My nationally-televised morning talk show appearance…on an
island.
Last month I was in Grenada, the most expensive and
difficult island to fly to. It’s the
southernmost island in my territory…Trinidad is further south (right above
Venezuela) but my co-worker covers that island.
Direct flights to Grenada (that are over 4 hours long) only go a couple
times per week, so you have to overnight in either Trinidad or Barbados, or you
can island hop and make a big trip out of it.
So, I took 5 days – flying directly from Miami down to Grenada to start,
hopping over to St. Lucia on Wednesday,
and then up from St. Lucia to Miami to get back home on Friday. These islands are on a 220 volt system. In case you don’t know, the U.S. is on a 110V
system. Europe, parts of South America,
and some Caribbean islands are on 220V.
Milwaukee Tool doesn’t carry a lot of 220V, so my trips to islands like
St. Lucia, Grenada, and St. Vincent are limited. Well, we have one account in Grenada, called
The Creative House. It’s your typical
hardware store/home center, only this store has a morning TV show that airs in
their building called Day Break Grenada.
Since Day Break Grenada uses The Creative House’s space for their show,
The Creative House gets some freedom to have air time every once in
awhile. So, using that free air time, Milwaukee
was nationally televised on the island for 2 different mornings! The first one we were supposed to be on at
6:30 am, but Day Break got behind (island time….) and I didn’t go on until
7:30, when “everyone was already heading to work so no one saw it.” The next day, though, the marketing lady I
work with at Creative House picked me up at my hotel at 5 am so we could be
on-air at 6:15…and we were! Click the
link below to see the 6-minute YouTube video of my first-ever interview on a
nationally-televised news show. It actually
went REALLY well. I’m not a natural in
front of the screen, but watching the video gives me a bit more confidence that
I actually DO know what I’m talking about!
I didn’t have a script prepared, I just winged (wang?) it. This just shows how much power tools have
grown on me…it’s scary. They didn’t
powder my face or anything, and since I was up at the butt-crack of dawn, my
raspy voice was even raspier, but I think I communicated the benefits of
Milwaukee Red Lithium Ion Cordless Technology pretty well. My boss got a crack out of it. “Milwaukee is at a blu-ray level of battery
technology while everyone else is at a DVD level.” Yeah…I made up that analogy on the spot, but
I think it worked out pretty well.
The indoor set of Day Break Grenada
Preparing the tools for the TV appearance
On the radio 98.3, talking about tools!
Aaron and me, talkin' tools.
A couple other things about Grenada – there’s a sugar cane
juice man on the island who, every day, brings his cane juice making machine to
the same location in the main town of Grenada to sell sugar cane juice. He invented the machine himself. He picks sugar cane from the fields in the
morning, takes his machine to town, and shoves the cane in to produce a liquid
sugar cane juice…can’t get much more natural than that! He told me times were hard years ago and he
had no money, so he invented the machine and is now sittin’ pretty.
The Grenadian sugar cane man. He invented that machine.
Grenada from the air.
Finally, I’ll end on Grenada with a little Grenadian lingo I
learned from Lou and Rhesa, the buying and marketing managers I work with at
The Creative House: at the end of MANY
sentences, they say “you understand?” in a way that I never really understand,
haha. The island accent in Grenada is
thick, and they speak very fast. Next
time you talk to me, I can imitate the accent for you, but it sounds something
like “yunnastan?”…really really fast.
Also, instead of responding to someone by saying “we’re good” or “sounds
good,” you say straight. “Ya, everyting’s streeeight.” “Ya, we streeeight.” Lou and Rhesa gave me pronunciation lessons
at lunch…not sure if they were laughing AT me or WITH me.
Lou "everyting streeeight," me, and Annika, one of the marketing ladies at The Creative House.
Barbados from the sky. I had a layover here going from Grenada to St. Lucia.
Eating 3 desserts in one meal because my hotel was
all-inclusive…on an island.
Yes. Three
desserts. A trifecta. Story of my life, trying to stay in shape and
eat even healthier than I ever used to in high school or college while constantly giving in to the ‘homemade
bread’ or the ‘catch of the day with cream sauce’ or the ‘decadent tiramisu’ in
restaurant after restaurant, island after island, week after week. Oh well, one must enjoy good food when it’s
available…the problem just comes when you’re at an all-inclusive hotel in St.
Lucia, you have a sweet tooth and there are over 8 options of dessert, all of
which you can indulge in as much as you’d like!
