That is, until now…
It would seem that in 2010, the man with the hammer, after years of calling, made his presence felt with a passionate display of defiance at the gates of the Gods.
But this sledge hammer wielding man was not Mr. Charles, and these gates did not secure the heavens or the passage to the afterlife.
It was in fact, local activist Mr. Ishmael Samad and these gates are in Trinidad.
The only common denominator, it would seem, is that the gates were indeed protecting a God…or something larger than life itself.

Activist Ishmael Samad slams the gate of the Cascade home
of former UdeCOTT chairman Calder Hart with a sledgehammer
on Wednesday 14th April, 2010. (Trinidadexpress.com)

Mr. Samad went to Mr. Hart’s residence to make a citizen’s arrest based on the premise that Mr. Hart in his capacity as UdeCott chairman had wronged the people of Trinidad & Tobago. In an act of sheer passion, determination and frustration, he brandished a sledge hammer and dealt the mighty gates several blows. It is public knowledge, the events that transpired during and after the incident.
Damage to the gates was estimated at an unbelievable $200, 000. Mr. Samad was arrested and charged with malicious damage, no citizen’s arrest was made, Mr. Hart returned to Florida shortly thereafter.

My focus was not totally directed on the act itself but, rather, on what would cause/persuade/force a man such as Mr. Samad to take it upon himself to carry through with such an almost desperate plan of action. I use the word ‘desperate’ after much thought; when a man is left with little choice after all legitimate avenues have proven futile, desperation sets in. When expression is taken away from you, desperate measures replace conventional forums. When you genuinely feel you or your people have been blatantly disrespected, disregarded and reduced to helpless statistics, you are left with two choices…either rebel or ignore.

Mr. Samad chose to rebel against suppression, to stand up, to publicly express what most people would not dare to do… he did it on behalf of hundreds of thousands of people…and he did it alone.

So…”Wey de man with de hammer gone?” Well, to its most literal translation, the man with the hammer, Mr. Samad, went to the home of Mr. Hart to effect a citizen’s arrest. He was unsuccessful in his mission, but victorious, I would say, in his quest, which evokes a deeper meaning of the same question. It calls upon every citizen of this country, it pulls from deep within, from your soul like the tune, but it asks you about yourself, about your beliefs, about your spirit as a Trinbagonian.

So…again…”Wey de man with de hammer gone?” Look at yourselves. We come from a people that stood up for what they believed to be right. We come from a people who fought so that the produce of their blood, sweat and tears remained their own. We come from a people who were not afraid to clench rugged fists around proverbial hammers to break down walls of tyranny. We come from the man with the hammer. We have come from all of this…but look at where and what we have come to…

The old adage goes, ‘desperate times call for desperate measures.’ However, given the current state of affairs of the country and the general state of mind of the people, a transformation is in order; “Desperate times call for educated decisions.”

Such could never be more applicable than right now when the country is plagued with critical governing issues and a general election is mere weeks away. Now you can answer the call! Now you can redeem the strengths upon which our people uplifted themselves. May 24th is the day of reckoning; it is the day when the man with the hammer returns.

Wey de man with the hammer gone? On May 24th, your index finger becomes your sledge and on that date we say the man with the hammer never left.

So Mr Samad, thank you. Thank you for reminding us all of something we have taken for granted…For reminding us of the power we still have as a people…For reminding us that our struggle continues and that it is not in us, it is not in our people to submit. Our spirits may have been broken, but we still carry the hammer within us that the generations before us used. Thank you Mr. Samad, for reminding us of who we are, what we are made of and what we should stand for.

I admire his courage and the passion he has for what he believes in because it was selfless…it was never about him, but about us. I, admittedly, would not even think about carrying my protest to a private residence, much less consider forceful entry to get to the subject. Trespassing on or malicious damage to private property? I may not even take the chance unless it was personal…maybe. There is one question that provides food for thought in my mind though; is Mr. Hart’s property private or public?

So wey de man with the hammer gone?

“Somewhere up in Laventille, many years ago…
A man had a hammer, used to follow him to and fro…
He used to use it to pong a pan…
Or sometimes a stupid man….”

Fourteen days since the earth reclaimed the lives she helped create. As she breathed life into dust and created man, so she has turned flesh back into dust.

Fourteen days, more than 150,000 people buried.

Fourteen days of unimaginable pain, immeasurable suffering, unequivocal struggle and chaos.

