As a Book­sta­gram­mer one of the ques­tions I get asked the most is, “How do you find time to read so much?” The sec­ond ques­tion I get asked a lot —“Is read­ing your full-time job?”. Peo­ple are be­wil­dered and of­ten sur­prised that I read “so much” even while hold­ing down an in­tense man­age­r­i­al po­si­tion in my day­time job. So far, for the year I have read over 100 books—122 if you want to be spe­cif­ic. How do you find the time to not on­ly read but read “a lot”? Here is how:

There ex­ist two sides of the coin in ref­er­enc­ing our Caribbean style. There is a lux­u­ry lifestyle as­pi­ra­tional fash­ion a la Clau­dia Pe­gus and then there is an or­gan­ic, bo­hemi­an tex­ture, the aes­thet­ic of The Cloth. Both were re­cent­ly fea­tured as brand am­bas­sadors at the Mon­tano’s Choco­late Com­pa­ny cock­tail at the Hilton. In a word, our fash­ion lan­guage can be bilin­gual. So much so, that the soul of our fash­ion sen­si­bil­i­ty does pos­sess the com­ple­men­tary yin and yang, both el­e­ments be­ing part of the fas­ci­nat­ing is­land hy­brid that is our Caribbean trade­mark.

Arista Kat­wa­roo start­ed learn­ing mu­sic at the ten­der age of five at the Bharatiya Vidya Sansth­haan (BVS) found­ed by Sangee­taachaarya Ma­hakavi Pro­fes­sor Hari Shankar Adesh. She is an ini­ti­at­ed dis­ci­ple of Pro­fes­sor Adeshji.

Dis­cov­er how to wish them the best and move on with your life with a pos­i­tive frame of mind and a con­tent­ed heart.

Nneka Jones al­ways had an as­tound­ing love for colour and spe­cial at­ten­tion to de­tail. She ad­mits that the Trin­bag­on­ian cul­ture has al­ways been promi­nent through­out her artis­tic jour­ney. The artist was nev­er one to ac­cept medi­oc­rity, not on­ly in art, but al­so in her every­day life and has al­ways been will­ing to take on a chal­lenge. This led her to take the risk of leav­ing be­hind her fam­i­ly and friends to trav­el the world in pur­suit of both shar­ing and gain­ing ver­sa­tile ex­pe­ri­ences that would en­hance her artistry.

Tekeira Atkins start­ed learn­ing how to style hair at a very young age from her moth­er who is a hair­styl­ist. As­sist­ing her moth­er with her clients made it easy for Tekeira to learn dif­fer­ent braid styles. Dur­ing her sec­ondary school years she of­ten braid­ed her own hair, but lit­tle did she know, she was on her way to mak­ing a ca­reer out of it.

The brain has its own su­per pow­er. In some peo­ple it han­dles that pow­er dif­fer­ent­ly; be­comes over­whelmed and shares the pow­er with oth­er parts of the body in­to jerk­ing- some peo­ple call these seizures, if its re­cur­rent enough, you’ll get the tag called Epilep­sy.

Sama­ra Leza­ma is a 25-year-old chef who grew up with her five sib­lings and par­ents in the com­mu­ni­ty of D’Abadie. Fol­low­ing her sec­ondary school years at St Joseph’s Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, Sama­ra set foot in Pe­ru to do mis­sion­ary work, which al­so al­lowed her to be­come flu­ent in Span­ish. Af­ter Pe­ru, she de­cid­ed it was time to pur­sue her dream of be­com­ing a chef.

In my last ar­ti­cle, I left off on time man­age­ment and this next top­ic has that as its foun­da­tion. As Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, there is an un­der­ly­ing cul­ture of pro­cras­ti­na­tion for some which tends to seep in­to all as­pects of life. It is more ap­par­ent with some peo­ple than oth­ers. How­ev­er, plan­ning ahead is quite the op­po­site and more of­ten than not, re­sults in more good than harm. So what does plan­ning ahead have to do with be­ing hangry? Let’s start by defin­ing ‘hangry’ so we’re all on the same page.

The blame game is in­sane ! How many times have we heard con­stant com­plaints on what women need to do in or­der for a man to stay faith­ful ? Delve in­to what caused this way of think­ing and why it should stop.

Born in San Fer­nan­do, 30-year-old Ka­reena Far­fan is a Type 1 Di­a­bet­ic (ju­ve­nile di­a­betes). She had this type of di­a­betes since the age of six - that’s the ma­jor­i­ty of her life. In spite of this, Ka­reen lives a full life as a lover of fash­ion, make­up and meet­ing new peo­ple.

Many women are feel­ing the pres­sure to have it all to­geth­er. This can mean dif­fer­ent de­sires for in­di­vid­ual women and every­one’s list may look dif­fer­ent. How­ev­er, most women want to ex­cel in every as­pect of their life and chase suc­cess.