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!

Somehow this post always makes me happier at Christmas. This will be my 3rd or 4th time re-posting it since 2004 lol

de de do do doo doo doo

I took the role of lead singer
Parang soca in Arima
Fans heard of my parang band so thousands flocked the grandstand
Ne-ville Cook was the mc
When he intro-duced me
People jumping like carnival
To my rendition of serenal??

Alpacata alpacata
Who no rampu no paratha
Maria Maria Maria!
Me choroson
From Port o Spain to Faisabad everybody know Jdid mad
Maria Maria Maria
Me choroson

Was listening to the calypsonian Crazy sing some parang yesterday (I still cant decipher those words even though I've heard this song a million times) trying to get myself into the real Christmas spirit. Didn't work lol. Might be too late for me but give me the old time parang, a Christmas ham cutter and

"a gallon a rum, a gallon a rum, all I want is a gallon a rum
..........ya bringing ya family ta eat me out
and then in January cant even buy a stoute".

So my selector rewind cause, ol time Christmas come back again if not for real at least in my memories. For me it was all about the music, the food and the Christmas program at the Church.

Christmas back then to me was more that the one day. As a child there was so much anticipation of the actual Christmas day that sometimes when it arrived it was a bit anticlimactic.

But leading up to that actual day. Oh wow! Fun and excitement cann dun!

In Barbados, once Independence day was finished and December 1st hit, bram! Christmas music would be pounding down non-stop on our local stations; CBC, VOB and Reddifusion. Big tunes like this spouge one:

wha ya gonna gi me fa Christmas I need something from you
give me something for Christmas boy and I'll give you something too

and this one in parang

Hurray hurray hurrah!
Hurrah hurrah dey say!
Our savior was born today
It was through his light
While a shepherds (plight)??
for they just couldn’t believe dere eyes
And when he come a man
Ya kno dem non-christian, get tagetha an pound nails in he hand
And on the third day he rose again
So ya see he shed his blood fa we!

You just couldn't resist the Christmas fever with sweet music like that. It definitely put you in the proper frame of mind for the season. It was an eccletic mix, reggae, soca, gospel, parang, spouge, r n b every music under the sun. From Felic Navidad (Prospero ano y Felicidad) to Good King Wensalas. Big tune dat! Merrymen, Draytons Two, Singing Francine, Nat King Cole, Crazy, Michael Jackson, Jacob Killa Milla artists of all genres. Music coming from every radio in the neighborhood, transistor, radiogram, stereo, every store speaker downtown, everywhere. Just total immersion in Christmas music.

Around neighborhood in Barbados everybody was busy painting both the inside and outside of their house and putting up new curtains, making the place look pretty, pretty, pretty just trying to get things looking special for that one day. Moving the furniture around and choosing some nice bright colors for the inside and outside walls. All like now, I would have paint in my hair, on my hands, on my skin and be trying to use the turpentine to wipe it off but just ending up with my skin looking dry and ashy and smelling of turpentine. Boy I do so much painting as a yout helping my father that I was a painting pro before I reach 12.

Verandas and outside walls being painted in bright colors as everyone tries to out do their neighbor in the painting arena. If one man gone yellow another one gone blue or green with brown trim or cream with aqua marine trim or something so. Every color under the sun and everybody turn superstar painter like dem middle name is Picasso.

Santa Clause, do you ever come to the ghetto (ghettoe-oo!)
Santa Clause, do you ever wonder why we suffer so
Santa Clause, When will you come to the ghetto (ghettoe-oo!)
Santa Clause, we would love to see how those reindeers go.
We aint gonna fuss,
We aint gonna fight,
But where are the presents that you brought for us.

The curtains made from fabric that you bought down by Swan Street or Kirpilani or from Miss Ram or that you 'truss' from the "coolie man" in the Suzuki van (that rhymes) who would then have hell to get certain folks to pay. When January came, anytime there was a knock on the door or window you would see certain houses get real real quiet instantaneously and their inhabitants peeping from behind the said same curtains they "truss" to see if it was the coolie man coming for his money.