But those fourteen days have not broken the unrelenting will to survive in the bold face of overwhelming desperation and desolation.

Yesterday, fourteen days after, a man was pulled from the rubble…alive.

With his resurrection and each individual miracle, however sporadic and unexpected, coupled with the global effort in sending aid and support, hope is rejuvenated.

Hope… But what is hope?

Hope can represent a true belief in a wanted outcome or at the same time it could just convey a sense of wishful thinking.
We ‘hope’ that the people of Haiti receive the aid that is being sent and that Haiti emerges from this disaster and begins to rebuild.
Haitians ‘hope’ to see another day…
Sometimes hope may be all a person has and until we are in that position we will never truly understand what the people of Haiti have endured and what they are experiencing right now.

Here is an excerpt from The New York Times’ online publication posted January 26th, 2010:

“CROIX DES BOUQUETS, Haiti — Not long after 14-year-old Daphne Joseph escaped her collapsed house on the day of the earthquake, she boarded a crowded jitney with her uncle and crawled in traffic toward the capital, where her single mother sold beauty products in the Tête Boeuf marketplace. “Mama,” she said she repeated to herself. “Mama, I’m coming.”
Abandoning the slow-moving jitney, Daphne, petite and delicate, got separated from her uncle and jumped onto a motorcycle-for-hire. She arrived alone at a marketplace in ruins and ran, in her dusty purple sandals, toward a pile of debris laced with “broken people,” she said.
Growing closer, she saw her mother, lifeless. She froze, she said, eventually watching as her mother’s body was dumped in a wheelbarrow and her only parent vanished into the chaos.
“I wanted to kill myself,” Daphne said in a whisper.

The one positive thing that has surfaced from this disaster is the emergence of the one characteristic that I always had faith we hadn’t lost completely…Humanity
My true hope is that after all the dust settles and the initial shock of what has happened to Haiti disintegrates into a memory, we as a people continue to offer support in whichever way we can. Haiti won’t be healed in a day. They will need us months from now..years…
Imagine if our country, our home, our people, were to be dealt this destructive hand, where and how do you see yourself? What would you do…if you were still alive? What could you do…? The ones you love have been taken from you in an instant, your home no longer exists and the utterly helpless feeling of not knowing what comes next plagues your mind and sinks you into despair. Just think for a moment and maybe, just maybe, you will understand just a tiny bit of the very clear and present hell our neighbours have been unfairly forced to adopt.
The anguished bellows of an eleven year old girl trapped under rubble with people clawing through twisted concrete and steel with bare hands to get to her, the pleading cries of a woman buried alive for days telling rescuers to tell her husband that if she dies, she loves him and that her husband never gave up looking for her, finding her and standing at her concrete prison until rescuers arrived, and a man found alive after fourteen days, reminds me that after all, we are still human. We are not supreme, we are not indestructible, however we have humanity which defines us but without which we are lost.
What do you hold on to when everything else has been stripped from you…? The one thing that you take for granted everyday…your life.

Help Heal Haiti, Humanity Heralds Hope.

Ah wah?   Ah Zebra meh say!
Yes, the ever alternating, unmistakable presence of the Zebra Crossing; subtle in its artistic creativity but bold in its statement.

We all know what a Zebra crossing is and of course, its purpose, so I need not post some long technical definition. One, however, did catch my attention:

“n (Engineering / Automotive Engineering) Brit A pedestrian crossing marked on a road by broad alternate black and white stripes. Once on the crossing the pedestrian has right of way”

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 6th Edition 2003.

Pretty standard, but pay attention to the last sentence, ” Once on the crossing the pedestrian has right of way”

Some of the behaviours I’ve observed on the road recently have led me to infer that some drivers are either not aware of that fact, didn’t learn about it during their ‘learner’s’ period, paid for their permits or display a clear cut case of ignorance, which is the one I’m tending to. The blatant disregard for zebra crossings has become quite apparent to me in recent times.

Tyres screeching on asphalt always seem to grasp your attention, don’t they? Your seeking eyes follow the gripping sound, your mind preparing for the images to follow.

This was my experience on Monday evening while on the main road in Marabella.

It’s a four-lane roadway, and for those of you who have an idea of the area, I was heading out of Marabella, toward the roundabout, behind a vehicle that had halted at a zebra crossing.

