Has it really been that long...

Since last I blogged? Waayyysss...

Like I said before though.

I was busy...

I have writer's block...

I'm making beads!

I'm on vacation!

I went to Tobago!

So let's start with the first excuse: I was busy.

Well I was and I wasn't.

I do most of my blogging at the office (free DSL nah), and since I was preparing to go on vacay, I really didn't have the time between handing over and all that jazz.

Excuse #2: I have Writer's Block.

And it makes me itch. LOL.

I didn't have anything (not even random) to post.

I find it better to write/post (as I'm doing now) just randomly off the top of my head and see where it takes me.

Writing down topics to post on does not help.

I've been stuck for weeks now on a topic titled "That's So Gheddo"...but it's just NOT happening when I get to the pc.

One of these days though.

Excuse #3: I'm Making Beads!

Well not making beads, but making jewelry/jewellery (however yuh want tuh spell it).

And not even that busy making jewelry because we only got some of our stuff last week I think it was.

I did one of our new designs/products on Tuesday and it looks great! (of course it does, is me...LOL). I may post a sneak peek.

MAY...doh hold yuh breath.

Excuse #4 and #5: I'm on vacation! I went to Tobago!

Well I am. And I did.

I'm now on my 5th day, *YAYYY* with two more (working days) to go. *cry*

A short one, but very much welcomed with all that's going on at the office these days.

My plans to do Christmas cleaning have developed into nothing.

I have no idea what I'm waiting on, cause I hate last minute ting.

So what's next? What's up? What's happening?

I'll save that for a next post. LOL.

7 days since last I blogged...

Let's see...not much going on right now...but plenty going on too.

In 9 days I'm going on vacay (yes again, doh hate!) :D

Also, in 9 days I'll be heading to Tobago to celebrate my 8th year of marriage. *wine*

On the bead front, things not going too smoothly.

We not making any mid-November deadline for launch. So we now looking at a Carnival (I eh know how ah doing dat in between my partying but we'll see) and uniform launch (we getting new uniforms in April 2007).

Have to start some work on a project for Dre. Ah sticking bad.

In other news...I hate my hair colour. I think I'm going back to my red-sugary roots.

That's about it yes.

My creative juices just dried up right now...and this is not a good time fuh that seeing as it's Christmas and all and I have decorating to do and all that. *sigh*

Ah well Christmas around the corner, Carnival right after and then my birthday!

Bishop's Girls Don't Cry

Thanks to MT (a fellow Hilarian) for sending me this article!

BISHOP’S GIRLS DON’T CRY by Attillah Springer
At the end of a love affair, Attillah Springer wonders whether Bishop’s girls can really have tabanca. Blame it on her alma mater .

At the end of the love affair, I did what was expected of me. I made a misery playlist for my iPod, and ate appropriately obscene amounts of dark chocolate. I was, for about a day, having what seemed to me to be a tabanca.

Tabanca: that well known Trinbagonian lost-love syndrome that so often takes a fatal turn. The sickness has identifiable stages. Tabanca: the fresh hurt of lost love.

Tabanctruck: begging for a second chance and possible stalking.

Froufoulou: weight loss or gain, depending on your penchant for George X doubles. And then the final stage: counting lampposts, which speaks for itself, sadly.

But I realised one day, soon after I’d eaten the last of the chocolate, that I didn’t really have the heart to run the whole course of the illness. So I did what no other right-thinking woman should do: I blamed it on my alma mater.

I went to a high school in the middle of Port of Spain, hidden behind a moderately high grey wall similarly severe to the one that surrounds the Royal Gaol on Frederick Street nearby. Behind these walls there is some sort of education going on that surpasses the typical high school subjects. This education creates a peculiar and highly complex organism called the Bishop’s Girl.

Within the hierarchy of Trinidad’s church-run “prestige” schools, competition is a fierce and not-so-pleasant leave-over from colonial days. But this school, from its founding by an Anglican Bishop called Anstey, was really for the growing number of black middle-class Protestant girls who did not necessarily find a best-fit in the nun-run convent schools.

