A friend in need and a friend indeed.

A good friend from my university days in the mid-1970s sent me an e-mail message yesterday, having lost my address some two years ago; but as he's a sort of office "pack rat" and never gets rid of anything, he managed to find me again on his computer system. He's a scientist, having studied physics, and has spent most of his working life in road contruction and transport projects for the British government. He originates from the north east of England, Newcastle ("new-kasl", as it should be pronounced) to be precise, and fell in love with London and the south east of England, especially the suburbs of Surrey. Having caught up with me he then sent me on a little box of surprises about how his life had been recently. What we see of our lives often makes us unhappy about the choices we made and make. This friend has always been open with his telling of how life has been good, but also how it has dealt him its woes, especially with work, sport, and women. His love life warrants a novel. As he writes in his latest messages, he only manages to find love with women who are already married (not a good situation) and gets rejected by the others.

We take a lot of things for granted, especially the good things we encounter and the good people we meet (Bob Marley said it better: "Good friends we had and good friends we lost, along the way"). But friendships really get ditched too easily.

My friend is a scientist, but not all of science is an open book to him. People who work with computers, especially those who know how they really work, are savvy about all things Internet-ish, right? Wrong. Most people know the difference between the Internet and things you can do on the Internet, right? Wrong. An article I read over the weekend talked about how many people do not know that e-mail and the Internet are completely different things. Let's not even get into what you can do with a Blackberry, and how it sends messages and has no cables.

So, I was more than a little shocked when my friend wrote "You are all technical ! I regret I am making a point of being the only man left on the planet without a computer. I have no idea what a 'blog' is and I certainly would never know one if it passed me. As for 'Facebook', well that's way beyond me. I have no mobile phone, no fax machine and no home computer. M15 will never be able to track me down." I know that I am no geek. I figured out a long time ago that to get so-called labour-saving devices to do their job, you often needed to expend a good amout of labour to understand them, at least initially. After that you could probably surf on the basic knowledge you had acquired. I was forced to understand a lot more about "IP addresses" and "routers" and "modems" and "switch boxes" through getting companies to set up cable TV in my house and then trying to get wireless Internet access working at home. Then, in my last assignment, I had to understand how the machines that provided the "server" facilities worked so that if the engineer could not fly in to help fix it, my junior economist and I could have a good attempt; we drew the line at climbing on the roof to fix the satellite dish. So, there he is, a qualified scientist, but determined to stay on the road-less-travelled by science.

I don't really know if I should applaud him or commiserate. But I will encourage him to open himself up to some of the developments of the past 30 years.

He feels he has let himself down, and sees this as part of a set of bad decisions he has made in life. "I am in despair at how I have wasted my own years and it would never do for me to look back on the good decisions other people made that I did not. I paid a brutal price for my poor degree and yet I worked so hard, I wish now I had done a Civil Engineering degree and I could have worked overseas for awhile in the Middle East." The money might have come from going to Dubai or wherever, but would he really be any happier with where he ended up?

When we were at university, we spent many hours playing squash, especially when exam and study pressures rose. I was new to the sport, only starting at university, but I was a good athlete, and had a great coach (a former five time world champion), who helped get lots of the basics right. My friend had played before, and we had many great, sweaty tussles on court (metaphorically speaking, not like Oliver Reed and Alan Bates in "Women in Love"). Squash was his real love and has been his pillar through many hard times, at work, in love, and so on. But even here, he feels that time just passed him by. He wrote:

"I play on the county veterans squash team (that's over 50s). Now, it's a ranking as low as you can get. This is the third team and I am at number '5'. Over at a local club the other afternoon I faced a big bull of a man and I was sure this match would be a 'steal'. No! Like the other 8 matches I have played over 2 years, he machine gunned me in 3 sets. I did win 3 points. I just wanted to get away back home. I looked up at my pals in the gallery and it was like a scene from 'Gladiator'. I just cannot win any vets matches. I also played at the fabulous RAC club in Epsom last month. This 'old boy ' rolled up late, and I thought this match will be a breeze. But again, I was bullet ridden. I had more holes in me than an Iraqi taxi. He of course was an old champion of the 1970s. Gutted and humiliated we all came away, all of us but one defeated. I just keep playing because if I stop squash I will have nothing in life."

I don't agree with him and said so many times before when a similar set of events occurred. But, I understand that it's hard to have defeat or set-backs face you regularly and feel good about yourself.

But he offered some bright spots:

"In March I went off on my first holiday in 10 years. I was skiing with some pals from the squash club. We stayed in France a place called Samoen, at the chalet owned by my family doctor (the benefit of living in a small knit town). I thought I would give it a try and I booked up tuition when I arrived. I had the time of my life. After Day 3 I was flying. I was whizzing down slopes like Box Hill here. No fear. My legs and joints were black and blue at the finish of it all but I had the time of my life. It was fabulous."

So, he is not afraid to try new things and to get some success quickly transforms his outlook on life.

He mentions that he has a trip coming to a part of London where he used to work, Liverpool Street-Broadgate (near the famous train station), where there will be a glass walled exhibition court for a world class squash tournament. A club friend bought the tickets and asked him along. He will go, reluctantly, because it's also the place where his career in a sense got derailed; he had good days there but made another "wrong choice" in his career. He used to see trips to London as an adventure. I remember well the awe he often had when we visited different places, which for him had just been names representing the high, the mighty, the good and the great. People from the harsh mining and shipbuilding areas of the north east of England could only gasp at the thought of ever seeing them.

He also just won tickets in the Wimbledon lottery draw for ladies finals day. As he muses, "Just think, I could be sitting a few feet away from lovely lean Sharapova in July. Oh heaven." She is single so maybe love will blossom amongst the strawberries and cream. I'll accentuate the positive for him. My friend also plays tennis so I hope he is honing up those skills so that the little Geordie Sharapovs can get lessons from Dad when Mum is touring.

My friend's life has been a bit complex, not more so than many others, but that has weighed on him. What I have always liked about him, and in fact all of the people I call friends, is that when he finds me he has no hesitation in laying himself bare, even though years have passed since words crossed between us. The apologies about not having been in touch for years is not necessary as far as I am concerned. In fact, it should be that I send a complement for having bothered to seek and seek again.

I would love to say more about my friend and identify him but given that he does not even know about this medium for writing and sharing thoughts and opinions, I will spare him that. He did say "publish and be damned", though.

Neighbours can be friends too.

When we moved into the little street that was to become home, about a year ago, I found it strange that none of the residents came to welcome us. Not just on or around the time we moved in but ever since. I should exclude my landlords, who live in the same street. I should also exclude a family whose daughter is in the same class as ours, and we already knew. I should also exclude a colleague of my wife's, who lived down the street. Maybe people don't do that in Barbados, known for its reservedness. Now, the arrival did not come with a big moving van, and lots of boxes being put out on the sidewalk, which often signal new arrivals even for those who are oblivious to all that is around them. So, our coming could have passed by unnoticed. But after some time of driving in and out of this dead-end street I would have expected someone to notice a new set of people. Maybe they did but did not know what to do, or felt that indifference was the order of the day, or just want to keep to themselves.

Even the neighbours on either side kept a distance, which to this day has never been broken by an introduction. Yes, we have met: I hailed one couple and found out what they both do, and since then we wave at each other when we pass. In the case of the other side neighbours, who appear to be two families living in a Taj Mahal style house, the young boys play cricket in the yard almost every day and the ball flies into our yard sometimes. Bing-bong, the bell chimes. "Yes, who is it?" I ask. "Can we get our ball?" comes the reply. "Sure" I say, and open the gate electronically but also walk outside to see who it is; this is a first meeting now. "Thanks" says the boy and saunters through the gate with his brother, I guess, and rummage around the flowers and plants and comes back smiling with his plastic tape-covered tennis ball. "Bye" I said. But that was that. Now, with children I take the view that you do what your parents encourage you to do, and clearly introducing yourself to strangers, even neighbours, is not something they do.

