weather

Monday Traffic Thought.

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time of the week again as I watch people begin their rolled marches to work in their vehicles, the beginnings of Monday morning traffic on the nearby highway. It’s a highway in Trinidad and Tobago, but in larger countries it might be simply a road, just as what we call a river here would be called a drain in Guyana.

The traffic, though, is real, as people grind their way toward dropping their children to school, getting to work and maybe even being productive there after the standard amount of time talking about how bad the traffic was this morning.

Somewhere in government, some idiot is probably trying to find a new way to decrease traffic while filling their pockets. The usual suspects will get contracts and kick money back, and there will be more roadways to have traffic on such that more people can talk about it in the morning.

Over the weekend I encountered an unnamed local politician’s question on why the local temperatures were so high, as if he had just awoken from a slumber. The question bothered me for a few reasons.

First, it was a question central to Trinidad and Tobago, as if the rest of the world didn’t exist – and I expect in his mind other places only exist to hold money outside of the purview of the local government. He may have even visited these places and treated them like Narnia, coming home to tell everyone of the wondrous and terrible things he saw. Maybe he could write a book. The fact that temperatures have been breaking records world-wide seemed to be something he was completely oblivious to.

Second, and probably even more importantly, as someone with all these connections to have his position, the fact that he didn’t know why temperatures were so high should bother people, but it doesn’t. People were helpfully commenting on his facebook post, trying to remedy his lack of knowledge.

These are the sort of people that are ‘leading’ society in Trinidad and Tobago, it seems, and perhaps why the solutions they present suffer their own lack of understanding of the problems.

Or maybe they’re just popular idiots. There seems to be a trend globally for electing popular idiots.

The Contrasts.

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

The sunset yesterday evening was intense, like the next 2 days of weather will be here in Trinidad and Tobago. The rains beat out their own rhythm, sometimes with the glancing blows of high wind, sometimes not, and in the Northwest of Trinidad it has been… unpredictable.

Before I left for an appointment today, it was raining one way, then another, bamboo nearby was sheared by the wind. I found it exhilarating. I always have enjoyed a good storm, but today it was only a few hours where I live, with a sunset as above. In South Trinidad, though, I imagine it was much worse, with people still having been flooded from past days.

It’s disappointing, really. The same problems keep coming back while the politicians point at each others for local elections. The flooding has been happening more frequently recently, but the Water and Sewage Company of Trinidad and Tobago somehow never seems to have enough water in the reservoir. There’s too many levels of bureaucracy, not enough accountability, and no effective change – but the government of course wants to bring back a property tax based on what someone guesstimates you can rent a property for.

Nature has no time for that.

There is brave talk about electric cars, and hybrids, but the state owned Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission has problems with the grid off and on, at least where I am. It’s hard to imagine the grid charging so many cars every night. I’ve heard the batteries for the cars cost sometimes more than the cars themselves to replace sometimes. All in the name of ‘saving the planet’ which will well be here long after we are not.

The reality is that if these islands, among all the other islands, went and did everything right, from renewable energy to carbon footprints, it wouldn’t have much of an effect on the global climate because these nations, while polluting, aren’t the core of it. For their trouble, they import everything they are told to at high costs, but the global situation’s problems are really in the larger nations that export these things to the smaller nations. “This is good for the climate!”

The woman with a hungry child on the corner has more immediate concerns.

Since Trinidad and Tobago refuses to believe it can produce it’s own technology solutions, hampered by the failed attempts by government to innovate. Big businesses thrive, small businesses die, and everyone wants to start a small business. Big businesses largely import things and sell them to people. Small businesses try to make local things. The bias, as it is, is evident.

The batteries for the cars will end up in the local dumps, likely. Poisoning ground water, like old cell phones and computers do. Politicians will vie to be elected while not actually doing anything, and the shell game of government corporations absolves all from blame.

It is, in it’s own right, a beautiful dystopia at certain hours, populated with a majority of good people who do not go out at night as much – partly economics, partly crime. The crime of the young has become more personal, more painful to the victims, symptoms of a deep economic divide that the government regularly excavates. It’s not an economic divide, really. It’s a moat.

It can be depressing to see on a daily basis. At busy intersections, we see women with children holding up signs with lists of what they need. There are too many for most to help. This was once a rich country. What happened?

I look toward the west, toward Venezuela, another nation which was rich – and could still be rich. I deal with Venezuelans fairly frequently, and while some call them a plague, I see the hard working immigrants that build countries given the right tools. This fresh blood could be an asset. There are intelligent people here, talented people, who in a land where titles mean more than merit, find no place here. They dream.

It’s not too much to ask for a better tomorrow, particularly if you’re willing to put in the sweat equity. I see it almost every day, contrasted against BMWs and Range Rovers while police escort Ministers through the traffic they are responsible for.

These contrasts are much like the sunset. At certain times, beautiful. The rains will come again tomorrow, properties will be flooded, government will posture yet again, and we’ll see what the sunset looks like tomorrow.

It is in it’s own way Groundhog day in a nation with no groundhogs.

The Beach Flow

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

NSB Sunrise (09/03/2016)One of the things I loved about living in New Smyrna Beach (NSB) was watching the sun rise – but it was always more complicated than the sun simply rising.

Truly wonderful things have a depth to them.

Weather predictions were always laughed at in NSB. The ebb and flow of high and low pressure at the beach always made the weather questionable. The sun might rise and push back cloud cover that sat over land in the morning.

There are dark parts of our lives that we can’t change, that we can’t seem to affect – and people will come by when it’s pouring rain and tell you that your attitude is the problem when they’re standing under a brightly colored umbrella.

They might even call you less than pleasant things when your grounded wrath strikes like lightning, the boom of thunder announcing a less than pleasant feeling for someone between the wrath and whatever that they are tethered to that isn’t ground.

In the end, sometimes the sun simply needs to rise, heating the ocean, creating a high pressure over the water that drives toward the low pressure, pushing the clouds away. Sometimes it pushes the storm to you, the maelstrom of beautiful rage pressed upon the fleeting, the delible, and to greet that rage is also a powerful thing.

When it happens, the best way to experience it is with the feel of the water lapping your toes and the unsteady feel of drifting sand between your toes.

The water currents, the winds… the moon, the outflow of water from rains on the land…

It’s complex, yet all the moving parts of the experience are there to understand by simple observation.

To watch the sun rise is one thing. To watch how it changes the way you experience the world, to change your world in such a tactile way, starts the day properly.

To see it happen, to understand the complexity of the experience, to feel it all as it happens with that understanding…

Is something I miss.

Soon.

Prediction.

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

Coyote Head NebulaEvery morning, waking, checking the sky for the weather even before the sun rises, every morning a little different – patterns emerge.

Weather forecasts are fairly useless so close to the coast, the fickle winds battling between a small landmass and a large.  Radar tells you what is, not what will be – it tells you things on a macro scale, it doesn’t tell you about what happens around you.

Wake up early enough, and on a morning where there will likely be no rain, you can see stars. On mornings where this is not true, they hide behind the Earth’s visual blanket of clouds, sometimes with the winds shifting them like living inkblots.

Prediction.  Deciding how to proceed. There is no question that one must proceed, as in life. There is no perfect set of circumstances, there are only circumstances you can proceed in – and the question is whether you wish to proceed or not; the answer is how you can make conditions something you can proceed in.