What's good?

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The winners of the 2010 bloggies will be revealed this weekend. Meanwhile, all the nominees are here at http://2010.bloggies.com. Lots of yummy stuff to check out.

The new gig is cool, but the traffic! so I'm moving in with somebody next week that lives in that area, maybe my uncle, until I move on campus. Don't want to spend 30% of my waking hours commuting. You shouldn't have to either.

Broke

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Got a job today, will be a grad student / lecturer at University of Lagos. Just in time.

Poem: Ballroom Dance

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Just wrote this ten-liner.
Posting it because, I guess I thought ErikLeRouge might like it.

BALLROOM DANCE

In the early days, we would
dress up and watch couples
floating like a dream
across the gleaming floor

While me and my husband,
we tripped clumsily
over twenty fat toes
then argued whose fault.

Still in love, we trip
clumsily, daily; privately.

I'm No Superman

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I should totally have watched SCRUBS all those times I saw it on TV in Cali. Ah well, I bought the pirated $1.50 version. Just finished Season One. Bliss. On to Season Two. I just curled my toes, feel so good thinking about it.

I've been living in my parents' home since late July 2009. Thank you. We're in the phase in which they think I'm a Barbie - I've been so compliant. I'm breaking the first of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - something about taking responsibility for your actions, "Be Proactive." Not being proactive sucks. But I'll call it research for my book, lol.

Scrubs is really amazing. I should have watched that in grad school, instead of the dating show marathons. Ah but they were good: Elimidate, Change of Heart, The Fifth Wheel, the other one I can't remember, Blind Date...then the weeklies: Bachelor, Bachelorette etc. Ah what a mindless shame.

I wonder what the world is up to now in its race towards its future reality. Hope it's good.

Things to buy

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Look, art, from Nigeria.
1. Ituen Basi
great stuff in 2009. I hope she does even better in future when I have more money and interest in fashion.
http://www.bellanaija.com/2009/06/17/arise-africa-fashion-week-ituen-basi/

2. Gidan Nodza
the best bags, possibly made by a friend, or maybe just someone with the same name and intellect.
http://houseofnodza.blogspot.com/

3. Nike Arts
her new gallery in Lekki (Lagos) is the place to visit. she sells top-of-the-line wall art (paintings, especially) typically in the low four-figures (six figures in naira.) It's really big. My friend says it's like the Tate (London.) Nothing else like it in Nigeria.
http://www.nikeart.com/shop.php

Tribute to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

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Pat-down searches now required at airports - assuming the airport security staff is mostly gorgeous people, this could be healthy fun for everyone. Let's do this groping worldwide, not only in America. Imagine the possibilities...

Humour - His attempt at terrorism has been called The Christmas Crotchfire Attack. And today, as we lit up firecrackers for New Years Day, the ones that wouldn't ignite were named the Abdulmuttalibs. Abdul Mutilate-A-Balls. Because we love fart and butt jokes and we still can't pronounce non-Anglo names.

Now that it's clear that I don't really mean the title, and that there's no need to put me on any bloated security lists even though I have been to Yemen (possibly my most beautiful place in the world ) and sometimes say insha'Allah and al-hamdulillah, let's take a look at serious reasons why I don't exactly pity or loathe the guy:

he "got radicalized." He came to believe in something so much that he was willing to give his life for it. Although clarity and singleness of purpose can be beautiful, I, as a scientist, do not have ANY fundamentalist beliefs - who knows what modifying discoveries tomorrow may bring?

I may admire his quest for purity, but I don't admire his willingness to kill other people to make his political statement. I think from now on, we need to think more Gandhi, Woodrow Wilson, Mandela - more nonviolence - and less war. I know he'll come to this realization over the next many years in prison, and I hope he can make amends for this foolishness that caused him to take to the air and nearly kill hundreds of people, human beings.

I think renegade terrorists and state-sponsored terrorists alike need to move on from their brutal business.

I think terms like preemptive strike and war-on-terror are rubbish, and that by my standards I haven't yet seen a just war fought by the US in the last ten years.

What happened to the Powell Doctrine? Where are our military philosophers? Are they really dumb and unimaginative, are they not being heard or are they just not speaking up anymore?

