I'm a white girl with problems, get me out of here.

I am raging at Trinidad just now, for a variety of reasons. Mainly this is my own issue and the country itself is not at fault, but the problem is that every time something bad happens the first thing I think is "THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN IN EUROPE!" and it is ALWAYS TRUE. Today I'm grumpy because I went to get my eyebrows done (got a mani-pedi as well, for the second time in my life. Turns out the first mani-pedi was really good.) and the woman fucked them up real bad. They're squint and it genuinely makes me want to cry whenever I look at them.

The manicure was a bizarre experience because the woman tried to give me a bit of an arm massage after she'd done it and I literally had to bite the inside of my mouth to keep from laughing. She started by lightly pinching my my arm skin (mainly my arm hair, if I'm honest) between her thumb and fingers, then repeatedly chopping at my arm in a Turkish-massage kind of movement, then stroking my arm in downwards movements. This is exceptionally difficult to explain but as someone who does not like unexpected physical contact I found it very uncomfortable but also hilarious. I will show you my newly learnt massage techniques next time I see you.

In general, I just find Trinidad a really uncomfortable place to be. Like, physically uncomfortable as well as awkward. My inner ear has been really itchy basically since I arrived, my entire body is covered in mosquito bites, my sprained ankle still twinges every time I exercise (so I'm going to be morbidly obese by the time I get back to the UK) and it's so hot and sticky all the time. Obviously the awkwardness is because I am foreign but I literally have never felt more out of place in my life. I am so uncomfortable with the way of life here and I don't know how to talk about my concerns with any of the people I know here without offending anyone. Also this country really needs a fucking bus service, this is ridiculous. I am assured that there is, in fact, a bus service but I have seen a grand total of two buses since I got here which is kind of just not good enough?

One of my aunts bought me this. It fits quite neatly with this post given that I have never felt MORE FOREIGN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.

Sorry about my face. And my eyebrows. Sob.

HYFR YOLO BBQ

I'm listening to Fall Out Boy's classic 2005 album "From Under the Cork Tree" and genuinely really enjoying it. I'm telling you this because I'm ashamed and need to be ridiculed for this as a weird kind of penance for having let my music taste slip this far.

ANYWAY. Yesterday was supposed to be the last day of my internship but I have to go back in on Monday because my boss forgot to bring a pen drive to get the work that I've been doing off my laptop. I'm not even surprised.

I have got money from the wonderful people in the Erasmus department of the University of Glasgow and it's enough to buy return flights to NY. I don't know whether to just book the flights and count on getting money from France in time or to try and wait it out a bit. But I can't really stay in TT doing nothing for that long so I need to decide soon if I'm going to just change my flight home or whatever.

I am also taking over as Features Editor at the wonderful qmunicate soon (now? already? I am unsure. Good start) which I am super excited to do but also nervous about. Although I think this will be a good lesson for me because I really need to get better at delegating and because I can't/won't/shouldn't write all of the features content for all of next year's qmunicates I will probably learn that asking for help is not a sign of weakness. On that note, if you have ideas for FW qmunicate then people let me know. Ruth Taylor has already been giving me excellent ideas because she's a babe.

I went out last night (I have two friends now - exciting!) and it was bizarre. We went to like "the best club in Trinidad" and the inside of it was decorated like a Wetherspoons (carpet in a club? Really?) with one super fancy shiny bar. It was probably twice the size of Viper and just as sleazy. Fun though, BECAUSE EVERYTHING WAS FREE. I shit you not - free entry for girls and FREE DRINKS FOR EVERYONE. The dancing to me looked a bit like a cross between an act of aggression and a sex act most of the time but people choose their own ways to have fun.

white girl problems, part 3764375676

Real talk: Trinidadian Diet Coke is not the same as British Diet Coke and tastes like shit.

More real talk: Being an intern is also shit.

