Fantastic Friday!!!

Photo courtesy Trinibeat.com

Now, clearly I am not in Trinidad tonight for what is known as Fantastic Friday - the Friday before Carnival. The true start of the Carnival weekend, despite a long season of sleepless nights and back to back parties. Clearly I am in layers and layers of clothes and socks, praying someone sets up a "free" stream of the show so the poor students of the world can watch the thing.

I do have a couple of Carnival grouses though. The first - I am an active tweeter, with 2 Twitter pages, and a love for travel, thus a lot of the tweets I follow have to do with travel. What really irks me though is that all...ALL the non-Trini related tweets about Carnival have been about Rio's Carnival. Nothing against Rio, mind you. I would love to experience a samba carnival very soon. But again, as with the lack of Trini products in Sainsbury's while Jamaica's Grace Kennedy is ubiquitous, it has to do with our marketing. Clearly. The latest insult was when BBC Travel tweeted this morning about Rio's Carnival - no fault of the BBC - but I tweeted back, "Is noone looking at Trinidad Carnival?"

The response:

We don't have a story on it, no. But if you tweet me a useful link, I can RT to our readers!

This is where the vexation REALLY started because as try as I might, I could not find a decent locally produced article on the thing!!! Ok, granted...I did not look that hard cause I was in class. However, do a Google search for Rio Carnival and the first result is the official Rio webpage - properly updated with all the events for the 2011 Carnival on the page. Everything you ever wanted to know about Rio Carnival is on this page - a virtual one stop shop. Do a Google search for Trinidad and Tobago Carnival and you get a frickin' Wikipedia entry as the first result, with the official tourism site as the third result, with the NCC's site as second. Let me just say, the NCC site could use a dose of Jesus. I was not about to share this link with BBC Travel to retweet to the world, so I went to option "official tourism site". Having a site with a link to the Carnival, that then takes you to a page with a load of external links - not impressive. Needless to say, I could not whip up an entry about Carnival right there and then, so this had to be it. The link was retweeted though if anyone cares at this point is questionable.

Secondly, I am REALLLLLLLLLLY challenged with this texting for your favourite artiste for tonight's Soca Monarch final. I should correct myself - I am really challenged by the flagrant "begging" for a text from one particular artiste. I have been streaming 96.1FM since I got home and I have heard this annoying ad more than 10 times. I have heard no other artiste on this station though I can imagine Iwer George is bashing in people's consciousness on his radio station with his own ad. But my thing is, while I support the people having a voice and a say in who their Soca Monarch should be - I really have a problem with 1) the ads begging for a vote and 2) the concept of picketing people before you even perform. I may love a song but on the night, the performance can be anything but stellar. I am not one of these ride or die fans. I love Machel - this is a well known fact - and though it is a RARE day when the Taipain is not on his game, should he flop, I cannot in good conscience text my vote for him if say, Iwer or Fay Ann was better. This whole advertising phenomenon via ads, social media and God knows what else, for a vote before you even hit the stage does not sit well with me.

And well, my final grouse - I agree someone has to make ah money tonight but there should be student discounts for this pay-per-view thing. lol. Or student exemptions. Good luck everyone and hook a sista up with a feed.

That is all. My fave for the Groovy Soca Monarch tonight. The Power Soca promises to be commess.