any pay by credit card.”
I presume they meant “and pay”, but you just never know.
And someone tell Bobie-Lee Dixon that it is possible to write an interview-based feature without fawning over one’s subject (in this case, Diane “Radical Designs” Hunt). And that “fashionist” is not a word.
But I digress. Here’s Dixon on Hunt:
Even in her “dress down mode” Hunt seems well colour coordinated with a look that just says, “hey I know my fashion,” and indeed she does.
With a winning smile across her face Hunt said her dream and aspiration is to make a serious contribution to fashion in helping to organise the industry and to make it more viable
And what is with the aversion to “said”? It’s a good word. A simple word. And it avoids having to write things like this:
Hunt also gave a breakdown of the different types of fashions that exists. “People only think of fashion as the designer,” she articulated.
I will not, for the sake of my aforementioned bloodpressure, comment on the sheer wrong-ness of “different types of fashions that exists.”
Sigh.
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May 23, 2008 at 0:02 · Filed under Rights & Freedoms by sinistra
Under Article 8 (18/1) of the Immigration Act, homosexual men and women are not allowed to enter the country. Section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act 1986 criminalises “buggery”. This Section provides a penalty of up to life imprisonment, if committed on a minor; up to 10 years’ imprisonment if committed on an adult (18 years) by another adult; up to 5 years’ imprisonment if committed by a minor on an adult. Section 16, relating to “serious indecency”, provides a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment for homosexual acts between men and between women.
This is one of those topics that I have long sought to write about and never quite succeeded. I have drafts saved on this very subject dating back to 2002. What’s changed? Very little, and therein lies the rub.
Read the rest of this entry »
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May 11, 2008 at 10:22 · Filed under Trinidad & Tobago by sinistra
“Seriously?”
That word, that exclamation, that question-almost-rhetorical, defines my reaction to the Trinidad I have witnessed over the past two weeks.
Women wearing knee-high leather boots on a sweltering hot day? Seriously? A Maserati roaring past on the highway? Seriously? Seven dollars for a loaf of bread? Eight dollars for chewing gum? Seriously?
And so on, and so forth.
We are trying so hard to be Miami, London, New York - any where but here, and everyone but ourselves.
But these are trappings only, because those leather boots must trod garbage-strewn streets and that Maserati must contend with potholes aplenty.
And I - don’t quite know how I feel about this. Incredulity prevails.
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April 17, 2008 at 16:41 · Filed under Trinidad & Tobago by sinistra
In ten days I will be moving back to Trinidad for at least three months, and probably quite a lot longer.
I am totally unprepared.
First, the basics. I won’t have an apartment of my own (and will be living with one parent or another, which is a regression on all sorts of levels). I won’t have have a car (and since I never quite mastered the art of Trinidadian public transportation, this is a scene). I won’t have reliable access to a high-speed internet connection (which I need for work to survive).
If I were moving to London, to New York, even to Hong Kong - I would know what to do. I’d be able to find an apartment with just a bit of legwork, a couple of phone calls and the good old interweb. I wouldn’t need - or want - a car, because I could avail myself of trains, trams, buses, ferries or taxis. Broadband would be a fact of life, not an expensive and hard-to-find luxury.
I would know how things worked - bills, taxes, banking. And if I didn’t know, I could find out - with a bit of legwork, a couple of phone calls and the good old interweb. I wouldn’t need to “know someone on the inside”. I wouldn’t need to slip a crisp bill or two to a surly public servant in order to get my driver’s license renewed without enduring three days of lining up.
Eventually, of course, I will figure all of this out. And learn to live with it. The problem, at this point, is that I wish I didn’t have to.
Yes, I am spoilt. I am one of those people. But there is no economic reason for Trinidad’s infrastructure to be in such total disrepair. For public services to be so inefficient. For the private sector to be so reluctant to embrace the fundamentals of customer service.
For us to be stuck in a third world way of doing things even as we adopt all the first world trappings - flashy cars, expensive restaurants, wine bars, and soaring, soul-less skyscrapers.
We need to forget Vision 2020. We need vision right now.