I thought coming to Trinidad might give me some perspective on how I don't actually have any problems, given that it's a third world country and surely I would start feeling for the plight of the vagrants who live on the Savannah but it's basically only worsened the White Girl Problems that I have at home. Like: why won't my fringe grow out faster? why is my hair always so frizzy? why haven't I got a tan yet? is it socially acceptable for me to post instagram pictures of me looking much prettier than I actually am? could I pull off a half sleeve tattoo without looking butch? I also had the worst PMS of my life and have spent much of the last two days bursting in to tears for no reason at all. Usually when I'm on the phone to my Mother, who is by this point probably seriously worried for my mental health.

Yesterday one of the artists who works with Trinidad Tunes came in for an interview, and it turned out that my boss had fucked up the phone numbers so the guy that came in for an interview was not the person that I had tried to book an interview with. So I had a bunch of questions ready for a Soca duo from Tobago and what I got was a Trinidadian rapper. Very embarrassing, AND my boss tried to pin it on me. Today I told my boss that Thursday will be my last day, because fuck not getting paid to do someone else's job twenty times better than they could.

sadface

I have been an intern since Monday. In that time NOTHING GOOD HAS HAPPENED apart from me learning to use iMovie. I called someone in to do a video interview from a list of artists and was told that this particular artist wasn't good enough. My boss got his name wrong when he was greeting him and it was so embarrassing and awkward. We did the interview anyway and it was shit because I don't know anything about Trinidadian music apart from that I hate it.

I don't understand how or when we got to the point where interning is now totally normal and not considered slave labour because it's kind of uncool that I appear to be doing as much work as my boss and I am not getting paid for it. I don't want to bitch too much about him because I could probably be arrested for all the horrible things I would say about him, and also this is the internet and no mean blog post can be totally without consequences.

Anyway, why is this normal?! Why is it not really weird that intelligent, qualified young people are working for free? I am lucky enough to be in a position where my parents can support me, and I can live with my auntie while I'm working, but what if you're not? What happens to your career options then? Also, do proper real-life grown-ups with paid jobs know how shit it feels to be doing a shit job to have something to put on your CV and not be getting paid for it at all? I'm pretty confident in my own abilities as a fully functioning human being but it's been much worse for my self esteem than I could have imagined, which is probably just proof that I am deeply shallow and value making money, but making money is kind of a big deal because YOU NEED IT TO LIVE. I want to be a valuable member of society! One day I want to pay my taxes and smile at people on my way to work on the bus because I am too right-on to drive but this is simply teaching me that people do not value other people no matter how good a job they are trying to do. ihatemyboss.


Here are some other white girl problems, summed up by this photograph:

1. My hair is constantly frizzy so I can't have a fringe ever so I always look like shit.

2. I need my eyebrows done SO BAD.

3. I haven't been to the beach yet so I don't have a tan and I stand out like a sore thumb as a tourist everywhere I go.

4. No one can understand my accent at work. My boss has to translate for me.

5. I have no friends here. (This is represented by me being by myself in this picture.)

6. I am sitting on the porch because I CAN'T GO ANYWHERE.

7. Being gay is highly stigmatised in Trinidad and sodomy is illegal. This is not represented in the photo but is still very sad.

get out your house, get off your block and see something

Hello. I am in Trinidad.
I got here last Friday after kind of a long journey but I magically escaped jetlag by depriving myself of sleep for a day. Winner.

I went in to the office that I'll be working in today to introduce myself and try and work out what I'll actually be doing. It was nice to meet my new boss, and I'm feeling pretty optimistic, but still totally terrified, about it. I have to start ringing round artists associated with the company to ask if they would be willing to come in for an interview (I have no car here, and I don't know where anything is) which obviously they don't because they are busy and there's really not a lot in it for them. I will just have to keep trying. I will then have to edit the video down to something that can go on the website. SO OUT OF MY DEPTH.

I haven't been to the beach yet. This makes me sad. Although I feel like I've gained about four stone since I got here so it's probably a good thing that I haven't had to face a bikini yet.

I'm getting pretty frustrated by the lack of independence that I have here already. I guess I'll either get used to it or just go crazy. Trinidad has, like, one bus route. No one knows where it starts from, where it ends up or what time it goes at. Useful. I realised today that I need to go to the pharmacy to buy a toothbrush and some tampons but I'm going to have to get a lift from my auntie, who is very kindly putting me up for two whole months and who therefore I do not want to bother with asking for lifts. Although at some time or another I am totally going to have to bother her for lifts.

