So they are using glue to fix the carpets in my office, and so I’m probably high. As a result this is what i ended up writing. Enjoy.

You Are Not As Hot As You Think You Are

This is a no brainer but you would be surprised how many people think that they’re as hot as that one amazing picture they took. They ignore the other 1000 they took that give homo erectus a run for his/her money. They dismiss these others by saying they are not photogenic. Dude (Babe), I got news for you the way you look in the majority of your photos, is the way you look in real life, deal with it. If you doubt that, think about the hottest person you have dated (not drunken hooked up with). Apparently you are slightly less hot than the hottest person that agreed to date you. This is similar to the two step rule where if you are a 7 you can go as low as a 5 or as high as a 9. So guys it’s not beer goggles that made you hook up with that ugly chick, it’s that she is slightly hotter than you are.

It Only Sucks to Be An American In Iraq If You Are A Soldier

I read a couple of articles about the antics of the private contractors in Iraq, and I was like damn. Talk about embezzlement with impunity. I think someone should send Oprah these articles, cos if she is going batty for Yahoozw, I think her head might just explode when she reads them. Especially when she gets to the story about how Paul Bremner brought $18 billion to Iraq in cash, and $12 billion can’t be accounted for. I’m sure if you tell some of the Naij governors that, they’ll be like, “really we need to talk with that guy, how did he manage to redirect 67% of the money?” Anyway the articles are here and here for your reading pleasure.

I Can See How Not Being Remembered Can Mess With Your Ego But Try Not to Take It Personally

Story 1: I see this girl in church that had a thing with my friend in Jand about 2 years ago. I remembered her name, and she didn’t remember mine. Not a big deal after all it was two years ago, and it wasn’t me she was…

Story 2: I get a call yesterday from some girl who said I met her on Adeniyi Jones about 6 months ago at some random thing. I have no idea who the babe is, and I tell her so. She starts going all “don’t worry about it” and so I end the conversation. After all having some idea of the person u are talking to is necessary.

Moral: If I don’t take it personally, You shouldn’t either.

Bourne Ultimatum Is Anti American

I got news for all you Bourne Ultimatum lovers (especially u confused) you all are Anti American. Think about it: In the move the CIA are a bunch evildoers who kill people for no reason (a la reporter guy), and program evil killing machines to do their dirty work leaving them souless husks (a la Blackbriar Guys). Nothing the US does in the movie is ever good, because of course when the US intervenes in the world it is doing so for evil cackling motives. Granted I'm kinda chanelling Bill O'Reilly here, but this is one time he does kinda have a point (NOOOOO Say it A'int So!!!)

In Closing...Remember I Told You I was High

One standard reaction to all those comments on my last post would be to do a post about the virtues of girls, guns, and (insert other manly thing that starts with guns). However that would lead to cries of overcompensation, and so I decided to do the post I was going to do already. I suppose since it's a finance post, most of the commenters on the last post will give it a pass :D

Most people who know a bit about lagos, know that the real estate market is red hot. It is commonly assumed (meaning take with a grain of salt) that south-eastern ikoyi is the most expensive real estate on the entire African continent. What is known is that there is currently a shortage of both commercial and residential properties at all ends of the market. The laws of demand and supply mean that the current prices are very high, and that new entrants are scrambling to get into the market. Practical experience also tells us that scarcity eventually results in over production and so there will eventually be a crash in the real estate market.

Until then, if you are a small investor without the money needed to start playing in the real estate market, you can invest in a type of company called a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). Think of it as kind of a mutual fund for real estate, a bunch of us small fry pool our money together and invest in stuff that would normally be out of our reach.

Everyone who has a brain who is involved in real estate as been thinking about REITs in the last couple of years, however only one firm has decided to actually start one. The firm is Skye Bank and the REIT is called the Shelter Fund. The total fund size is N5 billion but it is in two tranches (parts) and the first part (the part it is raising now) is N2 billion. While such initiative should be applauded, the way they are going about it leaves a lot to be desired.

REITs are supposed to exist as a pass through vehicle (there is no tax paid on the REIT income), which means that in most countries with REITs, at least 90% of the income is passed onto the shareholders in form of dividends. For reasons best known to them, Skye has decided that 80% is appropriate. Now you would think that the remaining 20% will be used for operating expenses of the company. Apparently the fund managers still think a management fee of 1.5% is sufficient (now I am not against the management fee in principle, but I think that the magnitude is a bit high).

