Pe­ter Ray Blood

It was a week­end to re­mem­ber, be­ing con­stant­ly sur­round­ed by beau­ti­ful women for most of it. It start­ed off very ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing when I joined the pan­el of judges for the se­mi-fi­nals of the Miss and Mr Trinidad and To­ba­go/World pageants, at Hilton Trinidad, in Port-of-Spain. Sit­ting be­tween for­mer Miss Bar­ba­dos Uni­verse Leah Mar­ville and Miss T&T World Crys­tal Cun­ning­ham caused me prob­lems to fo­cus on the 15 beau­ti­ful young women parad­ing be­fore us in swimwear, and evening gowns. Our task was not such a sim­ple one as we were man­dat­ed to chose the ten best women to con­test the Au­gust 4 fi­nal, at Queen's Hall, St Ann's, the win­ner earn­ing the right to rep­re­sent our na­tion at the in­ter­na­tion­al pageant in De­cem­ber.

Then came Sat­ur­day night and, af­ter a brief af­ter­noon cat nap, it was off to the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah for the launch of Car­ni­val Tribe's C2K11 pre­sen­ta­tion–Way of the War­rior. Al­ready bazodee by the af­flu­ence of beau­ty ra­di­at­ing on stage as the cos­tumes were show­cased, and eye-catch­ing out­fits worn by most of the guests in the me­dia area, I wasn't pre­pared to en­counter thou­sands of beau­ti­ful Tri­ni women, in vary­ing de­grees of fash­ion state­ments, in the gen­er­al au­di­ence space, all ready to par­ty hearty un­til foe-day morn­ing. From my van­tage point seat­ed in the du Mau­ri­er Pall Mall VIP pavil­ion I was able to fur­ther com­pre­hend why T&T is glob­al­ly ac­knowl­edged and ad­mired for hav­ing "the most beau­ti­ful women plan­et Earth."

Pan re­turns to Laven­tille

There are two ma­jor pa­rades in Au­gust–Sun­day's Eman­ci­pa­tion Street Pa­rade in Port-of-Spain, or­gan­ised by the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee, and the Au­gust 8, Eman­ci­pa­tion Steel­band Street Pa­rade in Laven­tille. Cel­e­brat­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion "Laven­tille Style," the pan pa­rade will move along the East­ern Main Road, Laven­tille, from 4pm, to the front of The House of An­gos­tu­ra where a judg­ing and re­view stand will be lo­cat­ed, on the op­po­site side of the road. This year, the Laven­tille Steel­band Fes­ti­val Foun­da­tion is adding an­oth­er fea­ture to this most pop­u­lar Eman­ci­pa­tion ac­tiv­i­ty–ac­cept­ing an of­fer from the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force to present one of its Spe­cial Dis­plays, high­light­ing the ver­sa­til­i­ty of its pop­u­lar sin­gle pan steel­band from 4:30 pm.

As in pre­vi­ous edi­tions of this dy­nam­ic street pa­rade, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards is ex­pect­ed to at­tend in the ca­pac­i­ty of guest of ho­n­our. Al­so ex­pect­ed to grace Laven­tille with their pres­ence are new Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters, as well as his col­leagues in gov­ern­ment, and mem­bers of the Op­po­si­tion, in­clud­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the area Don­na Cox and NiLe­ung Hy­po­lite. Hailed as "the safest steel­band street pa­rade in the land," this year's edi­tion is ex­pect­ed to show­case at least 25 of the na­tion best bands, in­clud­ing Wit­co Des­per­a­does, BP Rene­gades, TCL Group Skif­fle Bunch, Caribbean Air­lines In­vaders, Neal & Massy All Stars, So­lo Har­monites, Pam­beri, Phase II Pan Groove, Sagi­cor Ex­o­dus and Carib Wood­brook Play­boyz.