WAHAHAHAHAH, wuh lossssss, I ain’t laugh so sweet in a long time.
The last time I had such a sweet laugh was when my grandmother went to the mini-mart to buy orange juice, and she came back and said she ain’t get none, that all the orange juice in there marked “Staff”, how them only got orange juice there for the staff. Poor gran didn’t realise that “Staff” was the name of the brand of orange juice.
Anyhow, so here the other day I watching CNC 3, which is a TV station in Trinidad, and during the news I heard the presenter say this: “citizens are today being urged to exercise extreme caution when purchasing food from Chinese restaurants.
“A recent video posted to social media of what appears to be a Chinese national skinning a dog near a food establishment in Diego Martin has caused public concern.”
Boy, I nearly dead with laugh. Then the Minister of Health Dr Fuad Khan had his say. He said, “I notice the amount of stray dogs in this country have disappeared and you don’t see them in a pound.”
And yes, I saw the video of the man skinning the dog. But as a friend of mine always say, when you take an animal out of it’s jacket and cook it, it could pass for either chicken or beef. And I agree: just brown he down good with some curry and garlic and I good to go.
Negative publicity
But as a business person any negative publicity like this could seriously damage your business.
Here we have one Chinese fella skinning a dog near a restaurant. It could be for his personal use – we don’t know. Or maybe the dog was hot and was trying to take off the jacket and the man was helping him.
Either way, you would know nearly everybody ’bout in Trididad and Tobago and even here exercising extreme caution ’bout where they eat.
I remember a fella used to come out by the automart in Warrens selling some lovely looking Chinese cabbage – I talking bout big, green and lovely. And I would take home a few bunches every week. One week I carry home a bunch and my wife asked me where I got it from. I told her the usual fella.
The woman took up the whole bunch and threw it in the garbage and then told me that she heard that the fella does put human manure to the cabbage. Well, that talk spread like wildfire and by the next week he was gone. I ain’t know if um was true or not, but I tell you that cabbage used to eat real good.
And when I was a li’l boy gine school, them had a woman near the school who used to make and sell ice cream blocks. She would mix milk, water, sugar and li’l essence with red dye and make some pink ice cream blocks. And all the li’l children would stop there on evenings. That is till one day somebody spread a dirty rumour that she does use donkey milk, and that was the end of her and the ice cream blocks for a long time.
And, of course, I think I told you sometime back about the old lady in my district who used to sell sugar cakes and was doing a thriving trade till somebody said that she ain’t had no grater and how she used to chew up the coconut and spit it out in a bucket to make the sugar cakes.
So I telling you, owning a Chinese restaurant could never be easy. See ya.
E-mail: madderic@hotmail.com twitter@madderic