However the part of the compensation structure that I take the most issue with is this : "In addition to the annual management fee mentioned in sub-clause (i) above the Fund Manager shall also be entitled to receieve an incentive fee of 30% of total returns in excess of 10% of the funds Net Asset Value per annum." As performance fees go, it's very high even for proven fund managers. For a start up fund, I am yet to see the justification for it. Oh and as an aside, in general only private equity and hedge funds charge fees of close to that size, not REITs.

Still more worrying is the treatment of this fee in the prospectus. For example in the first year of operation, the prospectus reports this figure as N7.65 million. This does not seem bad, until you do calculations based on the figures in the prospectus which show that the figure should be N76.5 million. Excess returns over 10% of NAV are N255 million, 30% of that is N76.5 million. There are two possible explanations: honest mistake or intent to deceive.

Now let's move onto the actual business of the REIT. The REIT plans to play in the upper and middle ends of both residential and commercial property. Which is a pretty sensible investment strategy. However the first tranche is N2 billion naira which is $15.7 million. They are also saying that there will be no borrowing, which means that this is all the money they have to play with. Bottom line, the amount they are playing with is too small. The cost of one office building worth putting in V/I minus land costs will take out all that money. For the type of margins that they are talking about, you will have to do build and sell if you are talking residential. However that would mean that they have to develop, which means that it will be about 2 years before you start seeing any money. Now I thought about them buying an existing commercial property, but in Nigeria people pay rents (at least)two years in advance and so, they will have to find properties that have their rent due. There are only two things I can think of. 1) they are going to buy a government property and flip like, like UACN did with 1004. 2)There are one or two soon to be completed real estate developments that they are trying to get in on. Either one could allow them to provide the returns that they are promising.

In conclusion, I do not see any advantage to investing in the Skye Bank REIT as it is currently structured. I do not think the fund is large enough to capitalize on the truly lucrative opportunities in the real estate sector. I also think that the fee structure is particularly onerous. This was a valiant first attempt, but I think we'll have to wait a little longer for REITs.

My biggest regret about going to America instead of staying in England was that for all intents and purposes I missed seeing my younger sisters grow up. Granted they are seven and ten years younger than me, and once I left Nigeria I wouldn’t have seen them that much anyway, However if I had stayed in London I would have seen them when they came over for their yearly holidays as I did before I left London, and probably would have talked to them more than the perfunctory birthdays call, and the “hello how are you doing” when I talked to my parents and they were in the room. I am almost sure that I would have known them better.

When they arrived in England in 2005 for school, it was almost like I was meeting strangers. I had known about the major events in their lives, well I suppose the major educational events, cos that is what mothers and elder sisters apparently tell brothers about their younger sisters. We hung out (when they weren’t in school) until I returned to Naij in the summer (rainy season) of 2006 (though I bet they’ll say not enough) and I got to know them again. I think that their basic personalities are the same from when they were younger from what I remember, and they turned out to be two cool, confident, and oh so gorgeous young women. I think my parents should be given a medal, I mean they raised 3 amazing children - well they had me also but then again you always need an outlier :D

So for those of you that think you stumbled on to the wrong blog, I decided to write this because over the last week, they got their A-Levels and GCSEs respectively and managed to achieve satisfactory results. The one doing A-Levels only managed to get one more A’s than I did, and it was general paper so it doesn’t even count. I’m also disappointed in the younger one, she actually ended up with one lone A instead of getting all A*s, I mean who does that? ;)

Anyway if you guys read this, I love you and I’m mad proud of you.

P.S. Anybody who says awww will be subject to serious bodily harm. I am not kidding. I will find your IP address, find your real address, and then send men with steel pipes to your house :D

If you asked a true football fan to give his or her (these days) assessment of the main European leagues in order of respectability, it would probably have the English Premier League in third place behind the Spanish and the Italian.

However if you asked about popularity, then the English Premier League is top dog According to an independent article the global audience for a live premiership game is about 80 million, which is a lot of people. Anyway the British have followed the Americans and parlayed this into a monster new global TV deal. This means that the premiership and thus its teams (even those without foreign billionaire owners) are awash with cash.

