The weather chick

AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Laura Asbjornsen and, even after all these years, older people in Trinidad probably still remember me as “the Weather Chick.”

I don’t “consider myself as coming from” Port of Spain…I am from Port of Spain.

I was born in St Clair Medical in 1973.

I live now in Eindhoven, the “European Silicon Valley” city in the Netherlands.

It was a proud day for our family when we moved from a rented Stone Street apartment to the dream home in Cascade my parents worked very hard to build.

People who dropped me home after partying would ask if I was living in the bush, because no one ever went past Third Avenue.

I miss Trinidad every day. Especially in the dark and cold winter months.

After ten years in Belgium, I speak enough French and Dutch to get errands done and order Chinese takeaway in both languages.

I’m good partying, liming, at the post office – but I wouldn’t be very good in a formal presentation!

People always think that if you are from the Caribbean, then you are always late and do not know anything.

I got married a week before my 23rd birthday and my husband Rikard is the most patient man on this planet.

We met in Trinidad when I was 15 but we did not get together until I was about 21.

We moved in together after a couple of months, and my mother was horrified.

Some friends behind my back said he was just trying to get a Trinidadian residency and I remember thinking that there were easier ways to get that.

After 12 years of marriage, at age 35, we had a daughter, Georgina. Children did not fit into my career plans.

(One day) my husband's manager asked what was the point of being married, if you did not have a family. I was deeply offended.

But after having Georgina, I empathise.

When I moved back to Trinidad, a friend's mother said, "You only have one child? Lazy!”

You cannot please everybody and you should do what makes you happy.

My father, Charles Hanooman, passed away in 2008, a week after I told him he was going to be a grandfather. He’d felt he was on borrowed time since a stroke 12 years before.

I cried when I found some letters he wrote his parents while studying in Ireland to become a priest, before he married my mother. I never realised how hard he worked to become what he was, or what sacrifices my parents made for us. I called (my business) Charles & Co as homage to my father.

My mother's name is Pamela Hanooman, nee Abasali. My mother's father was Muslim but she was raised Catholic.

My family name, Hanooman, is Hindu but I never thought about it much growing up. (Except) I used to get teased mercilessly at school as Laura "Have-no-man."

I went to St Theresa's RC in Woodbrook. In 1985, I was one of three students who passed for St Joseph's Convent and was very excited about going there.

But once I got there, it was very lonely. All the other students knew each other from private primary schools.

My younger sisters, Anna and Sara, went to private primary school, so I do not think they had the same experience.

I was a studious child and did not have many friends. I would read on our balcony and just watch the world go by.

Once I finished my CXC exams, I was allowed to go out. I discovered makeup. All hell broke loose. I had my first boyfriend and I partied like there was no tomorrow, in total contrast to how my parents grew up. They worried for me.

I regret to this day that I did not study for my A-Levels.

I did my physics degree at UWI St Augustine, and two masters, environmental management in the Netherlands and international law and affairs at the University of Kent (via Brussels).

I started my doctorate when I lived in South Florida and have completed the comprehensive exam and the dissertation proposal, but am not sure I want to complete it. I am almost 50. What is the point?

I feel like my young adulthood was spent working.

I am a "convenient Catholic." I became disillusioned with the church when I went to Vatican City. They were proudly displaying an exhibit of the pope’s robes, encrusted with rubies and emeralds. Why do you need a jewel-encrusted robe?

The whole thing reeked of human desire for power and greed. Add my father's dismal experience at the seminary and I am very sceptical. Some of the most vile people on earth are in St Finbar's Church every Sunday, running up the aisle to take the Holy Eucharist in their designer shoes.

However, I still christened my daughter and she made her First Communion – “just in case."

I do not mind you having an opinion. But an ill-informed opinion devoid of critical thinking means you speak out of your a--.

No one really remembers this weather-girl business so I feel strange speaking about it. Because, really – who cares? (Even) I sometimes forget I ever did it.

About to finish my physics degree, I saw an advertisement for a weather announcer. I applied and, a couple days later (veteran and influential journalist) Sunity Maharaj put me on television.

Having done environmental physics, I was not intimidated by the weather.

It was a strange time in my life. All of a sudden people knew who you were. Everyone thought they were funny asking, when they met me, “How is the weather?"

Every day, my ritual was I would take notes of Alan Archer’s detailed morning Caribbean weather report on HOTT93. I’d watch how Femi Oke on CNN presented technical information. And with the information faxed from the Piarco Met Office, I would put together something I hoped was interesting and "correct."

After a year, I got bored. I could not see myself doing the weather for the rest of my life.

So I applied for a global scholarship in the Netherlands I never thought I would get. I got it.

When I am away from home, I miss the warmth of the sun and the hustle and bustle and hilarity of our people.

It's the little strange things, like the way we label a tall person "Tall Boy" affectionately for life.

I do not really miss Trinidadian food, because I have learned to make the things I love, and go out of my way to get the items I need to make our food, no matter where I am.

I got really mad watching an episode of British MasterChef when a British chef said Caribbean food is not elegant enough for restaurants in London. I was thinking "Have you never met Chef Khalid from Chaud Cafe?"

Many people I meet do not know where Trinidad and Tobago is. I always have to say, "near Jamaica," or "close to Barbados.”

To me, to be a Trini is a feeling of appreciation for our country and culture that make us gregarious and fun.

To me, Trinidad and Tobago means what they say in that poem: "Those who eat the cascadura will, the native legend says, wheresoever they may wander, end in Trinidad their days."

I really hope that will be the case for me.

Read the full version of this feature on Saturday at www.BCPires.com