Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Emperor Park Zoo

We spent the holiday (today is Republic Day) at the Emperor Park Zoo, a small but well-maintained facility in central Port of Spain. Some of the enclosures were pretty cramped for the animals and the zoo itself is small overall, but it made a nice day out for the family. The ocelots were awesome.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

shotgun sub

seriously, don't screw around at Subway . . .

Friday, September 19, 2008

University of West Indies

a few shots of UWI campus: local flavor architecture, northern range mountains in the background and great, sprawling old trees - not a bad place to study

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Trini drivers

this post has been a long time coming, how do I characterize the drivers and roads of Trinidad to someone who's never been here? Imagine the narrowest road you've ever driven on, barely enough room for a horse and cart, deep gutters on either side, potholes and broken pavement . . . just enough space for a cautious driver to maneuver. Now call that road a highway, give it two lanes of traffic in both directions and park cars along either side. Add pedestrians jumping out to cross at every blind corner.
You're beginning to get the picture.
Now, make those drivers reckless and aggressive. Don't get me wrong, we're used to that, we love our NYC taxi drivers and their penny-saving swerves, slices and cutoffs. But add a bit of, for lack of a better description, suicidal stupidity to the mix. Cars that swerve without warning, pull into high speed traffic and brake, hop their lane and aim right towards you with no hope of result except head on collision.
Not enough? Add blinding sun, freak thunderstorms, and a complete absence of traffic control.
Mix and serve . . . you almost have an idea of what driving to the local market for a quick bottle of milk is like. I can honestly say I've never seen worse drivers in my life, absolute white-knuckle lunacy, every day is an adventure.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Pretend it's September 01

The students I'm working with have arrived and not a minute too soon. Grey and I can now attest that the maximum amount of time one can spend on a tropical island without a sense of purpose before going mad is 30 days (hence you're pretending to read this on 9/1). After the initial Woohoo, we're here! No more Brooklyn for a long, long, time. Yay! And, so long subway, you suck and smell like pee in the summer anyway! And we're off to the beach on a Tuesday morning, and we're in the pool and it's mid-day Wednesday - I'm here to report that after all of that will come, huh, so what do you want to do today? Dunno, what do you want to do? It's amazing, at least it amazes me, how quickly that time came. I thought for sure we'd be here months before any kind of malaise set in, and that by then my students would be here and I'd be too busy with them to notice. But it (boredom, ennui, heat paralysis) arrived and as soon as the students started to come in I felt a huge relief that now I could stir myself and begin to work.

This happened once before. In winter 2006 I was in Carriacou researching my mother's side of the family. We were supposed to be there for just under a month and had been anticipating the trip for about two years. Massive mental hype. The actual work consisted of finding surviving relatives from my maternal side and chit-chatting with these octa- and nonagenarians, not especially taxing work and there was plenty of time left over for swimming and exploring the rest of the island. But it turned out that the rest of the island was about the size of Prospect Park with a hill rising in the middle that gave you a scarily water-bound 360 of the rock you were resting on. That's not reassuring to a New Yorker (and guess what, I am a New Yorker, you can't live for eighteen years in a place and not be of it. I've made my peace with that fact in the last few weeks, too).

I'll tell you what happened in Carriacou and what started happening here as well: I decided, quite irrationally, that I wanted to give up writing and academia and become a Producer. I have not a clue what being a producer entails, I can't specify what the heck it is I want to produce, but it always just seems like such a vital, energetic profession, like you're a mover and shaker and you get things done and you have to be at your job by 5:30 a.m., dressed sharp with a blue tooth-thingy and a big cup of Starbucks and multiple people to fetch and carry out your orders. So by the beginning of last week, I was back to wanting to be a producer.

It hasn't been just me, either. About two weeks ago, we're all sprawled in the gallery and Helen Dekker gets up with an incredible sense of purpose, puts on her sandals and asks me to do the buckles, puts on her hat and begins to walk down the front steps. When I ask, 'Hel, where're you going, babe?' She says, 'to a restaurant, to meet some friends.' This is followed the next day by her taking to her bed, blanket drawn up to her chin and announcing, 'Poor Helen Dekker. I have no friends.' Her daycare has righted that situation, and now she's with the big kids, about to get a uniform and having a great time.

And so the students have all arrived. They've started their classes this week and are eager to explore Trinidad and I have so many activities planned for their spare time that hopefully they'll not have the time to be bored. They are quite a bright bunch, probably future doctors and engineers and lawyer and I'd hate to have to be on the telephone with one of their parents explaining why their child came back from Trinidad wanting to be a producer.

Love from all of we.