Ah! This particular time I ate
some healthy seafood and vegetables for dinner, but then what happened? My lack of self-control and sweet tooth kick
in, and I somehow justify eating chocolate mousse, apple pie, and banana ice
cream…one after another! I mean, they
weren’t HUGE portions, but still...c’mon Anna – avoiding the potato and white
rice during the meal has no point if you justify that you can then eat 3
desserts to make up for it. Anyway, I
had to share this and vent it out because I walked back to my hotel room and
couldn’t believe I did that. I manage to
eat pretty healthy in all my travels, but it gets really hard sometimes,
especially when you’re really hungry and lonely. As you can tell, I occasionally cope with
that by eating things with high gluten and high-fructose corn syrup. Oh well…such is life. On another note, I’m running a half marathon
in Bermuda in May (a team of runners will be wearing Milwaukee Tools jerseys!),
and so a few months ago I decided to try being pescatarian, which means
partially vegetarian but you are allowed to eat seafood. I’m just trying it, both for training reasons
and for ethical reasons (talk to me, watch Food Inc., or read books by Dr.
Michael Pollan if you want to know more). This pescatarian thing works well for me since
I don’t really eat pork, don’t eat much beef, and am sick of chicken. And I’m traveling in places surrounded by ocean…you
bet your britches they have fresh seafood.
The pescatarian diet is going well.
Growing up in a meat ‘n’ potatoes family back in Wisconsin, I do crave a
burger or a steak once in awhile, but I will survive. I’ll go back to eating meat again, I’m pretty
sure, but I do know that once
I do, I’ll be more conscious of where the meat I’m eating is coming from, how
the animals were treated and fed, etc.
ANYWAY, this section was supposed to be on St. Lucia, but I’ve
gone off on a food tangent, probably because it’s lunchtime. So I had 3 desserts in St. Lucia, felt a bit
guilty and laughed it off, and all is good.
As aforementioned, I’m not in St. Lucia a lot, but it was good to be
back. The island is the most mountainous
of them all and thereforse is bit nauseating when riding in the taxis but
extremely breathtaking and worth the upset stomach. I met a new TINY account with a fitting name,
called Tool Hut, and the owner was super chill.
He introduced me to his wife and kids and told me that next time I’m in
St. Lucia, I’ll have to watch his band Chasing
Monday play at a local beach bar. We
cleared up a few issues, one being that the product he is ordering from us
contains owners’ manuals in Spanish. St.
Lucians speak English. Woops! Because it is 220 volts, the limited 220V
product line available to St. Lucia was originally meant for the 220V market of
Argentina, where they speak Spanish. There’s
a big risk that the St. Lucia Bureau of Standards will stop in the Tool Hut and
see the Spanish manuals, which is not ‘up to standard,’ so I’m working with
Milwaukee to get some sort of English manual that they can put in these
boxes.
A guava! Call me sheltered, but I had never seen a real guava fruit before this one.
In St. Lucia, riding in the taxi amidst the banana fields (on right).
In St. Lucia
St. Lucia from a cloudy sky. Notice the Piton Mountains, the two peaks above the clouds.
Now while St. Lucians speak
English, they also speak ‘patois’ (pronounced pa-twa). It’s a French
patois, so to me it sounds like French.
St. Lucian patois is a mix of English, French Creole, and African
words. It’s the native language of the
country while the official language is English.
The word patois actually means ‘informal speech’ or ‘incomprehensible
speech.’ Most of the population speak
patois, but it has started to die out with the newer generations. I would compare it to what happens in cities
like Miami and Dallas with Spanish. You
have heavy populations of Latinos who speak Spanish, and they teach their
children, but then their children speak more Spanglish and English in the
schools/with friends, so then when the next generation comes along, it’s even
harder to maintain pure Spanish unless it’s strictly spoken in the household
with parents and grandparents. So, most
St. Lucian adolescents understand patois but are more comfortable responding in
English. On the flip side, once you get deep
into the mountains of St. Lucia, you’ll find some who rarely leave their
villages and only speak patois. Patois
is found on other islands (Jamaica, Trinidad, and in parts of Latin America),
but it varies from place to place. Patois
actually means ‘informal language,’ sort of like slang, even though it’s not
just a few words – it’s a full-blown language. Here is a 15 second example of St. Lucian
patois (from the reliable YouTube).
Again, to me it sounds French, and you can hear the guys say ‘oui’ in the dialogue.
Thanks for keeping up with me, y'all! I have a few other random things that I'll write about next time, including the CRAZY stories I heard yesterday on my flight back to Miami...my seat partner, a fellow sales guy, was HIL-ARIOUS. I'll have to share a few of his adventures with you. Below are a few random sky photos...happy weekend, everyone...all the best!