Sorry boss, all the money dash way on Christmas and they cant afford to pay even a little installment. So Coolie man standing up in the hot sun with the van motor running, looking screw screw and every passerby he asking 'wait you see mistress so n so dat live hayso? You know wha part she gone?" And everybody just responding in the negative cause them know too well that Miss so n so hiding behind the curtains but they wont say so cause well when is them turn to truss from the coolie man they going do the said same thing. So poor coolie man can only stand and knock and get agitated and then go along about his business and check back the next week when the whole scenario played out one more time.

But don't feel too bad for him ya kno! Yes boy fa now they had the coolie man fooled but in the long run they still paid him and he still made his nice lil profit so that by next year no more Suzuki van but he had a little small store in Swan Street all bought and paid for from those little ends of cloth he had sold that Christmas. Cause you could only run from the coolie man so long before ya had to pay him because people would get 'fraid that he put the steel donkey pun them doah!

And lets not talk about the curtain fabric. All sort of designs, all sort of bright pretty pretty cloth which the women would sit with at night in the weeks before Christmas and slowly turn into curtains for the windows and doors. They either worked by hand, with a needle and thimble, getting the youngsters with sharper eyesight to thread the needle as the night got darker or using one of those old time clunky heavy duty Springer sewing machines. Is serious iron them things made out of boy! Solid solid solid and well made to last a lifetime.

Of course in making the curtain they had to match the colors of the house or sometimes the house colors would be chosen after the curtain colors. I aint sure which one led and which followed but you couldn't have a new paint job without new matching curtains cause that would look like ya aint got no style or no money and no one wanted anyone to believe either one of those.

Even if the curtains were finished a week or two before Christmas you would wait till Christmas eve or a day or two before Christmas to get up on the chair and put them up. So Christmas eve all you would hear is the rapping of hammers hitting nail heads, pounding out a distinctive Christmas melody as those new curtains went up at every house. It was a Christmas tradition cause those curtains had to look bright and new for the Christmas morning.

(baron version)
Mumma mumma
Would you like to join your sonnie
I am over here happy in this cold cold country
Darling for this Christmas
I hope everything is happy
come and join the chorus cause we will be having a partyMeanwhile the fruit for the Great Cake was steeping in rum, brandy, and wine since long time gone in September or even before that. Cherries, Raisins, Currents, mixed peel, that you had to help grind up in one of those old fashion hand mixers with the handle that you turned, all seeping up the alcohol. I tell ya, If ya eat two pieces of that cake when it dun, ya best not be driving anywhere lest the policeman ketch ya..............Matter a fact ya eat two pieces of that cake ya gine sleep cause that thing potent after all the fruit absorb all that liquor.

Dem church sisters may not touch a drop of alcohol but give them pieca great cake and I guarantee that their blood alcohol level on par with the fella that been hitting the bottle up by the corner rum shop since morning. This cake serious ya know! If it was North America a yout would have to show ID to get pieca cake.

And that cake taste real nice. Almost as nice as the ham when you cut off three slice and eat wid two sodabix or put it in a fresh salt bread and add a lil pepper sauce. Something bout a Christmas hamcutter that just taste better than any other sandwich in the world back then.

Everything nice, nice and in abundance. Nice n Nuff!

Sing we Noel, Calypso Noel
Sing we Noel, sing sing sing sing
Sing we Noel, calypso Noel
sing we Noel sing

A few days before Christmas my mom would give me a whole heap of green peas to shell. See me sitting at the dining room table feet dangling, bag of peas bigger than young Jdid. On one side two big bags full of pea husks, worms and and the occasional pea chink, the discards from the process and on the other side about a half a tray of fresh green peas. It would take a good hour or two to finish all that shelling even when I wasn't taking regular breaks to play with the big fat cream colored or green worms that came out of some of the pea shells. By the time I was finished the job after my mother had warned me about 6 times not to eat my handiwork my hands would smell of peas and chinks and my finger nails would be all green but there was enough peas in the tray to make our Christmas peas and rice dish cause Christmas in Barbados just wasn't Christmas without rice and peas using fresh green peas.

Yea true you could go down Cheapside market and get a few pints of already shelled green peas but it was so much cheaper to just get me to do all the hard work especially since we had two pea trees in the back yard.

