Skip to main content

Memories from growing up in Trinidad



So many memories. So many good memories. Where to start? What to write about? It's 317 am on a Wednesday morning and I am thinking about doubles for breakfast this morning. I remember the doubles man that sold outside San Fernando ASJA primary. You could even buy a singles. I remember the doubles from the cafeteria in St. Mary's College. That up north doubles was different. The bara was more yellow and more fluffy.

Back to San Fernando. A big part of my younger years was spent in San Fernando at my uncle's place. They owned a chicken depot. I remember eating bread, butter and tea for many breakfast. I remember the chinese parlour next door where I would go to buy the Kiss bread. Madame Lee would total my purchase using pen and paper. I remember watching Madonna music videos on the tube TV in the living room. I remember the empty streets and silence the day the Strike Squad played USA. All we needed was a draw to go to Italy and everyone was inside and glued to their TVs. I went to maktab. I played cricket in the streets sometimes. I had a container of marbles. At the end of standard 4 I returned north to stay with my mother. I attended St. Joseph TML primary.

North life was different. More hustle and bustle. I took the maxi taxi to and from school. I remember the pounding dub music in the maxis. I remember listening to Apache Indian at my aunt's home in Valsayn. Now Valsayn was a nice and posh neighbourhood. Yards with lawns and neatly landscaped. I could walk to Valpark. Valpark had a nice chinese food place and a nice bakery. My grandmother on my father's side was Portuguese. My grandfather was French. On my mother's side is Indian.

In those days you were lucky if you had a coloured TV. You were lucky if you had a telephone. Cassette tapes were common. Betamax and VHS tapes were the norm. Movie video rental places had satellite dishes and if you were rich you had satellite TV at home. Lucky for me St. Mary's College had a computer lab where I got my first taste of the PC and later on the internet.

We have progressed a lot since my time growing up and years from now when AI and robots are doing all the work while we sip pina coladas on the beach we would have progressed some more. Looking back has me thinking that there is so much that we take for granted. Let's appreciate things. The small things. Each other.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

God opens doors

It is 1203am and I have decided to write. Saturday I spent the night coding. I was trying to get a FastAPI app up and running, all from my budget Android phone. The test cases were written to use Puppeteer. I ended up using Replit for that. Coding is more challenging when using a mobile phone. Not impossible but more challenging. I hardly blog about technology and coding anymore but the love is still there. I still have a dream of creating my own coding and youtube studio with a nice desk setup. That is nice but what should I make this blog post about? What do I want to write about? What should I write about? I love creating presentations. That is something I could do to revive my youtube channel. I love Maths too. I have this feeling that I could solve one of those longstanding Maths problems that seems impossible. Sometimes, like right now, I feel like abandoning my blog post. It is going nowhere. Maybe I should get up and go wash the wares. I wish God could tell me what to write abo...

Mundane

It is 123am and I have decided to write. I have this new idea for a book called Mundane. It would be me writing about the ordinary. We chase the extraordinary but there is beauty in the ordinary. There is beauty in the simple. There is beauty in the everyday. What about God? We often think about God in grand terms. But what if God is simple too? What if God is mundane? What if we look for God in the everyday moments? I sit in this dark room with the air conditioning on. The fan is also on. The curtain is down but I imagine the moonlight shining on the grass outside. The cats are probably sleeping. I wonder if anyone else in the neighbourhood is awake at this hour? Is there another writer around who is also writing about the mundane? The fan breeze helps the air conditioning cool me down. These nights are warm otherwise. A mosquito flies across my screen. Hello friend or foe. I cannot quite decide which one. If I had a swatter you would be gone. I check my notifications and there is an ...

What we do not know

It is 1245am and I have decided to write. I had this weird alienish dream and it ended with me winning by simply stating "the truth is that we do not know". In the dream everyone was having an opinion of what was happening as if they knew. On to something random. I had this question. What is the most unrandom thing? Then what is the most random thing? What if everything is equally random. My friend Chatty thinks that randomness is not an absolute property—it is a relation between you and the system you observe. Randomness is not absolute—it depends on perspective. Something perfectly ordered can seem random if you do not know its pattern. So in a sense, everything can be "equally random" relative to the observer's knowledge, making randomness more about perception than an intrinsic property. The more we know the less random things become. Let me make a detour. Suppose we do not predict things but things predict us. For example, when I flip a coin, did I predict ...