Supermarket madness

Dear Mr Supermarket owner

I understand that ya duz mek nuff money when the holidays arrive cause certain people like dem duz only shop when Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas arrive but I got some advice for ya.

We your loyal customers dat duz shop week after week in ya store doan really like all the hustle an bustle come holiday time. I mean whichpart these other people duz be all year round? Dem doan cook except on special occasions? Is only KFC and Mcdonalds dem buying all year round fa true? Well nuh wonder summuch diabetes and obesity run this place nuh.

Anyways ah have two suggestions for ya. The first one is to try an have some sort of video or instructional pamphlet for these one time shoppers on using a shopping trolley. Lawd ave mercy, the place already pack but people doan know ya cant park off ya shopping trolley in de midle a people aisle an go browsing all bout the place causing all sorta aisle block.

And be familiar with the size a ya trolley. No miss lady dat trolley not going to fit in dat tight space and please watch where ya going cause muh corns cant tek anudda running over so soon after the last one. And dont be turning dem corners a de supermarket aisls like ya going to the indy 500 eidda.

The second suggestion is I feel ya need to reward the loyal customers like me that duz shop at ya week after week. So I suggest ya come up wid some sorta shopping loyalty or shopping priority fa we. Give we bigger carts or express lanes or some sorta preference to these newbies cause is we weekly business that duz keep you going from holiday to holiday ya know. If ya had to wait on Christmas, Easter and thansgiving allya goods wud be in deyso spoiling an ya wud be gine outta business quick quick.

Anyway happy Christmas everyone.

Shoot em up

Seems like every few months there is some new mass shooting in the U.S and the stories get more and more tragic.

I really haven't followed the latest Newtown shooting story as in depth as some of the other past ones. Maybe its a bit like I'm shocked but somehow not really surprised anymore because it seems like no where is safe these days anywhere.

How to lose a sale

Sorry I been away so long mi friends. Life just overwhelming at the moment. But anyways.......

Today is mi birthday. So I took the day off from work with the wife and we relaxing although I surprisingly end up doing nuff nuff wuk round the house but I still get in some relaxing.

In the early afternoon now we decide we going to the mall. Now I going readily admit I cant really shop with the wife. I duz bring she along for expertise sometimes when I shopping but I is a man dat duz shop real fast and can do the entire mall while she still in one aisle of the same store.

Anyway  we gone in a toy store and she looking for gifts. I look round twice and ready to leave and she in there tekkin she time. So I had wanted to go look for some other gifts and she tell me go ahead an we would meet back.

So I went and do my thing still ain't see she an then start roaming the mall. Now as I walk past this one cosmetic store, a young lady rush up to me and tell me smell some fragrance or the other and then she invite me in the store. I ain't got nuttin more to do so why now.

She then proceed to lay it on thick about such an such a product and how great it is and how it would be such a wonderful gift for the woman in my life. Then she hit me with the price and I was like ummm yea but the product nice an all but this is all ya duz get fa that price?

So all along she smiling up in mi face and then she try now wid she tricky self telling me she got a special deal for me an she wud lop off about 20% of the price. So I there contemplating and I tell she well looka is my birthday today you going have to give me a special extra discount.

Now the woman look pun mi an ask me how old I is. I tell she my age an hear the woman "oh you is the same age as my father."

New Math

One of the issues when you been blogging long long long like me an ya getting older wid each passing day is that ya tend to forget whether you wrote about a particular subject or not. That is why I repeat myself about all the people at TIFF the other day and ah not sure whether I repeating myself or not but we was talking about this yesterday so here goes.

Lemma see how to start this doah?

As time goes on, it sees like is more an more information to absorb an remember. Doan let me tell allya bout the what feels like 50 or so passwords I duz got to remember for computer and bank and work and almost everything under the sun. An I also doan know if wunnah notice it but the pickney these days seem smarter and more brazen than we were in the days of yesteryear. Dem born wid wii and playstation an touchscreen, duz jump out de womb wid an ipad attached to dem hand, an can operate computer better than some a we old fogies who grow up pushing old bicycle tires roun de road, pitching marbles and playing marble cricket (actually mi never play marble cricket but the old people always used to talk bout it so I mention it) and board games.

Ah mean all a dem now accustom to touch screen computer an ting an duz be shocked when things not touch screen but when we was little the only thing wud happen when ya touch the screen is ya might get a lil static shock. Ah lie?

I see my son learning things about science: recycling, types of clouds and water cycle, in first grade, that mi neva learn til musse mi was a big pickney in high school. But that is what it is now, everything fast fast fast cause is more info to absorb in de same or a shorter space a time. Wont be surprised if dem doing college level tings by thee time he reach third grade.

Tiger style

A man who was seriously injured after jumping into a tiger enclosure at New York's Bronx Zoo has been charged with criminal trespassing.

David Villalobos is being treated in hospital for bites on his arms, legs, shoulders and back, as well as a broken arm, leg and pelvis and a collapsed lung after leaping from a monorail train into the den of a 180kg tiger last week.
The 25-year-old, whose condition was described as stable, has been charged after a complaint from the zoo and admitting to police that he deliberately jumped into the enclosure – without fear - because he wanted to "be one with the tiger".

But imagine this eediot though!

TIFF

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has been going on for the past two weeks. Now while I'm sure its a boon for the City economically and culturally, I am really happy that it finished on Saturday so I can get my sidewalks back.

I mean I have had to navigate the King St sidewalks near the Bell Lighthouse, the headquarters of TIFF, on my way to the subway station on evenings and let me tell you it hasn't been easy.

Bolt again

Big up Usain on another sprint double.

