Television

music

My new favorite TV channel is CNBC World, carrying quality near-global financial and business programmes.
see SCHEDULE

How I know that I'm evil

music

Because I allowed people to create a violent war in Iraq. I murmured a bit, and then moved on with life and quotidian concerns.

If it's "not my job" to do something, and not your job, and not her job, and not his job, then who will do something? And who will do something when I am (or you are) the victim?

Better Half

music

Best Couple Award

Eleven years and one month ago, I fell giddily in love with a boy. My hormones had played similar tricks on me before, but unlike all my prior loves, he was actually in my age group and I actually knew him in real life. I felt very certain that I was his girl for ever. Although he is a most delightful friend, I guess I can be grateful now that my willpower wasn't enough to make us marry.

I remember the week we fell in love. I remember too how Saamu (camp clown) organised an impromptu award contest on the bus back home. There were categories, nominations, votes, most of which I was oblivious to, being engrossed in my Beloved's speech as I was. I was embarassed - blushing red despite my dark brown skin, I was told - to find that we were Best Couple.

I was also secretly pleased to have won a cool award. It was nice to get attention for something not serious or schoolish, but Away-an: foreign, Western, ...cool.

Some things haven't changed much. I'm still waaay more geeky-cerebral than cool (although at Caltech, I was considered radically cool, which just shows that "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is the King.")

Nigerian Blog Awards

I nominated myself for a bunch of Bloggies this year. You should nominate your blog(s) too. Or other deserving blogs, if you're so inclined :)

According to TaureanMinx, another blog award organiser, a few people are now authorized to wear this badge of honour on their blogs:

These are only some of a multitude of fabulous Naija blogs out there. Next year, the awards will be even more awesome, because more people will vote, for more diverse blogs.

See all the 2006 Naijablogger winners!

Do Believe The Hype

music

Watching Dreamgirls was a sumptous experience.

When I was about seven, my family got a videotape with footage of Jennifer Holliday, spotlit on a dark stage, in glittery dark clothes, microphone in hand, performing the You're Gonna Love Me solo. I could never forget that performance - the sweat, the depth, the passion.
Fast forward many years, and everybody's talking about the same song.
Thank you, Miss Jennifer Hudson, for giving a musical film performance that will be remembered for generations.

Let the music play on

music

There are so many songs I'm dying to post here.
I'll keep up with blogging and with posting the songs...server problem for hosting the songs needs to be worked out...still owe you the rest of the Arab Film Festival gist, I know...be back in a few days.
Peace and love.

iCall

music

My calls with Skype have been of really poor quality recently. Maybe it's the new wireless connection that has problems. Or maybe Skype is overloaded and underperforming. I just read about iCall, so I'm downloading that right now to use for my calls from home.

My cell phone plan is stupid. It costs a lot, yet I can't use it freely because of the very very limited minutes included and the stiff penalty for going over. I want to dump the company (T-Mobile) but they gleefully informed me that I'm under contract for a year. The phone itself is ancient. I can get another one at a heavily discounted price if I sign up for two more years of this misery. "TWO YEARS!" I exclaim, "I don't even know what COUNTRY I'll be in in two years." (I hope it's Yemen.) I'll find a way to dump my phone Company soon, you'll see.

Peace.

12 hours later: I just tested iCall and found similar problems, so the problem is with my low-bandwith wireless and Skype is still fabulous.

Who moved my cheese?

music

I have now joined the rat race. Used to drive less than 10km/week in Pasadena. Now I'll drive five times that, and ride the train the other half of the time. I love the Bay and the City. Work won't feel like work at all.

The work is/will be: brokering/trading forex, tutoring SAT math, acting. Lucky me.

Localized

music

Still job-hunting. From tutoring and petroleum R&D to trading desks and "financial engineering." Trying to stay within 15 miles of Berkeley.

In other news, there may be some more acting and playreading in my immediate future. I like!

We need to unpack and sell/donate at least half of the junk in this apartment. Then I'll feel much saner, we'll have a nice long Thanksgiving weekend, I'll start studying Arabic again...

Peace.

Still don't know

music

Despite my best efforts to hate the career fair, it was fun.

Some fun people and companies, like a Nevada technology company that makes slot machines, or this "normal" technology company - with people I like, actually like - that analyses/tests Internet Protocol performance.

I sort of liked Advertising.com - had never heard of them.

I lost some of my apprehension about DE Shaw, so I'll look into that further.

I saw new "trading" companies besides the ones I'd already decided against. One of them is based in LA and hiring right now. Like "can you start next week?" They like my math, seem like cool people, but are not sure if I really want to be a trader - very perceptive. Another one is doing their first interviews / math tests tomorrow morning, so I'll go and try to see if I remember any math. By the way, traders buy and sell stocks or derivatives or financial products people make up. So far that's beautiful. It's said that they work long hours. Pause.

I cornered a recruiter who was not so busy to learn about how she figured out what to do in life. Answer: elimination. I love old people. And all other people who are not too harried to answer my questions.