This is the view from my balcony. Yes, you heard. BALCONY! Right outside my room. So good.

Some of my family came over for lunch yesterday including my cousin who I haven't seen since we were both about 16, and my other cousin who I have never met before on account of her being 18 months old. She is so adorable. Observe:

This is my cousin, Zi. She knows how adorable she is and bloody loves having her photo taken.

Dear Rap Music: is this the best you can do?

Feminist media criticism ruins EVERYTHIGUFYDUGRHNG.

I had mixed feelings towards Drake for a really long time then all of a sudden I heard "Best I Ever Had" and SRSLY HAVE YOU HEARD THAT CHORUS?! It's good. He's obviously kind of an arsehole but I am literally at the stage now where I expect that sort of thing from rappers, male and female. Nicki Minaj and Lil Kim have beef basically because they are both women who rap and are quite good at it so they're not allowed to be pals?! What?! I can't pretend to know a whole lot about hip-hop and RnB but I do like some of it so bear with me here. (Due to my crazy addictive personality every time I hear an artist I like I get a little wound up and need to know everything about them. Mental, sorry.)

The feminist rage issue that I have today basically comes from one single lyric in "Make Me Proud" by Drake and Nicki. There's a whole lot else wrong with the song too but even I don't have the time on my hands to be analysing every word. SO listen to the song first because out of context it might not be as annoying? Maybe it is. Dunno.

Blacked-out chebs on a sculpture... Does this means boobs aren't arty enough to escape censorship?

Now that you've watched that:

"Running on the treadmill and only eating salad"

RUNNING ON THE TREADMILL AND ONLY EATING SALAD.

That makes you proud of a woman? To be so consumed by what she looks like that she doesn't get to eat cake? EVER? That isn't a life, Drake! Come on now!

Nicki's verse (I love her. I would not bring this up if it weren't bothering me) also has it's issues. Liiiiike how she seems to hate women half the time and be talking about pulling 69 of them in others. "All of dem bitches I'm badder than" because she has to compare herself to other women constantly. Even one of her rap alter egos is Barbie which is weird because Barbie is becoming generally accepted as a symbol of all the things that we should never teach little girls. Moving on. And this is the worst bit. THE WORST BIT.

"Baby, if you asked me to take a break, I'd give it all away."

DO I EVEN NEED TO.

Whole song about a successful woman getting her degree and her dolla and whatever and then OH BUT YOU PROBS WANNA BE THE BREADWINNER, YEAH???

For lessons in some more lady-positive rap please see: Tupac "Keep Ya Head Up" (I realise this is something of a one off for Tupac but it's bangin': "Since we all came from a woman, got our name from a woman and our game from a woman I wonder why we take from our women") and also I am kind of coming to love Iggy Azalea because she hasn't fallen in to either the "femcee" trap of trying to over feminise her music, nor has she gone the other way and tried to deny her gender by ironically rapping about sucking her dick all the time. It's not post-gender or post-racial or whatever, it's just fun and naughty and I genuinely think that she's a well good rapper.

I will now resume being white and European and talking only about things that I know about. Like gin.

j'aime mon pays mais j'adore le tien...

I've been on a bit of a self-imposed blogging hiatus in order to avoid the sort of horrific naval gazing that I would inevitably get down to if I tried to write a blog while there is nothing going on in my life.

I've booked flights for Trinidad so I am definitely going and I will probably have all sorts of hilarious anecdotes and cutting social commentary to fill this blog with from the second I get there (lol, jk, I'm going to moan about how it's not as efficient as Berlin for two months) and have stopped making such horrendous life choices as the last month or so (for the time being. Normal service will resume shortly, I'm sure).

My 21st passed with no fanfare whatsoever and was generally a bit of a non-event but my mother has planned a ridiculous party which will be fun because there will be gin cocktails and a MASSIVE CAKE. I will post pictures and talk about more of my white girl problems after the party.

Resuming blogging silence... NOW. (until around the 20th when I'm leaving for Trinidad)