Protesting on a scale never seen before

 The situation with the government is at an all time boiling over point. Today the Maxi taxi association has made good on their promise to strike - or as they termed it, rest and reflect on the status of their jobs. What they are asking for to me, is so basic...better working conditions. A more comprehensive way to settle their drivers permits as commercial drivers....come on, couldn't the Minister of Transport met with them over the weekend to resolve these things? Instead what the nation saw was our Prime Minister enjoyed reenacting Indian Arrival Day by going to a nearby river with a few unnamed people for a photo op, where she and everyone else were waving the Indian flag. She then let it be known....our Prime Minister does not do taped or real addresses to the nation this time around. She let it be known that she plans to change the indigenous name of our airport to that of our first Indian Prime Minister, Basdeo Panday.

I have not been writing much about what is going on in Trinidad and Tobago because it is a blow by blow, hour by hour situation here. Something is happening all the time! I cannot keep up and I am concerned about my own mental state in all of this, absorbing the foolishness we deal with!

It is so weird! She won the unexpected election. She had campaigned for 'all of the people of the island.' She claimed to love all the citizens and would be fair and honest, supportive and listen to our needs.

None of this has happened.

The maxi-taxi association plan to protest for two more days and they say that they may do even more if the minister does not meet with them and resolve their issues. Then on Friday, the group of people who have stepped aside for a moment for this protest, was also dealing with a 19 days for nineteen bullets....the unlawful killing of Joshua Samaroo. His common law wife, Kaia Sealy who was paralyzed because of the police shooting into their vehicle while Joshua had surrendered by placing his arms outside of the car and raised...she was accused of manslaughter. This enraged the public to activate a response.

Then before that, a little two year old in Tobago was murdered and we still have no idea what happened to his body. People want answers for that.

Nine influencers found lucrative jobs with no real resumes at our Water and Sewerage Authority.

The Housing Development Corporation (HDC) is involved in a questionable procurement plan where the government is telling the nation that two contracts, both billion dollar ones, do not require state funds. However it is state lands. Why give state lands to multi-million dollar developers?

I Show Speed an international Blogger came to Trinidad on a worldwide Caribbean tour and after he left, the Minister of Tourism did an AI poster acting as though he had invited him to the island.

The Ministry of Health may be facing a small pox and tuberculosis outbreak! But no one is saying anything to the public.

The Minister of Finance is never available to speak about still outstanding money's owed to many public servants. 

The Minister of National Security is blaze about anything he must answer when the desperate media try to catch them going into parliament. This includes blowing into a plastic bag and walking off.

When the television stations and radio stations tell us the daily news, no minister is ever able to be reached. No one answers the questions that are asked!

The Minister of Energy keeps telling us that the government shall be meeting with Venezuela's interim?! President, Delcy Rodriguez - this after the Prime Minister went out of her way to insult Ms Rodriguez many very public times. The Prime Minister also has rubbished CARICOM, the body that happily accepts a large quantity of our local products and keeps our economy in the non oil sector, stable.

That's what I can remember off the top of my head for today.

It has been a lot and they have only been in power for one year and a few days! 

navel gazing

 Last weekend I actually said aloud what I have sometimes felt about aging to a friend of mine who brought up his own observations. I said that I sometimes find that I look like a very faint photocopy of myself. It is a statement that makes me smirk as much as it makes me wonder where all the time went? He was saying the usual thing that we used to hear older people saying, which is, I don't feel a day over 30. Lol. 

Bringing this up comes out of nowhere, it is just one of many thoughts that swim through the mind. I feel for this moment like I have stopped and observed the world moving in all of its ways, and I have this moment to test what may be coming next...the subtle ripples that make up what the future is becoming at every nano second. 

It is a miracle to be on the Earth. Suddenly the vision of the entire atlas and the varying peoples and historical moments, architecture...they all vye for attention as I give this thought.

You can look back and consider my family and wonder what they thought and felt as I do the same.

Just wistful.

 There are days that the word that comes to me and stays with purpose is confidence. When I watch a documentary about an Artist or Writer or whomever, when people are having issues that word springs up. It is a message to me too. The world can wring it out of you. So many things distract. So much promise is lost in following down the wrong path. Yet, to dispare is not an option. 

 The weirdness of life sometimes just makes me shake my head. In my efforts to just do my best and to support others, sometimes, despite this, things just go wrong. It is unfair that people focus only on what you didn't do or didn't work out over the thousand of times that things did. Things just turn on a dime. You never really know where you are standing. I am having a birthday in two months and I still don't feel that I have it all together or have great success. However, I am always wistful and the drive is there.

early morning walks

 They are so still and quiet and it is wonderful to get up at half past four and prepare for the morning exercise. The street is absolutely empty and all that I hear is my own footsteps. As I round the bend nearing the savannah, the neighbor has rabbits and the first time that I saw one in the street I nearly laughed. It seemed to come out of nowhere and look like a scene from Alice in Wonderland. Today there were four rabbits in the street at that hour. They are quite large and very inquisitive.

Also today, I was the only one up at that hour. In the past I sometimes see an older lady with a very long chaplet and also two men who are clearly friends who are on the grass before me. I really like walking at that early time, it means that by 6:30 my day has started.

What I have to work on though is the fact that by seven I do get exhausted. I find that I need a catnap...but then, later, I am up to about midnight, sometimes as late as two...and I am beat. As I write this, I realize how ridiculous that is, as I am clearly burning my candle at both ends.

I pushed into exercising again when I went to Stonybrook University last year, and ever since I have continued. I did fall and scrape both of my knees a few months ago and that had me out of commission for about three weeks to a month, and I was super antsy about not being able to go for my walk, but I was able to swim.

Every day I keep pushing. I want to try to do some evenings too. But for now, this is my regimen.

a little bit of this, a little bit of that

A few days ago I thought that I would have completely lost my shit. This year is an extention of 2024 where I had a major situation, a project go all pear shaped. It shifted my views about how I do business and I could not get my head around how badly things turned. Yet, it also gave me so much because of the uniqueness of it.Then, I think I mentioned before a situation that I saw a friend have with another friend of mine where they had some terrible cuss outs! I was stunned! Then, I was even more amazed at how they came back together and there was so much love. I earned from that too. I saw that ugliness can be the manure to make a beautiful garden. This year, another big spotlight mmessage comes my way. It is so funny too because it really is about all of the messaging and storytelling that comes from impressions made from landing in the job that I am in. I think that there is a running narrative about those people you engage with. You come in in the middle of the movie and you start assuming and peicing things together and before you know it,you are making up a whole story about what you think is going on. But guess what? Even if you are absolutely right, what difference does it make sometime?With this last experience what happened didn't really come from like working directly or observing from the sidelines. This was more a presentation where what I was doing that was perfectly appropriate rubbed two people the wrong way. I got a chance to discuss it at that moment, but what I saw was an unravelling of my belief structure where they were concerned. I had assumed for so long that they were so much more and now I know that they know even less, understand so much less in a staggering way. Waw! It was just a testimony for me to realise that we are all just doing our best...don't be an asshole.

trying something on

With certain expectations that do not pan out, the spiral you can go down can make you think that it is a place of residence, not a place of reference as the quote goes.