I had another encounter with these neighbours, who don't cause me any general problems. I saw and heard the putting up of a large satellite dish on top of the house. It was massive, and they had opted for a Mac truck in the days when you can get a Suzuki Swift equivalent in TV satellite receivers. Men were on the roof, winching and hauling this thing up in the late afternoon, and I thought, that sun's not nice. They obviously had the same thought, because the next day--Sunday--bright and early, before day break, I hear drilling and banging and whirring. These people are mad, I thought. They are Muslims, so Sunday is not sacrosanct for them. But this is Barbados! You don't make that kind of racket on a Sunday morning, I thought. So, come a decent time in the day, I set out to "meet" my neighbour. I saw two men sitting on the sidewalk outside the house, talking. "Morning. Do you live here?" A kind of bewildered stare met me, and one of the men muttered in poor English "No live here." Drat. My ire was subsiding. "Where is the man who lives here?" I asked slowly. More bewilderment before I got "Big man he not here". Drat and double drat. Well I still had to get my point over. So, I looked sternly at them--a stern stare is universal--"Alright. When he come back, tell Big man that Little man not happy to hear drilling and banging and crashing before dawn on a Sunday morning. Understand?", I said. They nodded. To this day, Big man has never come to see Little man, but noise abatement is under control.

Another set of neighbours--again a Muslim family--almost got the proverbial boot in the rear. Still without a "Howdy", even though I have walked past their house, waved, admired the dangling pomegranates in their front yard, and wondered how many people live in the house, a mother and two daughters came bing-bonging at my door one Saturday. When I got to the gate, without a "Hello, I know that we have never met, but..." I got, "Will you give us some money to sponsor a bus for our school?" I lived in a Muslim country for three years, and my mind whirled with "Eh, Allah!" I blinked, and in my British-learned manner, said "Excuse me? You what?" They proffered a piece of paper and held out their hands. I know that a hand can get chopped off for some crimes in certain Muslim countries. Well, I lost it at that moment. "Listen," I said, "You don't know me. You don't even come to acknowledge me and my family. You see me passing your yard and drop your eyes. Now you come asking me for money? You crazy?" They all understood English very well, and in a mixed Asian-Bajan lilt, the mother quietly said "Sorry for that. But will you sponsor the bus?" I grinned, and pulled out a dollar coin, and said "Good luck" I think the irony was lost on them. I have never seen them since at my gate. They race up and down the street in a little Suzuki van, eyes fixed on the road and barely slow down to pass me if I am in the street.

That said, the good neighbourliness does exist. The family we knew from school are often with us, at least with some children, and I am often at their house. Drop off, pick up, car pooling, play dates, etc, the children make a focal point for getting together almost daiyly. My landlords and us are together about 2-4 times a week, for a regular lime at their house on Thursday evenings, for breakfasts at Brighton on Saturdays, for lunches sometimes on Sundays, and today for breakfast for Mothers' Day, and so on. I even go to work there if the Internet is down at the house we rent from them, and that comes with lunch if I am there long enough. I also see one old man, who is always tending his bouganvillias, many days a week; and there is another family with a small child whom I chat with whenever we cross during a day. So, the lack of welcome is mixed.

But my wife was smoking something special as she took a leap of faith and sought out the neighbourhood association. Well, she found out that the dilapidated signs on some of the telephone poles, mentioning a neighbourhood watch, actually relate to something recent. In the broader neighbourhood there have been signs of neighbourliness spotted. I don't know if they are on a revival kick, but off my wife started to go to meetings. She's a leaderene type and within one meeting had come back with the grin of her new rank, liaison officer. Oh, lord. Everyone in the street signed up quick-a-clock once she started pounding the pavement, and dropping off fliers, and telling of "coming events". I started getting e-mails from people I did not know, but were part of a group saying "Thanks for the form, will be at the BBQ". Must be spam, I thought, and started to delete some of these messages. Well, the assiduousness of the organization was evident. I started getting reminders and other calendar prompts, and a message about what contribution to make. "Be there or be evicted?"

Well, the day arrived for the great neighbourhood block party. See how a little attention can create big things. People from what must be a half mile square were descending on another cul-de-sac to lime and wine and sit under tents and eat burgers and hot dogs, and drink lemonade, and beer and wine, and get to know each other. Whadat last part? My wife was chief name tagger, another non-paying post, and she was assisted by a chief gate prize lottery chit filler inner, as she peeled off tags and slapped them on the new arrivals. Soon, we were all peering at each others' chests--always nice for a guy when it involves looking at a full busom--and trying to read the names. Some one asked my wife if she was a pharmacist because he needed to know how many times a day to take the prescription she had pasted on his shirt. He knew his name but could not recognize it from the label. She pierced him with a squint. As time passed on a few arrivals escaped the formalities and were duly quizzed to ensure they were not gate crashers before they went back to the "waiting area" are were duly tagged.

A bit stiffly at first, people started to circulate and try to get acquainted. The children, with no real need for name tags, were playing tag and having fun with each other from the get-go. One of my neighbours, whom I got to meet first at tennis, found some cousins of hers. "Chile! Go get an umbrella. Rain go come." They all hugged and smiled and wondered why many years had passed without saying boo to a goose and it took a block party for them to meet up. But it did rain later. I met neighbours from my street that I had not seen, in one case I knew the husband and his father and mother, but his wife works late and I had never seen her. I then introduced her to neighbours who lived opposite her! And so it went on. Our MP came to the party; he used to be a resident in the neighbourhood. He could have been accused of looking political in the way he shook hands and cozied with the older set, but I think it was genuine old time friendship. I met him for the first time--I can't vote here so he would have wasted his time being political. I met other people whom I had seen elsewhere but now know are part of my extended neighbourhood.

It got better as we relaxed and the beer and wine took effect. The sugar from the homemade brownies (the universally agreed dessert, it seemed, even in appropriately race neutral brown and white styles) started to kick in. The hamburger grillers got into their groove, and even fired up a second pan. They went a bit excessive with the cutting down of mango branches to put on the grill to add some "local smoke" to the food--mango and hickory don't work the same, bro'. They tried to cater for all. There were some vegetarians waiting patiently for their veggie burgers, and these were popped on the grill right there with the meat patties. They made up their faces, and eye brows rose singly and together. Oops. Guys, next time you have to get a separate grill for the non-carnivores. But what the heck, we being neighbours now. The music, which had been on someone's list but left at home, started to get jammin...She's Royal....Mek me sweat.... I wondered if we were going to see some of the pensioners wuk up. Just party, man.

The "committee" started pulling for the door prizes. People started cheering, and walking off with smiles and a box. I did not see the prizes except a box of chocolates, but I heard one was a toaster oven. The special prize for mothers? Not sure what that was. Maybe it was the Dairy Box selection.

By 7.30 pm, the festivities that had begun at 4 were waning, but not much. Children were still playing on the swings andrunning, and in the case of my daughter, falling splat on her face and cutting her hand, and having a good cry. Then a pair of policemen arrived in one of those huge jeeps and we thought that some neighbours must have complained about the smoke and noise. But, all the neighbours were at the party. Oh, these guys were neighbours. We safe, for sure, as they toted their burgers with their machineguns slungs on their backs.

Safety and friendliness should go hand-in-hand. If I know you I can start to trust you, or at least less wary of you. If I see you now I can say to myself you are from this neighbourhood. We have little crime in the area but knowing who is who and where they're going is part of self-protection. It took an earthquake last year to get a lot of people in my street to come out and meet. But such natural shocks should not be the only reason to put out the welcome mat and the face to go with it.

Europe daze

May 9 is Europe Day, because on that day in 1950 the first moves were made to create the European Community (see link). Now, everywhere that the EC has its representatives, they roll out the carpet and "celebrate" this day. Well, in Barbados, I have to say it is a peculiar event. Last night's celebration was held in the lush settings of Graeme Hall Nature Reserve. Resting on the edge of the diplomatic community, though not on the A-list, we get invited to affairs such as this, and can hob-nob with the ... rather than remaining with the hoi-polloi.

As soon as we arrived, we decided to perch ourselves on the top of a slope, regal like, so that we could people watch from the comfort of some tables and chairs conveniently placed under a small covered... Everyone else was having "face time" down by the drinks tent. Like the mosquitoes hovering around us and looking for blood to suck, they buzzed around with blood-coloured drinks in their hands. We saw that food had been prepared in an area near where we sat and wondered how the rest of the guests would manage to walk up the slope with their drinks and then down again with their drinks and bowls of soup or plates of hors d'oeuvres. We knew a good many women there had not realized that there would be a lawn to deal with and had worn high heals, which could act as crampons getting up the hill, but would then help topple them when they tried to get their spikes out of the ground walking down again. We took out the phone camera ready for the right moments. Wicked.

