10 things the year 2013 has taught me- most of these I learnt the hard way

1. Some people have already made up their mind to hate you, no matter how much you try to please them.
2. Never preach to a depressed person.
3. Think wisely before you act.
4. Your lecturers really want to help you succeed.
5. Some people aren't aware of their faults unless you tell them.
6. To be mature has to do with your experiences on earth.
7. Familiarity breeds contempt.
8. Sew your clothes as soon as you notice a little tear..
9. When you fall, the world doesn't wait for you to pick yourself back up. Forgive yourself.
10..Your academic intelligence, degrees and credentials doesn't make you a smart person. Some people might not remember your actions but they would never forget how those things you did or say made them feel.
GOODBYE 2013...I hope I don't fall back on my mistakes again. (I don't want to have to re-write this post in 2014)

I JUST WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS TONIGHT

Dear blog, how are you doing today?. I hope you aren't sad from all the depressed musings and rants I've been feeding you with lately. I just want to let you know that you are my only friend for now, so please bear with me. it's just me and you now, I am so tired and really finding it difficult to sleep tonight, the hot water didn't work (where do they get that from anyway).
This playboy called Mtn and its entire group of scammers have duped me once again. I keep on enriching these people with my money, while they throw their placebo of a "service" at my feet as if to say "take it or leave it".
Why don't we know our rights?, why don't even know our worth?, we cant protest and speak out when we're being exploited and molested from behind like a hopeless harlot...
From my experience in Nigeria, I've discovered that we suffer and smile - a huge grin at that. We prefer to fold our arms and say "e go better, God dey". For where!?!
No offense, but i think religion has done us more harm than good in this country.
The white-man religion has fooled us. We relax and pray,hope,pray,hope,pray,hope...nothing else.
You tell a pastor that you are hungry,and rather than giving you the a place of rice from his fridge, he opens his torn bible, sprinkles 'anointed' water down your throat and says "let me pray for you".
You see someone in dire need of money to cater for his family, rather than give him some money, you look the other way and use the money to pay tithe/offering. To who?
You might be surprised at the way I have switched my anger from mtn to Nigerians and religion, but believe me,they are all connected.
Our religion has contributed greatly the "over-complacency" of Nigerians you see today. They are so filled with the hope that they can sit down,watch their country decay, and their hypocritical over-religiousness would fix the problems they themselves welcomed in the first place..
Not only are Nigerians mentally handicapped to fix this country collectively,but we are also a deluded bunch. Arise O'compatriots!.

Thanks blog for letting me throw up on you once again. Now that I've poured out my heart, I can now sleep.
Goodnight people. *yawns* *drinks hot water*

Studying law? like seriously?

I would say that I was ignorant about the law and all its 'orobo' children. In my opinion, studying law because you enjoy arguing and convert this odd hobby into a career in law represents a fundamental misunderstanding of law school and the legal profession. Law is not about arguing; it's about arguments. The difference between the two may seem subtle, but in reality, they are miles apart. Law school is for calm people, not wild heads. Most people garner their argumentative power from the loudness of their voice, irrelevant conclusion and anecdotes but law is like that. We call that poetic justice. Instead of encouraging argumentative kids to become lawyers and further perpetuate the myth that people who argue should become lawyers, we should call them what the really are: Assholes! ITK!

The very first day of law class: it was one of the longest day of my life. I had like five classes scheduled at over five hours. The annoying part of it was the expectations; I didn't know what the next class would bring, so the time moved at a snail's speed. But part of it was just how boring law school classes are. It is a miracle that I had to keep returning to class.

The WASPy dad from Legally Blonde must have been right; "Law really is for ugly, serious, and boring people."

When I was a fresher, my classmates would occasionally have battle of wits and would make arguments like they knew it all. All I could think of was, "Christ, they actually believe in this stuff."

When one of my lecturers who is a SAN at one of the big firms told us that his desire was in "making an impact," In my mind I immediately had a bizarre image of a truck crashing down on me. I just couldn't get the hype surrounding the issue of the law as being this end-all-be-all concept.

I would resume school next two weeks and I would be taking an exam that was put off because of the asuu strike, it is going to be sort of a bulimic method of exam taking. I binge up all those legalese and then purge it all over my exam papers.

I saw an angel in Nigeria

Wtf?, is this me?

