Saturday

Both the manager and the assistant manager are all solicitude and
concern. Interesting. Last night, I thought all I needed was a bit of
care, a metaphorical hug, some non-dispassionate, non medical
expression of support - from anyone. And, God knows, these guys are
giving it this morning. But it doesn't work. Peversely, I'm the one
who feels dispassionate as I watch and listen to them. They tell me
how they're new here, still learning the buildings, how the drainage
at the far end of the building (where my room is) is pretty bad, how
they are going to recommend non slip flooring. Idly, I wonder if this
broken wrist is going to fund my retirement; then I look at the pair
of them and know it's not. Nevertheless, I do wonder at the
disingenuous nature of this discussion!

Michael comes over. He's the wonderful taxi driver who took me to
hospital and waited for 4 hours to bring me back. Almost a friend!
Ridiculously, his coming over to say hello is hugely cheering -it's
a beautiful Caribbean day - wish I could go swimming!

Later

A most welcome plate of fresh fruit - watermelon, guava and pineapple
- awaited my return to the hotel. And a bottle of champagne - though what we were celebrating wasn't quite clear! I managed a glass but the drugs kicked in and I slept. Woke this morning to what sounded like huge winds and muffled thunderclaps. I felt grateful. At least it wouldn't matter that I couldn't go swimming! Eventually I got up and drew the curtains to watch the storm. The golden sunlight streamed in. Across the balcony, the cloudless, gleaming blue sky stretched to the horizon, meeting the sparkling, dancing Caribbean sea. The sand shone golden, newly burnished. Storm? What storm? Unbelievably, the sound I'd heard was the crashing of the sea as it drew itself up into last minute waves and threw itself with unrelenting passion upon the waiting shore. Then, sated, 'all calm of mind, all passion spent', the sea wiithdraws and breathes in, preparing for its next onslaught.

friday night

Well, it's official - the wrist is broken. The right one, too, which is
going to mess up my life for the next few weeks! A very cross x-ray
technician finally tipped up and took the photos. Interesting lack of
protection from radiation but maybe not necessary for just a wrist.
The nurse with the syringe turned out to have worked in Batley(!) And
the doc came from Nigeria and had worked in UK and US- using his
medical qualifications to see the world! So much to say about the
hospital but will have to wait. But am hugely grateful for their
expertise.

After the ball was over...........

Left the ship yesterday midday and moved to hotel to have a couple of
days on my own. It always sounds so idyllic and opportunity doesn't
normally arise. So thought I'd experiment with a couple of days on
my own partly to see if I could hack it. Nice hotel, near shops and
restaurants, lovely big airy room, well appointed. Spent all afternoon and
evening writing bid and budget for friday deadline. Finished at one am
and then slept fitfully. Woke early and decided to take everyone's
advice and get ferry to Tobago. Arrived at around 1pm and taken to
hotel. Brilliant sunshine , beautiful beach, not wonderful hotel but
apparently only one on island with a room! - everyone either
celebrating thanksgiving or fleeing the conf! Spent afternoon in the
sea, surrounded by pelicans fishing, divebombing the sea with unerring
accuracy frequently about 12' from me! Food pretty ghastly at hotel
so thought I'd try Tobago's finest for dinner. Whilst I'd been
showering and getting ready, there had been a huge storm and downpour
and everywhere was soaked, especially the outside corridors and
marbley steps. And four steps from the bottom, my flipflops just planed
across the watery surface and I fell. Landed at the bottom and hit
the back of my head on the step behind me. I lay there in the pool of
rain that had gathered in the corridor. It was pitch black by now,
darkness falling fast and intense by 6pm in this part of
the world. Slowly I began to realise I couldn't just stay there. I
forced myself up and then looked at my wrist in astonishment. My hand
was at a most peculiar angle to my arm and the pain was intensifying
exponentially. I gingerly made my way to hotel reception, nearly but
not quite slipping again on the treacherous floor. The hotel manager
was solicitous but could do nothing. Eventually, all other avenues
having been exhausted, he called a cab and had me taken to hospital.
It's now 930pm and I've been here in A and E since 7pm. They've
examined it, given me a sling to relieve the pressure and an injection
to relieve the pain. The x-ray person has gone home and we all have
to wait till she has supper and is willing to come out again. In this
weather, I don't blame her for taking her time! The worst thing is the
overwhelming sense of isolation. It was 11pm UK time when I rang home
- he's obviously in bed and deeply asleep which irrationally makes me
want to scream. Reason reasserts itself and I realise how pointless
the call is - what did I expect? That he'd pop in the car and come and
rescue me? Well yes, dammit - never mind reason - come and rescue me,
take away the loneliness! The kids are each doing their Friday night
things and friends all busy with their own lives - this experiment in
being alone ain't going so well!