Guests, mainly from Barbados' diplomatic community, sashayed onto the lawn, and were soon serenaded by a band whose choice of music was for the main part reminiscent of the early 20th century and before. Their first tune was the theme song from "Beauty and the Beast". Was that some subtle message? Barbados was surely the beauty, but why would Europe be the beast? Oh, EPA. Few people know what the initials mean but we have all been getting upset that Caribbean countries represented by CARIFORUM (carry for whom?) and the European Union have apparently agreed to something that will probably suck more life blood from this region in the name of free trade. I know that EPA stands for Everything Packaged from Abroad, and that soon all the best consumer goods that France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Spain, etc. can offer, will get to fill the shop shelves in Bim. Good, if they mean the arrival too of lower prices.

Back to the band. They then went into a selection that included "Tennessee Waltz" (penned in 1947), "Midnight Blue" and other tunes designed to put those around into a stupor reminiscent of fairy tales, from which we would need to kiss of a handsome prince to be revived. I looked around and saw only ugly men with fuzzy faces, so I did not get lulled by this, for fear of having some ogre leering at me and saying "Be my bride" and me trying to figure out how I had got myself into some pickle. But it was hard to keep my eyes open. A lady then sang "The first time ever I saw your face" (written in the 1950s). Then a jolt. A Caribbean tune! Then boom. Back again to the dirges. My wife had been muttering all evening about how these events need to get into swing with modern times. I did not have the heart to say that swing--having its hay day in the mid-1930s, and would have certainly been preferable to what Herbie and the Pallbearers were giving us. But she was talking to the stars, but bless her she felt better.

Then we heard a voice muttering through a microphone. Whatever it was saying had the effect of drawing the swarm away from the drinks tent toward another larger tent that offered nothing but space. There they all stood, around the legs of the tent while the MC introduced the European Commission's Ambassador Diaz, and the government's representative, Senator Maxine McLean. Clearly, some unspoken rule said "do not approach" as the crowd gave them the tent to themselves and stayed a respectful distance away. The band swung into new life again with a stiff rendition of "Ode to Joy", which has been taken as the EC's anthem, to the well-known music of Beethoven's 9th symphony (composed 1823), then of course the Barbados national anthem. We then got the speeches. Well, the mutterings. I heard reference to "10th anniversary of the European Monetary Union"--well, we not inthe EU so we'll just let you celebrate that; "importance of the euro"--tell us, we can't afford to go to Europe to witness this ourselves, but nuff Europeans can come here and lord it over us; "EPA"--soon to get it; and so on. No one really listened, which is no particular disrespect, it's just a fact. But the speeches were, thankfully, short

There must have been a reference to food because people started to wheel around and head for the hills, so to speak, and the band played "In the mood". We took just a few steps and loaded up with clam chowder, prime rib, and sauteed shrimps before the soon-to-be-enlarged guests ascended upon us. Having sensed a thoroughly European style to the evening's musical offerings, we loved the sense of local flavour in the drinks. But what about the food? There was a Caribbean section to the food, amongst the desserts, cutely labelled "local selection".It had coconut cake, peanut brittle, and other things which we "locals" knew by name but clearly for Europeans needed only be referred to as a "selection". I guess we could have had "sea food selection" and "meat selection" too. But they were ooh, so colourful and sweet.

By this time, our little breakaway section had risen in number to about 10, mainly from the Caribbean, and we were now seeing much irony and mirth in the whole affair. We realised that in a time when a lot of aid is not coming from Europe you have to take the financial support however you can. So, we noshed even more. But, we all felt a bit strange and when it was time to go, we did so. There was no announcement that the event was over. I lost sight of the dignatories. But the cue came from the fact that the bandstand was now empty. Cleverly, the music was still playing but now it was from a recording. Clever fiends, these Europeans. So, off we went, and had to pass through a special exit so that we could collect our commemorative gift. The box was beautiful, wrapped with a symbolic blue ribbon. I wondered if some of the men were thinking if it would be possible to re-gift it for Mother's Day. What was in the box? Shake, shake. Sounds metallic. Shake, shake. It's kind of weighty. Shake, shake went on all the way home. In the safety of home, my wife ripped off the ribbon like a child does on a Christmas present. Aha. A mug with the EU flag. Original. A ball point pen, with EU logo. Also original. Good mementoes. I was not happy, though. I had hoped for a CD of the band's music.

You call that work?

You have to wait for the right moment. That's an adage that applies to so many things. Tell me as I watch my trades flip flop. As far as ideas go, they flow freely through my head but they need the right moments to see air. Yesterday, I got one of those moments when a good friend treated me to a lunch of curried tripe; that before she was due to go on a trip. When the belly is full the mind can work. If Confucius did not say that then he should have.

My friend told of an "encounter" with some other parents at school, who were lauding the school. As she told it, one mother said "It has a great PTA, with lots of women who have time to do things because they don't go out to work." Clang! That was the bell for my moment. She continued that the woman realized that she was digging a huge hole but tried to stay above water--sorry for the mixed metaphors.My friend's back stiffened at that moment, just as it did at that PTA moment. "You see how some people see us? I felt ready to biff her. Pushing up on me in her sleek suit, with me still in my gym clothes. Like I am some kind of layabout...." Harumph...

I had been listening to a radio call-in program on my way to lunch. The discussion was about the productivity of public sector utility workers, and so much of the commentary was about what people see. Water workers down a hole, or telephone workers up a pole, but the drivers lounging in the truck, other workers standing on the side--seems that they could be doing something. Sanitation workers removing garbage--or sometimes just redistributing it along the street, driver moving the vehicle along--seems that the driver is doing all he can. And so on. Why can't these workers have more flexible arrangements and work 24/7? And so on. Work is not what is done. It's what we see being done. That's why thinkers or so-called intellectual workers had such a hard time getting respect. You're thinking. That's not work.

I have recently thought long and hard about the nature of work, and started a blog post that ran for some 10 pages. Well, that is too long in my mind, so I have dribbled out some of the notions as I have written other posts.

I could ask "Why do people who go out to work think that they are the only ones working?" When I posed this question to myself several months ago, I did it from the somewhat odd perspective of a stay-home dad, who spent a good chunk of his day working to make money--and I can see how much I make or lose each moment. If I make no money, my bills don't get paid. If they don't get paid, then...Well, you know the drill. When I visit "the workplace" of my spouse I see what people do, and what they don't do: unless someone does something really extraordinary they salary rolls in each month, whether one really works or not.They all think that they are working. People rarely walk into an office and say "What have you done today?" It's obvious. They have been working. But people often roll into the homestead and ask "What have you done today?". Hmm. Well, I have been working--just at home.

Simply put, there is a tendency to see the home as a "non-work place". Part of that is a natural tendency, or logical fallacy, to see the home as a place for leisure. If you leave to go to work then when you come back you are not at work anymore, so you are on leisure time--rum and coke, TV, relaxation, yaddah-yaddah. Therefore, people who are at home must be on leisure time--permanent rum and coke, TV, relaxation, yaddah-yaddah. Mind you, the housekeeper is clearly working--washing, ironing, cooking, etc. The at-home parent, for instance, is not working unless he/she can show some "professional" activity is being performed--therapists, writers, political pundits, may get some slack here. We economists are largely to blame for this state of affairs: because we tend to value only paid employment or income-producing activities. We see the housekeeper, for example, as contributing to national income but the stay-at-home parent (doing other "domestic" things for no pay) contributes zero.

Traditionally, the faux-pas about who is working had a gender bias. Men tended to go out to work; women tended to stay at home. Now that has changed and a lot of women go out to work. So, the "PTA" type comment burns if you are a stay-home mother, running your butt ragged with errands involving children's academic and social schedules, yet being seen as someone who has "time on their hands". Even in little Bim that time is well used; while the distances are less, the traffic is horribly dense. Think about a typical day for the at-home good-for-nothing.

Drop off at school (8.30am). Back to house to deal with carpenter, gardener, plumber, delivery man, etc (9). Gym (10--yes, that's leisure-ish). Hardware store to pick up door locks, or supermarket to pick up food, or... (11), and having now to negotiate the Wildey Triangle twice--soon to be like that in Bermuda, from where one may never re-emerge? Lunch (1pm...or really 1.45 because traffic was beastly). Back to school for pick up (2.15). Drama at school for number 2 child (3.15). Music lesson on west coast for number 1 child (4.15). [Need help here, because you cant do those two trips...enlist another loafing stay-home parent. Problem resolved.] Pick up number 2 child from drama (4.30). [Need help here, because you are now stuck up the west coast...enlist another or same loafing stay-home parent. Problem resolved.] Pick up number 2 child from friend's home (6pm). Home (6.30...Wildey-Bermuda Triangle permitting). Spouse returns from office (6.30). "Honey, I'm home. What a day I had at the office. I spent the whole day in meetings, from 9am until 4pm; had to eat the lunch you sent me at my desk. Then was on a conference call with an advisor in Timbuktu, discussing nothing important. What a waste! What did you do today?" Spouse gets sent into orbit with no scheduled re-entry date (6.40...lands in pool so needs no bath before packing his bags for night at hotel).

