Air rifle club update

Air rifle club update

Another successful meeting of our air rifle club has taken place. Officers were elected, a logo with its elements, a colour scheme and a final draft of a membership application form were finalized and agreed upon. The expected Sport Ministry official did not attend, but she promised to be present at the next meeting.

The new executive got through the agenda in three hours, as opposed to four in the first meeting.


GAS PRODUCING COUNTRIES FORM NEW GROUP: GECF

Fifteen of the world’s major gas producing countries, including T&T, attended a meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in Moscow, last week.

Algeria, Bolivia, Brunei, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, T&T, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Equatorial Guinea and Norway were there as observers.

Russian PM Putin offered St Pietersburg as a permanent home for the offices of the new entity, along with full diplomatic staus. but the GECF leaders adopted a charter and agreed to establish a permanent office in Doha, Qatar, instead.

The group signaled the end of cheap natural gas, but were quick to deny any talk of ‘price cartel’. What this portends for T&T’s economic future, we’ll wait and see.



SUPERMARKET CHAIN RUNS OUT OF SHOPPING CARTS

One of the largest national grocery chains had a run on their carts on Monday 22nd Dec. We arrived at the store to find shoppers standing around awaiting other shoppers to return with trolleys from their cars.



OBVIOUSLY PREGNANT WOMAN REFUSED EXPRESS SERVICE

Pregnant woman with a couple items in hand, asked shoppers to allow her to skip in express line at well-known supermarket chain. All refused, vehemently. Sounds like the story of baby Jesus.


MORE PREPS

Bought a pair of steel toe garden boots, a clip-on bicycle pump and some more tinned foods. Took an old towel that lost its ‘fluffiness’, cut it into several smaller pieces, serged the edges and now we have several washrags and hand/face towels for the BOBs.

We are planning a family emergency evacuation and relocation drill. It should be a learning experience. Hopefully we can have someone videotape the entire event for learning and posterity. No point discovering during a real emergency that we overlooked a critical aspect of the plan. Better to find the flaws and glitches now, fix them and make any necessary changes. One prepares for war in the time of peace.

- Trini Funshooter

Iguana, preps, meds rotation

Shot an iguana today. It took five or six shots before finally succumbing. A healthy seven-pounder, about 35 inches from head to tail.

Why do iguanas just sit there while you shoot them repeatedly? It seems counterintuitive to survival.

I gave it to someone who loves that type of meat.



PREPS

Got two more whistles (free, at a childrens party) and immediately put them in the Bug Out Bag (BOB). One more lanyard, and we’ll have one whistle-and-lanyard combo per family member.

Bought a few more tins of pellets, at a good price. Some for target practice; some for the BOB, and the rest for the preps. To that, added mints, vitamins, a knife, pure cocoa butter, ginger tea, plastic forks.

Some of the stashed meds are getting close to expiry date. This is the one ‘downside’ of prepping: you cannot rotate (use and replace) meds out of your stash. It’s a sunk cost. The upside is, it’s there; available for your use in the event of an emergency. Doesn’t matter if there’s a curfew, the pharmacies are closed, the hospitals and health centres are overwhelmed or your insurance doesn’t cover the private nursing homes.

Better to have them at hand and not need them, than need them and not have them.

We have access to medical advice by phone, sms, email and web chat from professionals familiar with our health/medical history. So there would be no self-diagnosis, nor self-prescribed administration of any of the meds (some are quite powerful and effective).

We also keep a personal health record (PHR) for each family member, that is quite detailed and comprehensive; in soft and hard copies.

- Trini Funshooter