While spending 70 million pounds a season may be the province of Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United (Arsenal can afford it but seem to be making thrifty a watchword), the smaller teams can also now afford to shell out 15 to 20 million pounds a season without blinking. So just like we had a Chelsea price and an everyone else price, I expect that in the next few years (until the other Euro leagues get their act together) there will be a Premiership price and an "everyone else" price.

While there are still only three teams (on paper) with a legitimate chance of winning the premiership, there are two strong dark horse candidates in Arsenal and Tottenham. Tack on another six (well seven if you include Bolton) that have a strong case for making Europe. Toss in Villa and Boro as two bottom half but definitely safe teams, and the remaining six teams are made up of the three guys that just came up (Derby is a yo-yo if I ever saw one), an imploding Wigan, an unconvincing Fulham and Birmingham. This means that there are few gimme games in the premiership anymore and that’s good for the league as a whole.

Since only the top teams in the other European leagues will be able to compete (in terms of spending) with the premiership teams, that means that the premiership teams should do better in the UEFA Cup and not necessarily the Champions League. It doesn’t mean that they will win (after all English teams are notorious chokers) but there will be more of them in the final stages.

Going by the example of the major American leagues who have been flush with cash for a good two decades, it is almost given that a lot of the money will turn out to be badly spent. After all unless you are Wenger, if you have money you will spend it. So there will almost have to be a lot of expensively bought duds in the premiership in the coming years. Look at the bright side: Veron will finally be able to shed the “most expensive player in recent memory” title.

So yesterday it rained really badly, which in Lagos means soul crushing traffic. I did not even consider thinking about going home. I decided to go see a movie instead. However as the summer comes to a halt, there aren’t that many movies that I am really interested in seeing. Anyway I was going to galleria to watch the movie, as almost everyone does if they decide to see a movie during the week (I suppose not having to fight traffic beats easy parking on weekdays). I decided to see Bourne Ultimatum again, seeing as all of you jumped on my case for saying that the movie wasn’t all that.

Well you will be pleased to know that I didn’t fall asleep this time. I realized that I fell asleep last time because when the whole Tangiers scene jumped off I realized I was seeing most of it for the first time.

So Bourne as a man and as a movie is all about calm build up and then explosive aggression. The three main set pieces in the movie were breathtaking in their execution, though they entered into the James Bond ‘nary a scratch’ territory several times. The acting was of course better than the run of the mil action flicks as was “some” of the dialogue. All of which makes the Bourne Ultimatum a very enjoyable flick, with a “slightly too bad ass” hero and killer action.

Now I did not say either Transfomers or Die Hard were better movies, I said I had more fun in them. That didn’t change after I saw Bourne again. Bruce Willis plays the world weary hero better than Damon ever could. Bourne’s cool with all his stoicism but McClane is fun. I’m sorry I’m a child of the 80’s I like my action with well delivered wise-cracks.

Following on the whole “child of the 80’s” theme, there is no movie that can step to Transformers this summer. I mean from the opening sequence it was like I was a little kid again. Granted the people were annoying distractions at times (why was Bernie Mac even in that movie), but there was enough robot action to keep me giddy all the way through. Say what you want about Michael Bay (I have and often at length) no one does spectacle like he does.

So on second viewing I am left to conclude that Bourne Ultimatum does make my top three movies of the summer… well at least until I see Ratatouille. Hey I heard it was mad!!!! :D

First Contender - The Guy Who Thinks Nospecto Is Still A Good Idea

The SEC and EFCC have apparently carried the princpal officers of Nospecto and will be prosecuting them. Granted it was probablyalready too late when the "finance house craze" made all the major papers four months ago, but at least you should have tried.

Second Contender - The Guy Who Wrote This Sentence

This is by far the dumbest statement about the naira redenomination exercise, and it's courtesy of the Financial Standard:

"The commuter bus driver could still insist on collecting N100.00 from Ikeja to Lagos Island instead of reverting to 40 kobo"

Maybe the second was a little bit harsh, seeing as it's an actual person and not a possible person like the Nospecto investee, but sometimes the financial reporting in this country gets to me. This guy is basically saying that there will be people in Lagos... Lagos! that will pay N10K for a trip that costs 40 naria ! I mean is he serious? I mean people are talking N10 will be upped to N50 (smallest note in the new regime - 50k)but this guy is talking N40 to N10K.

