Will the real whites in London please stand up?

Heathrow’s lounge looked as it probably would if it were in an Asian country such as India or Pakistan (I guess 🙂 My Indian (loosely defined) friends were everywhere one looked, the seats, kiosks, walkways etc

And I wondered into one of those flash kiosks at the airport where of course Elvis (the bandit) graciously parted me with my 1 pound.

And T-Mobile ripped me off by selling me a 1-pound SIM card with no credit on it for 10 pound.

There is no true detribalized or deracialized person. It’s just degrees that differ. I have said it before, that the actual process of trying to see everyone as equal (no colour) already implies that the person’s “difference” is apparent to you in ways that differ from how a fellow of the same race would think. I noticed that African (loosely defined) taxi drivers automatically gravitated towards blacks they see, and taking the Yoruba’s saying literarily “Afoju jo rawa” – some even automatically guess your tribe and speak to you in Yoruba for example – I am sure this sometimes fail when they wrongfully identify a fellow sojourner from home. They appear very helpful too – the African is a warm, gregarious, sociable soul on the average anyway. Either from hoping they will get my custom or not, at least I was able to call my brother free on 2 separate persons mobile phones – the first actually offered his phone when he saw me trying to call from one of the commercial terminals. Yes, the calls were free to them, but it was still heartwarming. They seem to treat people of other races the same, but will the other people treat the blacks the same? Mixed in with the basic instinct of self-preservation, mistrust of outsiders and ensuring the survival of the group is probably our track record of being 419s etc. It’s like, if a black man brushes past you, your credit card is automatically overdrawn, your bank account emptied, your credit history a mess, and your phone hijacked all at once! What paranoia! 🙂

I asked one of the security staff hanging about in the walkways where I could get a SIM card and he subjected me to quite an interesting question and answer session – he was pleasant enough but I am sure at a subconscious level, he would have been happy to nab an illegal black alien if possible. If there were no racial undercurent, no matter how unintentional or uncounscious, how come my simple question led to a host of questions from him for which I had to supply answers, only after which he then directed me to where I could buy a SIM?
Where are you coming from – Nigeria
What do you do – IT/Telecomms
Did you pay cash for your (plane) ticket – yes
Was it your money or did you borrow it – mine, I work
What’s the purpose of your visit – holiday
How long will you be staying – 3 weeks
Will you be doing anything else while you are here – no
Where will you be staying – with my brother
Where does your brother live – SW London
I am sure if I was white, he wouldn’t ask me all these questions – afterall, I was already through immigration (very jovial old guy and asked very few questions, except to call me the VISA guy when he found various valid VISAs in my passport and couldn’t decide which one to use) and on my way out of the airport. I kept a slightly amused look on my face throughout which is more or less as a result of the incredulity of the situation. Here is a man who thinks I might have borrowed money to pay for my trip, yet I am sure I earn more than he does in real terms.

Arrived at about 6:10pm Nigerian time, left the airport about 3 hours later, and didn’t get home until 2am or thereabouts – went straight to a small get-together first. Nigerians, I ate rice and plantain even though there was pounded yam on offer.

Thank God for the New Year. Had a long leave over the Xmas break. Felt like I should stop working full-time. But like I told a colleague, the only problem with that is that company I work for will stop my salary, otherwise I see no obstacle to free-lancing full-time.

OK, nearly lost my right knee on an okada who ran into a car after miscalculating the speed at which the car was moving – that was about the first week in December.
Walked away but throughout the Xmas holiday, the knee felt really tight and uncomfortable. Still feeling something down there but much better. I guess I will have a full-body MRI or CT-scan sometime in the future.

Now I am hooked on Desperate Housewives. The drama is just engaging. I am going through Season 2 at the moment. Prison break is great too. I had promised myself that I wasn’t going to watch season 2. I felt a single season is enough based on the premise of the film and I wasn’t going to be held hostage by another 24 a.ka. Jack Bauer which I finally came to my senses and gave up watching mid-way into season 4. Heroes – season 1 was great, the TV/Network people as usual wants to ring as much cash from the cash-cow as possible by making as many seasons as possible until people get fed up with it and lose interest and the TV ratings fall. I am on episode 5 into Prison Break season 3 now. I will pick up Heroes later when there is enough episodes to watch at a stretch (which I prefer to the one episode per week approach)

New Year, new things, new resolutions – what? who? when?

Hi B.S.,

This is where I play the psychologist.
I believe all your “display” is just you seeking acceptance and your need to be popular. There is nothing wrong with that, but there is a lot wrong with how you have chosen to express that need.
Having said that, I think you need to fire all those yea-sayers which you have employed and who for lack of courage or fear of losing their cosy jobs have not been able (or wont) tell you the truth.