Put that way, some of the distinctions are really ridiculous. Office worker salary? Let's call it US$ 5,000 a month. At-home "worker" salary? Let's round it. Zero point zero.

My friend? No need to say what her substantial professional qualifictions are. But she's been there and done that in the world of corporate ladder scaling. She tells me her back is broad--and her skin is not thin--so she did not launch the PTA commentator into orbit. Well, not that time. But I suspect that Barbados may soon have a space program--located in the parking lot of one of its schools--if you get my drift.

Living with the little people: Solomon was not a stay-home parent

The past 15 months have been amongst the most instructive periods of my life. Children are meant to be enjoyed. Having said that let me deal with some utter negativity. I shrivel with fear when I read stories of people abusing children--locking them in cellars for years; power hosing them for some transgression; burning them with cigarettes to teach them lessons; etc. I am parent to three children--two are old enough to have their own now; they live in New York, Montreal, Nottinham, England, or wherever they happen to be. The third--an unplanned treasure--is just on her pathway of infancy, and at four she has the spirit of giant already. But, I am digressing. This is not about my children.

As I now spend most days at home, working at what I do, I find the transition from in-office bureaucrat to at-home whatever, full of fascinating revelations. Not the revelation that working in tee-shirt and shorts makes me more productive than sporting a suit, jacket and tie ever did. The main one I see frequently is the wisdom of children. Not so much what they know but what they can teach as they learn. Let me give a few examples. You know those children who cannot abide eating green peas? Well, like most things for small children, it's part of a habit that gets nurtured or not. It's often easier for a friend to change what a parent cannot. So there I went. First stop: I don't eat that.

Me: "C'mon. Open your mouth. Close your eyes. Chew. How does it taste?"
Little Evie: "It tastes like brown peas" [The child is Jamaican so loves gungo peas, which are brown.]
Me: "Ok. Have another mouthful. How does that taste?'
Little Evie: "Yucky."
Me: "Ok. Try some more. Now how do they taste?"
Little Evie: "Still yucky."
Me: "Hmm. But you've eaten one brown pea and six yucky peas, and you're now growing horns...Just kidding."
Little Evie: "I can't wait to tell Mummy."

So this is not evidently a life-changing moment, but it could be. Now, Mummy has a base on which to build eating more peas, and other things that are now on the list of "I don't eat those". No threats; no beating; no search for the key to the cellar.

What I find is that children often comply if things make sense or if things are presented in a fairly consistent way. For example, "No, you cannot watch that" does not mean "No...not today, but if I'm fed up, then ok, go ahead, but remember tomorrow, you can't...". That is an oft-seen recipe for confusion and game playing. Kids are good at negotiating. So, better to make the deal with them that you want to really see happen.

Next stop. Sharing.

Breathless little one: Uncle Dennis! This is my paper. Her paper is in the bathroom and Rhian's paper is on the floor. Tell her!
Me: But all the pieces of paper look the same. They are all purple and have on the song from class. So, how can you tell which is which?
Breatheless: Mine is dark.
Me: Hmm. Let me try something.

I then shuffle two sheets of paper as three pairs of eyes look on waiting for the magic to happen.

Me: Whose is this one? Wrong.

And so on I went for a few more minutes. The children still waited for the magic, but the lesson was sinking in. Three sheets of identical purple paper look identical. Now, let's solve the mystery of the missing purple paper. Here I invoked Solomon. I gave one sheet each to the two girls who claimed that they were theirs and the silent one I took to the place-where-paper-was last seen--the bathroom. We hunted in the bathrooms where the children usually wash and play but could not find the paper. I don't panic easily so no sweat marks showed on my tee-shirt as the eyes of my little partner started to get moist: her paper could be lost forever. Tragedy. I could hear her thinking "Mummy, I can't learn the song for Christmas. You won't love me. I...I...". I looked at the doe-like eyes and asked a question. "In which bathroom did you put the paper, Evie?" She looked at me like I was a true buffoon. "In Auntie's, Uncle" Aha. We were in the wrong part of the house. Duh.

Off we went to the master bedroom and I saw the paper immediately--not in the bathroom. But wait. Here was my teaching moment. "Look in the bathroom, Evie. See the paper?" Of course she did not. "Oh. Look over here. There it is." A little sheepish hesitation came from my doe-lookalike. The paper was on Auntie's dresser, near Auntie's make up and jewelry. There's another story unfolding, but I thought that we both knew what was up. I did not go on about playing in our bedroom (off-limits) or playing with Auntie's things (off-limits). This child was a frequent guest but my child should have reminded her of the rules, but was not there to have me deal with that issue--too busy painting toe nails now. I will get another chance to work on that. We found the other girls and everyone was pleased. Three girls. Three sheets of identical paper. Ownership rights restored. "Look," I said, "Let me put your initials on each piece of paper so that if they get lost again we can know whose is which". That pleased them. "Hee-hee. See my name? EW"..."Mine's RJ"..."Mine's ES". Skipping, they then went to cause more confusion in the house.

So things went on for a few more hours. So things go on several days a week. By the end of every day, I feel a bit tired but also have a huge smile inside. I do my work from early morning till around early afternoon--I like to write before dawn and my trading goes on during the day. Once my daughter comes home from school, I still work but I am mentally switched off being serious about what I need to do. I slide into a parenting mode to lesser or greater degree depending on who is around, which means that my eyes and ears are on a new frequency and I am ready to drop what I am doing, but I don't go chasing around. If my daughter has a play date--and that can be with one or several other children--I usually let them play contently only intervening for "Solomon moments" to help resolve a "crisis". I often try to encourage them to reason out the problem themselves. Adult logic and child logic are different and children can usually fix problems themselves without war breaking out, if they are encouraged to do that. I intervene for "rest stop" moments--food, drink, potty management, etc. Never give more chips to one child than anotherand if there are more than two children each one needs to have the bigger half! Always remember that everyone wants their favourite colour cup.

If you are spending your day in an office, while you pore over some sheafs of paper and deal with phone calls from people who seem severely intelligence challenged, think how Solomon would resolve the problems you face. Then think what you would do if you were dealing with a child. Take the latter option, whatever it is (and in the work place, locking people in a dark room may be a kindness). It'll probably make you laugh more, and the problem will disolve into what it really is--just a minor matter. If that does not work, remember Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal" (see link), that really will make you laugh not least because it will remind you of the link between nurture and nutrition, and of how people used to view "going to Barbados".

What world are we living in? Redux: Tensions of development.

Some Bajans have commented to me orally about the original post (see link) and put forward some notions that I had held from my earliest days here, but were interesting to hear from people who have lived here all their lives. In the case of one woman, who has never left Barbados, studied at UWI, worked for the government at some stage, and now works for a regional organization, she put forward the following:

In Barbados, Bajans have a "culture" of not putting their wealth up for show--hence the tendency for modest-looking housing. Various government policies have also encouraged mixed income housing developments to try to remove the sense that some areas are for "haves" only (parts of the west coast?). The first part fits with the common notion that people are conservative and reserved. However, that said, when I look at areas such as The Pines, and parts of the inner urban area around Bridgetown, I don't see modesty, I see poverty--areas of economic stress or depression, and from what I hear and see on a daily basis they show plenty of signs of social stress (problems related to drug use, violent crimes, etc.).

She added that much of the "wealth" in Barbados is not national: a lot of money flows into developing property in the country but is controlled by foreigners and mainly enjoyed by them and expatriates. The manicured golf courses near the west coast are wonderful to see but they don't directly produce nutrtition; they are tourists' and rich people's play things. In addition to that observation, I have noticed that pressure to develop an already congested island is raising a lot of concerns about the growing disappearance of open spaces and their replacement by concrete; a post in another blog today (Barbados Free Press; see picture above) highlights that in the rural area of St. Philip. An undercurrent to those concerns is that the "developers" are often foreign, though there are major local businesses who are also in this game. What I would add is that some of what I have noticed looks like good old urban blight. That can be the result of inertia on the part of the property owner or an agency such as the government's planning department. Reasonable plans may exist to develop an area but the plans remain blocked for a range of reasons. Neighbouring property owners can only wait and see.

