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.
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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.
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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.
