To: TobagoJack who wrote (15164 ) 2/18/2002 7:52:12 AM From: tradermike_1999 Read Replies (1) | Respond to Hi TM, Sorry, yet more Vacation Chronicles. Just as people elsewhere are confusing gambling with investing, mistaking investing for saving, puzzling g over price vs. value, daily stock trends with economic direction, CNBC for television, in turn for entertainment, and other folks’ wives for own girlfriends, the people in Trinidad are confusing fantasy with life, and holidays for work. A relation, Tony (the 85-yr old coconut plantation owner operator whose grandmother was my grandmother’s half-sister), has revealed to me the secret to Trinidadian happiness. Apparently, the people here had taken up flex-time a few hundred years before the concept took off in progressive California, and subscribed to time multiplexing long before Maurice had gotten whiff of Globalstar. The manufacturing, farming, and physical labour oriented employees here work for a specific objective, say a new television, or an old car. They would work just enough to pay for whatever they thought they wanted, all quite modest, and then stop showing up at the job. They do not take a holiday, give notice, and are not fired. They simply show up at the company again when they feel like working some more, a few days, weeks or months later, for several months, weeks or days, replacing someone else who has similarly taken off on flex-time.
