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.

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Three Degrees of Sexy, and Four Degrees Celsius

Brrrrrr. It is biting in London today. I all but pounced on the train this afternoon, just eager to get on it. The heater is on. I refused to even go back out to put the recyclables in the bin. Nope. This is it for me.

Once upon a time I used to stay up late to watch the Oscars, but then I said to myself, these people are millionaires and I am not. I have to get up early to make a hundredth of what they make. Sleep is more important. I love movies but not to the detriment of my beauty sleep not to mention my personality. Lack of sleep + trininista = homicidal creature. And with the time difference, well...forget it. I am glad that The King's Speech won everything they should have won. I cannot comment on Best Supporting Actress cause I have not seen Melissa Leo in The Fighter, but Helena Bonham-Carter, though a bit weird, is an excellent actress and I would have liked to have seen her win. But Christian Bale got his and I am happy for that.

But my first sexy - is this woman aging at all? My God. My personal hero, this one. Stunning. My Oscar winner.


Halle Berry at the 2011 Academy Awards
Courtesy: Yahoo

 And though I am not really a techie person, this just looks sexy and I want one. The Dell Inspiron Duo convertible tablet. Not an Apple groupie really. Sorry.

The Dell Inspiron Duo Convertible Tablet - sexy

Finally, lunch with the neighbours yesterday was truly impressive. True Caribbean hospitality. Everything was so incredibly good and by the time I left their place, I was stuffed. And though Arsenal losing the Carling Cup Final jeopardised my fishcakes, she still sent over apple pie and custard, and a slice of good Barbadian sponge cake. Wicked. I can say nothing ill about my wonderful neighbours here in London. That pie was uber sexy.

Homemade apple pie, with yummy vanilla custard courtesy my awesome neighbours

My pillow right now - super sexy. I am so tired. I am going to insulate myself under the covers and try to stave off frostbite, and get some sleep in the process so I can hopefully be academically productive later.  This heater is taking its damn time to warm up my room though.

And while I may not miss out on sleep to watch a bunch of rich people collect awards, I will miss sleep to watch a bunch of Trinis fight it out for $2million on Friday night.  9.30pm start time in Trinidad, means 1.30am start time in London. God help me.

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