A girl in secondary school uniform was making her way across roadway, along the crossing. In the opposite lane, the one closest to me, a guy in a 3 ton truck also gave way to the crossing and it’s passenger.

At this point I had my experience.

Locked up wheels, screaming rubber and pleading asphalt tried their best to compensate for the ignorance of the man behind the wheel. The images registered in my brain in slow motion and though it seemed like more time had elapsed, it only produced one thought/response…’Oh No!’

Tense anticipation quickly turned to relief. The team of brakes, rubber and asphalt convinced the car to stop mere inches away from the girl but had no affect on the ignorance of the driver. He proceeded to gesticulate aggressively, his sheer disappointment and disagreement, it would seem, at the girl’s decision to cross the street. Though visibly shaken, she was able to complete her trek to the other side, unharmed…

Relief quickly turned to rage, no..not ‘road rage’ but ‘rage on the road’ as I witnessed the audacity of this man. An elderly gentleman who was standing at the side of the road also seemed to notice his erratic behaviour and had cause to approach his vehicle and make it clear that there was indeed a zebra crossing on the roadway.

Had he hit that young lady, I’m quite sure he would have been schooled quite differently and I would have helped with the lesson.

So, as drivers on the nation’s roadways, lets do our part and possibly set examples, by obeying traffic laws. Let’s keep our streets safe, particularly for pedestrians. One day it can be your family or friend crossing the street.

Respect de Zebra nah man…

It is a shame that the service afforded to tourists at the hospitals in Trinidad and Tobago is not so efficient to locals. Lack of medical care and crime is rampant in this country where the ministry believes that big buildings are all that is needed, and they completely forget about the quality of the service. It’s like having a high tech computer with no software on the system.

To the foreigners that cast a dark eye on the Caribbean, there is a point to duly note however. While I have not had the luxury of traveling, I do believe that there is nowhere safe in this world and you should do all that you can to safeguard yourself but don’t be paranoid. Hiding behind closed doors is not living your life to the fullest. Staying home a nighttime does not save you from vampires. I am saying to just live life like there is no tomorrow but just be aware and be mindful. What you all think, this is “Sleepless in Seattle”? Get over it! Come visit our country, drink our unnecessarily highly priced alcoholic beverages, bathe in our beaches and urinate there while you’re at it. Change your clothes, hang out in some cool places where security is tight and you are good to go.

Dec. 3, 2008 — Nearly two pounds of still-green plant material found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert has just been identified as the world’s oldest marijuana stash, according to a paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany.

A barrage of tests proves the marijuana possessed potent psychoactive properties and casts doubt on the theory that the ancients only grew the plant for hemp in order to make clothing, rope and other objects.

They apparently were getting high too.

Lead author Ethan Russo told Discovery News that the marijuana “is quite similar” to what’s grown today.

“We know from both the chemical analysis and genetics that it could produce THC (tetrahydrocannabinolic acid synthase, the main psychoactive chemical in the plant),” he explained, adding that no one could feel its effects today, due to decomposition over the millennia.

Get a glimpse into life far (or not so far) into the future, in the year
2056.……

Trinidad government still searching for alternatives after depleting oil reserves in 2036, while assuring the population there is nothing to be alarmed about.

According to latest census statistics illegal Chinese immigrants now account for 35% of the population with Douglas 20%, Indians 17.5%, Africans 17.5% and “other” 10%.

Brian Lara Stadium is almost complete by January 2058.

Over 100,000 people are still awaiting appointments for the “new” machine-readable passports.

The shoulder will now be a legal lane “since everybody uses it
anyway.” Driving up the opposite lane to beat traffic is also legalized.

Crime detection/cases solved statistics for 2009 to 2054:
Murder 12%, Burglary 10%, Rape 3.5%, Kidnapping 0%, Removing Tint from vehicles 100%, Raiding Whore houses 100%

Due to ongoing constitutional reforms, local government elections (due in 2005) have again been put off until 2058 (to coincide with the opening of the “new” Brian Lara stadium).

UNC celebrates 50 consecutive years in opposition. Basdeo Panday says he will step down as leader of the UNC in 2060. A boxing ring is included in all constituency offices to manage the continuous infighting.

And my favorite, the value of Subaru vehicles drops drastically while the cost of parts continues to be highly priced.

