Pet Peeves of The Caribbean

We went to the 19th annual Caribbean Festival Sunday afternoon. The highlights were the chicken and vegetable Jamaican patties, and watching some people from the Grenadines dance around a maypole. I was disappointed with my lunch, though—jerked chicken and a pineapple soda. In the taste department, Betty's parents' Jamaican neighbour has a far spicier and more flavourful recipe. Logistically, it was no small feat using a plastic knife to carve up the chicken while seated at a park bench; there wasn't enough table seating. Moreover the food stalls didn't have drinking straws so Matthew had a hard go at drinking directly from the can.

I think the rain warning affected the attendance. Betty and I almost got caught in this morning's downpour during our 5K run, and that probably kept some of the people away.

It's fair to say that the number of pictures taken at a festival for inclusion in this blog is proportional to how much fun was had. So this was our first and likely only Caribbean Festival.

Note: we never made it to Saturday's Yaletown Street party. Instead, I spent the afternoon reading How Proust Can Change Your Life (review forthcoming) on a comfy couch just outside the Coast Mountain Sports store at Metrotown Centre while Betty and the two clowns did some—what else?—shopping.

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Pet Peeves

1) The Legs-Spread-Wide Bus Passenger
I've done my share of riding the bus. Well over ten years of it, in fact. One thing that got my goat are the fellow passengers who sit with their legs spread apart, pressing their thighs against mine and violating my personal space. We aren't talking about big people or people with huge backpacks on the floor beneath them, but regular-sized folks whose lower limbs spill over seat boundaries. Note: on the rare occasions when the fellow passenger was hot, her legs could've been on top of mine for all I care... ;-)

2) The Wide-Stance Urinal User
As most of you ladies know, urinals at most public restrooms are placed pretty close to one another. When it's rush hour in the men's room, this can lead to a short duration version of "The Legs-Spread-Wide Bus Passenger" situation. I can't explain this phenomenon. It's simply not that difficult biomechanically to reposition one's legs, even in midstream, to make room. If the stance is indeed a compensatory reflex, it'd make more sense for them to use the lower children urinals, and then complain very publicly about how "deep and cold" the water was. Nope, my uncomfortable conclusion is that these guys are afraid of me taking a peek and are keeping their distance.