Thursday - by way of explanation

All the three previous blogs just published today - I know this isn't in the spirit of blogging but I just couldn't get access to the internet on the ship where I could also use a thumb drive - so have been writing and saving to thumb drive and then hoping to copy over to the blog when I finally got access -

anyway, have now left Serenade of the Seas - HM The Queen arrives tonight - big banquet - so thought I wouldn't get in the way! Seriously, my bit now done so have now moved to hotel on dry land - with some relief i think - don't think staying on cruise ships is quite my thing! -

Off to compose new tender, deadline 12 noon tomorrow UK time so must go and concentrate -

And the sun is shining!

Wednesday, Day of Creative Industries Panel

5.30pm – the mayhem is over and am just taking a couple of minutes out before the next event. Our session went well. At ten past ten, there were 20 people in a room set for 100 and it suddenly seemed a long way to come for 20 people – but then it transpired that an earlier session was over-running and Andrew, chairing the panel, decided to wait. Good call – within 10 minutes we were packed, with people bringing in extra chairs or standing at the back, with a sublime disregard for H&SAW! Pablo had put everyone’s presentation on to his Apple because the provided PC laptop wouldn’t support his slides – and of course, with a predictability that leaves you dumbfounded, and despite the half dozen dummy runs before the audience arrived, the bloody thing crashed as soon as the first presentation started. With weary patience, the shipboard tech support got it running on the ship’s laptop, and we were off. Hardesh Singh is a Malaysian music entrepreneur doing some very interesting work opening up the market in his home country, working with telecommunications companies on the new distribution of music – he won the British Council Young Music Entrepreneur of the Year this year. He was serious, unshowy and let the audience gasps come in response to what he did rather than how he presented it. Then Dr Abha from Simla in India – working with women weavers, using crafts and creative practice to help empower women to achieve some independence – the project has been so successful that they are talking about rolling it out across India and the world. She really is an academic specialising in women’s issues, and this is just one project she runs – again, a gentle speaker, whose images of the cloths the women were weaving drew spontaneous applause from the audience.
Then the fireworks began. Kiran, a Trinidadian now living in Miami, works with Disney and Warners and all the big media names imaginable. His work, as he described it, is at the very edge of ‘cutting edge’ – ranging from films to events to major stage shows – he is currently developing a peripatetic ‘Museum’ project, which will tour the world, and will use astonishing 3-D and augmented reality technology but whose core purpose is to ‘clone’ all the greatest artworks in the world and make them available to audiences who might never otherwise have the opportunity of experiencing the real thing – even the Louvre (whose management described Kiran as their worst nightmare – if people can have the work come to them, what need to go to the Louvre!) but they agreed to the cloning of the Mona Lisa on condition that, at the end of the tour, the cloning software becomes their property entirely!
The presentation was lightly and charmingly made, with Kiran never once making the mistake of drowning the audience in tech-speak and openly enjoying and sharing their wonderment at what he was showing. His own delight in the work was infectious.
And then Pablo arose. Looking like the embodiment of an El Greco-esque character, long and very thin, with a small narrow beard outlining his jaw line and his longish black hair cascading on to his shoulders, he was dressed completely in black save for an outsize diamante skull head as a belt buckle. His fierce black eyes shone piercingly through the black framed square spectacles he wore, enhancing the intensity of his heavily accented but completely intelligible, racing Colombian English. He gave the audience no breathing space, showering them with images and references, and unforgiving of them in their media illiteracy. In fact, he started with literacy – asked this audience of sophisticated government and business delegates how many of them could use a Playstation, knew what an X-box was, could upload apps on their phones – inevitably, he was met with embarrassed silence – he then said ‘if you don’t know how to use this stuff and what it can do, how can you possibly tell your children what they can and can’t do with it?” He then took the audience on a journey from when he first started programming computers aged 8, through the history of images invoking Gutenberg, Tesla, Gabriel Garcia Marques and many others, taking the audience way beyond anything they had imagined, making you question what you knew and wonder at what you didn’t – it was noisy, dramatic, political, passionate, provocative, funny and totally magical – one of the best I’ve ever seen. He ended with two coups de grace – he produced a T-shirt, just a common or garden T-shirt – one you wear and wash in the normal way, but one that has technology built into it – through augmented reality, he held the Tshirt against himself with the webcam focused on it and, as we watched on the large screen, butterflies appeared endlessly from the material, as it were, and fluttered around. And then he turned off the computer and showed the audience a book – it’s a book he’s just written for the schools in Colombia, teaching the kids about using technology. And technology is built into the book itself – in order to access parts of the book, kids will have use their mobiles; ‘bar codes’ of information are part of the text - and so on – as he says, the kids will get it immediately – it’s the teachers that will have the problems! Of course, there was a roar when he finished – everyone was knocked sideways and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who wanted more!
So then it was left to me to finish it – as Andrew commented under his breath to me as I go up to speak, “Follow that!” – and it was a bit like that – not for the first time, I cursed myself for not getting more advanced Powerpoint skills! – but mine was so different, I think the change of approach helped move things on – by the time I got going, despite the inevitable technology difficulties that, ironically, Pablo was tearing his hair out trying to resolve behind me, the audience had been thoroughly warmed up. They were therefore immediately responsive to anything that even remotely resembled a joke! That obviously affected me too so rapport was pretty immediate and I felt good as it went on. I quoted my brief conversation with the Minister the night before and i think it suddenly brought the whole discussion back into accessible reality – ‘monetising the Carnival’ was something everyone understood so, as I used it to take them on an unanticipated journey into CIDA’s Innovation process, our work with our Silicon Valley partners, the impact on clients and collaborators and the story of the Creative Town, I could feel (and hear) them responding.
As I have been writing this, Alison, the organiser of the programme, just came up to me to tell me that the word amongst delegates is that ours was the best session of the conference – very satisfying – if creatives can’t enthrall an audience, what hope the rest?!
I’m off to the pool deck to go dancing with Pablo!

