My Friday Morning Bored and Hungry Random Musings

People dey vex me dis morning. Hunger dey worry me. Na dis kain tin wey I no dey like for Friday o. Warn yaselves.

Oya:

- Why are human beings inherently rude? Or is it a lack of home training? Why would I give you something that I spent my hard-earned naira converted to pounds to buy for you and you can barely mutter 'thanks'? Abeg, if you no want, drop am dey go. There is such a thing as "No, thank you".

- Why are balding, greying, bespectacled, well-spoken men SO attractive? Throw in dimples (and a nice smile) and nice hands and... well... *ahem*. *composing myself*)

- What is this nonsense about cassava bread that I am hearing? With everything happening in the country right now, we're talking about cassava bread?????? Filing this under things that annoy me about this country's leadership.

- The Spreh-spreh gang will soon start practicing since the abroad-ians are landing soon. Please spare me. I am not interested in your random r's and l's in random places in random words. Just smile and nod when I'm talking to you.

- I love kids. I love kids. I love kids.

- Grad school? Grad school? Grad school.

- Oga husband, where you dey nah? Abi we dey fight? Or I don meet you already? Na wetin? Thirty no dey too far oh.

- They said I am a rebel and a snob oh. Hmmmm. Okay, I will buy iPad. Donations are welcome :)

- I'm a bit rebellious sha. Thank God for the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

- Please if you ever want to uhm, sway me/win me over to your side, I have a list of things that I accept depending on what you are asking for. So there are ranges. If you are interested in this list, call me.

- Dearest lady friends of mine, if you wear a skirt/dress that is four inches above your knee and the slit is at the back, and the slit stops right under your assets: You are looking for trouble, and you will find it. Don't be alarmed when it comes knocking boldly at your door expecting a pleasant response from you.

Peace.

-One more thing, if you are a single forty-something year-old man or woman that spends your time gossiping about people, talking negatively and laughing about other people's relationships, sounding like you have nothing better to do, I genuinely feel bad for you.

The Lost Art of the Birthday Card

I remember birthdays when I was younger. My favorite thing to do was tear open the birthday cards from family and friends. Maybe because of the money that was usually hidden inside. Maybe because I have always loved words and I LOVED reading what greeting cards said.

On everyone else's birthday, I pick greeting cards with so much emotion that sometimes, I end up crying in the greeting card store. Like, "yeah, that's my *sob* sister *sob*...." Ahem. Yeah, I can be emotional like that.

I don't remember the last time I got a birthday card from someone other than my family though. I must say that I really miss that.

In the place of greeting cards, we have blackberry messenger (bbm) messages, facebook messages, tweets, blackberry messenger(bbm) status messages and profile picture changes, etc. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the various gestures. I also understand that the average person today spends more time on some sort of computer than with anything that actually requires writing long-hand. Case in point: this blog. Once upon a time, all of this would have been written in a journal. As a matter of fact, I have quite a number of half-full journals hanging around my bedroom from the last couple of years.

I just miss the personal touch that greeting cards have.

I am just as guilty as everyone else though and am quick to change my display picture to your picture and put up an appropriate message. I do wish things were different though.

Why does this bother me so much, you ask. Well, first it was the greeting cards, notes and letters that went. Then, it was phone calls. The people that call me most - My family and my boss. I call people but I find that many times, they'd rather have a bbm conversation. Mostly because of being discreet, which I understand, but also for reasons best summed up as habit.
Now, we all want short, abrupt ways of communication - tweets, bbm, text. All effective but quite impersonal.

So it's December and as part of my new year's resolutions, I intend to give as many people birthday cards as possible. Maybe it will spur something on.

Twenty Eight: Thankful

I had been planning November 27th 2011 for so long that when the restaurant manager at Southern Sun called me that morning trying to be difficult, I was not having any of it. At all.

Neither was I having it when the cake lady decided to catch an attitude about her own problems.

The amazing cake. Southern Red Velvet from Cake Flair

Even though they decided to try themselves and all, the brunch happened, karaoke happened and  my favorite people were present - including my parents who have not been at any of my birthday celebrations since I moved back almost five years ago (for various reasons)



I really had an AMAZING birthday this year. I am grateful to God for His mercies and blessings on my life. I am most grateful for the friends and family he has blessed me with.

I am now 28. The journey continues.

My Chevy

I drive a Chevrolet. It makes me want to cry.

My Chevy sounds like an airplane sometimes and at the moment it is costing me waaaaay too much money. Sometimes, I want to just abandon it somewhere, you know, just dump it and walk away.

The problem is I loved my car once upon a time.
It will turn six in December and if you ask me, I think it needs to be retired soon.

