Notes from a small island

Notes from a small island
A weblog by Jonathan Ali

Sunday, June 22, 2003

"As a journalist it would be remiss of me to not mention the poor standard shown by both the hosts and the delegates with regard to grammar. The 'green' verbs, especially from the two young ladies who served as the evening’s hosts, were appalling. They also did the young delegates an injustice, since it was quite apparent that they did not read the questions beforehand and so did not read the more complicatedly structured ones properly, leading to some confusion on the contestants’ part. Kudos must be extended to the young ladies for attempting - and some quite successfully - to answer the often unfairly difficult questions.

"Some of the questions: do you find your government supports local East Indian culture; should children of mixed marriages be accepted and the one that had everyone stumped asked if the delegate could improve her country’s name how would she go about it. No one understood if the question referred to the actual name Trinidad and Tobago or to the country’s reputation. The low point of the evening came when one delegate was asked whether she thought the country was becoming too Americanised and why.

"Apparently the microphone was not working properly, making it difficult to hear her. Compounding the problem were the shouts from the crowd, 'We not hearing she, raise the volume. Aye, we eh hearing. Turn up the volume!' The poor girl tried her best to answer but was soon completely drowned out by the more rowdy members of the audience and lost her composure. This incident competed with the shout of 'Hush yuh arse,' from one member of the crowd which was directed at one of the evening’s multitudinous guest artistes. The result of this was that, at midnight, the pageant was still going strong with no end in sight."

- From the Express review of last week's Miss Fem India Trinidad & Tobago beauty contest.

posted by Jonathan | 1:02 PM 0 comments

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