In A New York State of Mind?

music

Spent the past few days in bed nursing a cold and reading the Wall Street Journal. Would like to do the same today, but I have to take a few hours out to meet the people at the career fair. Used to be good at career fairs; now I'm old and cranky. There's a lot of stupid work out there, y'all. Don't live in this country: it's full of people working very hard at stupid things. Not you of course!

Thought New York / Wall Street work might be fun, until I went to visit my sisters in DC two weeks ago and remembered how intolerable cold weather is to me. Now, I'll only go to work in New York if it's something I really really want, if it pays an evil amount of money, or if it doesn't include October - March.

Would work in DC year-round, on the contrary, since seeing my sisters daily would make up for the cold weather.

Moving to Berkeley, 400 miles NW of Pasadena, in ten days. A guy named Raj.

Beyond Borders

music

I saw Anousheh Ansari on The Oprah Winfrey Show today. She spent days in orbit around the earth as a space tourist. She loved the lovely view outside her capsule: it was of the earth, and there were no borders, she said. NO BORDERS. Really. Did you know that?

Yet there is such suffering in the name of borders: a Jewish state called Israel, the often deadly northward passage through the Southern half of North America, Bakassi, and hundreds more large-scale conflicts between the in-group and the out.

Are you in the EU, or not in?
In North Korea or South Korea?
Israeli Arab, or born right outside the borders in Palestine/Lebanon?
Northern Moroccan or Southern Spanish?
Who cares - it shouldn't matter. Sadly, it matters too much.

There are people who see that it doesn't have to be this way. I met N. at the film festival. She and I talked about how far we are from where we need to be in designing a peaceful world...how the framework itself, one that divides with borders, is flawed.

There are no borders.

Yes, we have inherited a recent tradition of knowledge that partitions as much as possible, puts things in mutually exclusive classes: this country is in Africa, this in Asia...this is a mammal, but that is a bird. All this grouping is sometimes useful for representing data simply but incompletely. That is, it's not the whole story...not the whole truth...Is this land Camerounian or Nigerian? Maybe the answer is both. Or neither.

Perhaps you dare to dream of a new world order that doesn't have division built into it, but increases freedom. Maybe you dream of something crazier. Hold fast your dreams, anyway.

Social intercourse

music


I just got back from the Arab Film Festival.

The first film I saw there was a short documentary shot throughout Sana'a and titled A Stranger in her own City. It was utterly emotional for me to see video of the place and to watch a girl living out loud in a culture that has other ideas for people of her sex.

Next I saw the equally captivating Goal Dreams. Days later, I met Morad, a Palestinian and American who was prominent in this film about the quest for a World Cup qualification for Palestine. I said "you were in the film" and we introduced and smiled and...quit smiling and parted ways.

The ONE film from the festival that I want everyone I know to see is Occupation 101. Wait for its release, get it, have a viewing party. Let's get the word out and move towards peace and away from stupid violence.

Sadly, most of the films I saw were so good that I anguish over each one I didn't see. (It's impossible to see all the films at this festival, but that doesn't console me.)
I'll write more about the week's movies soon.

San Francisco loves me
Maybe I'll move to the San Francisco Bay Area soon: on this trip, besides watching a lot of films and hearing a lot of Arabic, seeing and liking Berkeley, reading about bonds and stocks, and detoxing from my addiction to toiling on the Web, I met a number of lovely people, some of whom want me to live closer to them.

I had a soul-mate all along

music

It's pleasing to think that I'm so connected to someone, though scary because I want him to stay alive. OK, it's not so scary anymore.

My mother often said I should have been a boy/man.

I'm looking forward to figuring out my hairstyle(s) for work.

Your money or your life

music

Just saw this quote on 43 things:
When we go to our jobs, we are trading our life energy for money. The truth, while simple, is profound.
The New Road Map is one attempt at a fair trading strategy.

I have an over-the-phone job interview this morning.
I am genuinely very interested in working at En*, and assume
1. I will do great work here
2. my interest will die out after a short time
Ideally, I'll work here for (a few/many) months, and later go to work somewhere else.
To work "somewhere else," I need to read gobs of finance.

This dead Aussie clearly lived out loud - the way we ought to want to live.

Romance

music

Spice
I just saw A Touch of Spice. It was singularly sensuous: a collection of images of beautiful people; people whose hearts touch; people mired in attachment and addiction to those oils and spices that fixed a place called home in their skin - so deeply, it would never be forgotten.

I have started to unlearn some of my deep love for the many textures of meat - tendon and cartilage and marrow and kidney. It's still there, but poisoned with the idea that meat is a sirloin or a rib-eye or New York strip steak; a sanitized and standardized and very oversized and overnourishing slab of loot.

