So I managed to steal time from my hectic christmas schedule to blog. I don't really have anything to say but I thought I should blog before the end of the year. After all it is highly unlikely that December 31 is going to be a blogging day. This Christmas was aiight though I have to admit that the most fun I had all Christmas was chillin at ikeja cantonment drinking beers and eating fish. Though apparently I was not sufficiently appreciative of the wonder that was bacchus this christmas. There was a fashion show that made me feel like an old, old man and there was a somewhat disappointing movie about dancing penguins. This reminds me of those essays they made us write in primary school about the holidays so I am going to change the subject. Though before I move on I have to say that is it just me or is there practically nothing to do in lagos during the day apart from hang out. Come night time every one is chock full of ideas about what to do, but ask about daytime and you get blank looks like you asked them what the square root of pi is. Maybe I am hanging out with the wrong people, but judging by the number of people I saw wondering around aimlessly at the palms and galleria it seems that it can't really be just me. Alright I am really done about the whole christmas thing but can someone please tell me what the hell is up with the saga viii thing. I mean that has to be the most retarded name for a club that I have ever heard, though my cousin voted for bacchus just for the cheese factor. Anyway to those who are reading this before the new year have a happy new year and be safe.

As I was hard at work today I came across the mention of the Implicit Project at Harvard. Obviously since it's Harvard it must be good (here is a hint I'm being very very sarcastic). Any way this project uses words and pictures to determine how people implicitly (notice the very clever naming scheme) view certain issues. Seeing as I was working I was only able to take three tests: one on race, one on gender and one on sexuality. I kind of expected the "little or no association with race preference" (black guy from naij, with black guy in all white town) and the "little or no association with gender/science preference" (most of the brightest science people I know are women) but I have to admit I was a little surprised on the gay thing. Don't get me wrong I am not sad that I'm not a gay-basher, its just that I thought I would be, at least in the "not 100% comfortable around them" kind of way and not in the "I would rather the world go to hell than see them married" kind of way. I mean I know 3 gay people that I would call friends and I stared just as much as the women at the barbers / hairdressers at the flaming gay guy that was walking down toyin street (though I did not run after him shouting "aunty dare" like they did). I still feel like I need an -ism though, I'm thinking light-skinned blacks (always a good one), though if I'm really daring I might go for a moderate preference for skinny people over fat people.

PS. There is no cartoon cos I couldn't find one with the caption:
"What do you mean you don't hate gay people?"

I saw this on a comment on The Dilbert Blog (yes I clearly have way too much time on my hands at work) but it was bloody funny and so I decided to put it up. Enjoy

FROM:PRNCSS. L ORGANA

DEAR friend.