Fear is not an excuse for war. Greed or creed should never be an excuse for war. Land and country often have been excuses for war. I say we get some flexibility about how important "owning" land is, or how sacred country or faith is relative to a single human life.

The only thing that ought to excuse war has been extinguished by now: a need to get food to survive. The world now produces enough food (in total, not evenly so.) My friends, we now have no excuse for killing one another.

Because we are young as a human race, there may still be times when a show of violence is needed. In those times, it will be very clear that what was averted was a clear and certain danger of big big size compared to the violence applied. Such a war won't take years, costing even the aggressor hundreds or thousands of lives.

By this standard, Israel-Palestine is a rubbish war that ought not to be happening. Maybe we need to execute - ok, not really - the leaders on both sides because both countries are mired in hopelessness (one being reduced to a military state, the other a prison) while the leaders seem to think fighting is cool. End the bloody war: Call in Powell, Mandela, and friends. Divide up the land between the warring groups. Take feedback for a short while and make adjustments, supervised by people / institutions with high credibility as people of fairness and peace. Use military or legal force against those few who would rather have the baby cut in half, who want Jerusalem for themselves alone at whatever cost to their civilization.

Likewise, Iraq and Afghanistan should be about getting the so-called Allied Forces out while keeping down the risk of civil war. I mean, really, I feel bad for the soldiers whose mission seems impossible to accomplish simply because it is endless. To think some of them only joined the Forces to get money for school.

This first day of 2010, one week after the averted body bomb attack, I am thankful that George W. Bush is no longer the POTUS. Because sometimes bone-headed crackerpants come from accomplished families.

Happy New Year

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A sweet, recession-free 2010 to all.
May the good times roll.

Bookish Santa

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The very bright and amiable Nigerian writer Eghosa Imasuen wrote this story and gave a nice reading in October at a Farafina event in Lagos. Enjoy: New Generator.

NEW GENERATOR: ‘I PASS MY NEIGHBOUR'
A short story
By Eghosa Imasuen

Mr. Ochuko’s decision to buy a new generator was taken with the help of his wife seven months
ago. They lived in one of those suburbs that NEPA seemed to have forgotten about. The electric
company’s staff always hustled around the transformer just beside the junction to their street,
light came up for about five hours and then was gone for another three weeks. Then the NEPA
staff came again.
“Junior, wait. Let me enter the house first,” Mr. Ochuko said.(Read More...)

Farafina Books (Kachifo Limited) has a mouth-watering catalogue of African Literature. Enough reading to get you through the holidays and half the coming year. Priced low enough that you can get them ALL for $100 or less. As with many Nigerian businesses though, I think Kachifo is not big enough. OK, that's a subject for the other blog, not this one.
Merry Holidays and hope the recession ends and the party returns in 2010.

Especially Laziness

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Cardinal rule of my worklife: if there's a mega-process, simplify it.

Agassi Open

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I adore Andre. Want to be like him when I grow up. Can't wait to read his book, though not sure when I'll get to...

More Agassi Open - the 60minutes interview ... Part 2

Good luck to Richard Gasquet with the cocaine charges. It's not a performance-enhancer, rather the opposite effect - shouldn't that be important in judging these cases?

And good good luck to Billy. He's been in jail nearly six years already.

Inspire Me!

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Viktor & Rolf always inspire to lose the walls, artistically speaking.
Watch the Fashion Show and hours of video in their archives.


Check out their website tour. No wonder Rufus loves them!

Writing a bit

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and waiting for 'Tech. Can you believe I'm itching to get back to Caltech?

A bunch of poetry books in the pipeline. I tried to stop writing them for a while, then someone upset me and I started a third book to be titled "Big Girl" with poems about the yuppie/wealthier-class young woman in Nigerian/similar climes.

I just started reading a Nigerian novel I found around the house that is very good. It's as vivid as Things Fall Apart (by Chinua Achebe), although it describes a different time (the 60s I bet, just after Independence) and place (a hypothetical university with a mix of Nigerian staff and expatriates.) Understanding this novel (I don't, really, although the language is simple like Things Fall Apart) you understand the politics of today's Nigeria. I'm surprised that even terms like "godfather" were already in use then. The novel is The Naked Gods, by Chukwuemeka Ike.

