The Manicou Report

Mani’s Shorts - SEA Exam and more…

SEA Exam Today

Allyuh today is SEA exam. Allyuh have allyuh No. 2 pencils, yuh sharpener, yuh eraser and yuh exam slip? Allyuh eat a good breakfast? Remember not to get too stressed out, eh. Answer the questions as quickly as you can. Make sure to blacken the entire circle on the answer sheet. Do your working on the side. If you don’t know the answer to a question, skip it and come back to it if you have time. Doh feel nervous, yuh know. Make sure to reach on time ok? So make sure to tell mummy or daddy to drop yuh off early. Nice chirren. Don’t worry, after today is play time till you get your results. No more “reaching late for SEA” dreams.

Is it strange that I never forgot my Common Entrance number? Even if I didn’t, my mother saved my slip and has it stashed away somewhere. During the exam it took my shoes off, kicked back and did my exam. I remember the examiners joking with me when it was all done that I took off my shoes and looked so relaxed. I guess that was the only way I knew how to do it. Anybody else mammy still have they Common Entrance slip or is that just me?

Rain & Clouds
Allyuh, I haven’t seen the sun now for almost a week. All we’ve had is rain, rain and more rain along with a helping of black clouds. And it’s only just March. The Bermuda/Bangladesh game could only go about 21 overs a side because of it. Yet it doesn’t look like it’s letting up any time soon. The good thing is that I haven’t heard of any reports of flooding yet.

Basdeo Panday

“The only reason they failed was because they got too greedy. They tried to hang two Indians with the same rope.” Would someone who truly loves Trinidad talk like this? Or is this a self-absorbed, megalomaniac politician trying to seize power at any cost? Who cares if this divides an already polarized society? Who cares about the repercussions?

And I’m not making any judgment here about whether the prosecutions of Mr. Sharma and Mr. Panday were witch hunts. I’m concerned more with the language used by Mr. Panday and the immediate implication of race into this whole matter.

West Indies Vs. Australia

Whether we play them first or last, we have to meet them. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a little worried. Watching that game they played against South Africa made me wonder if we have it in us. Of course both Australia and the Windies are capable of playing at a World Class Level, but it has come to the point where Windies’ losses are called slumps and Australian losses are called flukes. It’s a little hard to win against a team that loses once in a blue moon.

Although they’ve moved out of the old Antigua Recreation ground and into the newly built Sir Viv Richards Stadium, will Lara get his old Antiguan luck back? Oh loss ah worried.

Posted in Cricket, Education, PNM, Politics, Race, Sports, UNC | 10 Comments »

10 11 Things that have been on my mind

There is no preamble to this.

1. Why do people keep asking me “who yuh backing for the world cup?”? What manner of question is that? I’ve been asked that question twice in two weeks.

2. If I hear that CWC soca-techno “Game of Love and Unity” song one more time, I swear I’ll puke.
3. Since everybody but the police seem to know which are the houses that sell crack and weed, I have a solution. Give a crackhead $100 and follow him.
4. Why does part of CNC3’s 7pm newscast seem to be on tape nowadays? I can’t figure out if it’s Roger Sant or Shelly Dass who’s on tape. But CNC3 isn’t hiding it very well. I feel cheated.
5. Speaking about Roger Sant, it makes me wonder sometimes if sportscasters actually watch sports news. Roger is a bad example because his only sins are mispronouncing Amare Stoudemire’s first name (pronouncing it Am-AIR instead of Am-A-ree) and pronouncing Tomas Rosicky’s last name as ROS-icky instead of Rose-ITS-key. Well Astil Renn is another case all by himself. Do these guys actually like sports or do they just do it because it’s what the boss wants them to do? Despite that, in my humble opinion, Roger Sant is still the best sportscaster Trinbago has ever had.
6. On the topic of CNC3, where’s Carla Foderingham? She’s been missing for months without explanation (or at least I may have missed the explanation). I miss my Carla, where is she?
7. Boysieringo asked me what I thought about the Panday decision a few days ago. Boysie, I think that Panday is vindicated just as much as (and I can only imagine this) a turd’s taste will vindicate its smell.
8. I want to be a famous rock star, however I don’t think many rock star biographies begin with “I got my first guitar when I was 31″.
9. Why do all counter staff in Trinidad seem to be the most spacey-minded people in the world. Why do I have to stand in front of a girl for almost two minutes while she packs pens in a box before she asks me what I want? Why does she think she’s doing me a favour by selling me a legal pad?
10. Who is the first man to eat caraili and think, “hey, this is something I want to eat tomorrow”?
11. Why does British Gas aka BGTT take out full-page colour ads in the newspapers? Just what are they advertising? And to whom are they advertising. On the other hand why do WASA and T&TEC do the same? Sprangalang put it best when he asked “Who is the other electricity company that they does be competing against? I want to know because I want to go with them”.

