My name is Hysus Felician and I run a smartphone and electronics supply and repair business.My mother named me Jesus but the lady in the Red House probably thought I should be special. So she spelled my name the way my mother pronounced it. Nobody ever forgets the spelling, once they see it. And everyone with a normal name like Jesus has to put Jesus5000@hotmail.com. I'm the only Hysus.
I'm from East Port-of-Spain originally. Right across from Riverside Plaza. When I was growing up there, it was more manageable. Parents were able to correct kids and we were a bit more disciplined.I wasn't a Dry River footballer because my parents wouldn't allow us out that late. But the chennette downs trees down there, we used to like to climb.
I'm multilingual. My mom is Venezuelan and my dad is from Paramin, so he speaks patois. We moved to Maraval when I was seven-eight. My sister lives in what used to be Chavezland.When I got married four years ago, I moved to Barataria. I'm married to Natalie Banker-Felician. And we have a lovely two-and-a-half year old daughter, Hylie. Our entire family was raised Catholic.
I wasn't one of the wealthier kids at Queen's Royal College but it was quite a good camaraderie. I have friends in low and high places, in government and in jail. Every Sunday, we're back in QRC playing football together, for the past 15 years.
I became a businessman at QRC. Everybody was piercing their ear and a jeweller was two streets away from my home in Maraval. I would get the stuff from him, back to school. And I'd make a little on each earring. And that would make you a little less dependent on your parents. I never pierced my own ear, though.
At age 19, I went to work for an interactive online casino, two young, multimillionaire Israelis working out of Antigua. My mum called and told me I was accepted at UWI and I had to come back. I was making more than both their salaries put together but I gave in and came back. I came out of UWI and went into a government job. I could only bear it for about nine months.
We came to the mall by force. We had tried to be revolutionary and do everything online, but it became dangerous to deliver products in Trinidad. It came down to one gunpoint incident. We lost a couple' computers and said, "Let's pay some rent!"
A lady came in Ash Wednesday with a phone that got soaked in J'Ouvert. We worked on it, worked on it, worked on it, and got it to come on for about ten minutes. Then she was like, "My BBM is not working; can you update the software?" When we plugged in the phone to the computer, it shut off again–there was some bit of moisture in there somewhere still.
And then she was so insistent that we had to replace her phone because we "damaged" it. She was explaining to another person in Spanish, saying how we mashed up her phone. I'd only spoken English to her up to then. At the end, I answered her in Spanish and she was most amazed. She was telling the other person she wanted her phone back in the order it was when she came to us; well, it was!
Every day, I give the guys a pep talk and remind them: upsell, upsell, upsell! And I try to stay around all day. I have to do research to keep up. You have to streamline the products to get them off the shelf before the new release, like with the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the S5.The best part about the job is when one customer comes back with two other customers and says, "This is where you get the best deal!" The bad part is a customer that's not willing to understand how warranties work.
A Trini is somebody who wants an eight-to-four job but wants to work nine-to-two.I'm very passionate about Trinidad and Tobago. I was there, crying in the stadium on November 19, 1989, when we got knocked out of the World Cup.
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