Concerns are particularly high when it comes to losing some of the beautiful coastal areas, that give "windows to the sea" (see recent comments by Hartley Henry). For the west coast, the views are gone; the east coast has a lot of views that can be preserved, and could be an area for some real tests of government's resolve to preserve what many nationals hold dear.

She further added (stressing that she had no strong preference for either major party) that the previous government, BLP, had a tendency to spend excessively, but put little of that into productive ventures, thus Barbados has a lot of "fluff"--sone showy exteriors but a somewhat shoddy underside. Bright, modern buildings, such as The Sherbourne Centre (pictured), the new commercial areas of Warrens, the international airport, show an intent to give the country a "well-fed" face, but they do not indicate convincingly that the body is also doing well.

Every country has these kinds of dichotomies, so Barbados is not unique. My question is whether the whole country is moving in one direction--upward--or if there is a distinct sense that some parts are growing poles apart.

Getting your just rewards. Being taken for a ride by airlines and hotels?

I've written a lot about fraud in recent times and have what I would call a healthy skepticism of a lot of "corporate" practices. There are many stories that one reads or hears of about how airlines and hotels try to filch frequent fliers/visitors so that the points they accumulate are null and void. I have just had one of those experiences.

I was checking my balance for a major hotel chain, whom I have honoured with my money and nights, and where I have stayed several times in the past 24 months. First, I found that my account details were not recognized online, and on checking found that my card had expired at end-April 2008. So I called and was told that a new card would be on its way in the mail. No problem. So, I asked about my points balance, recalling that there was enough for a night stay (30,000 points). Yes, the balance had been over 40,000 points, but they expired in June 2007 due to a lack of activity over the preceding 12 months; that expiration would have been pre-notified. Alarm bells started ringing. I said that I knew that the airlines and hotels liked it when these points expired, but it was frustrating to not have been forwarned. I took a deep, sigh-laden breath.

I first asked if a copy of the notification could be re-sent to me. A pause; a consultation; a supervisor came on the line. No, the company could not re-send the notification. Shame, I responded, but I really would like proof that it was sent. Was that not possible? Another pause. No. I took a deeper, more sigh-laden breath.

I was then asked what did I want done. I have heard this question before and recognized it as a ploy to see where the customer was prepared to go. We were in a negotiation!

I said, give me the proof on pre-notification or reinstate the points. Another pause. I was then asked when I had last stayed with the chain. I knew that I had been on a week-long visit to Washington DC in late 2006, and was checking my records I said; so was the supervisor he said. He confirmed that I had had a stay in October 2006. So, I said, the points were annulled prematurely. Another long pause. He repeated the principle for annulation. I repeated that I understood and that there had been an error. Another long pause. Yes, sir, you are correct. The points had been annulled prematurely and would be reinstated to my account in a couple of days. How nice, I thought. "Thank you" I said.

I said that I would check again in a few days and if I did not see what had been promised, I would be calling back.

Was I being subjected to a standard business practice, which means that people fall to the line of least resistance, do not ask questions and lose their just rewards?

For frequent travellers some of this is not new. Accumulating the miles and points is very easy, but using them is hard and losing them can be easy. The airlines have recently become more aggressive in cutting the values of the miles and points (see an example).

The true cynic in me asks questions such as "If the customers' miles and points are annulled, where do they go?" It does not take much imagination to see that if the miles have been accumulated then annuling them for a customer does not remove them from "the system". Could it be that these annulations then get transferred into a pool of usable miles that can be exploited by company employees for themselves, friends and families? Who would imagine such a fiendish scheme? We already know that many companies do not let employees keep miles and points they accumulate on business travel and then pool those for the benefit of travel by other administators. And like the cashier who keeps a few pennies from the change that should go to a customer, they all add up.

It's Sunday, so if what I suspect is the case is in fact true, I will pray for the forgiveness of all the souls who are part of this sort of scheme.

Travel is normally put in the category of leisure activity. Those who travel a lot know that there is often not much leisure, and nowadays much less pleasure--ask my wife who wasted Thursday at the airport in Trinidad trying to get back from a day/night visit to Guyana, then could not connect for her three day weekend business trip to St. Kitts. Well, she did then get the leisure of a weekend in Bim and the pleasure of the company of her family and friends over the weekend.

Life ain't easy.

Here we go!

If you do not like football, shame on you. If you think that the only sport to follow is cricket, more shame on you. If you are not following the last phase of the race for the Barclays Premier League, even greater shame on you.

I was a football fanatic--player, spectator, coach, referee. I used to spend much of every Saturday either playing, watching, coaching or referring--not all at the same time and in the same place, mind you. Even after I discovered family life I was able to keep up with this diet. When I went to the US, I watched less, but played, coached and refereed more. Then I played less, coached and refereed more. Then I coached more and refereed less. Then I stopped it all.

By that time I had arrived in Africa, where football is really like a religion and youngsters play like they did when I was a boy in London--anywhere, with anything; a few people or a full team. It was passionate and fluid. The imagination and oddities of the situation developed skills that cannot be taught: how to bounce the ball off an object and get the rebound; learning to bounce off concrete (never easy); learning not to fall on concrete (it could be the last fall of all). I had played in Africa for a short while, in the rarified air of Malawi. I was in my late 20s and people there could not understand why I had not retired; all their best players stopped around the age of 26. I had been told that a player peaks at around 28, and there I was, so I was still playing.

I never thought of myself as a veteran then, that privilege came later. I remember going through tough years, not much later, when I did retire (unhappy with a lot of things). So, I spent a year of misery not having anything to do with football. Then an old friend, in his 60s, who had played for Millwall as a full professional asked me to come and play veterans football. "You can be our ringer, as you're not yet 30." I loved it. I was much quicker and fitter and all of a sudden I was a star, and much abused for that. I scored lots of goals, made lots of goals, saved lots of goals by running more and doing more than anyone else on the team. My mentor, seeing me smiling after yet another Sunday morning game, told me to never stop playing if my legs had movement. His secret to a long playing life was simple: no sex (not even with your wife), and a round of golf before every game. No comment. I tried to stay with football a long time and stopped playing in my mid-40s; ironically I went back into training to come to Barbados to play in the Wanderers Masters Tournament and that was a real shocker to my system but a great thrill. But after that, I gracefully hung up my boots. Now, I just try to encourage my youngest daughter to kick and head; her sister who is in England has just spent a season discovering varsity level football and the thrill of the team sport at a higher level

All that aside, I now sit ready to see the top two teams in Britain (yes, Scotland's Celtic and Rangers are not in the same league--literally), Chelsea and Manchester United,play to a possible "double" of awesome proportions. They are 1 and 2 in the Barclays Premier League, and they are both in the finals of the UEFA Champions League, to be played later this month in Moscow. I was never a real Chelsea fan, but always loved their style in the 1960s through 1980s, with heroes such as Charlie Cooke, Peter Osgood, Ron Harris, Peter Bonetti, Alan Hudson, Ray Wilkins, etc. Many of my best school friends were fans of the Blues and we hung out a lot in the Chelsea area. I also loved Man. U--especially in the era of Bobby Charlton, Denis Law, and George Best. Now I love them again, with Christiano Ronaldo showing me things on a field that you only do to showboat.

So, here we are. Chelsea beat Man. U last week to draw level on points, but Man. U have better goal difference. Two games to go, both tough. I will be nail biting and go to the finish. My money is on Chelsea, and they will win by a point. We will see in a few days time if my prediciton is right. I think that Man. U will get their revenge in Moscow. Honours will be even? One game at a time and later this morning I hope to see West Ham put the nail in the coffin for Man. U, as they have done before. Come on you Hammers! Chelsea play on Monday, a holiday in England. So exciting!

Trying to make it: some random thoughts on British immigration.

A young cousin of mine, living in England, is now embarking on a career as a banker. He made me think about some of my past career in The City of London, the heart of much of the world's financial dealings, but also about immigration and race.

I never had any notion that as a black immigrant I could not succeed in England. I did what I wanted, took my education seriously, went to university and then needed to embark on "a career". Most things I tried worked out well, in sport, education, and then work. My very first job offer when I left university was to work as a management trainee on the domestic side for, Lloyds, one of the major English banks. I turned it down because I really wanted to work for their international side. But I always think about whether I would have become one of the very first black bank branch managers in England.