Church bells ring a ling
Angels sing a ling
Happy Birthday Jesus
Snowflakes ding a ling
Sleighbells jing a ling
Happy Birthday Jesus
All year long we wait
just to celebrate this Christmas morn

Anyway about a day or two before Christmas suddenly ya nostrils perk up like when the dog smell his dinner on the way. I talking bout them pot starvers (mongrels) we used to own dat was real dogs not these poor great North American pretenders that cant even chew two chicken bones without getting sick. Is Kibbles and Bits fa them if ya please! No leftovers! Wha up ta last week I was telling the wife dat back when I was growing up we din need no recycling green bin for leftovers, we had a natural recycling device. He did name Rover or Spot or Blackie or Brownie or sometimes he was just de Dog. But nowadays dogs get posh and only eating brand name, store bought food. What a ting! Chupse!

Anyway I digress. Selector bring back some music to set the mood.

I've got that old feeling
that seems to fill the air
Its Christmas in my Caribbean land
and though there's no snow or sleigh bells to be heard
this feelings oh so grand!
now soon the bells will be ringing
choirs singing in good cheer
and old forgotten friends are brought to mind
oh tell me of this feeling
why cant this Christmas feeling exist amongst all people through the year (oh yea!)

I going wake up real merry
bake me jug and me turkey........

Not much Christmas lights when I was growing up. Too expensive to buy plus electricity was also expensive. Just one or two houses did the big light extravaganza that we have today. Instead to make the place look presentable ya would sweep up the front yard after ya finish paint, dig up the grass (none of that lawn business) maybe put down some marl or small stone out front and combined with the poinsettia and the snow on the mountain flowers blooming the place would still be looking real colorful still.

Now as I was saying before I digressed about two nights before Christmas your nostrils would light up from the scents wafting in over the breeze. It started the first night with sweet bread, Great cake and pudding and continued into the second night with the meats; delicious ham, succulent pork, turkey, chicken with the gizzards as stuffing. Heavenly scents! Everyone in the neighborhood baking at the same time and had started a day or two before Christmas because the ovens are small and ya baking enough to feed two armies so it took some time to get the job done.

Why we baking so much? You play you aint know that when Christmas day and bank holiday come round people gine be visiting and you have to have food to serve them. How it gine look bright Christmas somebody stop by and you cant even offer them two slices of sweet bread or pudding or if they is a good friend a slice of great cake. And all ya hearing;

So Santa Clause is in town
He comes but once a year
So ya vex because he came around
To visit me my dear

But Maizie in all in this heat
Wine up under the Christmas tree
Maizie I am vex because
ya making movements wid Santa clause

Maizie where is the Reindeer
Maizie I aint see no sleigh
If he have no reindeer no sleigh?
He came on BWIA

And of course as a child you don't want regular dinner those days when you start smelling those scents because you're hoping for a first slice of cake or meat that night and you staying up late dreaming of hot sweet bread. You eyes light up when the first sweet bread or piece of meat emerged from the oven and you might try to sneak off a lil taste when your mother wasn't looking but you had to be careful that she aint catch you and pelt some liks in your backside cause you know full well that the food is for Christmas and afterwards and the baking being done is as much for the guests as for the family.

Ah yes dreams of sweet bread and great cake washed down with a cold soft drink from the 2 or 3 cases that got bought from the drinks truck when it was up the street earlier that week by the village shop. A few weeks before ya had to go out in the yard, collect up all the empty drinks bottles to make sure you had a full case. Then wash out all the insects and cobwebs from those bottles cause you couldn't go and give the drinks man no nasty bottles ya kno! It wun look propa!

Then you had to make sure you knew what day the drinks trucks came to the village shop. The Banks truck came on Tuesday and the Ju-C truck Thursday so all Tuesday and Thursday ya trying ta keep a look out for the truck or if ya smart and ya on good terms with the shopkeeper (Meaning ya aint owe him no money) ya tell the shopkeeper ta give ya a call when the truck reach. Tiger Malt and Plus, Sprite, Ju-C, Bim and Frutee in all sorts of flavors from Red (Kola Champagne) to Yellow (Pineapple) and Banana and even Sorrel Flavored although the sorrel flavored ones aint taste as sweet as the real thing. You would tell the drinks man to mek sure he doan gi ya nuh stale drinks either cause if you open a drink and it flat ya gine be real vex. But those drinks had to last into January so you couldn't start drinking too early although if nobody looking you might sneak way one and even sneak a lil Falurnum in the drink to spice it up. :-)

But ya din have ta do dat too often cause first ya frighten ya get ketch and secondly ya had sorrel.