Caribbean Restaurant
A few days ago I was starving, so I found myself at this new nearby restaurant. Actually, it's more than two years old, and I've been there maybe three times. On previous visits, I noted that I like the decor, that the passionfruit juice is mind-blowingly good, and that I doubt any true Carribean people eat such bland food as they serve there. My complaint? They don't know their sauces.

Well, if the food was tasteless a year ago, why was I back there last week?

A charming man (not the owner, who's also charming despite being a perhaps overeager businessman) made me order some juice, brought me a loaf, which I devoured, followed by a very very good and simple salad. I quickly annihilated the rice and beans; only when it was just the meat left was I calm enough to actually taste the food. The meat reminded me of suya. I have never had meat in this country that reminded me of suya before.

I bought some suya on the street near the embassy in Victoria Island last time I was in Lagos. Took some home to my brother. It's so hard to take suya home - hard to stay honest - but I love the boy. He loved the suya. I hope that means he loves me too.

The restaurant owner told me the carne asada I just enjoyed was a filet mignon, butterflied, all that crap. I don't care. I had butterflied whatever before, and it didn't taste like this. I had expensive steak before. In undergrad, a Microsoft recruiter took a bunch of us kids to dinner. I was going to stay in school to study for tests, but gave in to the pressure to be interested in a wealthier future at Microsoft. I recall that dinner for maybe ten people cost as much as a semester's meal plan at Howard. No, I don't remember the food, but it was one of those dinners at which people made a big to-do about things being butterflied.

Honey
I saw a honey-coloured insect today on my way back from the movie. Outstretched wings, elegant craned neck...I came closer and it was a cockroach. Then I thought it had too many feelers...oh! that's another one next to it. The grate they live on is labelled as covering a drain that feeds into the sea. Oh there were many cockroaches on the draincover. The first placid family of cockroaches I've seen.

O happy day!
Before the Greek Spice movie, I ate ẹba at home, with leftover ọgbonọ from a trip to Veronica's Kitchen. Before that I saw Trust the Man - my kind of film.

Today was so right. And warm. I was so happy. I hope I die on a day like today.

Desire

music

On desire:
The sheer desire of these young people!
The link is to a set of eight pictures, see them all.

On nesting:
This jibjab animation shows how people use the Big Box Mart to satisfy so many needs.

Luc Leestemaker

music

It was my first time at The Grove in Los Angeles. December 2002: I had just learned to drive, got a car and a license three months earlier, and was desperate to escape worrying about my qualifying exams for a few minutes or hours.

The Grove was magical at Christmas.

That evening, I had a thought-provoking conversation with a Dutch, almost American, artist while waiting to see The Hours. I see on his webpage that he recently founded The Art Fund Corporation to help build artists' careers. (I'm jus' sayin'...so you know...if this is your thing...)

Although I don't remember the story, I'll never forget the images from and the thoughts evoked by The Hours, a movie I watched more than once - drove friends to LA to see it days later.

Material girl

music

Gucci now has video?
Probably temporary link showing 2007 cruise collection. Because I like.

Paper or Plastic?
I had two bags at home that, with their bold science conference labels, were definitely not fashion runway material. They were too large and unwieldy for school. I already had a white canvas bag for, who knows, like, if I ever went to the beach. The point is that my two conference bags had no function...
Meanwhile, I wanted to stop growing my useless stash of supermarket plastic bags and paper bags. For inspiration, I looked to the women of Aix-en-Provence, always alluring, addicted to understated seduction. Years ago, I had watched them walk down to the street markets clutching simple baskets, to hold fruits and a baguette, say.
When Mediterrenean-inspired fashionista meets ex-science conference attendee meets environmentally conscious food buyer, you have me at the supermarket, answering the "paper or plastic" question with "I brought my own bag(s)." I'm really proud of this.

Want
What I want these days, in addition to a fab job, is still mostly media - books, music, movies.

Araro̩mi

music

I'm going to finish up school this year.
If you've been just dying to call me Dr. O. - sorry, it's not going to happen.
I'm taking a Masters degree and moving by the end of this year.

If you're a friend who wants to know where to, please allow some time for me to work out the details.
Since I'm not trying to be too busy anymore, this year is a great time to get in touch with me.
If you just want to cyber-stalk, I'm on 43things.

Stolen copper wires

music

I just heard this story about copper wire stolen nearby from a communication company. I didn't know this happened in the US.

Nineteen years ago, my family lived on TinCan Island in Lagos, where we hadn't electricity for a long stretch. The power outage went on for weeks, longer than normal for that time and place. The reason was stolen copper wire.

We cooled off on mats outdoors on the veranda, sharing riddles and stories. My father explained what sea breeze was. We fanned the twins, who were then babies, with a raffia fan. The joke was that they were oyinbo, because they were born into air-conditioning and couldn't endure being hot.

In Lagos of the eighties and nineties, street light parts got stolen - lamps, wires, and metal. Once, during a fuel crunch, some people poked a hole in a remote petrol pipeline and as the news travelled, people rushed to fetch petrol as they fetch water - in kegs and buckets and open basins.