I had my car serviced in October because it was acting up seriously and making a very embarrassing noise. Ten days later, I got stranded on Queens Drive on my way home. Apparently, the hose popped off and as a result the car overheated and well, the engine shut down.

So, I got my Dad's mechanic to come and look at it. He fixed it. Then, it started to misbehave a few days after. Then it decided to have a full-blown relapse.
It was early Sunday morning on Ozumba and the thermometer suddenly went all the way to the right. I started praying and turned into the Mobil filling station. Thankfully, the "specialist" was available even though it was a Sunday.

After that incident, everything was fine and dandy until last Monday evening.

I was driving home and my car suddenly started making a noise. From experience, I was able to determine that the noise was coming from the fan belt. I was so mad, I was laughing. You see, I got my fan belt replaced in October when it went to be serviced. I know that fan belts generally last longer than a month so I think my anger is justifiable.

So as I write, I am car-less, relying on the goodwill of friends and family members. I hate feeling like a burden on other people.

My birthday is in four days. I NEED to have my car working by then. Otherwise, I envision it being slightly difficult to properly enjoy myself (and it will mean having to spend more money than I had planned on car hire or something).

For the past six months, I have been going over the various possible options of sorting out this car problem. Not that I can currently afford it but there's no harm in planning ahead. The available financing options and the car vendors are a topic for another day.

Keeping my fingers crossed that My Chevy pulls through intact from the operation it may need to undergo tomorrow and rides with me through my birthday weekend.

It's retirement date is not up just yet.

Growing up is hard to do

I've had a lot of firsts in the last few weeks.

I bought diesel for the first time.
I was a bridesmaid in a friend's wedding.
I got stranded when my car overheated on Ozumba
I went without a car for more than a week.


I travelled with my two younger brothers on the same plane.
I stayed awake for an entire overnight trans-atlantic flight (thanks to some annoying little girl. I am yet to recover)

It dawned on me that I am getting quite old.

Fine. I am in my twenties.

Fine. My life is pretty alright.

My birthday is in twelve days and I am suddenly panicking about all I should have done by this age.

Now, it may sound like wishful thinking but a windfall would definitely set a lot of these outstanding plans in motion.

Seriously though, I think I should apply to grad school, and/or look for a new job soon.

This cannot be it. God did not bless me this much for THIS to be it. I guess the realisation is all part of growing up.

Working hard, praying harder.

Hail to the Buff and Blue

I finally got to go on a little vacation (ten days is too short, trust me.)

You're shaking your head at me??? Well, take a minute to ponder upon the crazy transfers I had to make in 24 hours (Lagos-London-New York- DC)....and my 2am arrival in my DC hotel, trust me, it was a VERY short vacation.


I love NY. I really do. BUT I realized that I hadn't been back to my college city since the year after I graduated So I took a little trip down to DC.

And I realized just how much I had missed the serenity of the DMV area. New York is Lagos, DC is Abuja. Just seems mad Chiiiilllllllll. And it's as though EVERYBODY works for government in one way or the other.

On arrival, I was reminded of how much I had loved it in DC. The amazing classes we got to take, the trips to the Library of Congress, the shutdowns of my campus during IMF/World Bank meetings.......*sigh*. Fantastic college experience, I tell you.

My university has an interesting graduation tradition. Each graduate is given a commemorative brick - with your name, your degree type and year of graduation - that is placed somewhere on campus. It isn't mandatory but I remembered that I had opted to have that.(thank God I did because I have no official graduation pictures as I forgot to order them)

As I hadn't visited my campus in so long, I had no idea where the bricks for my graduation year(and semester) had been laid. I decided to go searching - after a trip to the bookstore to stock up on alumni memorabilia - after all, how hard could it possibly be? Imagine lugging shopping bags around campus, looking intensely at the bricks on the floor, searching for a sign of your year, or your name. Not easy at all.

After walking across campus  for about 20 minutes, and having worked up quite an unattractive sweat in the process, I decided to get help. So I called a friend of mine who graduated a semester after I did, and she described where they'd laid down the bricks for our year. With renewed energy, I lugged myself and my shopping bags back across campus to the spot she had described, and voila! there it was - My Name, I was so happy I almost cried.

I figured my trip back on campus wouldn't be complete without partaking of happy hour at our all-time favorite hang-out spot, where I proceeded to spend three hours at the bar being pulled into all sorts of conversation (that's a whooooole different blog post altogether)

In all, so many things had changed, yet so many things had remained the same. I was ( and still am) so proud, so happy, so grateful that I had been afforded the luxury of attending college where I did.