Another task for me as a youngster was to get the fresh sorrel and cut off the fruit (is fruit or is leaves?) from the seed so that it could be dried and prepared into that delicious Christmas drink. Another tedious task where the discarded portions, the big seed in the sorrel fruit, were more than the actual usable pieces, the petals which were steeped in hot water to prepare the delicious potion, and this time there were no fun worms to play with like with the peas. But the ends justified the means because the sorrel drink with a stick of clove in it was the most refreshing thing Christmas offered me as a youngster (except for the mix up sweet drink/beer/falurnum concoction that my dad did every Christmas which would knock me out for hours after Christmas dinner).

Drink a rum an a punch a crema
Drink a rum
Is Christmas morning
Drink a rum and a punch a crema
mama drink if ya drinkin

Christmas eve night everything in full gear. The cakes mostly done bake unless ya run outta gas and you weren't smart enuff to have a spare bottle in the house. I mean you know is nuff nuff baking to do so ya shoulda been prepared. Don't blame me looka try and run down by the gas station and buy a new bottle...if all aint sell out yet.

Its all the scent of meat baking that you sniffing in the air. And the sky bright with stars and outside chilly, by West Indian standards, but you still pushing ya nose through the jalousie (jealousie) window or sitting down on the step with the rest of kids indulging the sense of smell and being overcome by that feeling of Christmas. "boy you Mrs Browne like she baking a nice peica pork cross deyso." "You smell that ham that Miss Clarke baking? you that thing smell so good it got my mout watering real bad then!" "Ha ha, you smell dat? Wuhloss somebody sweet breads like dem burning." "Chupse dat cud only be Mavis wun cause you know she cann cook, wha even she husband say so."

The air smelling sweet, the stars looking brighter, the air just feeling sort of tingly on ya body. You can taste the excitement or is that smell it.

You cant wait for the Christmas morning.

One Christmas eve casually I was walking down the street
One Christmas eve casually I was walking down the street
I was attracted by the voice of a lil boy
as he strolled along the street no shoes on his feet
as he walked he continued to repeat

Listen Mama I want you to tell Santa Clause
To bring a trumpet and a concertina for me
I'm so lonely and have no children close by me
ma you don't kno how happy your son would be


Merry Christmas everyone.

February dun

And not a moment too soon.

Every year at some point I'm pretty sure that I complain about winter but this past month lawd avest mercy. I'd have to say that February 2015 has been the coldest month I've ever experienced.

No thankfully unlike Boston and other parts of the eastern USA , we up here in Toronto were not drowned in snow but what we did get were some extreme cold days. In fact I think they said this was the coldest February on record since they started collecting weather data.

But thankfully that is all over and hopefully March will be a better month weather wise.

Condiments

Man dese pickney nowadays, mine included like alot a ketchup.

I mean if I did feeling a ways I wud think that my cooking aint up to scratch and the chile need ketchup to mask the taste a my cooking but I realize it aint just my food he duz put ketchup on. And is not just he one but nuff a dese other lil children I see that duz be putting ketchup on everything their parents give them to eat.

Travel

We was chatting today bout travelling.

Apparently all the airlines now want you to travel wid ya two long hands cause they charging left right and centre for big check in bag and they becoming more strict about the weight and size of the carry-on.

Is one time man used to travel wid two big valises looking like they could hold a dead body, not no boney dead body eidda a good size duppy and then still got a big big two tonne carry-on bag pack down dat dey used to squeeze up squeeze up in de overhead bin and you used to be sitting underneath saying lawd avest mercy I hope that this bin doan open midair and this bag catspraddle me as I sit in me tight seat.

Well dem days dun star!

Ferguson MIssouri

It was about 6 years ago that I wrote this rather euphoric post. I had the audacity to hope for black folks.

Now today after the Grand Jury decision to not indict Darren Wilson for shooting Mike Brown I think I've done a 180 turn and just feel despair.

Congressional Black Caucus Chair Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) slammed the grand jury decision not to indict Ferguson, Mo., Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed teen Michael Brown, calling it a “frightening narrative,” Talking Points Memo reports.