I could not decide what to do, so did a masters course at universtity, then worked as a transport economist in rural north Wales, where I saw that a Welsh speaking black man (me) could get better treatment than a white Englishman! I then got a job as an economist at the Bank of England. When I started work there in the early 1980s, I was one of about one black professionals. Black male professional faces in The City were very few; more black faces appeared in the ranks of ancilliaries (janitors, porters, messengers) and also secretaries and administrative staff. Feeling some sense of isolation, however, I started an association of black financial professionals in The City, and we met monthly and shared experiences and tried to do the network thing. I was good support at the time.

Black Caribbean immigrants and their offspring have had an interesting history in England, since the early waves of arrivals on The Windrush, and are still trying to make it in more fields, and to seem less limited in terms of presence in fields outside sport and music.

The rarity of black financial professionals is now much less, and with the international nature of finance in London more black professionals appeared, in part from US banks. It's great when I watch Bloomberg TV that one of their favourite pundits is a black British-Caribbean economist and currency strategist, Trevor Williams, who was an academic and civil servant but now is chief economist for Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets. (Good of me to have left him that space with my earlier career decision.)

Just for my information, I asked my cousin to give me his impressions as a young, smart, black man trying to make it in England. Here are his thoughts:

I am a young black man, and I think I have a good future. I was born in London, so was my mother, but her mother was from Jamaica and came to London in the 1950s to work as a nurse. My father was born in Ghana and came to England as a boy. So, like Obama is a real African-American, I am a real Afro-Caribbean.

I had a great start because at one time I had a scholarship to one of the best independent schools in London. Then my parents broke up. Money was tight and the scholarship money had finished. They could not continue to pay for me to stay at that school. So, I moved from there and managed to finish my studies at a college. After I left I was given my first job, as a trainee with one of the English retail banks (could be Barclays, or Lloyds, or National Westminster, but I am not saying).

My position in the bank is not high enough yet for me to give a fair and accurate perspective on how black men are really doing. But I can tell you what I observe. In general, I would say that black men aren't doing too bad for themselves. I have managed to observe a few branches in The City and in Baker Street, Marble Arch, Sloane Square, and Westminster. I have met the area and regional managers and they are all black. So I was very impressed with that discovery.

I would say that the environment that I am in is pretty even-handed in its treatment of blacks and whites. I work in "retail banking", which is dealing with a lot of personal customers. Things may be different in other areas of banking such as corporate and investment banking. I hope to break into one of these at some point.

Racial equality is a thorny issue--a great understatement. Britain has some peculiar problems to deal with in that regard. Most immigrants are not black, they just happen to be the most easy to identify in an environment where most people are white. Britain, mainly London, but also the major metropolitan areas of Birmingham/West Midlands, and Lancashire and Yorkshire (such as Manchester and Leeds), became a haven for displaced Commonwealth people, and has seen waves of mass immigration in the past 50 years.

A wave of Caribbean migration came in the 1950s and 1960s. Then a large influx of Cyrpiots, when ethnic conflicts between Greece and Turkey in the mid-1960s to 1970s, led many Turks and Greeks on the island of Cyrpus to leave. and seek refuge in England. Idi Amin put the fear of God into many professionals and merchants of Indian origin in Uganda, and another wave of migrants began to flow in the early 1970s. Irish migrants have sought to escape "the troubles" in northern Ireland. Most migrants are now coming from east and central Europe, either as refugees (say from Serbia) or as the European Community liberalises the flow of workers (so most times now when I visit London I need to understand a Polish or Latvian accent to get served a beer or have some work done).

The organization set up in Britain to deal with racial inequalities, The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), is chaired by Trevor Phillips--a contemporary of mine at university, who was born in Britain in the mid-1950s of Guyanes parents, and became a Labour Party politician and political journalist. But even the EHRC has its problems, and failed to implement an overarching equality scheme, setting out its position for its staff on race, gender, disability and other potential areas of discrimination (see report in The Times).

The EHRC has said recently that lack of control over immigration has led to a racial “cold war” among rival ethnic communities. Mr. Phillips believes that the failed policy risks inflaming racism among millions of young mothers and working professionals. He laid out a plan for managed migration and and said that people should not be intimidated from making legitimate criticism of ethnic minorities.

Britain, like many nations, has grown from an influx of foreigners (Danes, Romans, Normans, Frenchmen, etc.) and is still full of foreigners. For the modern Britain there is now a fascinating interactive map of the racial diversity in some 30 British cities (see link). What a project it would be to do an historical trace of some of the earlier immigrants.

My thoughts are shaping up so I am offering no conclusions, just a few stepping stones.

What world are we living in?

As my eyes wander when I travel around Barbados they show a certain perplexity with what they see. I don't have the keen eye of one of my fellow bloggers (Barbados in Focus, whose images are both vidid and small works of photographic art). As an economist, I have noticed for a long time in the English-speaking Caribbean countries the contradictions of wealth and poverty. However, having lived in a dirt poor west African country I know that our absolute poverty is relatively good compared to the miserable existence that is imposed of many Africans struggling to get by on less than US$1-2 a day, often without drinkable water, electricity, basic health and education services.

Jamaica has posed a conundrum for many economic analysts for decades. Official statistics show a stagnant or declining economy, which has suffered several periods of high inflation. However, if one tours the country you often see many signs of a country that is thriving, at least for a not insignificant part of the population that lives in the large houses and mansions that adorn the middle class suburban hillsides around Kingston, or as appears to be becoming more common in smaller towns, of which Mandeville is one example with which I am familiar. Jamaica has not had a conventional social explosion that might be expected in the face of a depressed economy with high price increases. Financial transfers and goods sent by families abroad have done a lot to keep many Jamaican residents more than just afloat. Financial transfers to Jamaica in 2007 were about US$ 2 billion, compared to foreign direct investment of about US$ 750 million. Some would argue that the country has had a social implosion--at least in the metropolitan area around Kingston--in the form of a frightening rate of murders, putting it as a world leader in that category. This is not an Olympic sport so it's not a proud position to be in. Without going into the various possible explanations of the violence, it has put the society under a high and debilitating level of stress.

Overall, Jamaica is said to lag its neighbours like The Bahamas and Barbados in terms of its economic status, when measuring growth and income per person, and looking at things like the public debt burden. Yet, as noted those who have wealth seem to have plenty of it and often flaunt it, and the average income is weighed down by poor people who visibly have very little.

Whenever I visit Jamaica I never feel that I am in a poor country. When I visit The Bahamas and now that I live in Barbados, I do not think that I am in countries that are especially wealthy. A lot of consumer goods are available, but often very dear. The economies are heavily dependent on tourists and financial services, and outside those areas it's not easy to see where wealth is being created. Yes, there are certain things that are more readily available in the smaller islands and their provision is simpler given their size. Certain dislocations that one experiences in Jamaica, such as power failures or brown outs, or water shortages, do not seem to occur as often--though they do occur. Social services are mixed in all the islands. Public transport is good in Jamaica (taxis and buses), and in Barbados (where it is also relatively cheap, but private car ownership is also very high), but it is really limited in The Bahamas (where the love affair with the private car has reached obsence levels).

Increasingly, when I look at Barbados I search for some clear signs of its higher standard of living, and I wonder where it really is. It is not Switzerland or Singapore, yet I experience a very high cost of living, and a lot has been said on that by me and others. Barbados has some services that offer good standards, given the size of the island and its population, but they can be quickly stretched. But for a country that is supposed to be on the cusp of first world-dom it has some disturbing signs of pockets of poverty and a place where some important things don't seem to be right. (For those who know the island all the pictures here show places that are no more than a mile from either the Governor General's or the Prime Minister's official residence.)

I see many destitute-looking people men walking or lying on the streets around the south coast. I aslo see handfuls of them dancing at Oistins on Friday evenings, with a drink in their hand and reggae in their ears.

I see signs of deriliction and incompleted buildings in urban and rural areas, and I am now trying to capture some of that in pictures. Sure money for construction runs out. Some of the derelict and rundown properties are owned by government, and one has to ask what is the story with letting such buildings stand idle while renting other space. Some buildings appear to be privately owned, including some glaring eyesores on land owned by churches.