Going back made me realize how much I have changed, how much I have settled into where I live now, the job I have and the general peculiarities of the life here.

Walking round campus made me miss certain aspects of my college days but I couldn't stop thinking about how much I missed my car, and the Friday Night Brandy/Cognac/Whiskey sessions my colleagues and I sometimes have, my hair/spa/dry-cleaners routine.....even the lack of electricity sometimes.

I realized that the three and a half years I spent in college molded my mind, molded my thought process as I  entered the world as a fresh graduate. However, the experiences of the last five years have molded me into the somewhat responsible adult woman I am today.

Sometimes I regret the choice I made to move. Sometimes I wonder what would have been different. Would I have met some of the crazy assholes who ....(let me just leave it there)? Probably not. But I wouldn't also have met some of the best friends I have. I know I wouldn't be HALF as confident as I am as well (because this city demands that you are tough as nails or you will be spat out...on the regular)

So here I am, just like my beloved Buff and Blue GWU, five years down the line and a lot of things have remained the same.....but quite a lot of things have changed.

Grief

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted

My grandfather died when I was seven years old. I picked up the call that announced his passing on. I remember spitting out the half-eaten sardine sandwich in my mouth when I heard " Papa ti ku".
I never saw his body. We were not allowed to go to the funeral. My mother felt it would be too much for us to handle.

I lost my maternal grandmother early last year. I chose not to go for the lying-in-state.

I lost a first cousin about a year ago. Auntie Bunmi lived with us when we were kids. She was stylish and loved the colour yellow. Auntie Bunmi was 50, had never been married, and had just adopted an adorable but feisty baby girl called Deborah. She suffered from acute Sarcoidosis in her lungs. Her condition was  made worse by initial misdiagnosis of tuberculosis and of course, the wrong treatment. By the time she could get the right diagnosis, the damage had been done.

The day before she died, on a Saturday in September, she was at the airport, finally going to get medical treatment in London. She never got on that plane.
The crew noticed she was gasping for air and called her sisters. They in turn called my parents.

My parents did everything in their power - calling specialists, shuttling between hospitals - and finally, she was taken to Reddington Hospital. By the time she made it to the hospital, she could no longer breathe on her own. To alleviate the pain, she was placed on life support.

A day later, my siblings and I were sent away (we were forced) to have lunch. At some point, my dad came to join us. He didn't look good.
As soon as he left, we decided to go to the hospital to be with my mother. When we got there, she told us she had sent my father to us as he had reacted badly to the news. The doctors had come to tell them that one lung had collapsed and the other was filled with fluid.  While we stood there, they dealt us the final blow: Auntie Bunmi  was gone.

I remember being so angry. Not at God as I understand that in everything He has a plan. I was (and still am) angry at our healthcare system. It is barely functioning. Some days I get tired of hoping that those in power will actually do something - aside from meetings, conferences, seminars, papers etc - to fix the problem and I resolve instead to just pray constantly for good health. Let me never have cause to go to the hospital for myself or anyone I know - even my enemies.

Auntie Bunmi had been to many different hospitals and had seen all kinds of specialists. She was asked to do a number of costly scans. She was plied with medicine. She was given many different opinions and varying diagnoses. And every time they changed their minds, she believed them. What choice did she have?
One day, my mother, upon noticing how frail she had become, decided to visit her and ask her some questions. Auntie Bunmi reluctantly told her and showed her all the documents from the doctors.My mother came home shaken. She knew what she was looking at but she chose to believe that something could be done.

Auntie Bunmi could still be with us today as Sarcoidosis is a manageable condition. There is no cure but if diagnosed early, it can be managed well. By the time she was finally correctly diagnosed, Auntie Bunmi was running on borrowed time. In the words of the specialist, Dr. Johnson, " I've seen it disappear suddenly before. Pray. As a doctor, from all I can see, it's only a matter of time...".
We still don't know how she drove all the way from Igbo-Efon to the mainland the Friday night before she was to travel.

Recently, a number of people very dear to me have lost loved ones. I am almost bursting at my seams with emotion.

This is the third time this year. I remember every other time I have felt like this.

Sometimes, we are affected by the loss of people we never knew. The impact of the loss on a friend or family member's life is enough to transfer the grief. Their grief seeps into you and settles like a really heavy, bad feeling, weighing you down like a ball and chain.

To my friends, I offer this:
No matter the pain you are in, please remember the joy. Remember who they were, how they laughed, what you shared, and how you will never stop loving them. May the memories warm your heart. May God grant you peace.

And while we are still here, tell those you care about how much you love them. Do it often. Life is too short.