“This decision seems to underscore an unwritten rule that Black lives hold no value; that you may kill Black men in this country without consequences or repercussions. This is a frightening narrative for every parent and guardian of Black and brown children, and another setback for race relations in America,” the Ohio Democrat said in a statement.

 What a shame, what a shame what a crying shame!

Chicken-got-cha!

To add injury to insult, a few days after my mum's funeral I came down with chikungunya. Yep talk about joint pain. wow! Was pretty brutal.

Anyways I think I had a milder but more chronic version. Let me explain: my joint pains and fevers only lasted about a day and by the time I was ready to head home it was like having mild arthritis in my knees. However when I got back to Toronto I started getting all the other symptoms which lasted maybe another two weeks.

Still its pretty much gone and has been replaced by my latest illness: sinus infection which is killing me at the moment. 

Where this chicken-gunya thing come from though/ I swear about 40-50 of the people I spoke to i Barbados had had it at some point in the past couple of months and some were still recovering.

I guess the only good thing about having it is that I'm told the virus stays in your system a while so my next visit home in the new year I shouldnt catch it again.

The funeral went as well as could be expected. I'm still not sure what I feel to be honest. I've ben angry, depressed, sad and defiant at times but I still feel like I cant believe my mum is dead. Its still sort of weird.

Well

I'm off to Barbados in a while as my mum has passed.

It wasn't unexpected but still I'm a little depressed well actually a lot depressed about it. I think her illness has been one of the reasons I wasn't writing or blogging or doing much of anything over the past 6 months. I just was living in fear of that phone call. Honestly, every time I heard a long distance ring on the phone my heart skipped a beat.

Anyway she has passed and I feel sad no scratch that I feel lost. The last time I was there in March I did feel like we were saying our goodbyes though. I'll be honest, I've hated going to Barbados for the last two years as its felt like every time I went she was slipping further and further away and the pleasant memories were a distant thing. At the end its almost like I've been grieving for a long time as the person I knew, the person who raised me and taught me and made me who I am today for good or bad had slowly disappeared over time leaving only this shell. And now even the shell is gone.

Not sure what else I can say. When my dad died I was able to write a bit and express myself and that helped  somewhat. Maybe it will be the same this time although I'm feeling far less eloquent than I did then. Just hoping that I can do her justice in her eulogy.

p.s: guess I'm an orphan now

Begging

Times tough....still. I know everyone says the recession is over but I dont know. Maybe this is the new norm, with less people working and more businesses closed. I dont know.

Leaving

One of my better neighbours is selling his house. I wrote about him a few years ago. All around good guy and I will be sorry to see him go.

Gluten

Every few years it seem that another word is added to our list of bad words, undesirable words.

No, I not talking about cuss words ah talking about words related to food and eating an ting so. Remember years ago it was carbs and everybody was on a wuhloss I aint want no carbs, carbs not good for you, ah cutting back on carbs, hummuch carbs dat got in kick?

Donald Sterling

I wanted to write this days ago but never got the chance but I'll try to make it brief....maybe

So here are a few thoughts

- Regarding Donald Sterling's fall from grace so much has been said. He does seem like a despicable human being if the reports are to be believed and the penalty handed down by the NBA seems to be the way to go.

Cutass!!

So there is a video knocking around of a Trinidadian mother beating the crap out of her 12 year old daughter because the daughter was apparently being tummuch woman an posting provocative sexual type photos on Facebook. a rude she well rude!

If a can find de link ah will link it but trust me I could only watch about two minutes of the 6 minute video cause the mother beat she like a bobolee. (bobolee - A stuffed effigy of Judas which was tied by the neck and dragged through the streets on Good Friday, usually followed by youths with sticks, beating it until it fell apart.)

Missionary Mauve

Ah had a lil flashback the other day. (not sure where this note going but we will see)

Growing up my mom was always deeply involved in church: choir, Sunday school, missionary work, church board etc which of course meant that until I was a teen I had to go with her to church whenever she went so I guess I can rightly say I grew up in church. Ah not sure if that is a good thing that I admit that or a bad thing cause allya might say wait he grow up in  church an he duz behave so fa true? lawd a mercy!!

Anyways church was Sunday school followed by long, long, long service on Sundays from as far back as I can remember and of course there was also Sunday night service to go to if my dad wasn't home and Wednesday night service as well.

