Entertainment

Lots going on this weekend - Friday was Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights. There was a massive motorcade - cars and lorries with strings of coloured lights and depictions of Laksmi, the goddess of happiness and prosperity, and Lord Ganesh, the god of luck. Meanwhile there are firecrackers (illegal) being set off all over the place, many under cars so they set off the car alarm just to add to the general mayhem. On Saturday night the Hindu households burn diahs which are small cndles all round their house and entrance - the lights are a symbol of knowledge and wisdom.
Saturday I had a birthday party with VSOs as well as some of my new friends from choir. I did an entertainment party where people brought along a song, a game or whatever - we had some fun with that. I got them doing some dancing (Zemer Atik) in the kitchen, we had some calypso singing, cheerleading, Dingbats and poems.
On Sunday I sang with the choir as part of a concert for pensioners. It turned out to be pensioners of the government (over 55 - so I'd qualify). Believe it or not they sang their song at the beginning: "We are Pensioners of the Government" to the tune of D'ye Ken John Peel. It was a bit like a Flanders and Swann song, but sung in earnest. If you get the local style of speech, the accent comes on the last syllable of the word - pensionERS, governMENT - then it fits the tune pretty well!
Nature notes: I am taking to walking in the Botanical Gardens on a Saturday morning, and this week saw a crocodile - OK just a cayman actually, which was a foot long, and a toucan flying around, with a white and red beak.