I AM PRINCESS LEIA ORGANA ONLY SURVIVOR OF THE ROYALFAMILY OF ALDERAN (ALDRN). I AM MOVED TO WRITE YOU THIS LETTER, THIS WAS IN CONFIDENCE CONSIDERING MY PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCE AND SITUATION. I WAS FALSLEY IMPRISONED UPON THE IMPERIAL BATTLESTATION ("DEATH STAR") WHEN MY PLANET WAS HIDEOUSLY DESTROYED AND ENDED BY THE BVERY BAD SITH LORD VADER. I ESCAPED ALONG WITH THE AID OF BRAVE REBELS AND WOOKIES, AND AM NOW I AM LYING LOW DUE TO THE SITUATION IN THE 4TH MOON OF YAVIN TILL WHEN THINGS GETS BETTER. I HAVE CONTROL HERE OF THE SUM OF $25, MILLIONNN IN IMPERIAL CREDITS DEPOSITED WITH A SECURITY COMAPNY FOR SAFEKEEPING ON TATOOINE. THE FUNDS WERE SHIPPED BY A COURIER SERVICE AS DIPLOMATIC ITEMS OF HIGH VALUES TO PREVENT THEM FROM KNOWING THE CONTENT. WHAT I WANT YOU TO DO friend IS TO INDICATE YOUR INTEREST THAT YOU WILL ASSIST ME BY RECEIVING THE MONEY ON OUR BEHALF ON TATOOINE AND ASSIST IN INVESTING THIS MONEY IN ANY LUCRATIVE BUSINESS LIKE MOISTURE FARMS AND STOCK IN MULTI-PLANETARY COMPANIES AND OTHER SAFE LUCRATIVE INVESTMENT IN YOUR SECTOR. MAY I AT THIS POINT EMPHASISE THE HIGH LEVEL OF CONFIDENTIALITY, WHICH THIS BUSINESS DEMANDS, AND HOPE YOU WILL NOT BETRAY THE TRUST AND CONFIDENCE WHICH I REPOSE IN YOU. IN CONCLUSION,IN THE EVENT YOU ARE INTRESTED TO ASSIST ME I WILL LIKE YOU TO CONTACT MY LAWYER WHO I HAVE STATIONED IN MOS EISLEY TO WITHNESS THE TRANSACTION TO IT'S CONCLUTION.YOU CAN REACH HIM ON HIS DIRECT LINE VIA MAIL watto39@aol.com, HIS NAME IS WATTO THE TOYDARIAN, I HAVE THE FULL TRUST IN HIM. FINALLY,I HAVE SET ASIDE 15% OF THE TOTAL SUM OF THE FUNDS FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE,AND 5% FOR ANY ESPENCES THAT SHALL BE INCURED DURING THIS TRANSACTION.PLEASE BE FREE TO DISCUSS WITH MY LAWYER. I SINCERELY WILL APPRECAITE YOUR ACKNOWLEDGMENT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.HELP US, friend, YOU ARE OUR ONLY HOPE. BEST REGARDS, PRNCSS. L. ORGANA

The suprise is not that N38 billion of the N65 billion recovered from the late General Abacha is missing, the surprise is that we are finding out about it. I guess that is what happens when people who are planning to polithief ask the World Bank to monitor the use of funds. Helping the World Bank were a group of Nigerian NGOs and it is these helpful guys that "leaked" the story to vanguard. The World Bank report is due later this month. However the beauty of this story is not the N38 billion that simply cannot be found it is that the N27 billion of work that was actually not worth close to that. There were 51 projects that the FG claimed to have spent the money on and so now the NGOs are calling for the EFCC to investigate the what should actually be a bigger scandal than the PTDF. After all if you go to all that trouble to recover the money only to have it stolen again, some heads gotta roll. Ribadu is always claiming that he is not political, well here is his chance to prove it.

Those of you who read my blog and also live in Nigeria will be pleased to know that Starcomms has reduced their Internet access rates. Now the good people at Starcomms will like you to believe that they are doing this cos they feel that Nigerians should get cheaper access to Internet. And if you believe that, it is my hope that you do not ever get an email from one of the yahoo boys (cos clearly you are too gullible to be allowed out without a minder). Now the reason they are doing this is cos another broadband company Swift has just launched with a faster internet service and they don’t want to lose customers. Now Swift is standard house based broadband unless u are wiling to pay 75K a month and above, while most Starcomms stuff like the multilinks stuff can be moved about so that will play into people’s decisions. This is Competition 101; new entrants in a market tend to reduce prices, but the funny thing is the way they are pious about doing it in Naij (and b4 u go on about how everyone else everywhere else does the same thing, don’t)

Now the second group of “butter no fit melt in our mouth” peeps are those lords of dignity: the august members of the Nigerian congress (ie the House of Reps and the Senate). These distinguished gentlemen (and ladies) are understandably anguished by their inability to further their polithieving as 85% of them were either not returned back in the Congress primaries or were thwarted in their gubernatorial ambitions. So these stalwarts of the political arena had a meeting and decided to make it tough on Baba and his federalis some say by completely sabotaging his domestic agenda and others by the renewal of the impeachment agenda. Now most of these paragons of virtue are saying that they are doing this to curtail the emergence of a too-strong executive. If you believe that I have a plot of land to sell you in Bakassi complete with Governor’s consent.

