Follow the rules (or not)

Posts here are admittedly few and far between. In Jordan, seeing camels on the side of the road seemed novel every time it happened - which was all the time. Here life seems normal and we're more likely to see friendly street dogs than exotic wildlife.

Trinidad is in many ways a fairly lawless society - there is a large sense of live and let live and universal loathing of the police. Red lights and one-way streets are routinely ignored. Cars park anywhere without fear of citation. Even when breathalyzers were put into use last Carnival for the first time there was widespread moral outrage about entrapment and convictions based on their use are still newsworthy.

In another example of the casual approach to rules: last night we went and had a drink at Drink! Wine Bar and we saw that the lights were on at the nearby cricket oval (note: the cricket oval is owned by a private posh club - this is important to note for the rest of the story). It was a nice night (note: almost all nights are nice) and we thought we'd go get tickets for whatever match it was and watch for a little while. We walked to the ticket office which was oddly closed so we walked back to where we had seen cars driving into a parking lot. We asked the security guards who was playing and how do we buy tickets. The security guards said it was a private soccer event for club members but added, "you look like members - you could just go in if you want." These are the security guards encouraging us to crash the party!

Given such lax security - imagine our surprise then when the movie theatre was a huge stickler about the age requirements. We went to see "The Other Guys" with friends and their two boys - I think they are 13 and 15. The movie was rated 14+ but their parents were with them. The box office didn't want to sell the boys tickets. When we tried cheating by having some else buy the tickets, the box office called the inside ticket takers to make sure that the boys did not enter the theatre. We can think of no other rules here that are so vigorously enforced.

p.s. The Other Guys was good. The Social Network was excellent.