Now since I am not in your employ, I can tell it to you like it really is.
You need to clean up your act!
The fact is that you are young and seriously speaking, slightly thick. BUT not unrescuably, irretrivably thick. But that guy you have shacked up with (sorry I mean your husband) is definitely thick. He is the thick-o-meter against whom other thickheads will be measured. Seeing that you are hooked to him for life (hopefully!), “we” need to help him out. The truth is that there is no one without at least one saving characteristic or attitude. At least he was smart enough to marry you.

About your website, I will sensor it and all your releases for free. If you can arrange it, I will willingly help edit your press releases (and releases by your publicists etc) for free too.

The press can be both a friend/ally and your worst nightmare. The thing to do is to strike a balance. Frankly speaking, privacy as in “private life” approaches zero once you become a celebrity. The idea is not to not be yourself (we are all human and entitled to self-expession,)
but to ensure that your image (public perception) works for, and not against you.

Either get someone to rewrite the script for your TV show (if there is one) or employ someone to write one. In either case, I had be willing to help edit it.

I am a fan per se. There was a site that showed you from being a skinny good looking teenager
all the way through to your present form with mentions of all the attrocities you committed enroute and the self-enhancements you did. No problem, as a celebrity said, if all the people in Hollywood who have had a job done go on holiday, why, there would be nobody left in Hollywood!

Back then as a fresh teen, you really looked good in a simple shirt and jeans combo.

It is time to reform your image and get your life back on track. I will offer all the help I can, we can do Yahoo chat, MSN chat, phone (you will make the calls!) or any alternative you can think of.

Have a lovely week.

By the way, kudos to your mother for acting fast to resolve what could have been a very unfortunate situation (ending the first I-Do. Ok maybe not). She sounds like someone with lots of grey matter. The pre-knoptial agreement she got your new hubby to sign is how many pages long? 50? 80? 101 pages? Let me take a peek at it sometime over lunch eh? Good.

Remember, if you believe the sun will shine.

Omega X

In 27-dresses, the woman says to heigl, “it must be hard to watch your younger sister get married before you” (our take: not cool)
But the face on the woman after the unexpected come-back by Katherine Heigl is a classic!

Ok, the next bit is raw, but take it lightly …
J-Lo sings “i cant control it, u put something inside of me”
and we all know what that is – it’s a baby.
And contrary to the song, we know when he got you alone, he definitely didnt try to leave.
Way to go padre, hommie – Marky-Mannnn-all-man!
26/02/2008

I am not an MS-basher.
The MS money-making juggernaut has one simple but effective formula – make a software full of holes and performance issues and sell it
to the consumer; then make another set of software to fix the issues of the original software and sell it to the same set of consumers for more money. Don’t worry if they complain, what arethey gonna do? Start using Apple MAC or Linux? Whinnying pushovers and ninnies all!

And talking of performance, all good system users at my end realised long ago the mirage that is the Microsoft Vista Welcome screen
when the system is powered on. It seems since MS knows that one of the criteria for judging how responsive a system is – is how fast
it boots up, they decided to just put up the welcome screen up there as fast as possible, then continue the boot up process in the
background for another 2 minutes or so, during which time the unsuspecting but surprised users make many attempts to login by pressing
CTRL+ALT+DEL only to wonder why the “keyboard appears to be dead”. Now I just chill for some time after the initial welcome screen is
displayed before attempting to logging. Why punish the HP hardware for Microsoft’s sins. On the other hand, since there is a conspiracy
between all of the hardware OEMs and MS to rip off the consumer, I think I should go right ahead, but then who comes out the winner
when I have to replace the keyboard on my laptop – it’s a lose-lose situation for the consumer.
Then there is always Linux, or $30 Mac OSX on a regular PC (“Hackintosh” 🙂

And since I am not an MS basher, I wont encourage you to go to annoyances.org to see what other disgruntled users are up to.

Try vlite – though not recommended by MS, it may just help you to trim some but not all the fat off the bloatware that is Vista.

I suddenly found myself on the deck of a ship, with the sea a raging cauldron with the feeling
of everything being enclosed in some finite space possibly bounded by glass.
My mum was there, so was a sibling. As soon as was onboard, I noticed a couple of guys that
appear at ease on the deck. One short, one tall and I soon recognised them as two classmates who
moved together back in my secondary school days. They recognised me at about the same time.
I could vaguely recall their names.
I drifted to my mum with the enclosed sea continuing to rage, and water breaking regularly
over the sides of the vessel. People were being swept out to sea, and others were jumping in
trying to safe them. My mum was of course distraught to notice the number of people on the sea
and the fact that some were being swept under the waves.
Some were saved from the black foaming see. My sibling was on the other side of the boat and
for some reason had a single cross-eye about which my mum observed that if what medicine she
has doesnt not cure her, she would have to send for help from her friend (a nurse also) in
the U.S. …

Can’t still shake the closeness (claustrophobic-ness) of the vessel/enclosed sea even after I
woke up.