According to the Trinidad Express (05.08.09) article, “YES IT’S HERE” “Trinidad and Tobago is in recession – according to data released by the Central Bank”

The article states that the last quarter of 2008 showed a 1.1% decline in real GDP, whilst the 1st quarter of 2009 recorded a -3.3% movement.

According to the simple definition above, that seems a straightforward case of recession. However, the IMF “advises that a broader number of indicators be used to ascertain whether or not a country is facing a recession.”
According to the article, information on the Central Bank’s website indicate declines across several sectors.
The CB Governor goes on to say that “the available data showed that the Trinidad and Tobago economy was decelerating faster than anticipated and the country would likely register zero, or even negative GDP growth this year.”

He also found it necessary to add that “the country’s economy was not in recession but in ’stagnation’.”

Trinidad and Tobago’s Finance Minister, Mrs. Nunez-Tesheira, during an address to the media, admitted that “There is an economic slowdown and therefore a stimulus is required. There are things that we must do and partner (with the private sector) to achieve.”
Again,according to Wikipedia, “Governments usually respond to recessions by adopting expansionary macroeconomic policies, such as increasing money supply, increasing government spending and decreasing taxation.”
However, she stands with her fellow Ministers and our beloved Prime Minister, in categorically denying that we have been experiencing a recession and “it takes more to make a recession than just negative or slowed growth.”

The views purported in the article “Economists see more decline”(05.08.09) in the same newspaper convincingly beg to differ.
“Several local economists agreed yesterday that although the quarterly figures could be argued, they did in fact indicate a recession.”
…And if distinguished economists unanimously agree, who am I to argue..?
Economist Mr. Jwala Rambarran says, “We see a sharp drop in retail sales and that tells you across the board consumers are spending less…In three to six months down the road we are going to see the number of projects and the number of jobs decreasing…the data from the second quarter would prove that we are already nine months into a recession.”
In what could be considered a response to Mrs. Nunez-Tesheira’s indication of a stimulus package, Mr. Rambarran states, “We are almost a year late in putting together a stimulus. A stimulus plan should have been put into place since earlier this year.”
According to the article, Mr. Rambarran said the government could easily refute the claims of a recession because there was no official body in Trinidad and Tobago that could declare a recession except the Central Statistical Office, which publishes statistics annually and not quarterly.

“Those numbers are not considered official numbers but whether or not they recognize (it), it is there. It is one piece of evidence that we are in a recession.”

So…are we..? Though all indicators allude to one conclusion, and until the effects are so far-gone and so integrated into our economy and social fabric, the answer ‘technically’ will remain ‘No’…

Well Adobe and University of Wisconsin scientists have created software that can correct shaky camera work. There is software on the market that does similar stuff but nothing is advanced as this. Using 3D modeling, it guesses the intended look, then warps the original video to adjust.

Basically, the software examines each frame and warps it to form a steady line of shots based on a 3D projection of the cameras path (courtesy of off-the-shelf Adobe software), giving a buttery-smooth look almost as good as if the camera was on rails. It’s got a few downsides, namely that it can only be applied after the entire film is shot, and the resulting product will need a little bit of cropping. But it still looks like a pretty great tool for amateur filmmakers, and should be available in about two years.

New Scientist

Due to the growth in the economy, because of the oil boom in the early ‘00, other areas have had to modernize to facilitate this backbone. One of these is the Internet and information technology. Because most of the major stake holders in the oil and gas field are foreign companies, their local counterparts have had to match their technology with their parents. This caused a major influx of technology to Trinidad. Trinidad now boasts one of the most technologically advanced IT services in the Caribbean.

On the other hand, Trinidad has a very rich history and culture which has proven to be ’sticky’ in an ever changing modern world. Much of the infrastructure in the capital is moving in the right direction of being first world but the rest of the country sadly holds on to the legacy that is third world. Being a traditional country and having our history embedded in colonial days, most if not everything that is modern is brought in from the United States and beyond. This may be expensive at times and may introduce delays in any projects.

Due to this very fact, older generations tended to hold on to items in possession because they would be hard to come by. Who knows when the next ship will be coming in with new stuff? I will hold on to this as long as I can, no matter if I need it or not. This brings me right back to the topic of online business. We are now modern enough to get anything we need overnight. We no longer need to hold on to these items we have stashed away for a rainy day. We have the technology to implement a system to buy and sell as we please on the Internet (shame less plug for my site trinifieds.com ). This is the next direction in buying and selling in Trinidad. It is the only natural evolutionary path.