Third Contender - The Analyst Who Doesn't Understand Objectivity

So one of the mini scandals in the financial services industry is the analyst guy that got fired from CSL (a stockbroker) for shitting all over Access Bank. The guy called them a bunch of crooks, and said that anyone who should buy their stock should be wary. So CSL is kinda owned by FCMB which is kinda acting as an issuing house (investment banker) for the Access Bank offer. So Access Bank in true Nigerian fashion threatened to dump FCMB from the public offer deal. And FCMB responded by firing the analyst. After that happened, everyone wanted to read the report. I read it, and I was like granted the guy had a few good points for example in the first 9 months of 2006 access bank made the same amount as they made in only the last three months of 2006. They really should be able to explain that. If he had talked in reasoned tones about this and the other issues he had noticed it would have been fine, but of course he had to sound like the MD came to his house and banged his wife. No objectivity, and so no job.


Since the spiel after each contender seems to be getting longer, I'm going to stop at three. Though I suppose the title of the post told you that already :D

I was planning to do my NDS on Nigerians and their attitudes to expats, but I’ll save that for next time. As most of you know the news of the redenomination of the naira has broken and everybody and their mother has an opinion about it. I have left a few comments about my thoughts, however I decided that I will do a post on it. There will probably some technical stuff in here, so forgive me.

So the basic thing is that N100 will now be equal to N1. That’s it. There is no other change. However, this now means that dollar equals 1.25 of the new naira. In theory this means that there will be no effect on the economy because it’s a nominal change. It’s like replacing all your existing silver with gold. You don’t get richer or poorer because your coins are worth the same amount.

Now in practice there will be some costs. These are the main expected costs: the cost of withdrawing the currency from circulation, the cost of printing new currency, the cost of redenominating old contracts and the like, and the cost of the massive education campaign that will be necessary.

The other big elephant in the room is the effect on the price level. In the theory, all market participants are rational and so will be happy to accept 10 kobo instead of 10 naira for two pure water sachets. However in practice this will probably not happen in all places. So you are almost guaranteed some temporary change in the price level on the cheaper goods (which technically is not inflation). Knowing whether there will be permanent inflation and any other real effects is anyone’s guess and so it is pointless to speculate (technically people should be building economic models to check, but they are too busy getting the difference between redenomination and revaluation wrong).

With all these costs, a lot of people have asked “why bother?” After all it is a nominal change that doesn’t change anything. However there were two clues in that speech that I thought showed the reason. The first is the CBNs goal of making the naira the main currency of the region (well he said Africa, but WA is more realistic). The second is that in 2009, you will no longer need the appropriate permission to buy foreign exchange at an official counter. This means that there will be no need for black market.

So a currency that is around par with the dollar (think the euro) has a better chance of becoming a currency of choice, which is the stated reason for the move. However if you look at the plans to create a West African currency (WAC) it could make sense. With the introduction of a WAC, Nigeria loses its ability to make monetary policy; which really doesn’t make sense at the moment as the Nigerian economy makes up 80% of the West African economy. This is where the second point comes in, they are removing restrictions on naira convertibility so anyone can change naira into anything else for any reason. With Nigerian companies expanding ever more deeply into West Africa as they grow bigger, a naira that is about on par with the dollar, and freely convertible to every other currency looks more attractive to everyone in the region. So without stating it, I honestly think that this is a way to scupper the introduction of the WAC without actually doing it by making the new naira the default WAC.

This is why on third look, I think they think the new naira is actually not a bad idea. What do you think?