Posted in Miscellaneous | 20 Comments »

Tech Tuesday

Would you believe it’s been five weeks since the last time I had tech Tuesday? But to make up for it’s absence I have three pieces of freeware here for you. The first one is called Launchy.

Launchy is described as a “keystroke launcher” for Windows. From the official website:

Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.
Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

…and it does what it says it does. Pressing ALT+Spacebar on your keyboard brings up the application’s file finder that locates files or programmes as you type. Pressing “Enter” opens the file or programme. Simple as that. No more reaching for your mouse or searching through the start menu to find what you need. You can also set it to search the directories you want it to for example “My Pictures”

Launchy is also fully skinable. So when you download Launchy (from Sourceforge) make sure to download the Skins pack. To use the skins, simply unzip it and add it to the skins folder.

This next one is simple, but I’ve used it consistently ever since I downloaded it. This one is Volumouse and what it does is control the volume of your computer from your mouse. The default setting has you pressing ALT and scrolling the wheel to raise or lower the volume. However since Volumouse is customizable I set it to where I can left click and adjust the scrollwheel thereby using only one lazy man’s hand. Not only is the Volumouse for volume, the programme can also be used to adjust the brightness or transparency of your screen as well as a bunch of other stuff I haven’t really explored as yet. I understand that this won’t work with Vista though. You can download Volumouse here (it’s a little hard to find the link on the page, but scroll down and you’ll find it).

Lastly, and since Tech Tuesday has been away for so long I’ll give you a third tip - a Firefox extension this time. This one is Highlighter - which is pretty self-explanatory. Highlighter highlights text on a page. Select text to be highlighted, right click and choose “Highlight” and presto. You have a lot of different colours to choose from, but the only bad thing is that it won’t stay on the page after you close it like the Internote extension will. But it’s still handy for quickly annotating important text on a page. Get Highlighter here.

Still don’t have Mozilla Firefox, download it from here:

Posted in Tech Tip | 6 Comments »

Wacky Week of Cwicket

Well this has indeed been a wacky week of the Cricket World Cup. The person who said cricket is boring is incredibly misguided. Whether the action is on or off the field, the excitement never stops.

1. First of all the West Indies beat Pakistan. The wacky part is not that the Windies won, the ease of it all. They sort of looked like the Windies of days gone by and not the shaky, nerve-wrecking ones we’ve become accustomed to.

   Sachin Tendulkar

2. Next, World Cup debutants Ireland force a tie down Zimbabwe’s throat in a game that seemed to be a sure win for the seasoned Zimbabweans. At one point, needing just 15 runs from 36 balls with four wickets in hand, Zimbabwe slumped to needing a run off the very last ball of the game. However no run came as number eleven Ed Rainsford was stumped on that last ball creating the third ever tie in a World Cup game.
3. India then looses to lowly Bangladesh by five wickets at the Queen’s Park Oval. India accumulated 191 all out in 49.3 overs - an innings in which Sachin Tendulkar could only muster 7. Bangladesh was able to make up the total with 5 wickets to spare.
4. Pakistan, of course, wasn’t going down like that. In their bid not to be upstaged by rivals India, they decide that they are going to lose to an even worse opponent in the form of Ireland - by three wickets - on St. Patrick’s Day. Guess who their top scorer was? The extras with 29 runs. Not only do they lose and are booted from the tournament, but then they get fined for having a slow over rate. Inzamam-ul-Haq was fined half of his match fee, whilst the other players were fined 20 percent each. Say what? In the wisdom of Ace Ventura, “Unfortunately in every contest, there must be a looooser.” What exactly is a minnow anyway?
   

   Bob Woolmer found dead

5. Next, the unthinkable happens. Very sadly, Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer is found dead in his hotel room. The cause of death is still uncertain. Before coaching Pakistan, Bob Woolmer actually coached South Africa and even Warickshire during the time that Brian Lara scored his record 501 not out. I’m hearing talk that the players will be wearing black armbands to commemorate Woolmer’s passing although I’m not sure for how long.
6. Lastly, England Vice Captain Andrew Flintoff was one of six England cricket players disciplined for their participation in a late-night drinking session. Flintoff himself was demoted and handed a one game suspension for his role in the incident that ended when he had to be rescued from the sea when the pedalo he was using capsized. Hmm, excessive drinking at a world sporting event? Can anyone say Bode Miller? On the other hand, why does a 4am pedalo ride appeal to drunk people?

