Perception and Deception?

(Third times a charm)

Its interesting what you see on the bus sometimes.

It was near midday and the bus was half empty.

About halfway to my destination, the two ladies who had rushed on at the last minute with strollers and who sat near the middle of the bus, rang the bell.

As the bus was lowered and they started to go down the bus aisle to exit at the front, I absentmindedly noticed that in the seat next to where one of the ladies had been sitting was a light scarf.

I got ready to shout something from my perch at the back of the bus when all of a sudden another lady who was sitting across from the vacated seat swiftly got up and sat next to the scarf.

Overpass

I was driving over the Progress bridge/overpass when I saw it.

Car pulled over halfway to the side, half in the curb lane with the hazard lights on. That's sort of weird I thought. And then a tall slim black man , elegantly dressed in a suit stumbled out with a cell-phone to his ears and went to the pavement.

Weird, I thought as I got closer.

And then he stumbled to the edge of the overpass ledge just as I was passing and it dawned on me.It couldn't be right?

Banks

Found this paragraph written but never posted from two years back and I think it relates to this story
(I had promised to keep this to myself cause complaining seems pointless (but this really isnt a complaint), plus as a Bajan at home pointed out to me we 'foreigners' doan know how things duz work in Barbados and duz come wid we foreign thoughts and new-fangled ideas and wanta get vex bout things in Bim when we not actually contributing to Bajan society or in other words 'grin and bear um' or 'shut up and put up'.)

Anyway with that off my chest...........

looka dese wufliss Bajan people doah!

Comin back to dat in a bit.

As a immigrant, living ova in away, wunna know how hard um is to do business wid anyone back in Barbados? Lawd avest mercy!! Dem people down deyso got a knack of mekkin every iota difficult ya hear! An den dey duz complain dat overseas Bajans wun invest and give back to de country.

Ah know wunna gine tell me I been in Canada too long and I get Canadian-ish an faget how we duz do things home and I shud keep quiet (see first paragraph). Well I do know and I don't expect tings home to be like up hayso but cuhdear sometimes wunna duz mek simple tings too too hard ya.

Exhibit A: Consider something seemingly as simple as opening a bank account.

In Toronto, I can walk into a bank wid my lil deposit, my i.d and social insurance number and maybe they may ask for a letter from muh workplace if dey malicious, an in two twos I got three accounts, overdraft protection. a bank card, a line a credit, 6 credit cards, 2 mortgage offers, a toaster, two iPads and the bank manager home number. Thanks Bob, pleasure doing business!


In Bim, well...............

Post-Election

 "They say signs that the end is near, I wonder can I walk a righteous path holding a beer" - Resurrection by Common

(written on Saturday) It's been a difficult week.

I can't help but to look back to 8 years ago this week when president Obama was first elected. All the hopefulness, all the anticipation of change, all the wishful thinking. And while somehow in the back of my mind that euphoria was tempered with an 'oh crap I know they going to shoot him before he gets into office!' anxiety which thankfully didn't come through I still felt like it was a momentous occasion. Something truly wonderful had happened.

A black president!

Didn't think I'd see that in my lifetime.

Flash forward to this week and if the Obama election took us to euphoric heights, this election has had the opposite effect and plunged us into the depths of worry and despair.

Seriously not the place dude

So I'm not exactly anti new technology but I do think that some people take it too far.

And I'm pretty sure I've spoken about this before and tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, not to come off as an old fogey but I really think some folks go a tad far with their need to use their phones for recording and other purposes at the most inopportune time. Its like we've reached this stage where if you don't have a recording or photo of it to show others it didn't happen or the event is somehow invalidated.

Look at the photos showing groups of other persons with cameras and tablets held aloft at some concert or sporting event these days. It appears we have reached a stage where society would rather view an event through a digital lens than through their God given eyeballs.

And then there is the other case where we must be connected 24-7 regardless of where we go. Its like WI-fi is the new umbilical cord in this connected womb we now exist in. To not be connected and fed information, to be unconnected for even a few seconds and be out of the loop is somehow worst than death.

My weekend activities seemed to all validate this notion.

She lives!

Time sure does fly.

The same year that I started this blog, a long time ago in what feels like a galaxy far far away I also moved from a downtown apartment to the suburbs of Toronto. And man I must say it took me a lot of years and three kids to really kind of outgrow the pining for downtown living but that's another story.

As I may have mentioned before, I've been taking the same bus to work since then. Its been an interesting ride and since I basically catch the bus every morning in the same half hour range I feel like I'm come to know a whole bunch of folks by seeing them regularly over the years. But its the bus and its Toronto so you just recognize people but you don't really speak to them.

Whats also interesting is watching the school kids. There are two high schools on my route and its interesting to see the kids come on the bus as Grade 9ers and then grow over the four years of high school.

What can I say I'm a people watcher.

My cou-cou story

"Endorse the cou-cou give me a bigger share" - Dacosta Allamby

I grew up on cou-cou.

Its of course the national dish of Barbados and as a small child I fully embraced it. At one point cou-cou was the only thing my mother could get me to eat without me putting up a fuss. I just loved me some cornmeal cou-cou!

So much so that I would probably have cou-cou no less than 3-4 times per week. This was pre-primary school mind you but you can say that I'm pretty much built on cornmeal. Cou-cou with red herring, cou cou with saltfish, cou-cou with flying fish the national dish, the occasional salmon when someone over in away sent you a few tins, cou-cou with pork gravy or my favorite cou-cou with mackerel in tomato sauce. Loved me some cou-cou!