Not everthing in Nigeria is bad, we have unfiltered desire to love and share with each other. At a very tender age, when I was about five to six years old, I became obsessed with angels. My priest always preached that there was a guardian angel watching over us and I believed him, literally.
So I would leave an empty chair next to me while I ate or at night I would lie down on my bed thinking of my guardian angel and inviting her to sleep with me (no homo...lol).I would chat and talk to her and at the end I would feel somewhat inspired.
When I was seven I finally got to be an angel in the christmas carol play (I fought for the post)...it was a crowning achievement in my life to that point.
But Grandma didn't believe in angels, she believed in hardwork to fight another day. Grandma was tough and tireless. The kindest but least sentimental woman I have ever known, she believed in seeing and believing, action not words.
I remember the day a woman who lived next door to us was threatened with a miscarriage, while my mother sat down and cried with the woman, Grandma walked a mile and half to fetch the doctor...right in the dead of the night!.
Grandma was a famous fix it woman in our neighbourhood. Someone always needed help and she helped everyone. She took food to families, her matter-of-fact manner made it acceptable. Grandma made our clothes and conjured good meals out of no promising ingredients.
As I grew up, I turned my obsession with angels into a serious affair. I studied then and even aspired to write a ground breaking book, proving their existence. I read on people who had miraculously recovered from an illness and people who had actually seen angels.
I narrated the story of a young boy to my Grandma, the boy had screamed and sobbed to keep his family from boarding a flight as an angel advised. They ignored him and the plane crashed into the sea.
Grandma wasn't having any of it. "If it is true," she said, "why didn't the angel save everyone?".
Eight years later, Grandma died. Her death had a devastating effect on people who knew her. It felt like something was missing from my heart and I walked around in ghost mode.
One day, about a year after Grandma's death, I alighted a bus, I dug into my bag for my wallet but it wasn't there!. It could have been lost or stolen, I didn't know...I could feel hot tears welling up in my eyes, when a man sitting beside me dropped a 1,000 naira note on my lap, "don't worry", he said briefly "it happens to everyone sometimes". Then he walked out before I could even utter a word of thanks. I looked out the window but he was gone.
That was the turning point. It made me realize that I have been looking in the wrong places to prove the existence of angels, because life is full of them, performing small and not so random acts of goodness and kindness. When you become aware of this, you begin to notice them all round. They don't wear wings or white long flowing gowns (at least not the ones I've seen), and they look like teachers, mechanics, waitresses, and they behave like...well Grandma.
My little sister once asked me if Grandma was in heaven, and I replied in the affirmative.
She then asked me "is Grandma an angel now?"
I told her what I know is the truth.
"She always has been"

I knead you to eat these words

You may think that my gastronomic metaphors are tripe, but rather than weeping over spilt milk, I am going to put all my eggs in one basket because I am as cool as cucumber and I am confident that you've got the swagger to swallow and relish this feast I've just cooked up because there is a veritable banquet of mushrooming food metaphors that grace the table of my language and season my tongue.

The people your meet...your peeps, some have taste; we take them like a pinch of salt, while others drive us bananas. Some are crusty old teething nollywood wannabes, they hold up their apples and blackberries with their hand as wrinkled as cabbage. They are no longer in their salad days.

Some others are half-baked turkey-heads who steam us up and drive us nuts.

Some breadwinners make a lot of dough and others earn peanuts.

Then there are those salt of the earth(the good eggs, who in a nutshell, make life a bowl of honey. They are the apple of our eyes!!!.

Is this the age of anger?(2)

This is the second part of the topic:

Bloggers who shout the loudest and hurl the nastiest insults gets the highest ratings.

Homosexuals are enraged that the anti-gay law hasn't been scraped. Fashion models with gymed up sleek bodies glower menacingly from runways and stages.

On tv adverts, models spped their shiny cars along rain soaked, tortuous roads. Their sneers seem to say, "look at you, I've got a car and you haven't".

Our governors are enraged, they tell widows to "go and die", ex presidents write 18paged letter to presidents. Distressed daughters attack their fathers, grandpa raping children, officials striking, bankers and church leaders embezzling all in the name of service. Police men arresting native doctors (that one no fit happen for Nigerian film o).

(To be continued...)