FYI: In Nigeria you can’t actually own land, but you can lease it from the government for like a hundred years, but to do this u need governor’s consent. You can imagine the corruption implications of that. Oh and if you can’t figure out why the above is a scam you are either not Nigerian or u need a minder to make sure the other minder does not fleece you. The wikipedia link is here and the link to a more in depth discussion of why we Nigerians are thieving bastards is here.

So you get irony, sarcasm and an unnecessary constitution lesson, don’t say I never gave you anything.

Before I mosy on into today's ramble, I thought I would tell u what an idiot I am. So yesterday I queued up for two and a half hours to buy petrol and it did not occur to me that there might be fuel scarcity. Now I am not saying there is cos NNPC has said there isn't, but my point is that it did not click that 2.5 hours = fuel scarcity and thus buy full tank. I was thinking may not hit the bank today and low on cash and need to get a phone card. Now I am thinking if there had been fuel scarcity, would I be carrying the girl I so did not need to call (trust me on this) around on my forehead. So I am an idiot. Now on to today's regularly scheduled program.

Now that I am pretty much settled in Naij with job and NYSC stuff I am in the process of decided what model of friendship to pursue. I know that sounds retarded but I actually have a point. When I was in the states I did the hands on friendship thing. Basically you make most of your friends yourself and so generally your friends are your friends 'cause they met you. Basically I was a one man mailing list, and my flatmates took advantage of this when their friends came for the weekend (I had to back up all the claims of "I told you my school had hot girls")

This is contrasted with what I did when I returned to England. I basically could not be arsed to make friends and so basically the only people I met were people my friends from before were friends with. Luckily my friends were social and so they knew a lot of people which meant I met a lot of people and did not suffer from lonelyitis (a condition that could lead people to predatory churchgoing and its less glamorous cousin: idowu tayloring.)

Now to put it simply, I know people who know people who... well you get the picture and so it is tempting to fall into the same pattern as I did in England. The thing is that it is hard to build meaningful friendships with pattern two, but then again by my age you've generally made all the meaningful friendships you are going to make. It just so happens that in my case they are generally in other countries.

I suppose the hybrid is the best option at least as a sop to my inherent laziness, but that may underestimate the laziness potential within me. I think I have blown enough grammar for one day. I swear it is easier to write in broken and now I know why baba alaye does. Later.

PS. No comic today cos stupid blogger is acting up. I didn't forget Sunday Corper either but on monday I thought the drinking thing was more important. It's not like u expected it to appear on sunday anyway.

T-Minx mentioned this in passing in one of her lagos 101 posts but I thought I would make an issue about it. This post going to be preachy but I think it is important.This Christmas while you are bar-hopping on the Island I would ask you to remember one thing: There is no DUI in Naij. This means that people (read guys) have only peer pressure stopping them from driving wasted. Now I've been "that guy" and I have had to tell "that guy" not to drive and believe me it is almost impossible to convince someone that he is too drunk to drive. You constantly hear things like "I've had only 10 bottles of Stout I'm fine" or "I only cancelled half the JD bottle, so I am fine" and that should be your cue to run the other way. Generally if you are a guy you are fine cos you either have your own car or if you are riding shottie u can convince the other guy to let u drive. If you are a girl you are generally relying on someone else to ferry you around and so please if possible do not let yourself be driven by someone who is wasted. There are some circumstances in which it can be hard, for example you are out with a guy and he tries to impress you by guzzling everything in sight and you have no other way of getting home. Even in that case I would suggest you call someone to pick you up if you could. Whether a friend who lives in the area or whatever. Let's be frank probably 9 times out of 10 times nothing happens when you get into a car with someone who is driving drunk, but why take the risk.

