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The best and the worst of it
I like the way we seem to be bouncing back quickly after a solid blow to the body by 'Dean'. Guess he never figured we could take such a punch, but we have shown that when we put our minds to it we can roll with the best of 'em. If only we could be that way all the time instead of consistently being at each other's throats. We'd be the greatest nation on earth.
And speaking of greatness, I must tip my hat to the JPS that about 24 hours after Dean had savaged us, managed to get power back to parts of Kingston and St. James. True, there are still many areas without power but one senses that it should not be too long before power is restored islandwide. The water commission, too, has managed to restore supply to many of their customers. It is not often that these two utility companies earn our praise but this, I believe, should be one of those times.
As is usual, disasters tend to bring out the best and the worst in us in this country, and this time was no different.
Let's start off with the worst. How can anyone with even a modicum of decency break into someone's home during the height of a storm, or shoot someone or break into a factory and steal tons of sugar? How far does one have to descend to get to that point where we lack all empathy for those who are suffering around us?
Now, if somebody had managed to get a hold of these cruffs and put on the mother of all 'ass whippings' on them, then nobody could say a thing. I mean, how low can you go?
On the day before the hurricane came rolling by, I witnessed something that had me wondering just how deeply Mega Mart has burned itself into the psyche of people living in Kingston. From where I am, it's a less than five-minute drive to Mega Mart. So naturally, I hopped into my car and drove there, only to see that at minutes to 10 a.m., the whole of Kingston was already there. When you get to Mega Mart and you see cars parked in the parking lot along Waterloo Road and across the road on Annette Crescent, you know it's a waste of time to go inside. If anyone had bothered to go in after, then by the time they got out, the hurricane would have been in the Gulf of Mexico.
Anyway, out of curiosity I drove to Public Supermarket in Manor Park to see if I could do my shopping there and lo and behold, there was virtually no one there. Is it that when shopping for a hurricane Mega Mart is the only place to be? Clearly, I need to buy shares in Mega Mart because they have the hurricane thing down pat.
Digicel needs to take a page out of their book as they obviously did not learn from the 'Ivan' experience as virtually the same cell sites that were affected two years ago, were the ones that went down again in the height of the storm. I was trying to call my mom down in the country for the better part of Monday but only managed to get a recording that she had turned off her instrument. Clearly, they don't know my mom. At her age, there is no 'instrument' she wants or needs to turn on or off.
I am running out of space here but I could not close without mentioning that people need to ease off of Portia's case about this state of emergency thing. Some people can't help themselves when it comes to politicising everything. I have seen editorials calling for an end to the state of emergency and heard the usual suspects calling in to question the need for it. All I can say is that clearly, they don't live in the same country that the rest of us live in. If a man can break into a man's house when rain is tearing and heavy breeze blowing what won't he do under the cover of darkness?
The state of emergency protected us all from those who would not be shy about initiating chaos across the city so that they could get to loot and pillage. I support the state of emergency and even if it's the only thing Portia manages to get right, at least she managed to and we should be thanking our lucky stars we did not have to find out what would have happened had it not been called.
Send comments to shearer39@gmail.com or anansiweb.blogsport.com
I like the way we seem to be bouncing back quickly after a solid blow to the body by 'Dean'. Guess he never figured we could take such a punch, but we have shown that when we put our minds to it we can roll with the best of 'em. If only we could be that way all the time instead of consistently being at each other's throats. We'd be the greatest nation on earth.
And speaking of greatness, I must tip my hat to the JPS that about 24 hours after Dean had savaged us, managed to get power back to parts of Kingston and St. James. True, there are still many areas without power but one senses that it should not be too long before power is restored islandwide. The water commission, too, has managed to restore supply to many of their customers. It is not often that these two utility companies earn our praise but this, I believe, should be one of those times.
As is usual, disasters tend to bring out the best and the worst in us in this country, and this time was no different.
Let's start off with the worst. How can anyone with even a modicum of decency break into someone's home during the height of a storm, or shoot someone or break into a factory and steal tons of sugar? How far does one have to descend to get to that point where we lack all empathy for those who are suffering around us?
Now, if somebody had managed to get a hold of these cruffs and put on the mother of all 'ass whippings' on them, then nobody could say a thing. I mean, how low can you go?
On the day before the hurricane came rolling by, I witnessed something that had me wondering just how deeply Mega Mart has burned itself into the psyche of people living in Kingston. From where I am, it's a less than five-minute drive to Mega Mart. So naturally, I hopped into my car and drove there, only to see that at minutes to 10 a.m., the whole of Kingston was already there. When you get to Mega Mart and you see cars parked in the parking lot along Waterloo Road and across the road on Annette Crescent, you know it's a waste of time to go inside. If anyone had bothered to go in after, then by the time they got out, the hurricane would have been in the Gulf of Mexico.
Anyway, out of curiosity I drove to Public Supermarket in Manor Park to see if I could do my shopping there and lo and behold, there was virtually no one there. Is it that when shopping for a hurricane Mega Mart is the only place to be? Clearly, I need to buy shares in Mega Mart because they have the hurricane thing down pat.
Digicel needs to take a page out of their book as they obviously did not learn from the 'Ivan' experience as virtually the same cell sites that were affected two years ago, were the ones that went down again in the height of the storm. I was trying to call my mom down in the country for the better part of Monday but only managed to get a recording that she had turned off her instrument. Clearly, they don't know my mom. At her age, there is no 'instrument' she wants or needs to turn on or off.
I am running out of space here but I could not close without mentioning that people need to ease off of Portia's case about this state of emergency thing. Some people can't help themselves when it comes to politicising everything. I have seen editorials calling for an end to the state of emergency and heard the usual suspects calling in to question the need for it. All I can say is that clearly, they don't live in the same country that the rest of us live in. If a man can break into a man's house when rain is tearing and heavy breeze blowing what won't he do under the cover of darkness?
The state of emergency protected us all from those who would not be shy about initiating chaos across the city so that they could get to loot and pillage. I support the state of emergency and even if it's the only thing Portia manages to get right, at least she managed to and we should be thanking our lucky stars we did not have to find out what would have happened had it not been called.
Send comments to shearer39@gmail.com or anansiweb.blogsport.com