When you cross a Snazzy who thinks he should blog, and a Snazzy who has nothing to say, as usual you get a Young Snazz post. Today's edition was a notebook entry that he wrote to a prompt of childhood writing. For some reason the post is titled Orwell (I think it had something to do with an essay he wrote, but I forget). Anyway, enjoy

Childhood writing is always a dismal topic to explore. Definitely cringeworthy. Remembering the things that prodded one to start writing is definitely embarassing. The first piece of literature that I wrote that was worth talking about was called My Class Teacher. I was in 8th grade and was 12 at the time. It was a poem and it got made much of. The one line i remember was "who beat me when he was drunk). Don't worry it never happened but I figured that if I would write about my Class Teacher it would not be about the dumb arse that made me write it. It would be about a brutal daft teacher, the poster child for teacher hating students everywhere. The students thought it was pretty funny and my teacher appreciated it. I goot a good grade on it. This sparked my enthusiasm for comedic writing. My next foray was a Dear John letter, fictional, and I handed it in in class. It got read aloud and the student response was what I expected. This teacher was not impressed and I got a bad grade. this made me wary of comedic writing and letter writing in general. So I moved on to short stories for all my writing assignments as I didn't have to worry very much about structure as the tales were always engaging. I coasted like this until senior year where I met a teacher who demanded more from my writing and thus I started to pay more attention to structure. The main thing I got from my childhood experience was a prediliction to write for a popular audience. There is nothing more satisfying when you manage to create a strong reaction in a large number of people. The fact that people liked what I wrote gave me the convidence to write simply because I believed that if I liked it others would too.

I will say that there is a balance between writing what you like and what you know will appeal to others. I think I've moved closer towards the writing what you like phase, but he is still closer to the other side. But hey he was young...

So my friend from college was at the wedding on Saturday, and I remember him making this comment, that almost everybody he had met in Lagos was at that reception. I was like yep “Lagos has an incestuous social scene.”

However it would be wrong for me to come to such a conclusion without evidence. I mean what are the characteristics of an incestuous social scene. So I decided to come up with a list of the Top Ten Signs Your Social Scene Is Incestuous. Alas I only came up with six. So rather than scrap the idea all together, (or more horribly go with a top six) I decided to open it up to you my dear readers to complete the list. So apart from these six, what are four other signs that your social scene is incestuous?

1. There are four or five places that form the hub of your social scene

2. You can’t have more than two big parties on the same night without one of them flopping

3. If you forget to take the number of someone you just met, you don’t worry about it because
you know you’ll see them again soon.

4. It should take around three phone calls to get the entire dating history of a prospect.

5. In the last year you have met at most 10 people that are not “friends of friends”

6. The number of degrees of separation between friends is on average about 2. So over the
course of our friendship I have hooked up with Mary, who has hooked up with John, who has
hooked up with Martha who you have hooked up with.

P.S. I got done with NYSC today so feel free to say something appropriately nice :D

The most common formulation of Sod's Law is “whatever can go wrong will go wrong” or in a similar vein “when it rains it pours.” I was reminded of this over this weekend.

So I had a wedding to go for yesterday, and when I was leaving I glanced at my fuel gauge and it was at quarter tank. I fleetingly thought about buying petrol and I was like “nah, a quarter should be able to see me through the day.”

After the wedding (typical babes galore), a bunch of us decide to go see Bourne Ultimatum at 8:30pm (btw it wasn’t as good as y’all said it was: 4.0 and Transformers were better). Anyway after the movie I was going to drop someone at her house in Lekki, but she’s into salsa and so we stopped by La Casa for a bit because they have salsa night before the night out starts at like 11 (They built a little wall in the compound. I am assuming it’s to allow the police men to have cover to shoot at the armed robbers if they ever decide to strike again). So I drop her off, and it’s like 11 and I glance at the fuel meter again and I decided not to risk running out of fuel on the bridge (totally wouldn’t be fun). I go to the after-reception which is being held at the groom’s house (well parents house) off Queens drive and then from there I go to Park View where I’m crashing for the night with one of my friends. I was feeling pretty good about my decision not to venture to the mainland cos by the time I was driving into his house my reserve light was showing.

So fast forward to 7:45 the next morning. I make my way to the filling station and tell them to fill up my tank. I pass a bunch of ATMs and I don’t stop to get cash thinking that I have enough cash on me. So when the guy is filling my tank I open up my wallet and I have 1K. I was like no wahala, it’s awolowo road, if you spit you’ll hit a bank. So I tell the attendant that I’m going to the ATM and I’ll be right back.

