Deb­bie Ja­cob

I love books. The on­ly book I don't en­joy is­the Guin­ness World Records (known un­til 2000 as The Guin­ness Book of Records and in pre­vi­ous US edi­tions as The Guin­ness Book of World Records). I think the peo­ple at the GWR are to­tal­ly clue­less be­cause I know that T&T should have the world record for a num­ber of things that aren't even record­ed in that book. Here's my list of T&T ac­com­plish­ments for the Guin­ness World Records:

1. We're the best ex­am­ple in the world of a coun­try that pays pub­lic ser­vants to be mean to peo­ple. Ac­tu­al­ly, there's no re­al con­cept of pub­lic ser­vice. It's more like pub­lic tor­ture where peo­ple are herd­ed in­to a room like cat­tle wait­ing for the slaugh­ter. There, we sit and wait for pub­lic ser­vants to ver­bal­ly abuse us when we ask, "Is it my turn yet?"

2. When it comes to road con­struc­tion, we beat every coun­try in the world for pur­pose­ly cre­at­ing bot­tle­necks. We widen roads and cre­ate more lanes so that every­one can end up fight­ing to get in­to a sin­gle lane that will end at a traf­fic light. We make sure that every­one can rush to a point where they can't get any­where.

3. If there were a prize for road con­struc­tion dur­ing the busiest time of day, we'd take that hands down. Most coun­tries do their road con­struc­tion in the mid­dle of the night when there isn't much traf­fic. We like to have road con­struc­tion dur­ing peak traf­fic hours-es­pe­cial­ly at noon when we can see the as­phalt steam­ing on the ground.

4. T&T is a coun­try where more peo­ple dri­ve on the shoul­der of the road than on the road it­self. You would swear the shoul­der is a lane if you didn't know any bet­ter.

5. We could win a prize for the coun­try that changes the di­rec­tion of roads the most of­ten. Is there some warped sense of pow­er that politi­cians get from chang­ing the di­rec­tion of roads all the time?

6. There are more peo­ple in T&T than any oth­er coun­try in the world who don't un­der­stand the con­cept of a line. Peo­ple in this coun­try don't stand in lines. They are mas­ters at cut­ting in line in front of peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly me if I'm in the line. They don't dri­ve in lanes ei­ther.

7. No one beats us for park­ing cars in busy traf­fic lanes. Dur­ing rush hour traf­fic peo­ple park so that they can run in­side and buy break­fast or lunch. On the week­end, they park in a traf­fic lane by the Sa­van­nah so they can stop and take wed­ding pic­tures in the Pres­i­dent's Gar­dens.

8. We own the record­for bro­ken-down bus­es in the mid­dle of the road. I don't know if I need to elab­o­rate on this, but there are an ex­tra­or­di­nary num­ber of emp­ty bus­es with blink­ing lights parked on our roads on any giv­en day. I gave up dri­ving down Char­lotte Street two decades ago be­cause I was afraid of be­ing trapped be­hind a bro­ken-down bus.

9. I'm sure we must have more uni­ver­si­ties per pop­u­la­tion than any oth­er coun­try in the world. Why do we need so many uni­ver­si­ties? There's Costaatt, UWI, UTT, Roytec...Count them and tell me if that's not a lot of uni­ver­si­ties for a lit­tle coun­try like this.

10.This one I'm sure of: We have more hol­i­days than any­one in the world. We're so great we have Bap­tist, Hin­du, Mus­lim and Chris­t­ian hol­i­days, British hol­i­days like Box­ing Day.We don't just have In­de­pen­dence Day, we even have Re­pub­lic Day. We even have days for when peo­ple ar­rived, like In­di­an Ar­rival Day. Then we throw in days for Car­ni­val.This is tru­ly a great place de­serv­ing to be in the Guin­ness World Records.

11.We are the on­ly coun­try in the world that has nev­er had any­one quit a job.Here, in T&T, one "fires de wuk." This, I might add, is a fan­tas­tic con­cept.

12.The Es­ki­mos could be in the Guin­ness World Records for hav­ing the most words to de­scribe snow, but we should be in the GWR for hav­ing the most words to de­scribe dumb. We have dumb, stu­pid, chupid, dotish and my favourite: com­pound dotish.

13.Every­one tells me that we have the biggest round­about in the world (the Sa­van­nah) but I re­al­ly think we set the record for the most round­abouts.We love go­ing around in cir­cles.

14. I'm sure we have the record as the most par­ty-hearty coun­try in the world. Every­thing is an ex­cuse for a par­ty or a fete. Of course we could al­so have the record for the longest par­ty on record. Christ­mas sea­son be­gins in Oc­to­ber and winds its way through Car­ni­val cre­at­ing one non-stop par­ty.

15.We're the on­ly coun­try in the world where taxis and maxi-taxis have no rules for the road.Traf­fic laws don't seem to ap­ply to them at all.They're a law un­to them­selves. I could go on and on, but you get the point: We are ma­te­r­i­al for the Guin­ness World Records.

No coun­try in the world can bea­t­us,no place is more puz­zling, more out­ra­geousor more com­pound dotish thanT&T.This coun­try is an­i­m­pos­si­ble act to fol­low.