My mind is my room- I'm decluttering. (Tips for you too)

My mind and room have one things in common, they both need to be cleared and decluttered, just like my 'email' inbox. I am in my room and it is cluttered with toys, clothes, bags and books with extra things all over the place, it is chaos and my mind is frenetic.

I've been simple about things for years now,not bothering to check myself. I've gotten pretty good at it, but I've found that you have to keep coming back to revisit your clutter every once in awhile.



Here are my top decluttering tips for your mind:



- Don't think constantly: thinking constantly would get you stuck, instead do the most important thing for the day, if not you would be constantly distracted and unable to focus on easy tasks ahead of you.



- Make a decision- don't just keep on hacking your mind vault for no reason, determine what needs to be done about each situation or experience. Do not put it off, if you wait you might end up with a backlog of thoughts to respond to and may never get around to it. Be responsive and on top of things.



- Be on the watch- do not think negatively, feed on the positive, think like you've got a million dollar mind(because that's what you've got). Reflect deeply on the positive angle because you don't know when an inspiration might filter in and you don't want it redirecting itself to your spam folder. Tag it, save it and archive.



- Dispose it (Trash)- Conquering an entire closet or room can be overwhelming, and you might put it off forever. If that's the case, just do it in baby steps. Make aside couple of hours to do it. You may need to create a system to stop clutter from accumulating this coming year. Ahh...finally, empty inbox!!!

Like my room, there's a reason I have tall stacks of papers all over the place, and big piles of books and clothes. It's because I don't have a regular system to keep things in their place, and get rid of stuff I don't need.

This is a topic for another day.

The Joy of Christmas

Now I have decided ease up on the seriousness of my blog by writing my posts title in small letters and minimizing my use of the google images.

We all love the yuletide season and we expect a lot from it. Isn't it meant to be a day of fun and merry?

Then we frown when all that we looked forward to comes to nought. A single call from our friends eludes a twinkling feeling of joy within us. Our face lights up and we let up an involuntary smile across our face.

The weather may be a bit dry, cold and musky, it might impair our visibility or clog our nostrils, there may be travel chaos and an upsurge in crime but we rejoice!.

We celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ!!!...the carols are everywhere, the streets are festooned with decorations,trees and flowers, and there are those colourful greeting cards with moving words. The messages expresses deep emotions; deep, lyrical, simple languages signed by the sender and tucked in bright envelopes that we feel tempted to keep rather than dispose.

How I love reading those soothing messages, but at the end of it all i ask myself if the emotions expressed in those cards are actually reflective of the sender's true feelings.

Saboteur! Please don't let my title fool you december is actually a time to spread gossips,because everyone is going here and there, doing this and that, and few people have the time to actually sit down and think...those rumour makers and monger prowl around and they are really making waves on the streets. My friend was destabilized because of such rumour. She trusted some certain people...it could be quite funny especially if they didn't get the gist right. She sat back and decided to watch how things would turn out, but it didn't work in her favour. Without laying a finger on her, they killed her . I would forever use this day, december 27th to remember her.

R.I.P Ifeyinwa. I miss you dearly

IS THIS THE AGE OF ANGER?

Recently my friend said, "I hate modern classical music, it always sound so angry".

I've never perceived modern music as such especially if I listen to one of praize or asa's songs. But as soon. As she said it, I knew what she meant.

I've often criticized rap for that same reason "it is not like jazz or early rock, I'd say,"those we're happy". When I hear rap blasting from a passing car, I would wonder what the driver is so furious about.

I might as well name our time 'the age of anger and craziness'. Anger seems to be in everything, from films to music, from art to television commercials.

In advertising, they call it 'attitude'. And I would. Be hard-pressed to say what we are all so angry about.

Chat-show guests and speakers who act the angriest get the most applause. It doesn't matter what their position is- if they raise their voices and pinch the air, everyone would cheer.

(To be continued...)

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Merry Christmas!.

It's a rare moment to find myself at the computer with some space to write, some energy to formulate my thoughts and yes, even more surprising still, something perhaps to say.

I have been through a lot in the past months. Days have turned into weeks, weeks into months and months into years. Now the end of the year is here. There is a lot to be gained from...a whole lot!. It has been fulfilling, inspiring and educating. How time flies!...who would have thought that I could have scaled through all my distractors, seducers, and fake friends.