You know how we always complain about stuff that is going on in our lives and then we see something happen to other people and we are suddenly grateful for our lives in that particular moment. I started thinking about this thanks to the current number one enemy of my office productivity also known as mona. She sent me a link to a story that says that Indian men on average have small dicks. I swear I'm not making this up. Here is the link to the story. I suppose it kinda sucks that other people's misfortune makes us feel better about ourselves but such is life.

The saddest thing I've witnessed since I got back to Naij was a broken down bridal car on Ikorodu Road. It was just the two of them and I think they were on their way to the reception cos it was like 12 on a Saturday. When I tell people that story some people laugh (bastards) and other people express sympathy but I'd bet you my last scotch egg from Biggs that each and everyone of those people was also grateful that it wasn't them. I know I was.

If you have BSS Insurance you better use it



One of the standard responses you when you ask most Christians questions is that it is in the Bible.

Question 1
“Why don’t you support condom distribution in the fight against AIDS?”

“The Bible says sex before marriage is wrong and condom distribution will encourage fornication (I love that word, fornication, it just rolls off the tongue)”

Question 2
“Why should women not divorce their husbands even though he hits her and cheats on her?”

“The Bible says that women should submit to their husbands”

I could go on but my point is not about gray areas that most Christians tend to try and ignore, but instead my point is about providing the “the Bible said so” cover to a group that previously did not have BSS Insurance: The Gold Diggers. To those ladies who previously felt bad (but pretty much did it anyway) about choosing a man based on the size of his wallet, I bring you straight from the Bible the story of Ruth. Now leaving aside the fact the now absurd practice of a widow having to marry a relation of her dead husband made this example possible let’s look at it. Ruth (or rather Ruth’s mother in law) decided to marry Boaz (a rich relative), now there was another relative who was poorer but was first in line to marry Ruth. Now if you want to see how Gold Digging is done Bible Style read Ruth 3 to see how Ruth (with her mother in law) convinces Boaz to marry her, and read Ruth 4 to see how Boaz convinced the guy to relinquish his interest in Ruth. So the next time someone asks:

“Why are Nigerian women obsessed with marrying for money?”

“Even an ancestress of Jesus married for money”

is the perfect reply.

This does not concern me anymore. After all it is a purely Yanks issue and cannot possibly affect my situation in any way, still it bugs me and so I am going to vent. One of today’s major headlines in the States is the Supreme Courts decision to bar Seattle and Louisiana schools from discriminating on the basis of race. Here are the boston globe and new york times (reg req) take on the story. The civil rights people and the liberal judges were complaining that the Supreme Court has a history of supporting desegregation and now they might be ending that support.

I’m socially liberal and agree with affirmative action in its ideal form (if you have two equal candidates race can be considered as a tie-breaker) not in the form it is used today (where you get props for being black so even a rich black underachiever gets bonus points). But what they were doing in these cases was basically effed. You applied to get into a school and based on the quota system (thought affirmative action was against quotas anyway) you either got rejected or accepted. Granted some black kids got rejected but it was mostly white kids that got rejected simply because they were white. Now some people are saying “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” and all that but I agree with the judges “separate but equal” is “separate but equal” under any circumstances. This is just part of the end justifies the means thing that really pisses me off. The goal is noble; racial integration, but the way they are doing it is not cool at all.

Civil rights activists if they truly were that would be on the side of the parents that sued. Here is the thing, the other ways of encouraging diversity don’t work as well (nothing works better than quotas), but why should something so noble come easy. Screw saying we want 10% of black kids and so we will take 90% white and 10% black. Instead say we will set up a school in between self-segregated neighborhoods so that there will be a natural racial mix in the school that we can encourage. Or that we will set up schools with programs that would appeal to both white and black students.

