I think I have never danced in my entire life - not in church, not on my solitary foray into a night club, not at all the birthday parties I attended as a kid, not ever. I don’t remember if it was a concious decision, or if it was/still is a result of a deep seated phobia even I am unaware of, or if I have always lacked that seemingly natural ability to coordinate the limbs in resonance with external tunes, or if I just plain can’t be bothered. ...
The following is an attempt to be coherent at 3.45am. If the logic is fuzzy, the imagery abstruse and the conclusions bother on the insane, blame it on reading Malcolm Gladwell into the wee hours of the morning! In response to my rant/ sobfest in March about losing my friend Di, LoloBloggs pointed me to a post in which she argued that the right girl, wrong time argument was merely an excuse to prime women up for the inevitable future break up. Whilst that may be true in some situations, in one of those not-so random brain waves, it crossed my mind that the rightness or wrongness of the argument was peripheral to the fact that it fit the observed data for a reason - it is pragmatic! A further thought was a what-if, what if there exists a third dimension that when coupled with the right person and the right time serves as a useful predictor of how likely a person-connection is likely to proceed beyond the realms of casual acquaintance-ship? I would like to suggest that that third dimension is that of context. ...
Growing up in my own neck of the woods was an experience. We nicknamed our Pops the Ogbodons - not sure where the term originated from any more but my back side was a living testimony to his varied abilities and multiplied skills in inflicting pain. Mum didn’t help matters as she was was as resolute in hammering our ’evil’ proclivities out of our systems. I got the opportunity to contrast that parenting style a few weekends back when I went visiting some distant family members in London. Clearly their less than 3 year old daughter has more leeway with him than I do with my own parents at my (huge) age. ...
Day Zero. You meet her on one of those days. Boredom morphs into irritation, topped off with despondency. Your 8-4 (5-9) is especially dull on the day. Madam Bosco, your loud mouthed, over-bearing boss rips into you as usual over the ever yawning chasm between your targets and your deliveries. The heat seems to have major intentions of causing grievous bodily harm in any case. That is when the ‘gods’ of the internet and itchy fingers contrive to send Her your way. ...
I absolutely adore African food - I made it a point of duty to eat everything from amala, eba, party jollof rice, beans, moi-moi, yam porridge, nkwobi, and that peculiar Cally town culinary delight of Ekpangnkukwo as well as a sampling of soups - ogbono, egusi, afang, editan, afia efere (hmmmm), and even gala and several FanMilk icecreams flavours all in the space of 12 days. In fact, the ability to make piping hot akara is a key requirement of the future Mrs DB! ...
Over the past few days, the transience of life has been brought very forcibly to the forefront of my mind. Maybe it’s the new streak of grey in my beard, or the news of yet another young acquaintance who is no more, or it’s the startling realization that the kids who were born the year I completed undergrad study are all knocking on the door of their teenage years…. The various random thoughts coursing daily through my head have agglomerated around three key concepts - Cogitation, Connection and Contribution. ...