My mind is changing, changing...

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What is the nature of time? Read the winning essay by Julian Barbour on The Nature of Time, then browse more Expository Essays on the same topic at the FQXi, the Foundational Questions Institute.

Shortly, you will be able to view essays on this year's topic, "What is Ultimately Possible in Physics?"

Public Art

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COMMITTEE FOR RELEVANT ART, CORA (Winner of Prince Claus Award 2006)

We Are Cultural 'Landscapists'. The MISSION is to create an enabling environment for the flourishing of the contemporary arts of Nigeria and to increase human capacity of the continent. VISION is to make Culture the Prime Investment Destination for the Country and the Continent by 2018.

I attended the CORA book party yesterday, celebrating the nine shortlisted works for this year's Nigeria Prize for Literature (Poetry.)
Had an excellent time meeting some of Nigeria's sweetest poets, some of whose works I've started reading. Reading poetry is not bad. It doesn't hurt. Nor does it bore if you choose well.

Fiction: Honeymoon

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HONEYMOON
By Tosin Otitoju
ootitoju@hotmail.com

Tradition holds that newlyweds would spend thirty days away from their friends, family - their routines. The period is spent visiting sites of history and culture. As the new couple soared together, gliding among monuments, they would learn about love and permanent marriage. This obligation is so sacred that every newly-married couple in the land is given leave from work to enable it.
Per and Flooy are a newly married couple on their honeymoon.

THE WEDDING
On the wedding afternoon, the friends of Per and Flooy dutifully escorted both to the town square after work. Weddings were conducted outdoors in a green patch surrounded by tall, important buildings and dense, colourful traffic. One by one, the couples came in focus of a camera to declare verbally that they were new spouses. After every three declarations, an intern rang a small, shrill bell; this constituted the wedding proper. The whole show was typically broadcast on screens above the roads throughout the town.

Per and Flooy declared just after the bell, adding that “permanent love and marriage” would be their goal. They waited for the next two couples, and then the solemnization by the bell, before kissing and then skipping off to join their friends.

THE PRESENTS
Among their crowd were their cousins who handed Flooy tickets to see the ancient town of Jerusalem. Their workmates gave them a very classic trip – up the Nile to Sudan to see the oldest human skeleton. Their uncles and aunts had collected enough to present them with a fifty-meal dining card, so that they could enjoy fantastic dinners on the honeymoon.

The couple glowed and hugged thanks throughout their company, while everyone tingled with excitement about the parents’ gift.

As you already guessed, the parents of both newlyweds were expected to come together to pick out the most fantastic tours of their children’s honeymoon. Per and Flooy soon found out that it would be “The Seven Ancient Wonders.” Flooy had been hoping for the moon, not the kitsch Seven Wonders tour. Her in-laws could afford it, and she was certain her own parents knew it was the most desired honeymoon gift of the decade.

THE HOTEL
Soon, the guests left the couple alone with the clerks who led the couple to a newlywed hotel. Here they ate marvelously, slept luxuriously, and in-between these they spent hours holding hands and talking dreamily about all the trips they would soon make.

Two days later, it was time to begin touring.

The morning was glorious, with the sun’s rays bursting into their room, signaling time for breakfast. They had a jam and marmalade feast that was laid out with twenty cubes of exotic breads, all different, all appetizing.

Breakfast in bed was followed by a nap. Then they bathed and dressed for their trip. Flooy chose a dress in ivory printed with tiny begonias, while Per wore a youthful teal-and-khaki ensemble. They decided to get some exercise, so instead of calling for a vehicle, both strapped on their streamliners and soared out of the hotel window.

They traveled for a number of hours in the direction of the mountains, and soon were present among the ruins of the old city of Jerusalem, making small spirals on the rough ground in an attempt to brake their flying.

MOSQUE
Their seventieth hour as a couple found them in the vast courtyard of the mosque, where beggars used to crowd in wait for the alms of the faithful. In those days, hundreds of years back, after Friday worship, the mostly wealthy pilgrims would drop their zakat, their alms, with the men who lived in the streets or the poor shanties of town and made their living on the mosque grounds. Now, the courtyard was the starting point for tours of the mosque.