Now as anyone who has gone to school abroad will tell you, there is a difference between diversity and integration and Nigerians are a prime example of that. If you are Nigerian, before you even move onto how many white friends you have, tell me how many non-nigerian black friends you have. I am not pointing fingers cos I am exactly the same way, but the only racism that people care about relates to opportunity. You don’t care if random white guy wants to be friends with you (cos u don’t want to be friends with him no ways) but you care that if you and him go for a job interview he doesn’t get it because he is white (I’m also hoping that you don’t want to get it because you are black). This is why it annoys me (and ladies you should get annoyed too) when people say that black girls have it easier than black guys because they meet two criteria on the diversity scale. Now this implies that the said girls were not skilled enough to get the jobs and only got them because they could check two boxes as opposed to one. Cos here is the thing, people support affirmative action for other people but not for themselves. Every supporter of affirmative action will tell you that they got their position on merit but they are fighting for those souls who will not be able to get there solely on merit alone. I’m still waiting to meet the Goldman or McKinsey employee that will stand up and say I support affirmative action because if not for that Goldman or McKinsey won’t have hired me.

Intro

You know it's like I should just call this damn series Monday Corper and save everyone the trouble of figuring out why something called Sunday Corper tends to appear on Monday. Well this is the third entry and still not the final one about registration. It's not Moby Dick or anything but I think it's better than the last entry in the series. Well, shall we?

The Return of Registration: Day 4
You know the saying that "people who do more before six am than most people do all day are doing to damn much," Well that doesn't apply to me; barely. Regardless of when you go to sleep you're getting up at 4, 4:30. I showered and regretted it 'cause after the drills I was stinking again. Then we had the signing in ceremony. I'm sure it was beautiful and everything but I was too busy getting into position to get in front of the registration queue. The disadvantage of registering late is that people are waving to you as they go to get wasted, eat and such while you are huddling under umbrellas while the rain is trying to make sure you drown in a flash flood. Like the rest of lagos, girls have the expectation of not using their wallets for jack if guys are present. So fellas be prepared to come correct. After three days I can definitely agree with the assumption that there are tons of girls in camp and quite a number of them are babes as well. Though its getting harder to tell because the mufti is out and these ridiculous white tees, white shorts are in. I've been standing up for like ten hours straight and still a'int fully registered but I'm done. One last thing though, if you are a girl even the last official day of registration is too early. Met this girl that rocked up and managed to be at the same level that I was at the same time. Still the best thing is to work your registration. Nuff said.

Unnecessay Qualification
Aiight this one is easy cos there was straight reporting about what happened that day. Oh and if you have gotten your kit before the swearing in ceremony don't let anyone know (don't wear it on swearing in day). Cos what happens is that you get to stand (in our case the pouring rain) on the parade ground for hours while corpers symbolically representing each of the thirty-six (yep we have that many now) states of the federation sign the book of life. Til next week (hopefully sunday)

If you are of a certain age group and come back to Nigeria to work, there are three things you do a lot of: work, go out for drinks, and watch dvds. Today’s ramble is about the third. One of the main advantages of living in Nigeria are the ridiculously priced, relatively bad quality DVDs that are available everywhere you turn. However the first thing people are attracted to are the new movies. The “you mean I can get to see (insert movie here) and some other random movies I am mildly interested in for N400” face is a pretty common one amongst returnees. Especially those who had not been back to Gidi in a while. What most people find after a while though is that the movies are nice but the tv shows are even better and are of really good quality. Granted you have to wait a year for the current season dvds of current shows, but even that is not the main thing. The fact that you can get the entire run of even McGuyver (most random show I could think of) lets you know what you could do with box sets. Also you will have to go to Lekki Market to get most of the more random titles, but trust me it is worth it. As for me I’ve gone through House, currently going through Blade (not that great but already half way through the season) and this Christmas I intend to get through as much of lois and clark as I can, though I might go for the wire instead. Though with work and partying it can take you a while to get through the dvds so don’t buy too many at once cos well meaning friends will fap ‘em and you know how good we naija peeps are at returning stuff. Oh and if you have any good shows to recommend don’t hesitate to holla after all you can’t party or work all the time.