Posted in Cricket, Sports | 9 Comments »

Daily Mail: Daryan Warner fined by FIFA

The Daily Mail reports that daddy’s dearest aka Daryan Warner was secretly fined almost US $1M by FIFA (of which $250,000 had been paid) which represents the profit he would have made on the sale of 5,400 World Cup tickets for England, Mexico and Japan games over the course of last year’s tournament.

Last September the Daily Mail’s Andrew Jennings (Warner’s nemesis) revealed that Warner was being investigated for suspected shady dealings concerning World Cup tickets. Last December FIFA announced that they had cleared Jack Warner of all wrongdoing saying:

“It could not be evidenced that Mr Jack Warner had knowledge of the resale of these tickets at a higher price.

“The resale is certainly forbidden, but the person who did the reselling is not subject to the FIFA jurisdiction, because it is the son of Jack Warner.”

FIFA did recommend however that Jack Warner be scolded and reprimanded which Warner took as vindication.

Jennings says now that Warner was not only reprimanded, but been secretly fined during last December’s executive committee meeting and that FIFA stipulated that the $992,652US be donated to the charity SOS Children’s Villages. Jennings added that Daryan Warner’s company Simpaul Travel has been banned from dealing in tickets. The secret deadline for full payment of the fine is on March 22, but Jennings suggests that there won’t be any further action if Warner decides not to pay since Jack Warner controls 35 crucial votes that will ensure Sepp Blatter gets a third term.

Of course these are all allegations made by Andrew Jennings who seems at times to have an axe to grind with Warner. You can see the full stories here and here (including “secret reports that FIFA suppressed”).

Posted in Corruption, Football, Sports | 2 Comments »

West Indies Beat Pakistan

Windies Celebrate (AP Photo)

Well the West Indies pulled it off. The batting wasn’t as great as we would have hoped. 241 on a short-boundaried Sabina Park was not very much to defend. However we did have a good innings from Samuels, Sarwan and a blazing 32 of 15 balls from Dwayne Smith (THE Dwayne Smith). The bowling though was inspired. Dwayne Smith (THE Dwayne Smith) ended with figures of 10 overs 3-36 and Bravo ended with 9 overs 3-42. Let me tell you something, if I had to face Bravo, I’d be terrified of the man’s bowling and fielding combo, because he was on fire yesterday. One of the best bowling stats in my opinion was that the Windies allowed only 4 extras. We all remember how things used to be in that department.

On the whole it was good to see the much maligned Dwayne Smith come good for a change as well as to see Marlon Samuels continue with his recent good form. I have to say though, that I was a little surprised at how tame Pakistan was. On the batting side of things, Shoaib Malik helped to put up a decent fight, but that looked almost like a solo campaign at times considering power batsmen like Mohammad “Danger Man” Yousuf and Inzamam-ul-Haq were playing it pretty safe.

I did start to get worried when the wicket fall remained at 3 for what seemed like hours and it didn’t help that Michael Holding was going on and on about how Brain Lara needed to change his bowling attack to include more spin. Lara, however, didn’t change it to spin, and Holding eventually shut up about it after Dwayne Smith claimed Mohammad Yousuf’s wicket.

Finally my own Summary: Batting - 5/10, Bowling - 8/10, Fielding - 8/10. Can we improve this and keep it going till the end?

Posted in Cricket, Sports | 4 Comments »

Cricket World Cup Opening Ceremony

This is probably going to get some people mad, but I’m going to be honest with you. Yesterday while watching the opening Ceremony to the cricket world cup, I thought I died and went to Reggae Sunsplash.

Fireworks Light the Sky

I was actually a little shocked to see how Jamaican the Opening Ceremony was. Yes it was organized by the Jamaican Local Organizing Committee, but geez and ages, from start to finish it was Jamaican act after Jamaican act. Trinidad was represented by Machel, David Rudder, Boogsie Sharp, Mungal Pattasar and Faye-Ann Lyons who performed the tournament’s Official Song, “The Game of Love and Unity” along with Bajan Rupee and Shaggy.

Barbados fared even worse than us. They got Alison Hinds and Rupee (who performed the official song).

Jamaica was represented by Beres Hammond, Buju Banton, Dean Frazer, Gregory Isaacs, Half Pint, Jimmy Cliff,, Sean Paul, Shaggy, Sly & Robbie, The I Threes (who were part of a very moving Bob Marley tribute), Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, Sanchez (who sang the Jamaican National Anthem) and Lovindeer.

Dancers take the field

The night was also supplied with entertainment from Angelique Kidjo (so they say, but I didn’t see her), Montserratian Arrow, Vincentian, Kevin Lyttle, South Africa’s Lucky Dube and Drum Caf, Scotsmen The Duffies, and an Irish Celtic dancing group.