I see signs of delapidation in the road systems, and I don't know the political map well enough to know if that reflects political favouritism or lack of resources or failed works. For example, when I take the roads from the airport, I wonder why the road esastbound into St. Philip is a total shambles, within meters of the airport, while there is the blissful smoothness of the highway heading west toward the south and west coasts. I see the highway borders being trimmed and manicured periodically, and I see roads being dug up, repaved, dug up again, etc.(In many instances, these kinds of works appear like "make work" projects that allow contractors to get a steady flow of income, and provide jobs for some men and women who have few skills. Like the roads in Jamaica that seem to need repaving every year after rains took away the thin skim of tarmac and marl put on the year before.)

Very few Barbadians appear to live in stooshy residences (with their marble interiors, fine furniture, and golf courses); these are mainly the homes of foreigners, either as actual homes and/or investments which they can rent to tourists or expatriates. Most homes are very modest-looking; many inhabitated buildings are nothing more than shacks. The tourists may stay in some high class hotels such as adorn the west coast--and brand names are absent--but many hotels are small, boutique-style.

So, I have an ambivalent viewpoint about Barbados in figuring out if it is really first-, second-, or third-world. I think I can say safely that it's not third-world compared to most of the developing countries in that category. So, it's somewhere in the second-world. And moving up, sideways or down?

I am going to leave that as a question to be probed more.

MAKE TODAY HISTORY - MAKE HISTORY TODAY

One of my blogging friends, the artist Ingrid Persaud (see Notes from a small rock and 14x21 blogs), is starting a project aiming to record an ordinary day, Tuesday, May 6, 2008, in the life of ordinary people in Barbados. If you are in Barbados on May 6 all you do is keep a diary of your day, between 600 -1000 words, and send it to her by email. It will function as a time capsule capturing for history what normal people did on that very normal day – what they wore, what they ate, where they went, what transport they used – just the stuff of a normal day. It is not about recording extraordinary events. The records will ultimately be available online for all to share. Keep a record of the day and send to: maketodayhistory@gmail.com. You can email it anytime between May 6 to 9, 2008. Please tell your family, colleagues and friends.

Can we be proud of our tourism?

I cannot think and act like a tourist from Europe or North America. I won't even try to imagine what they think when they visit Caribbean islands and countries. Whenever there are surveys they show that the tourists love the friendliness of Caribbean people and the relatively easy-going lifestyle that is possible. But what can tourists expect and what do they often find? I am going to concentrate my remarks on what I have seen since living in Barbados and visiting neighbouring islands in the past year.

Attractions. It's easy to see the attraction of vacations in The Caribbean: sun, sea, sand; often relaxed lifestyle; often relatively safe; lively music; different foods; exotic drinks; etc., especially during those periods when you have at home snow, ice, darkness, trees without leaves. Visitors may also find some easy sexual relations here. The Caribbean offers some other interesting attractions: historical sites (not many and not often well kept, but there); wonderful nature (an attraction for some to just visit to see flowers, plants, and wildlife that they have only read about or seen on TV, for others it adds to the relaxation to be able to hike in mountains or forests that have few other visitors and can offer wonderful spectacle). The latter is being developed in some of the mountainous islands such as Dominica and St. Lucia, and in the jungles of Guyana. The historical sites--forts, plantation houses, underwater wrecks--are a mixture, but often repay a visit and can rival many similar sights anywhere, and if one thinks of places like Belize as part of The Caribbean, there are some wonderful Mayan or Amerindian sites.

Service with a smile or even service at all? Well, that is a rarity, even in the large, branded, top-of-the-line hotels. I have stayed at a Four Seasons (Exuma, Bahamas--broadly a very pleasant experience, and the mosquitoes that often plague the island had gone on vacation) and one of the Preferred Hotels (The Landings, St. Lucia--mixed; the hotel is not yet complete, but there are plenty of staff they just seem to be not always on the ball); I have visited Sandy Lane, Barbados just during the afternoon (the hotel is too expensive for me to stay there, but I was pleased with the level of service I experienced on afternoon visits. Overall, my impression is that service is at best patchy. A facade of friendliness and efficiency, but often no more than a facade. Just coming from a weekend in St. Lucia, I had to smile when the gate keeper at the hotel offered me a "guest pass" for my vehicle as I was departing for the airport to return home; the previous two days he had waved at me as I tried to enter after I had to honk the horn to get his attention to open the gate. My family and I don't need flunkies, but if you offer me flunkies then get the flunk on. On three occasions, the golf buggy transport "offered on demand" took more than 20 minutes to arrive; I gave up waiting and walked, and told the front desk that "I was not impressed".

I have to admit that I find staff in Barbados associated with tourism to be masters of the "grouchy approach"--it may be an extension of the criticism of the island as having too many BPOs (business prevention officers). It starts and ends often enough at the airport. There is a certain surliness of the staff that is bordering on disrespect. "Take out your laptop", "Gimme your passport", other orders come reeling out, without those short but very friendly additions "Please" and "Thank you", even the overworked Americanism "Have a nice day" or "Enjoy your stay in the island" would help to offset the unwelcoming approach.

I read an article in The Barbados Advocate on April 19, by Nigel Wallace, entitled "Polite as...". It noted "I did not recognise just how much manners were really missing until my wife reprimanded me for entering a room of strangers without saying 'Good morning'...You must ... imagine my shock when I recognised that Barbadians don't really want polite. They want, more than anything, to be ignored so that they don't have to fumble over the words that have been forgotten somewhere around a decade ago." Mr. Wallace hits the nail squarely on the head. He feels that it's because of distractions that the courtesies have been forgotten to explain (in his words) "when someone who is paid to serve us fails miserably at their job". He argues that "somewhere along the line we have forgotten to demand courtesy and good manners on a day to day basis". I wish I could agree with that last point because if you try to demand them you are met with an even surlier glare, as happened to me when I went to park my car and was met with a ticket thrust into my hand, and when I said "Good morning" three times and waited for a reply each time, was told "What you, expec'? You wan' me to say 'Good morning' to you? You fin' me here". On leaving the airport last Friday, the LIAT gate attendant took my tickets, processed them, thrust out his hand with them back towards me and proceeded to discuss some partying issue with a colleague. "Hello," I said, "the passenger is over here". He looked back at me surprised to be reminded that we were in the midst of a transaction. (Those of us who live in Barbados can add to this all the behaviours we find in ordinary stores.)

My wife is of the view that if the base for tourists in Barbados was Americans, as it is in The Bahamas, then the industry here would have to get its act together fast because Americans are believed to demand a higher level of service. I think it needs more than a change of visitor source. There needs to be a receptiveness to training and a willingness to want to work in serving people. Whatever training is given is not producing an industry that would tempt me to come back. But Barbados has a lot of repeat visitors, albeit mainly from the UK. My wife feels that British tourists are not very discerning. I disagree to the extent that The Brits can go to Spain and have a great holiday, with less travel, and as much sand, sea, sex and alcohol as anywhere, and it's a cheap deal. Even so-called fine restaurants in Barbados make a hash of serving. At a recent dinner at one of Barbados' top restaurants on the south coast, the patrons at an adjacent table, who sounded American, had to raise with the manager that after an hour they had still not received their food. Why it took them an hour to complain I cannot understand--too much acceptance of island time? Within 15 minutes their meals arrived. A lot of people in that restaurant had not been doing their jobs.

Value for money? This is hard to define. When people travel on holiday they are often on a budget, but they are also ready to spend freely--it's vacation time, when you are supposed to relax and have fewer concerns. But that does not mean that you want to be gouged by every price you face, or feel that the scent of your cologne immediately starts the price rising as the cologne goes up in the air. I find it hard to understand why everything in Barbados is considerably dearer than almost anywhere else I travel. Certainly, it is a pleasant surprise to travel to a neighbouring island and find normal prices for food and drink. Perhaps many tourists are insulated from the problem in Barbados if they visit on all-inclusive packages, and can drink and eat to their hearts' content without shelling out another pound, Euro, Canadian or US dollar, unless they want to party in St. Lawrence Gap. However, enough tourists keep most of the tables filled in many of the restaurants here and the British, Canadians and Europeans perhaps have not had such sticker shock with the recent strength of the Pound, Canadian dollar and the Euro; Americans are probably shocked at how much their fixed dollar does not buy here.