I get to the GTB ATM and the network is down. It’s one of the most annoying things that happens in lagos (police and armed robber harassment are higher on the list but only just). When the network goes down, the only bank you can access is your own. Still I was optimistic, and I continued walking down awolowo road trying the UBA, the Zenith and the First Bank until I get all the way to my bank; Diamond Bank.

I put my card into the ATM and it’s all good, my name comes up, it asks me for my pin and then the following words appear PLEASE WAIT. They don’t go away for a while and I’m like “this can’t be happening.” As I think that, the words: YOUR BANK IS NOT AVAILABE PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER appear on the screen. I’m thinking you’re my effing bank. How are you going to tell me you’re not available?

So my logical/practical side takes over and I start to think about who I can call to get me out of this rather unfortunate situation. For some reason funmi iyanda’s comment on one of her blog posts about how your true friends are the ones you can call when you are in a jam flashes through my mind. Limiting myself to the people I know in Ikoyi only, there are about 6 people on my list.

First I decide to make my way back to the station and see if they would be willing to take my card in lieu of payment and I’ll drop the cash by later in the day (I can hear you scoff, but hey a brother can be optimistic!) Obviously the attendant’s weren’t having none of that and so I get to dialing. My two cousins are not around, two phones were turned off, one person who I thought would be around ikoyi on his way to church hadn’t left his house, and then there was the friend I stayed with.

I give him a call, and he’s like “sure, I just have to check if the driver has dropped up my car.” He calls back 15 mins later, and says “Aiight I have the car, let me hop in the shower real quick and then I’ll come and get you.”

So 30 mins later he shows up. It’s normally a 6/7 minute drive but apparently some guy with a heavy military escort snarled up falomo roundabout (his soldiers were whipping okadas as well for some reason). So I pay the attendant (eyeing my friend when he asks if we should tip the guy). We then go across the road to Chicken Republic to get some food. The only thing they have ready is chicken pieces (pieces that if you gave your dog, he would swear at you). We then decide to mosey on down to TFC, where we do get food. There is an ATM right outside the joint, but I ignore it until I see someone getting money out of it. So just before we leave, I walk over to the ATM and it’s shut down. At this point, I think I expected that to happen. I stare at it for a moment and then get into my car.

I am totally expecting something random to happen on the bridge, but nothing does and so I get to my parents house without incident. I park the car walk to the gate and it’s locked.

Now that’s Sod’s Law.

P.S. Oh and thanks to this HiTV and DSTV nonsense, they aren’t showing the Arsenal game

A little while back I decided to keep a list of upcoming posts: things that I wanted to write about but either didn’t have the time, opportunity, or ability to do justice. So I open it today looking for inspiration and I noticed one post with a standard somewhat unhelpful title On Chemistry. Sometimes you remember what you were thinking of blogging about wrt the topic, and sometimes you don’t. I mean I know that I had an opinion about the Chemistry between two people of the opposite sex, but I can’t remember what I wanted to say about it.

I know it wasn’t going to be about my somewhat unhealthy trait of not hitting on people I click with. I always maintained that babes I had chemistry with on a personality level are worth more as friends rather than as potential hook ups. I’ve been told that I should have left that attitude behind when I left college, but I’m dismissing those opinions as those of people that want me to start thinking about getting married.

I know that I wasn’t going to talk about the whole physical chemistry which is just an expression of mutual lust. You know, you exchange glances and there is that thing. I mean cos everything that can possibly be said on that topic has already been said, and I don’t think that I would commit to retreading an already worn path.

I doubt that it was on the effects that meeting someone you have chemistry with has on you. I mean it’s not just that you’re almost instantly comfortable, though there is some of that - well unless the winds of life have sucked all the trust out of you ;) It’s the fact that you feel like you are more YOU when you run into some one that you click with. However it’s even weirder cos it’s a two way street, in that you get her and she gets you (otherwise, it’s not really chemistry it’s just that the other person meets well).

Ah now I remember… that was it. How do you tell the difference between real chemistry, and the other person just being a perceptive conversationalist? Clearly this is cos something relevant happened, and though this time I was on the assumee side of the divide, I also have been on the assumer side also. So I was thinking, how would you tell whether it’s chemistry or that s/he meets well. It's kinda like the john that falls in love with a stripper; to him it's fate, to her it's a job. Anyway I realised why I didn't ever post on this, cos just like then the only way I can figure out how to tell the difference between chemistry and the stripper scenario is to try your luck. And as you can clearly see, that little bit of "really! you don't say!" thinking is not enough for a post. Aiight I'm done. Have a good weekend y'all.