I don't remember much if anything about those services to be honest, just shouting pastors, off-key loud singing and sharply beating cymbals which I wish I had the rhythm to use and me sitting in a church pew hoping that the time would go by faster.

I used to have to take part too: reciting poems at Christmas and Harvest programs and singing in choirs and the like. For those, I just remember the very strong feeling of fear in anticipation of my performance, a salute, a duty out of necessity to properly form and project my words (sans microphone in those days) followed by a relief that I didn't mess up or at least no one seemed to notice if I did slightly mess up.

Ha!

Was a small church, not more than 40 or 50 members total but it was kind of cool that you got knew everyone. Of course everyone knew you too so ya had to behave properly.But that was a different day doan get me started on today's youts.

So my church also had this women's missionary group which would once or so a month carry on some early evening Sunday service or "cottage meeting" for shut-ins before the main Sunday evening service. I never really got the point of it but all in all it wasn't as long as regular church service so it was all pretty tolerable just another church event except for one thing.......

The missionary ladies had this uniform that they wore, a dress made out of some heavy type of material. It was some sort of light mauve with a white color.

I don't know what that uniform ever did me but from small til now I cannot stand that color.  

I mean I'm pretty sure it wasn't a traumatic event that led to the dislike of the color but maybe it was just seeing that badly shaped uniform over and over that drove me over the edge with regards to mauve lol.

Up to now anytime i see that color I will tell ya straight I just don't like that color.

Anyway that came flooding back in my memory this weekend for no apparent reason. Maybe I caught sight of someone wearing the same color but I don't remember. I just remember it is just not me favorite color.

See knew this post was going nowhere lol

Business sense

So two weeks ago I got a random call from a credit union, which I'm not part of,  offering me some savings on a product I already have with another company.

I was somewhat intrigued by the call so I set up an appointment, at home to meet their representative with regards to the product they were hawking but in the meantime said I'd look into it myself. Anyway time flies when you have twins to deal with so when they called me back to confirm the appointment I postponed the appointment to yesterday which gave me just enough time to talk to my bank to see if the opportunity was worth pursuing.

So thought it kind of strange they never called to confirm last week but anyhow yesterday I rush out a work to get home early to make it to this appointment. Was hungry but said I'd wait til after the appointment to eat so I'm sitting there watching the clock and ummm no one showed up, nuhbody call nuttin.

Fine.

Got a call this evening, representative says appointment is this evening, umm no it isnt, insists it is, umm no I have it in my calendar as yesterday and I wrote it down minutes after we chatted the last time cause it was supposed to be an exact week from the postponed appointment cause ya ask me is Mondays good for you and I said yes. And besides I aint rushing home to meet you this evening is you trying to sell to me not me to you.

Anyways no apology from them but they asking for another appointment, only this time they want it during the day and I'm to come to their office.

Ammmm I aint know bout wunnah but i aint went searching fa dem an they product, dem is the body dat call me up an offering um to me so why they cant meet me on my terms. Ah mean I duz always be skeptical bout these things when people call ya up an mek ya offers so cause I duz be trying to figure out how them tiefing from me and gilding duh pockets so an no guarantee I would sign with them but ah did gine gi dem a chance to talk duh talk.

And ah mean in dis harsh economic climate is not like I have money to throw at nobody so if you want my money ya have to come correct. Ah did very happy where I was before dem come confusing me an now they want me to act like I doan wuk nuhway an run up to their office which is by the way far far away from where I work to meet them.  Chupse!!!!!

Naa star. nuttin a gwan so!

Ah dont know what happened to people and business. Ah mean like I said is tough times we living in, if you trying to sell somebody a product the least you can do is be professional. Ah find nowadays people acting like ya doing them a favor when they want ya business. Ah cant deal wid dat sort of attitude at all. Den when ya business not doing well, ya wud wanta know what happen. Well if ya was professional mebby wunnah wud last. Another big Chupse!!

Deep Freeze

Happy new year everyone.

Well we here in North America getting lik up with these cold temperatures. Is not only up here in Canada but even way down in the US they getting polar vortex effect that got places like Kentucky and Georgia bawling fa blue murder from the cold.

Up here in Toronto since the new year we have had ice, snow, and then cold temperatures alternating. If it ain't one trying to kill ya is de next.