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April 3, 2008 at 22:45 · Filed under Trinidad & Tobago by sinistra
“Dude, you hear how much Curepe doubles is cost these days? Is all kinda $4, $5 people paying for one doubles.”
I don’t know if I can afford to live in Trinidad - and by that I mean, I don’t know if I will be able to afford the same standard of living to which I have grown accustomed after six years overseas.
The extent of the food price inflation is shocking, and I’m not just talking about the fact that $1 will only get you two pholourie these days.
Every time I go home I marvel at the rising cost of staples like bread, milk, chicken, vegetables.
How do people live? How is it that we, as a nation, seem to be able to absorb these price shocks without so much as batting an eyelid or giving up our weekly forays to Zen, Space, insert-name-of-trendy-club-here?
How do we afford all those cars on the road? How do we afford to pay rents that are increasingly being quoted in US dollars?
I don’t understand it. Explanations welcome.
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March 21, 2008 at 13:01 · Filed under Media, Trinidad & Tobago by sinistra
Trinidadian newspapers infuriate me.
I’ve already written at length about their lack of a systematic corrections policy, and the superficiality of much of our reporting; today’s bugbear is their casual approach to bylines.
Read the rest of this entry »
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March 4, 2008 at 23:51 · Filed under Media, Political Animal, Rights & Freedoms, Trinidad & Tobago by sinistra
Inquiring minds want to know:
1 - What are the economics of the proposed government-sponsored, Caribbean Airlines corporate/executive jet service?
2 - What are the current arrangements for government travel? Where do ministers et al go that requires the use of a jet leased from Guardian Holdings? How much does that arrangement cost? Why is it preferred to flying commercial services, either local or international?
3 - From Ria Tait’s Trinidad Express article on March 4 2008: “On allegations by Opposition Chief Whip Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj that CA received $350 million from the Government for the venture before Cabinet held discussions on the proposal last Thursday, Lok Jack said Caribbean Airlines did get money because “we had to begin negotiations and make downpayments”.” Caribbean Airlines had to make downpayments on an aircraft that hadn’t even been approved yet? Really?
4 - From the same article: “[Lok Jack] declined to say exactly how much money Government advanced to the airline or how much the service was estimated to cost on a monthly basis, saying that the airline was in a competitive situation.” Is anyone looking into this? We have a right to know how much our government is spending on this. And with whom, exactly, is CA “in a competitive situation” in the business of providing private jet travel to the government?
4 - Ibid: “Lok Jack said…the Government was “very interested” in being able to go on transatlantic trips and to travel African countries and therefore CA chose an aircraft which had the range to make such flights.” Why the focus on African countries? How much does a long-haul flight from Trinidad to Lagos (say) cost, in terms of fuel and wages for the pilots, etc? Are there no commercial alternatives?
5 - Ibid, but jumping around a bit: “[Lok Jack] confirmed statements in a Caribbean Airlines press release that Government would be underwriting the cost of the venture, eliminating “the commercial risk” to Caribbean Airlines.” Who owns Caribbean Airlines, exactly? What is the equity structure?
6 - In Juhel Browne’s Trinidad Express article on March 2 2008, Prime Minister Manning says a Caribbean Airlines jet service would be a cheaper air travel option for the State: “Right now, when some of us, when the Prime Minister travels in the region now, we do so by contracted private jet services. It costs a lot of money,” Manning said. Contracted jet services for regional jet travel? Seriously? Exactly how much is a lot of money? And again, why are commercial alternatives rejected?
7 - Who will have use of the services? Government only? Friends, family members, well-wishers? The Opposition? At what cost? Who pays what?
The relevant company insiders are fairly high-profile types who should be reasonably easy to track down. I’m tempted to make some calls.
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February 23, 2008 at 14:29 · Filed under Media, Trinidad & Tobago by sinistra
There are many, many things about Trinbagonian media in general, and our newspapers in particular, that make me want to pull my hair out.
I am continually bemused by our haphazard approach to errors and corrections, for instance.
But it is our apparent lack of reporters who actually understand business, finance, law and (the non bacchanalist aspects of) politics that is most worrying.
Read the rest of this entry »
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