But oh gosh boy, not a steelband in sight. Yeah Boogsie was there, but that’s one lonely pair of double seconds. No Limbo? The other islands didn’t have much else to offer except Lyttle, Hinds and Arrow? You would swear that Jamaica had all the talent.

This is not an anti-Jamaican post. I don’t have anything against Jamaica, and maybe my list of performers could be incomplete, but I think that the Jamaican LOC could have done a better job of representing the West Indies. Apparently I’m not the only person who thinks so.

Posted in Cricket, Culture, Entertainment | 19 Comments »

ShortDrop.com

Don’t let the name fool you. ShortDrop.com is a website with Trini roots but global vision. Anyone needing to buy or sell a car or purchase parts or audio equipment can find what they’re looking for at ShortDrop.com.

Short Drop allows you to search by Make, Model, Color, Transmission, Price, Year and Use. You have the ability to see what your a buying without leaving you home - far better than the classifieds if you ask me.

Short Drop even allows you to request a vehicle or item in their “Want-To-Buy section” if you can’t find it already listed.

The best thing about Short Drop is that it’s all FREE. Whether you’re buying or selling, Short Drop does not (or never will) request transaction fees, commission fees, or any other type of fees for that matter.

So whether you’re a dealer or an individual, check it out.

Posted in Miscellaneous | 4 Comments »

What’s Up Mac?

Yesterday’s Guardian	Yesterday’s Newsday

The unwritten statement on the Guardian could almost be, “I thought we had a deal?” Yesterday’s Newsday is even less tongue in cheek.

By the way check out this week’s Featured Friday on Allyuh.com featuring yours truly.

Posted in Media, PNM, Politics | 3 Comments »

The Minnows at the Cricket World Cup

Michael Holding

Courtney Walsh, Michael Holding and Australian Captain Ricky Ponting have all come out strongly against the inclusion of the minnows in the Cricket World Cup. Who are the minnows? These are the non-Test-Playing nations that have been included into this year’s Cricket World Cup. They are Bermuda, Canada, Scotland, The Netherlands and Ireland. The ICC more politely refers to them as “ICC Associates”.

Frankly I don’t see what all the hullabaloo is about. So they don’t play test cricket, they’re not as good as us. So what? It’s actually kind of nice to see some new faces on the scene once in a while. It’s nice to see players from Ireland and Bermuda playing our game. It’s nice not to be treated to the same old fare all the time. When did we here in the WI get so high and mighty that we can dictate who can come into our little member’s club?

As far as I could remember, both Trinidad and Jamaica were once minnows in the FIFA World Cup - and such minnows we were compared to all the big names. Yet we managed to hold our own in the face of stiff competition. Even now the West Indies manage to play like minnows on occasion, so what’s wrong with letting the new kids play?

Dwayne Leverock

One of the great things about the minnows (as Rahul Dravid put it) is that they add charm to the tournament. You can’t deny that.

Watching Bermuda’s Dwayne Leverock, who knew that a 264lb man could play cricket? Who knew he could spin bowl well enough to claim 2-32 (claiming the wickets of Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood)?

Of course this has reopened the fat-joke buffet that was closed when Shane Warne retired (Wait, did I just do one myself?). Some of the better ones include “Pietersen undone by wide delivery“, “Big bowling attack“, “Burly Leverock hungry for success“, “Spinner poses weighty problem“, “Dwayne Leverock does not throw his weight around back at the hotel…“, “England’s batsmen felt the pressure of the heavy roller” and “Bermuda were bowled out for 45 against England on Monday, but in 125kg spinner Dwayne Leverock they have a bowler who can turn the ball - even if he can’t turn down seconds.”

Yes, Bermuda were eventually scuttle out for 45 runs, but who knew a minnow could have England at teetering at 5-132?

On the other hand I do wonder if this inclusion is an attempt on the parts of the ICC and its sponsors to draw out the tournament in order to milk the ad revenue for as long as possible. Could be.

However, when the first round of the World Cup is over, the minnows would have been ejected and the rightful order of things would have been reestablished - that’s if the plan all comes together as it should. Surely, the possibility of an upset is not what’s driving people like Holding and Ponting to protest the minnow’s inclusion, is it? I can tell you that minnows in any tournament are capable of playing a style of the game that their opponents are unfamiliar with and therefore unable to adapt to, and that makes for unfamiliar territory and an evening, as it were, of the playing field.

And just to take the heat off Leverock a little, a bit of sledging between Warne and South Africa’s Daryll Cullinan:

Shane Warne : I’ve waited two years for another chance to humiliate you.
Daryll Cullinan : Looks like you spent it eating.

Posted in Cricket, Sports | 6 Comments »