Boy, it’s good to be home….

.

It’s such a simple pleasure, to sit on the front porch as the sun is rising, listening to the parrots making their morning flight, and reading whatever chupidness is in the newspaper. For example, this man with the cheese balls. Only in Trinidad, yes! Yesterday while driving I could not help but smile when I turned on the radio and heard the announcer say, “Dat is de onlyest problem”. Trinis have a very unique way of using English. I wonder what to call it… in Singapore they speak ‘Singlish’, and in Japan they speak ‘Engrish’… perhaps Trinis speak Tringlish?

Anyway, the flight from Tokyo to New York was, surprisingly, not as bad as I anticipated it would be. Because I had bought THE cheapest ticket available, I was not even allowed to choose a seat — it was assigned to me at the boarding gate which made me quite nervous. I was imagining being sandwiched in the middle seat next to two people with massive bottoms, in the middle of the plane, or even worse, next to the toilet where people line up right next to you and fart while they wait to go in to the bathroom.

But luck was on my side — I got an aisle seat up in the front, next to two very petite Korean girls who were part of some kind of Christian charity called ‘Love Nicaragua’ and were heading down there to build houses or baptise Nicaraguan orphans or something like that. The Korean troupe all wore these weird bright yellow vests, which looked strangely like life jackets, or perhaps traffic conductors, and everyone blew up those neck pillows and walked around wearing them for the entire flight. I thought to myself if the plane crashed, I was going to hold on to one of them.

Once I arrived in JFK, I had another stroke of luck, even better than petite Korean seat mates who never get up to pee. I was scheduled to arrive in JFK at 3.30 pm, and the Caribbean Airlines (CAL) flight was at 4.30 pm, and knowing how long it takes to transfer in JFK, what with all the taking-off-of-shoes and throwing-away-of-water-bottles, I decided to play it safe and book the flight at midnight instead. It would have meant waiting about 10 hours in JFK Airport. However, we arrived in JFK arrived almost a full hour early, so I made a mad dash for Terminal 4 to try to see if I could get on stand-by for the 4.30 flight. By then I barely had 40 minutes to get on that plane, but not only did they manage to get me on the flight, but they also helped me when I didn’t have enough US currency to pay for the ticket change (I was $2 short), and the very kind woman at the counter spared me some change and chipped in the rest. How kind is that? Out of her own pocket! Ah, bless the kindness of strangers. I breathed a sigh of relief when I sat down on that flight and we took off. It was a full 20+ hours of flying, but I think I was lucky to do it all in one shot and just get it over with. When I got home I chugged three very cold Stags, and went straight to bed.

Carnival is done, and I missed out on all the action, but I don’t mind. Right now, I am very content to just sit on the porch, drinking coffee, and chuckling at the dotishness in the papers.