Happy Birthday Yetunde Fasipebi.

I started doing situps last week – or should I say I did it for 2 days. By the 3rd day, I started having this pain in my lower abdomen. Then
I caught the cough that’s been going round (probably due to the weather)  and the pain really started – I started to dread the cough as it was
really bad down there at my waist line whenever i coughed. In fact, I thought I must have ruptured something! The pain gradually eased off
some days later. I think I will start again 2moro. Can’t be a superhero without plenty of exercise huh?

I don’t watch football much, but it seems the argument between fans after the games is much more enjoyable – especially when all the fans
support the same team – like Nigeria’s loss tonight to Ivory Coast. Nigeria’s population is about 160million. If we take away 20million
representing the under-5s who are not yet sure what the hoola-baloo is all about plus yours truly, the remaining 140million less one are
all world-class coaches/technical advisers (or wanna-bes) who in their own eyes are as qualified as the next man for the job and would give
Westerhof (or whoever is currently taking away the foreign exchange) a run for “our” money anyday. There is likely to be some truth in there,
but how do you wittle down 140million to the 50 or so who might actually deserve a shot at the position? – a real needle in a haystack dilema 🙂
21/01/2008

Sometimes I think I almost “came” as a Caucasian. Not that I am unhappy with my colour but some of the stuff that “my people” seem to enjoy gives me nothing but palpitations. Going by the classifications taught by Lionel (one of my coaches) – we are definitely “party asses.” Take weddings for example, just the thought of being teh subject of attention of 500 people, more or less puts me off the whole thing (chicken u!) I had rather go with fifty people or thereabouts – that should fulfill the legal bit about witnesses and also cover the necessary family and friends that would be present whether invited or not.

I think worse than that is the big burial bash that’s so common around these parts. It’s not about the gone but not forgotten – but an excuse to do what we do best – get together and be party asses. Common! I was still teething when Elvis left the building:-) Of course being man and of like-flesh, afflicted with ego in more or less the same proportion as other specimens of the specie, I am given to flights of fancy where I see myself giving an award-wining performance, but it never lasts – the palpitations – oh! How relentless they are – never letting up even for a minute.

It’s so easy to make it hell. Take the 2 opposite ends of the spectrum – that’s the “I am a hunk” spectrum. As I was saying, the lower end of the spectrum seems to be overly crowded with the guys spending their time wishing they were on the opposite end – that’s when they are not wishing they could hook up with the beaut just a couple of seats away. Now, its so easy to fantasize about that beaut that it’s a natural progression to start fantasizing about every beauty that the guy comes across. The hunks have got their own issues. It’s not easy to maintain the I-am-35-in-my-prime-a-stud-able-to-party-all-night-past-the-break-of-dawn persona. The body gets tired at some point. While the oogly ones are fantasizing, these guys are being literarily assaulted by the opposite sex – especially in the developed countries where its not exactly a taboo for a lady to take the initiative. Every one has his/her cross to bear.

It’s the little things about Windows that get my goat. Those little things can be real frustrating if they happen at certain times. Internet Explorer has got a nice feature which allows you to save a webpage as a compiled file with the “.mht” extension. The problem is that sometimes it takes a very long time for the save procedure to complete. So say, you change your mind and decide that you don’t want the page saved again and you click the “cancel” button – well nothing happens. So you click a few times more, then some more clicks … The problem is that the save dialog box has locked I.E. such that you cant do anything else with it. I was hoping this issue would have been corrected long ago but no such luck. From M$ point of view: “what you gonna now? Go ahead and be a b..ch about it. Raise your blood pressure a notch, throw a tantrum, add an ulcer on top of that. You are out of luck s..ker. We own your computer (R)”

Some other unrelated musings:
I see some women who look like they carry their fat well – but do they die well as well – when all the complications develop at some point? It’s been politically unacceptable for a while to refer to anybody as being fat – the more politically correct references include “big boned”, “muscled”, etc. So I see some women and I am tempted to go “Hi dear, you look smashing, but I think you should: throttle the beetle, stopper the mopper – I am sure you catch my drift!”

Connoisseurs come in various forms – some are fascinated with road kill (I am not but I know at least one woman who is). I saw a dog on the road on the way to the airport yesterday. It looked as if it had been well-quartered, piled up with the head placed almost upright on top. It had this half-faced death grin. It’s almost as if someone went to the pains of rigging up the gory sight right in the middle of the road for maximum impact on oncoming motorists..