Living in Barbados hits the road.

For the next two weeks I will be travelling through New York, London, and France to enjoy the French Open, at Roland Garros. They say that good things come to those who wait. I have waited several months since I made the initial travel bookings, and a good thing that was too as airfares have soared with the rocketing rise of crude oil prices from under US$100 a barrel at the beginning of January this year to US$ 135 last week. It's shocking for me to remember that when I came to Barbados in January 2007 oil prices were at US$ 50 a barrel. That's a weighty thing that is not so good for many people.

So, during that period I will try to blog as usual. Some people have asked that I blog from the tournament, even play-by-play--my tennis coach, Damien Applewhaite, is of course jealous, so I may have to have my phone line open so that he can hear the grunts of the players and the thumping of the ball. I have promised him that I will try to have an interview with Amelie Mauresmo, which would be a real coup if as we joked that could be in the shower. We could bring new meaning to love-all. My wife just wants me to blog daily. Though unspoken, I suspect that she wants me to blog from just beside her idol "Rafa". But I am a current Federer fan, and there is no ex-Fed for me but more Fed-ex. Another prominent coach in Barbados, Sydney Lopez, has told me that Fed will win this time. I hear you Sydney. Anyway, I have a deal with a young tennis player from UWI that I will get Fed to sign a shirt for him.

It is always interesting to look at an object from afar after seeing it up close for a while. I will enjoy seeing how I see the Barbados and the Caribbean from Europe, and how Europe sees us. For example, I may just ask people every day what they think of Bruce Golding's views on homosexuality and see if anyone gives me any kind of reaction. We're small but think we and our region are big in the eyes of the world. I know from past experience that we are small are we are seen as small and largely irrelevant, except in the realms of reggae music, soca, track and field, cricket and occasionally football, and of course crime and drugs (especially as it concerns Jamaica). Politics? Nah. Economics? Nah. Social issues? Nah. Drugs and crime? Oh yeah.

I hope to have fun and to send back some sense of that, in words and pictures.