Today I faced a bit of a dilemna. No flash or whatever on mi work computer so I couldnt watch the 200m finals at my desk. Luckily in roaming I found the Olympic tvs in Metro hall and came up with a plan. So see mi at 330 leaving the office to rush over to Metro Hall to get a good seat to watch Usain. Work pun pause!

Twits

Ok will make this short (or try to).

The Olympics are on. Interestingly enough for those who have been following this blog since its inception you would have known that it was the 2004 Olympics which first got me into the Blogsphere but thats not what I wish to speak on.

No, I want to speak on this Gabby Douglas controversy. Who is Gabby Douglas you may be asking? Well she is the African American young lady who just won the All round gymnastics individual gold medal. Congrats to her!

Summer of the Gun part deux

Knew I'd have posted about Toronto's crazy gun violence a few years ago. Just found it here.

Well 7 years later it appears that we are experiencing another summer of the gun. Last Monday, 19 or more people got shot here in Scarborough at a blocko on Danzig street including a 2 year old kid. A 14 year old girl and 23 year old man were both killed. Both innocent bystanders it appears.


Of course as is typical somehow the Mayor and the Conservative government found a way to blame it on immigrants and started this whole silly discourse on exiling or deporting gangsters when mind you no one has actually claimed or been able to prove that the shooters were immigrants.

But this seems to be the typical play worldwide so why be surprised. Seems like no one is willing to step up and deal with the facts to be honest. All we get is a lot of rhetoric on how safe the city is which may be somewhat true but in light of events like this one and the shooting at the Eaton Centre about two months ago and the execution style murder on College street last month one really has to take into consideration how safe the actual denizens of this city feel.Which at this moment is not so much.

Its funny though some of the same things I said 7 years ago still apply today. I just feel like we've really done nothing in the interim to deal with gun crimes and the gangstas are getting more brazen and prolific in their shootings and a lot less accurate at hitting their real targets. Its enough to make one want to stay home or buy a bullet proof vest.

Fruity

I probably shouldn't be listening in to people's conversations but sometimes they are so funny.

Like yesterday while browsing in a store, I heard this customer and one of the staff chatting about their dislike of fruit. Apparently both of them have a hard time adding fruit to their diet. Which fruit? Any fruit apparently.

They both preferred fruit juice to fruit.
So instead of extolling the benefits of fruit they were just going on about apples and mangoes like they were some sort of unnatural alien concoctions.   Or like medicine that they had to force themselves to ingest at some point during the day cause I got the impression that on some level they still knew that fruit were good for you.

The conversation which I was listening to while trying not to turn around laughing was pretty funny What got me though was when one made the comment: "Yea I just cant get into fruit. Something about the juiciness just weirds me out." 

Help

So a brother takes a little hiatus from Blogger and comes back to find they throw out baby with bath water and he cant find his way around the new updated Blogger console which from my first glimpse looks dreadfully spartan and uninviting.

Help!

Hmm maybe I should take this time to transfer over to WordPress instead of having to deal with maco google asking me for phone number and connecting my blog to google etc etc. When did everything get to be so intrusive? Cant a brother just have a little privacy on his public blog? (catch the irony there did we?)

GroundHog day

I absolutely love the movie Groundhog day but ya know I never understand this foolishness about the groundhog seeing his shadow or not and that determining whether winter lasting long or short.

Firss ting, so lemma get this straight if he see he shadow that mean is more winter in we tail but if he doan see he shadow then we good for early spring? Wha dat doan mek nuh sorta sense to me! Who decide on that order a tings and not the odda way around cause I wudda figure if I see my shadow um overcast so chance a rain so rain mean spring so spring coming but dey have it de odda way.

Skin sweet

Mosquitoes love me!

I mean mosquitoes love me more than everybody else in my household which can be literally a real pain when you're in Barbados being eaten alive by dem tings.

I remember growing up I stopped wearing any sort of short pants at home at some stage of life because of the threat of being eaten alive. It got to the point that unless you see me at the beach you would never see my legs at all. People start say I have skinny legs and that's why I don't show them or that I have robot legs. They dont understand how if I even show pieca ankle the mosquitoes duz mek mi miserable.

And now everytime I go back home for a visit as soon as I hit the door the mosquitoes does greet me with bites galore. It don't even matter how much flitting or spraying we do they duz come back looking for me. My mudda say is cause my skin sweet. I ain't know if that true but I do know the mosquitoes like to pick pun me bad bad bad.

And now they don't let no long pants stop them ya know, they move onto my arms, my neck, my ears man one even bite me on mi head top. Lawd you know what mosquito bite feel like on ya scalp? Is not easy ya know. 
Boy, it get so bad I considering putting on a burka and hijab to deal with these things.

Anyway I let them get they little couple of weeks of biting cause the more I protest it just seem like the more they annoy me.

CBC Barbados

“Wha kinda Chinee foolishness this is CBC showing tonight? Ya cann even undastan wha duh saying. Chupse!”

This has been bugging me for a while.

Having been away from living in Barbados for so long, for me it’s always difficult to judge various bajan institutions without the added bias of my years living abroad somehow working its way into my analysis.

I can sometimes find myself criticizing stuff because its not like what I have grown accustomed to, living in a so-called first world country, which really isn’t fair to Barbados. So given that I know that I have a bias I usually keep most of my thoughts to myself and grit and bear it through terrible customer service or try not to comment on some of the convoluted bureaucratic situations I have found myself in in Barbados and just chalk it up to well this is how it is in Barbados.

However coming home at least once or so every year or two over the past 20 years (and recently I think I’ve made about 7 trips in 3 ½ years now) and watching a certain institution deteriorate I believe in all honesty and without bias I can say that the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) TV 8 station is absolutely terrible.