Ease of travel. Poor us. We have to rely mainly on LIAT (about which I have written before and the plight of which many have expressed their hostile opinions--though for once, I can report a good experience with LIAT to and from St. Lucia, with on time service (even early take off and arrival) and our bags arriving within 10 minutes. So, on occasion their service can be alright. But apart from that, we are hampered in the islands because we cannot travel between places with ease and certainty, and the fares are not cheap. Although the fares costs differ the problems of interconnection are many whether travelling with LIAT, American Eagle and Air Jamaica. So, we have to endure long waiting times at airports in order to travel relatively short distances; can find ourselves spending an unscheduled night and day somewhere because of mechanical problems; or/and endure complications due to regulations about crew flying times. The inter-country services in The Caribbean are at best erratic, and at worst totally unreliable (even including the unannounced rerouting or cancellation of flights and the consequent dislocations that can cause for individual travellers). I cannot fix LIAT's problems; perhaps competition could, but it's a hard set of routes to work well and at a profit. The other problems we have to endure are a price for living in "paradise" with its relative isolation and many islands that want to act as separate countries.

The Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), founded in 1989, with the merger of the Caribbean Tourism Association (founded in 1951) and the Caribbean Tourism Research and Development Center (founded in 1974). It is headquartered in Barbados, and has a mission objective to"create and manage the partnerships necessary to increase the purchase of travel to and within the Caribbean that results in sustainable economic and social benefits for our people". Their latest report (for 2005) indicated that "Caribbean tourism sector was continuing to hold its own”. The latest statistics for 2007 show an incomplete picture because reporting from member countries in patchy: data released in March 2008 show full year figures for only 18 (of 29) destinations but they give an impression of important declines in stopover visitors in some major markets (e.g. The Bahamas -5%, Puerto Rico - 7%, and Cuba -3%), with much of that in the winter (January-April) season. Barbados' stopovers rose 2% but some of this may reflect the benefits of Cricket World Cup. By contrast, one major market, Cancun, Mexico, saw stopovers rise 27%.

CTO is working with other organizations to help develop new tourist products, looking at economic and environmental sustainability, and exploiting the "wellness" attributes of the Caribbean, whether for true medical services or for spa treatments. But these initiatives will still have to look for success in a framework of difficult travel possibilities and a service culture that is really lacking in many respects.

I think we should feel disappointed about what we offer tourists. There are general problems in the hospitality we offer that come from the kind of people we are producing in general, with too little regard for manners, respect, politeness, etc.. The tourism industry can try to correct certain behaviour through good training programs but it may have a hard time if these are ingrained in the societies' common education and behaviour standards. We don't seem to have excellence as a platform on which we will build tourism: that's not an easy objective, but given our size and the competition, "just so" can't do for ever. It may seem quaint and fit the foreigners' image of us being "simple people" but it's not something we can sell.

I don't know of any research that has tried to evaluate the costs of travel dislocation in the region. The average business person cannot cope well with the jumbled offerings of the airlines. No amount of local pleading seems to change the basic situation. The tourists have to tolerate it. But I think we are all hurting.

On the aspect of hospitality and an industry based around it, I think we have a long way to go. It's always a shock to think that the basic need is something that we used to have as a point of pride in the region, politeness, friendliness and a real sense of consideration. Lots of things have changed in the region and we don't put our hand out and hearts into tasks the way we used to. We often don't see that service is not servitude and our history does not help in getting over that issue. There's a lot of social baggage to carry. Changing these things takes more than platitudes and we need more constructive criticism from visitors and from ourselves; those hearing the criticism need to take heed of it. People will tend to come to the region because of our climate and lifestyle, but as money becomes scarce we have to add to those attributes in a significant way: you can get sunshine in a lot of other places, and an easy going lifestyle is also available in a lot of places. So, we need to build on the other aspects of tourism.

Tourism has become the life blood of most of the Caribbean countries and it needs to be re-energized. The solutions are easy to see but they need action to be taken and taken soon.

Bread prices rise. So does hot air.

So bread prices will rise by some 12 percent percent, with a basic loaf rising from B$4.55 to B$5.05 from April 28 (see report in The Nation). No surprise after local flour prices rose 30 percent two weeks ago (and it's the basic ingredient) and diesel prices were increased 76 percent last week (and the fuel is used in baking and transporting baked goods). The price of various goods will increase between 10-25 cents.

The debates will rage on about who will feel the pain and whether that could have been distributued better. One commentary yesterday, by Ezra Alleyne (see The Nation report), takes the current Democratic Labour Party (DLP) government to task for keeping its balanced budget commitment and with that raising diesel prices by 76 percent and gasolene prices by 25 percent, and reducing substantially the difference in favour of diesel between the costs of the fuels. The increases will affect many consumers with higher costs imposed on fishermen, food producers and distributors, operators of public transport vehicles. We all eat and we all need to move around, he contends. The previous Barbados Labour Party (BLP) government had absorbed more of the cost increase and not passed these on to the population, he contended. He also goes on to mention how the previous government had paid some B$20 million to civil servants as a one-off in 2005 when the cost of living rose over 5 percent; the government got back B$7 million in taxes. If the DLP had been prepared to follow its predecessor of running a budget deficit (that is having more spending than revenue) then life would be better for all, is the implication.

Political commentary is interesting. It is not neutral, like many arguments. Someone commented to me last week that Mr. Alleyne is a BLP supporter (actually the comment used a different noun, and it's interesting what comes up as the first article on a Google search--an unflattering commentary on that 2005 episode and Mr. Alleyne's commentary). Now that "support" comes out in the "analysis" and implications of fairness/unfairness. When the DLP aims to balance the budget, all you get is pain--no gain. BLP absorbs the costs, and that is seen as gain with little pain.

Interestingly, the IMF reports on the Barbadian economy showed that it had a balanced budget in 2006 and was looking to increase the deficit to 4 percent in 2007 (see IMF Public Information Notice). One economic commentator, Patrick Hoyos, however, has reminded us what the IMF said Barbados needed to do (see Broad Street Journal report) . In its 2007 annual consultation with Barbados it said that the pass-through of petroleum prices needed to take full effect:

“The mission also encouraged the authorities to increase the prices charged by major public enterprises, some of which have not been raised for several years. ... In particular, oil price increases would have to be fully passed on to consumers.” (Staff Report for the 2007 Article IV Consultation, page 11).

The report also states that:

“The January 2006 increase in domestic fuel prices implied almost a full pass-through of international oil price increases. However, the further increase in international prices since then has only partially been passed on.”

The IMF continued its call for Barbados to rein in its overall debt by exercising other options that would also raise, not lower, the cost of living:

“Fiscal consolidation is needed to bolster international reserves and reduce public debt. Announced policies are unlikely to achieve the government’s debt objective. ... The government has a range of options to achieve such savings, including reining in future projects, improving tax administration, raising VAT rates and reducing tax exemptions, and adjusting selected utility tariffs.” (Staff Report for the 2007 Article IV Consultation, page 14).

Changing the application of VAT remains an option to the government. So does targetting rebates to specific needy cases (the poor, or small business, or farmers), rather than taking the VAT off that much wider basket of goods as promised during the elections. So, to my mind the petrol price increases are dealing with but one important element of getting public finances onto a different footing. So, the jury is still out about what the overall budget picture will look like.

But packaging is important. Clearly, facing the budget realities of a country is something that has to be done with the levers of power in hand not from the luxury of oppostion. Also, economic circumstances change and how the government manages its budget is one of the keys to economic success. Deficits, surpluses, or balances in budgets have consequences. If you only think about today you will come to one impression but there is always something ahead. Without going into an economics tutorial, we can ask if everything seeming hunky-dory today means hunky-dory forever. It is legitimate to ask the question, if you spend more than you earn, and plan to borrow to cover the gap, who is going to pay that price and when? What happens if you cannot borrow? Tomorrow's generations do not necessarily want to be carrying the debt created today. In that sense, Mr. Alleyne's commentary is interesting in what it decides to leave unsaid.

The IMF's Regional Economic Outlook for the Western Hemisphere (see report) indicates that in 2007 "Caribbean countries' public sector debt burdens [were] very high". Barbados has in recent years had a better budget balance than Caribbean average, compared with Jamaica which has consistently been worse than average in recent years. That difference in budget performance has economic consequences that some would say are clear in terms of slower growth and higher inflation in Jamaica than in Barbados. The IMF goes on to say that the "region continues to stress its commitment to reducing debt levels further over the medium term". So, in that regard, the latest announcements by Barbados' PM suggest he is acting in a manner consistent with that commitment.

I have no political favourites with regard to Barbados' government but try to see things with a neutral's eye. I have no remit to be an economic commentator in Barbados and will leave that to others including Partick Hoyos. But I do wonder again what are Barbados' economists doing when these discussions are taking place. I again hear their silence and wonder why it is so deafening.