Liming

There's a word in Trinidad which means just hanging out, chilling and doing nothing in particular - Liming. That's exactly what I've been up to. The beaches in the north coast are perfect for that, and I've spent a large amount of time out there.

The other thing I've been up to is living out my childhood fantasy as a cricket writer. I've attended nets practice a couple of times, and by now most of the reporters know me. It's suprising how tired and cynical most of them are during the press conferences. I stand right in front, listening to every word, (I even asked a question once) and taking pictures. What is interesting though, is listening to the gossip when they head out for lunch, their relationship with different players, their impressions of the coach, etc. I'm going to write a piece on that for the website I'm writing for and post a link soon.

A funny thing happened the other day, on the way to the beach. There are shared vans which go from the downtown area so I hopped onto one. I was sitting next to an American couple who were headed there and we were generally chatting. They asked me if I was here for the World Cup. I was surprised they even knew about it, and said yes. They replied, so were they. For a while I thought they might be part of some TV company, doing some backup work. Turned out they were actually in Trinidad as fans watching cricket, and were headed to Guyana for some more matches.

I was very curious at this point, so they told me they'd travelled in India for about 6-7 months about 7 years ago, and being sports fans, started to watch cricket. They realised watching the cricket world cup as neutral fans, was a nice way to travel and have something to do, so they went all the way to South Africa 4 years ago for about a month, and are now in the Caribbean for 2-3 weeks. They plan to go Australia for the Ashes in about 4 years as well as India again for the next world cup.

We've become good friends over the last 4 days, and today I took them to nets practice and they were overawed at the chance to see both the Sri Lankan and Indian teams so close. 3 other friends of theirs are flying in from California for tomorrow's match (they're trying to convert them into cricket fans), and 2 of them are getting married in Tobago on Saturday. I'm headed to Tobago as well on Saturday, so I might show up for it if it's closeby.