A guide led the tourists to another area, a confection of small, hexagonal tiles said to have been once covered in shoes of every tribe and type. The guide showed them moving pictures of the same room over the centuries until the time of the Great Quake that sunk Jerusalem.

From the shoe room, they entered a grand room in which the faithful had prayed on thousands of mats facing Makkah in the south. On the screen, the patchwork of colourful carpets looked like a most elegant velvet quilt.

The building used to have five minarets, but three were now broken and hadn’t yet been restored. The central dome that roofed the praying area glistened with a gold that recalled similar domed houses of Australia and Antarctica. Mohammedans could be found in both countries, hence the architecture in parts of these islands used gold, and domes, and minarets, and even retained the use of a star in a crescent moon perched atop the highest reaches of the building.

Mohammedans were few anywhere outside these two places, the movies explained. The people of Mohammed believed that a man would find at most four permanent loves in his lifetime. Since they also believed that marriage could only take place between a man and a woman, and each woman of course could only marry one man, it was usually the case that all the desirable women were already married. Mohammedans often took wives from among the wider communities of non-believing women, and this helped remedy the imbalance in their spousal pools.

SYNAGOGUE
Per and Flooy were flying hand-in-hand as they passed over the tall birch trees that separated the mosque from an ancient mud wall into which the Jews had wailed their prayers for a thousand years. The tradition held that the Father of the Jews lived in the wall. Hence, the faithful took off their sandals and donned black robes over their street clothes before proceeding to whisper into the wall, in deep conversation and prayer which caused them to rock back and forth. Sometimes, if they didn’t feel like talking, they squeezed a letter in one of the many gaps in the wall.

The tour guide at the synagogue explained chattily that Jews busied themselves with two things: successful careers, and preparation for the coming of the son of God. One percent of the world was Jewish, more than the Catholican population of the day, the guide said.

The Jews didn’t believe in flying. They couldn’t shave their heads, eat meat, or gather with non-family members after sunset. These practices made them stand out in the world since bald heads were on every model in every magazine, most meals contained meat, and most parties or socials took place at night. In those days too, young people liked to spend their free time flitting around in the air, as it was a fun and inexpensive mode of transport.

Per had no sympathy for the superstition of this people, but he envied their dedication to work and vocation. Neither he nor his wife was superstitious. What sense was it, they thought, to revert to the thought patterns of millennia past, days so clearly inferior in quality-of-life to the present? In distant history, hunger had caused people to see monsters in benign shadows, while delirium made them merge physics and god; disease was always the result of jealousy backed with anti-god powers.

Yet Per’s wife had idols of a sort; idols in the here and now – her friends, her sisters, and their total acceptance meant as much to her as the thunder god or moon goddess might have meant to her early ancestors.

CHURCH
The sun had been one of the most worshipped gods in this land. Now, the cross held dominance. The sun was getting low in the sky now, and the couple determined to visit another monument before retiring to their hotel room. They traversed the cobblestone on the west side of the synagogue and found a short bridge where the gentle breeze loosened bright red flowers from the trees above, causing a shower of sorts. They walked on, hand-in-hand, in the direction of the former Catholican shrine that also lay in the valley of the ruins.

Per knew Flooy’s superstition about conformity. This was why he was careful to learn about fashion; perhaps she would never leave him, but only if he behaved according to convention at all times.

He hoped this would be enough.

He hoped he would be enough.

He glanced over at her, the most beautiful thing he knew in the world, his lily flower, his new bride. He watched her bald head and auburn eyebrows. Yes, he would do anything to see her face every morning. He smiled thinking the way her eyebrows crinkled then arched animatedly when she talked. He remembered the way she looked when she first undressed and thought grimly that he, for his part, would never leave her.

