Escaping the Rat Race

I ordered food from freshdirect.com on Thursday and it got here Friday morning. Ten years ago who would have thought that it was possible to shop from a room in your home with the click of a mouse!

I read widely and I like to share information, so I send colleagues and friends articles all the time. Now that I am home and have so much time on my hand, I have been emailing my colleagues everyday with different articles. Then there is the usual discussion that ensues between some of us on whatever topic the article is addressing. End result: a constant assault on their inboxes!

I am a very politicised person and I am very passionate about many issues. Unfortunately the constraints of my job mean that often time I have to be muted and keep my opinions to myself. Since joining the Ministry, I have used this avenue of emailing articles to colleagues and encouraging healthy discussions among ourselves as one way of dealing with this claustrophobia. However I still feel very restrained. I honestly believe I am more suited to academia but even then, these days academic freedom is under constant attack.

Recently, the idea of just removing myself from the rat race has become extremely appealing- moving to a farm in a remote area on some island and living a largely self-sufficient existence. I am sure Richard Hoad would love to hear about a young professional who decides that an easy life close to the earth is much more attractive. I don’t think I would do this in Bim though. It would have to be another Caribbean island- one of the OECS- or some other tropical place (need the sea) without all the so-called development that has happened in Barbados. A Barbados that is full of highways, traffic, flyovers, huge buildings, no glimpse of the sea as one drives along the coast, huge hotels, exclusive developments for wealthy foreigners, prime agricultural land turned into golf courses, inflated land prices that the average Barbadian cannot afford, people clamouring to live a materialistic lifestyle financed through credit, etc. appals me and I cannot really see myself being happy in such a place.

The Politics of Fear

I am writing with Grover playing in the background. Needed some calming tunes after watching a Fox News Special (“Radical Islam: Terror In Its Own Words”) earlier. The right wing blogs and sites had been salivating all last week as they waited in anticipation for the programme to air last night and again today. As I expected (it is Fox after all), a load of sensationalist diatribe and propaganda aimed at demonising the “other”, keeping the populace in a constant state of fear and justifying foreign policy. I would write a long article dissecting and destroying each argument in the programme but I don’t think my employers would be very happy. Diplomatic life is very restrictive when it comes to voicing personal opinions on issues like this.

Food has always been an interest of mine, whether it’s eating, cooking or talking about it and while I definitely will not be going back to my days of gluttony, my obsession with food will always be ever present. I like watching cooking shows and have spent lots of my time home watching a number of them. Besides having to suffer as chefs prepare mouth watering dishes, I have been picking up many useful tips. For example, using the twigs of rosemary with the leaves still attached at the top as a skewer when grilling fish. This imparts the flavours right into the pieces of fish.

I came across this December feature on the BBC website. It is an interview of a Barbadian called Laurie Daniels, one of the thousands of West Indians recruited in the 1950s by the British to work on their buses and trains. It’s presented as an audio slideshow. Check it out: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6164665.stm

While you are doing that, also check this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6310685.stm It’s an audio slideshow about the Festival in the Desert which is held every year in Essakane, Mali. I actually saw the link to the interview of the Bajan transport worker while I was watching the feature on the Desert Festival.