Tuesday

Official start of the Conference: miraculously, made it to breakfast and the Opening Session in time – it’s raining outside – has been raining since I arrived –as bad as Manchester but at least it stays warm!
Went to Opening Ceremony out of a sense of duty rather than anything else but actually it was worth the effort. Charming address by the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago (TT, as it’s known) presenting Trinidad as a highly successful and ambitious industrialised nation, benchmarking itself positively against economies such as Canada, exploiting natural resources but also – and oh, I wanted to cheer! – talking not about the importance of the’ creative industries’ but , rather, about key sectors that included music, print and performing arts! Then a stirring speech by Kamalesh Sharma, the Commonwealth Secretary General. He talked movingly of ‘Partnerships’ not being about economics but about people – a three legged stool (‘and some of the legs are a little steadier than others!’) of public, private and civil society sectors – and a reminder, frequently repeated by other speakers, that the primary cause and objective of the Commonwealth is the elimination of poverty, without which everything else is, at best, compromised.
The next session brought probably the best speaker, certainly in terms of content: Professor Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize winner for Economics. A wry but confident speaker, he gave what must be the best exposition of how the financial collapse happened. He commented that, in organising the bail out for companies, governments never stopped to ask ‘What kind of financial system do we want post crisis?’ So now there is much talk of the sign of green shoots of recovery but it is only the companies (banks) that are really experiencing it – for ordinary people like you and me, things are still tough – in the US, 1 in 6 people willing to work are unable to find jobs. Money is still scarce. The bailout to banks was to enable them to continue lending to SMEs but, as we know and despite best efforts of Governments, they aren’t, even now. What they are doing, however, is looking for the best return on the money they have, irrespective of risk because they now know they are ‘too big to fail’, so they are investing in emerging economies, generating the same potential for false confidence and unsubstantiated risk taking, and where the necessary regulatory frameworks may not be in place, as they were not in the US pre-crash. This runs the risk of creating an investment bubble in those countries which, in time, they will be forced to face and deal with on their own as the Western bankers will simply slouch away. So once again it will be poor people that pay the price of Western indulgence. Stiglitz went on to comment on the need for fairness and trust – how interesting to hear an internationally recognised economist use those terms! What price emotional intelligence now! He talked about the mistrust between the banks themselves as being one of the key causes for the eventual crisis but he comments that nothing has changed – for example, in the States, the private sector makes loans to students; Govt guarantees those loans, making them good if the borrower defaults; yet the banks still charge for the loans as though they themselves were liable for the risk of bad loans – everyone knows it is happening but no one does anything about it. There was more.... but it’s too much for a blog – read his book !
In the evening, a reception on poolside with a fantastic steel band – impossible for anyone not to start moving, dancing – all the women dressed up to the nines, all the men in suits without ties – so that’s what ‘smart casual’ means!
At dinner, the Trinidad and Tobago Minister of Information came over and was introduced – ‘So, tell me, Anamaria – you're talking about the creative industries? how do we monetise our Carnival?’..............it was the inspiration I needed – have decided to make it the core of my speech tomorrow – thank heaven for Ministers!