By the time I entered those hallowed halls, I wanted to follow the trail blazed by those outsiders who had gone on to own the world. In the chapel there was a dashiki-wearing mosaic Jesus with an afro, and a priest with a funky beard who gave the kinds of sermons that even the anti-church feminist girls wanted to hear.

But no Bishop’s Girl can tell the moment or the class or the day on which she first learned the lesson that Bishop’s Girls were really put on earth to rule the world. Upon release, the Bishop’s Girl mutates into several other species, including but not limited to: the Bishop’s mafia; the CEO; and the angry black woman who is not just satisfied with complaining loudly. She is also prone to decisive action.

No Bishop’s Girl can really recall the moment when she realised he really was better than everyone else.

But in the pursuit of this sisterhood of success, nobody warned us that men and other less enlightened women might have a problem with that.

“You think you own yourselves,” says my classic Caribbean man friend, giving his analysis of The Problem With Bishop’s Girls. A heated argument ensues, and I am inclined to agree with him that we think we own ourselves, which to us is not a problem. But given the fragile nature of sexual politics in the Caribbean, it’s the kind of situation a lot of men find rather disconcerting.

Of course, it’s not just Caribbean men who don’t quite get it. I find myself wondering if perhaps I should have explained to the mild-mannered European ex-BF who had no clue about the Bishop’s Girl phenomenon that it really wasn’t my fault I was haughty, dismissive, and wholly unmanageable. Which is not to say that I didn’t love him, in a Bishop’s Girl kind of way; that is, on my terms, which I have a right to change as it suits me.

And if the Bishop’s Girl in me dictated how I am in a relationship, it certainly has an influence on how I deal with its demise. Do we get sad or do we get even? Do we use that biting wit to make big men who might have been convinced by the Convent girls that they’re the cat’s pyjamas understand that, really, they’re not.

I mean, is it appropriate behaviour for me to be trying to figure out what I did wrong when clearly the man is the one with the flaws?

But another Bishop’s Girl explained that, in truth, Bishop’s Girls do get tabancas, because we have to settle for, as described by a past principal, two-by-four men. And it is because we know they are unworthy of us that we are prone to hurt.

So until such time as the advent of a Bishop’s Boy who understands high standards and the inherent need to be haughty, Bishop’s Girls are doomed to lives of settling for less-than-perfect men, and the disappointments that come with knowing that no one is really worthy.

Maybe I should just buy myself a lifetime supply of dark chocolate.

http://www.meppublishers.com/online/caribbean-beat/current_issue/index.php?id=cb82-2-96

Volunteer

For those of you who’ve been living under a rock and or couldn’t be bothered, the Cricket World Cup 2007 is being hosted in the Caribbean.YES! Right here!!

I won’t get into the whole-package-bidding-sunset-application and the related drama though. Suffice to say dat nuttin cyar happen here without a lil bachannal.

But on with the story…

So one day in a taxi on meh way to St. James, ah hear Paul Keens Douglas on de radio talking bout volunteering duh de Cricket World Cup. Ah say eh heh?
Next day (or it may have actually been a few weeks later) yuh girl log on to http://www.cricketworldcup.com/ and enter up she info and ting, hit submit and get back her confirmation email. Niceness.

Couple days after dat (might have been a week), I got a call that I had an interview on Saturday 28th October at 2:15pm, WICB box. Niceness self!

So...on Saturday evening ah reach down (or rather up) in de people dem place, filled out a form (yuh name, yuh address. areas yuh interested in, uniform size,e which games yuh want tuh work etc.) and sat down to wait for my interview.

Met with Ms. Sybil Jack-Valentine (nice lady) and got the usual tell me about yourself (I does never know how tuh answer dat question), ask me what I knew about cricket, if I understood you wouldn’t get paid (apparently some people had asked how much you would be paid as a volunteer) blah blah, that kinda thing.

I left the interview feeling pretty okay. They’re supposed to contact the successful applicants during the next two weeks.

So I’m keeping my fingers crossed...wish me luck! *crosses fingers*

Before and After...

Yes I erased my face.

Yuh know how I feel about this whole internet thing. LOL.

Even though I guess anyone who knows me would recognise me. *sigh*

It's a no win situation.

The real big floppy afro hair pics still waiting to be uploaded though.