Ready for mas again!!

I have a confession to make. It’s one I’ve made on this site before, but I’ll make it again for my more recent friends. I love carnival. I love soca. I love jumping in the hot sun. I love glittery costumes. But I’ve never been to Trinidad.

2008 was supposed to be the year. But you know how these things go – elections get in the way, people aren’t sure if they’ll have jobs or leave, hurricanes distract you, the girls you are going with are in too many countries to make the planning easy… so it is only know that we are actually trying to get it sorted. Which is of course late to be doing it. Tribe is sold out. Flights are getting fully booked.

The question is: Is it too late? Should we postpone our dream for another year? Or should we go for it?

I need help! People who have done Trini carnival, let me know! Will we be able to get Tribe costumes through Carnival Junction or somewhere? I’ve looked and it seems that loads of people are looking, and no one is selling. Or should we jump with another band?

2008 or 2009…

Driving

Does anyone else who lives in Kingston play games on their drive to work in the morning? You know the ones – how many times have I nearly been killed this morning? How many police cars have raced past me with their sirens on and only one officer in there? How many window cleaners have I had to tell to leave me alone?

just wondering!

On a different but related note, I was on my way out with a friend on Friday night and we were stopped at the traffic lights near Devon House. A man appears, selling roses at the car window. We wave him on – ‘we are girls who have flowers bought for us, not girls who buy them ourselves’ we tell him. So then a  moment later, he reappears and hands us a rose through the window. This is accompanied by a car horn blowing – apparently the rose was a gift from those men in that car. We smiled, waved and drove off with our rose.

Ah well, at least if blah times get worse, I know that I can at least attract men in a car in the dark!!!

Feeling blah

I’m going to copy from Island Spice - I’m feeling blah. Something about ordinary time, nothing much exciting. Well, actually that’s not completely accurate. The problem is partly that too much is happening… just I don’t know what it is! You see, being a civil servant, a new government means lots of changes. And this time, for my department, a heck of a lot of changes! But the problem is we don’t know what they will be yet. We just know changes are coming. So in the meanwhile, we are sat here in limbo. Waiting for instructions. Waiting to be told what to stop doing, what to continue doing and what to do differently. And we are all wearing our Ministry shirts today as they will be outdated by next week!

Otherwise, also feeling blah as it is bird season. I don’t shoot. I don’t want to shoot. But the man does. And I think it is really bad planning to have bird season starting so close after elections. You know, we gave up our men in election season, allow them to go off and campaign and save the world etc. But we expected to be spoilt afterwards in return. And then they put bird season immediately afterwards. Grrrr!!!! And they don’t even shoot the birds near a nice hotel so I can go and relax while they shoot. They shoot them in backabush locations with no decent hotels nearby.

 I am not impressed.

Changes?

I am in the process of renewing my contract at work at the moment. I wanted to be made permanent, but as a civil servant in the current environment, that wasn’t going to happen today. So a new contract it is. Now one of the problems of a contract is that you don’t get some of the perks you get if you are permanent, and I wanted to be sure exactly what I was entitled to… which resulted in the personnel officer and my boss getting very worried.

Me: So if I am on contract, what is the status re maternity leave?

Personnel: Huh? What?

My Boss: What? Is there something I should know about??

No there is nothing you all should know about. But hey, I’m a female and 30 is approaching soon… I’ve got to know my options!