Exam One - Over. Time to Cook.

Well, the exams I have are not mid-terms but this was a funny image that I just had to steal.

I still have another exam this week. I am not one to gripe about exams, discuss exams, and I have ever only cried over an exam once in my life. A'Level English, Paper One. I will never forget it. My teachers all expected greatness from me in this subject. I was the Literature master. lol. I could dance rings around Jane Austen and T.S. Eliot. I love books. I love prose. I love poetry. This was a joy in my life - studying Literature at A'Level was a joy. This is how studying should be - not boring scales and validity and crap!

Paper One. Shakespeare, Bronte and Chaucer. The three books I was most prepared for. Hamlet. Jane Eyre. Wife of Bath, And then the unthinkable happened. My watch stopped. Then it re-started 30 minutes later. I was writing merrily, glancing at my watch, timing myself. There I was, this brown Caribbean princess, telling the little white man somewhere in Cambridge all about Hamlet and his issues, having already delved into the world of Chaucer and leaving the piece de resistance - Ms Bronte and her Ms Eyre for last. When the examiner announced that we had 15 minutes left, I could not believe it. I had not even started with Bronte. How could it be? My watch said I had at least 45 mins left. I scrappily ended the Hamlet essay and raced on over to Jane Eyre, holding back the panic and the tears as I scribbled my life away for the next 15 minutes but I would always need more than 15 minutes.

I remember my English teacher waiting for her girls outside the class and when she spotted me, she asked "how was it?" to which I could only reply "I did not finish". The disappointment on her face was too much for me to bear and I cried my little eyes out, and threw the watch in the dustbin, my Grade A going down the toilet. The Grade A I wanted more than anything. It was the only time I had ever cried over an exam.

So don't expect tears today. I finished the exam this afternoon at 12.30pm, and my next thought was - I am in the mood for a pelau, dread. A pelau being a wonderful and one of my most fave Trini meals - comprising of rice, chicken, or beef or whatever works for you, green peas, veggies, all cooked and simmered in coconut milk. Yummo.

And so I went to good ole Sainsbury's, got some chicken, some vegetables, a ready made cole slaw pack, minus the mayo, some mayo (cause the pelau gotta have the cole slaw), some juice. Got to the Caribbean shop and got some coconut milk powder, Maggi no less (pig in mud dance!) and come tomorrow, in between reading about segmentation and brand equity, I will have something looking like this on my table - the excitement!

Trini pelau - Photo courtesy the wonderful Trinigourmet

You can check out the recipe from Trinigourmet here.

But in case you were wondering about the Literature outcome way back in the day when I still wore a uniform to school, and my school had no boys, I was comfortable with Paper 2 - which included Hardy, Austen and somebody else I cannot recall at the moment, but Paper 3 was going to be an issue - Woolf, Eliot and Beckett and all this existentialism nonsense. I never got Woolf - thought To The Lighthouse was tats (rubbish) the first time I read it but in the week I had to scrape up some pride, I fell in love with ole Woolfie and destroyed that paper.

And despite crying non-stop over not finishing the first paper and seeing my academic life flash before my eyes, I still got my A from Mr Cambridge. This is why I don't fuss over exams. You're either gonna do well, or not. You either put it in the work or you didn't. Be real with yourself. You're either a star, or not. Don't beat yourself over it. Move on. Life is too short, man. Cook a pelau! Or go watch a movie. I cannot wait to see Black Swan. Looks like my kinda ting! The weekend cometh...the countdown to freedom is on!