It's been about a week and a half since i trotted out the musings of the never imitated or duplicated Young Snazz. Today Young Snazz takes on the email habits of his fellow university students.

Someone left my monitor on for a long time and it's officially gone to pot. There is nothing for it, my monitor [he meant computer] has the fastest internet connection in the house and it gets used by people wanting to check email. What is up with **** [I removed the school] kids and their obsession with email. Actually it's not just an American thing, in England they were obsessed with it as well and so are the Nigerian heads. I guess it's just me that sweats on it. I use it and I check it but I feel no need to use it constantly or suffer a pseudo mental breakdown if i can't check it for twelve, or heaven forbid, 24 hours. The power of the web and all that rot. Don't get me started on IM. The thought of sitting writing for hours doesn't freak me out at all. All these kids with 100 name buddy lists make me wonder about the sanity of these individuals. I'm not sweating anybody and i see the gain in tlaking to people all over the world in real time but it does not move me. This is why i have huge phone bills. I need to keep in touch with my peeps in London and Nigeria and I'm too stupid to use the cheapest way possible. Nothing for it I guess, it's cool though. I get up in arms when idiots start going off about cell phones too. There is nothing dumber than idiots beefing about cell phones and cancer and all that. Technology is great but i still don't see what's the big deal about email.

Aiight so clearly he was a bit of a luddite, but hey he was young.

A Completely Unrelated Issue That Doesn't Really Deserve Its Own Post

I was uneasy about Transcorp before the IPO. My uneasiness turned to scorn as the company apparently used its contacts to maintain the stock price at above IPO levels due to some unexplained decision to maintain the techncial suspension. My scorn turned to schadenfreude (i know, i know, but it's the only word I know that means happiness at the misfortune of others) when the rumors started going around that the stock was 30% subscribed.

So today the MD announced that the IPO was 36.2% subscribed and the firm raised N22 billion. However they came to the market for N100 billion, and since they raised N22 billion wouldn't that mean that the IPO was 22% subsribed. I think I have started to feel bad for the company, after all it must be tough when your MD has problems with basic math.

Oh and he tried to make it like the woeful showing at IPO was a success. Let me leave you with a comparison. Transcorp went to the market for N100 billion and raised N22 billion, First bank went to the market for N100 billion, and apparently raised N500 billion.

Aiight so anyone who is an avid reader of my blog (well I’m sure there has to be at least two of you) and who also reads other peoples comments (well I’m thinking maybe one here) would have read Uzo demanding the die hard post I promised her. Well not only did I not accede to her wishes, I also even laughed about it in my last post (aiight there is no link here cos that would be too self referential even for me).

Anyway I wasn’t being an arse (okay wasn’t just being an arse). I actually did not know how to write the damn thing. I mean I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know how to say it exactly (I will now stop and let you sit in stunned amazement). I think I have been in Naij too long, all that lack of execution going around has clearly affected me :D

So I got out of this dilemma because I saw Groundhog Day again last night (it's possible that i've seen this movie twenty times). To those of you who have not seen this movie, please slap yourself twice before running out to your nearest video store to rent it. As I was watching that movie, I was thinking they don’t make comedies like this anymore. For some reason it clicked that I had found the perfect angle for my Die Hard post.

Aiight so the original Die Hard is pretty much the best pure action film ever made (only Raiders could give it a run for its money). See Die Hard had mad action (it holds up even today) but to be honest some of the spectacles that Michael Bay et al have done make some of those scenes pale. However the thing that Die Hard had that most of those films could not match was character. Most action movies make the action drive the story, not Die Hard. The characters drive the story. Think about it, when is the last time that you’ve seen an action hero that isn’t one dimensional? No one cares about characterization anymore because the action drives the story. I mean Bourne is like the only attempt I’ve seen in ages that succeeds in doing a character driven action flick the way it should be done. How many movies make you care about the fact that the lead character is not wearing any shoes?

