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Sweeten T&T

Published: 
Monday, June 18, 2012
Back for Good
Hosea Cumberbatch, his wife Karen, and son Mishail, take a photo with models Jono O’Connor, left, and Doogie McClean, dressed as London Palace Guards, at a ceremony hosted by Caribbean Airlines at Piarco International airport to mark their resumption of flights to London, England on Thursday. PHOTO: ABRAHAM DIAZ

I’m an optimist. A true the-glass-is-always-half-fullist. No matter what people say, ah love meh country. That’s why I left all that was available to me in London and returned. I knew it was going to be hard and that people are just waiting to pounce on me if I even allude to regretting my decision and say “Eh heh! Ah tell yuh so. Go back where yuh come from!” Thing is, I come from here. Apart from this column, I try to be a serious journalist and in my assignment travels, I meet so many people who are in awe that I returned, as if living in the place you were born is alien. Ever so often, I’m surprised by a positive reaction to my return. Some people actually understand and applaud me for giving up the life I had in London. I applaud myself everyday and try to find the silver lining in every bad experience that comes my way. Traffic. Can’t get away from that in Port-of-Spain unless you own a stargate. The other day it took me and Hugo (the van, allyuh should know he by now) almost an hour to get from Mucurapo Road to St Vincent Street Cuss? Complain? Get flustered? Nah. Blackberry time. BBM. A bit of Twitter. Responded to some e-mails. Macoed a bit on Facebook. Looked at some pictures of the boy. I did a bit of cleaning too. The boy is a little messy in the car nah. So found a plastic bag under my seat and just picked up some bits and pieces. Then I cleaned out my handbag a little, did some receipt sorting. Was quite a productive hour actually. 

 
 
Bad customer service. Someone has to be really, really not on you if combatting rudeness and inefficiency with a smile does not work. Listen! Yuh see me, I could cuss and complain like de rest ah allyuh but what’s the objective? The goal? Not to get something done? How cussing and carrying on going to do that? All you going to do is back the person into a corner and make them either do what you want with  a serving of vengeance or make you wait even longer. If you in a restaurant, that vengeance may be spit in your food or drink or even worse. If your cable bill came out of your account twice by mistake, your refund might take longer than it would have, if you didn’t blame the rep on the phone. Was it really her fault? Just be nice. State your issue. Preface that you understand that it’s not their fault and they probably get these calls all the time. Empathy goes a long way. Trini driving. A phenomenon yes and one I marvel at. Some of the things I see on our roads flabberghast me. Now being a woman, I am not an expert behind the wheel and having failed my regulations test the first time around, I am certainly not in any place to judge. What I can do is try and change it. If I were one of Roger Hargreaves’ Little Miss characters I would certainly be Litte Miss Kind on the road. I let everybody pass. Unless I’m in a hurry, then the gangsta drives come out. 
 
 
You want to turn around in de road, I letting yuh do it. You want me to reverse so you could reverse into a space on de side of de road to park, yeah man. You want to cross d road, even though there was a crossing with lights less than a block away, I letting yuh cross. You see the kindness is infectious. It makes me smile. Good deed after good deed. And the people notice too. I get a little beep beep or ah flash of lights and then a smile that almost says, “Ah know is chupidness ah doing but thanks for understanding and letting meh go through.” You see we need a mindset change in Trinidad. We need to wake up one day and just be willing instead of unwilling. Positive instead of negative. Because we are a part of something, a twin island republic that needs fixing. Don’t be daunted by the tasks ahead. If you going to redo your house, you don’t get excited at the fact that you’ll have a new kitchen or new tiles on the floor. You don’t drift off into a reverie imagining what it will look like when your old space is swaddled in new. That’s how I feel about T&T and where we are now. We’re on the cusp of change and the only way it can happen is if we Trinbagonians embrace our potential. It can’t be about what we’ve done or haven’t done in the past but what we are doing now and the potential that lies ahead. I truly feel that we’re going to do great things. Allyuh ready?

 

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