At the moment the couple arrived at the crosses that marked the shrine and cemetery, their thoughts - at that moment - ran perpendicularly. Flooy suspected this, Per did not. As Flooy Lily Wura’s brilliant red-lashed eyes focused, first on her husband, then on the statues of a Catholican married couple – a man in black tuxedo and his bride in head-to-toe white, with a silver heart behind them and a brown cross before them, as Flooy took in this picture of splendidly correct marriage, she smiled to think how nice the next ten years would be with a good man like Per by her side. She saw visions of babies and trips. Youthful sex. Afternoons comparing notes with her sisters on aforementioned babies and trips and sex.

While the shrine and cemetery had served for fifteen decades, her youth would last for fifteen years at most. With Per, her adorable first husband, she was determined to spend ten of them, and then retire like was the fashion, until she made a mid-life marriage.

Why then did she, just three days ago in the center of the town, swear to love him forever?

Because, silly you, romantic weddings all have the forever clause.

ARAB FILM FESTIVAL

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Mark your calendars.
California (especially San Francisco)
October 15 - 25, 2009.

I didn't realize he was dead

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Naguib Mahfouz, one of the world's great people.
Biography @ Wikipedia
Pictures @ images.google.com

He died August 30, 2006.
Guess I was too preoccupied to register the obituary.

Happy September

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Full of music, laughs, and flow, and maybe just a little hustle.

My new love

Shayo, by Bigiano.
Shayo means booze.
The kid is so cute, and so positive. I so dig androgynous hotness.

African Reader's Library

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I met this writer, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo yesterday.
Read more about her at 234next, and at sunnewsonline (so people really do it everyday)

I thought her elegant and...gracious? A new friend, looking to help me learn more about publishing options, brought me in to her office at the University of Lagos for a chat. Today I read her award-winning children's book "My Cousin Sammy." It made me sad at times, you know, the little daily cruelties in the family. The story is more interesting than some of the African literature we got in primary school.

For months I'd been trying to remember the title of a book that we read in Primary school. It had references to Bamenda, which we were told was in Cameroun. It wasn't an exciting read. I would maybe never have found it, was even considering posting a help request on the yahoogroup of my former classmates, when I got home found "The Village School" by Anezi Okoro. This wasn't the book but at the end was printed a list of other titles in the "African Readers Library," with short descriptions.

There was "An African Night's Entertainment" by Cyprian Ekwensi - I can still feel my heart race as I remember the sheer danger and excitement of following this story in reading class, was it primary 5 with Mrs. Emokpae? or Primary 4 with Mrs. Ogu? A similar story to The Passport of Mallam Ilia which we read in JS3 (Junior Secondary school) with Mrs. Bickersteth, the unforgettable, finishing schooled, then Head of English, now Principal of Queen's College Lagos. I just checked online...Ilia was of course written by Ekwensi.

On the list was also "Eze Goes to School" which is still very popular, but whose story I've forgotten, "My Father's Daughter" which I remember owning once, but it must have been unexciting, and on the third page of the list, at #16 was Promise, by Ashere, J. Promise was a book like "My Father's Daughter" - a girl's narration of some rustic living somewhere with not much action.

I would never have guessed that: "Promise is the story of a girl growing up in rural Cameroun..."

In those days, definitely Primary 6, 6A, with Miss * (three letters, two syllables, what was her name? jheri curls, dark and pretty and shapely and didn't let us play all the fun music at our class party at the end of primary school, so we trooped to 6C where the usually tough, cane-happy, short Ghanian Mr. Baa was letting the kids go crazy with disco etc. Was her name Miss Oji? She died soon after we left school.)

Where was I? In Primary 6 we had a book, not in the African Reader's Library, titled "Aduke Makes Her Choice." Aduke learrned typing and shorthand and things like that. I don't remember the "choice" she made, though. I remember the words stenography, and I think menstruation (which usually irked Aduke, or was it the Bamenda girl of Promise who noted this?) I remember Kenechi seemed to understand this part, mensuration or whatever, while I sure didn't. Kenechi is a nurse now. Thanks to facebook, I'm in touch with Primary school friends even.

Being on the campus of UNILAG...well, although it has that waterfront going for it,it's not a perfectly beautiful campus, but it is a campus, with all the youthful energy of late teens and tweens. I like campus energy, especially if it's all kinds of intelligent young people on campus, not only engineers.