Anyway so on to `q let’s not get it twisted they gave into the spectacle (especially the ridiculous scene with the fighter jet) however McClane turned that movie from a random cyber thriller to the most fun I’ve had in the movies this year apart from transformers. It could just be an early onset of nostalgia that is doing me, but think about it as I leave you with a question – have you seen a cop buddy movie pairing in the last five years that you have cared about half as much as you cared about Riggs and Murtaugh?

P.S. If you don’t recognize the names I’ve got no words…

I was going to give into Uzo's demand for the Die Hard post, but I decided I would do something different to send you off into your weekend. So I decided to bring you more tales from lagos.

Tale 1

Aiight so my friend from college moved to Nigeria for a while a couple of months ago (it's news cos he's a white guy from the states), and there was another guy I think he knew visiting for work. Anyway so he was telling him this story about a danfo guy that he saw while at falomo roundabout.

So anyone who is familiar with falomo roundabout knows that the danfos (or flying coffins as u all know) use the outer lane of the roundabout as a permanent bus stop. So there was this woman standing at the roundabout who was well endowed (hey I'm trying to keep it relatively pg-13). Anyway as one of the danfos was pulling away, one of the conductors leaned out and copped a feel. The conductor's laughter was cut short because all of a sudden there was a traffic buildup and his bus stopped. The woman seeing this walked up to the conductor and gave him an open handed slap in the middle of his back. Apparently all her weight was behind it, and she knocked him off his perch on the edge of the danfo.

So the moral of the story is...

Tale 2

Aiight so unlike most corpers who wear their uniforms over their work clothes so they can be fully dressed when they go back to work, I went back to work in the uniform and changed into my suit after I got to the office. The stalls in my office are kinda cramped and so it's slightly annoying to change in there, and so any chance I get I change in the conference room. Anyway one of my colleagues (well he's a vp, so not really a colleague) keeps threatening to bring ladies in while i'm changing. And of course i respond with a quip about how I could use another lady infatuated with me. Anyway so yesterday when i got back from corper duty, and in the course of the ribbing, he then started to tell a story from when he was in secondary school back in the day. He was a boarder and they had communal showers. So one day a bunch of them were showering at the same time, and then as one of them was leaving another boy looked down at the him and exclaimed

"kai, (name) when God finished with you the devil clearly put hand!"

Now i thought that the statement was obvious, but maybe it's just me. So what do you think the sentence means?

Tale 3

Currently I'm in the final clearance peroid of my service and so I'm away from work a lot. So I get teased about it a lot, especially since i was a relatively conscientious corper with the going for CD and such (The whole trying to dodge work bit). Anyway so we were talking about the going rate for settling for your service so you don't have to do anything from camp all the way until passing out. Well i was telling them that thanks to the flood of furriners into the system there has been serious price appreciation regarding this, so now it costs between N30K to N50K. So another vp was telling the time he was posted to some random village in Ogun state. Now they had problems with the posting and so he basically ended up doing nothing after he was deployed. Still he wanted to serve and so he went around trying to find someone to serve with. He lighted on this secondary school, and so he went there a few days later, dressed to kill. After he gave the principal his spiel about wanting to work there. The principal took one look at him and basically said,

"Yes, we need people but you can't serve here. I have girls here, and I don't want to hear any long stories. I'm sorry"

And the moral of that story is...

Have a good weekend y'all

Aiight so after about 6 hours in corper hell standing around, I come back to work to discover that the work i came to do cannot be done because i do not have the information needed to do the work. So throroughly more annoyed i start going through my reader catching up on the various blogs, and i come across one post that is so funny that I actually burst out laughing. I think i was eating epa (known to u furriners as "roasted peanuts") so there may have been spray :)

Anyway so the post was from Marginal Revolution, and it just had a quote

"My favourite ticketing system was in Mumbai, India," Kim enthuses. "No one actually buys a ticket, but you can buy 'ticket insurance' from private entrepreneurs who work at the entrance of the station. The 'ticket insurance' is about half the price of a regular rail ticket. It gives you a guarantee that, in the extraordinary event that you are booked by a railways inspector for taking a free ride, your fine will be paid. A relative was once booked and the ticket insurer paid the fine exactly as promised."

That just made my day, and i was thinking, that could so be Naija... well if we had functioning rail systems that is :D