Some months back peeps were blogging about the qualities they want in their ideal man/woman while all I did was observe. But what the fuck here’s my own list. Note that it’s all just dreams, in reality we’re bound to compromise.

1) My ideal girl must be a “soji” babe…sharp, intelligent…she has got to have brains. But on the other hand she should have a great sense of humour. You know be the fun loving, friendly, drama-free and laid back type.

2) Sharing the same interests with me would be a big plus. Most importantly would be my music interest/taste. I don’t want to be getting blown off my hip hop, rock, traditional or slow jamz while she’s getting high off “aka nchawa” (an Igbo gospel song).

3) I’m also on that emotional shit. My girl must be romantic, she must pamper me, she must be a sex bomb and she must be my down ass chick who’ll be there for me 24-7.

4) I like my girls chubby, cute and sexy (sort of thick). You know the bigger (in size) the better (in the right places). But not fat oh! Paris Hilton skinny is definitely a no-no.

5) Many girls like their men tall. But if your idea of a couple is the girl as short as Jada Pinkett Smith and the man as tall as Will Smith than hell no. I want my girl to be almost as tall as me so I can kiss her with ease. Besides it’s cuter that way.

6) I’m not religion obsessed…specific. As far as she’s positive minded it’s ok with me. I’m also not tribe or race specific.

7) Age wise I’ll not want to be older than my girl by more than five years. But if she’s older, at most by two years. That way she’ll be more of a pal/buddy to me.

I like ’em black, white, Puerto Rican or Haitian/Japanese, Chinese or even Asian

It’s not just girls that are crazy about kids, yours truly dreams about having kids! In the Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfieffer film “the story of us” the guy with the patriotic orgasm favourite line was “God bless America, God bless America”. Me! My favourite line at the moment is “I want you to have my baby”. If well deployed in the course of putting your bid in or hitting it it’s a knockout. But I ain’t going old school like our parents, I ain’t raising no football team. Two or three would be just fine. But if by the time I’m 35 I’m unmarried and girlfriendless I’m going the Michael Jackson route and finding me a surrogate. Departing this world childless ain’t in my plans; I want to raise me a little man/lady.

This might not go down well with my friends but at times I find the whole Arsenal, Barcelona, Man U, Chelsea, Liverpool, Juventus for life thing very irritating. Especially when coming from Nigerians based in Naija who don’t know the half about the team they claim to support. The only team I give a damn about are my darling Super Eagles. Yes oh, in the last six years I’ve hardly missed a grade A Super Eagles match. But being that we won’t be at Germany I’m giving my heart to the Carthage Eagles of Tunisia. The players, the coach, the team play, the jersey…damn. Tunisia is the team for me at next months WorldCup. Good luck to the other African teams.

This post is meant to clear the storm about homosexuality that has been raging on TRAE days. Don’t even bother yourself with trying to keep the storm going cos I’ll delete your comment. If you want to discuss homosexuality, do it on your blog.

Jeremy and Owukori misinterpreted my statements and started this storm. When I said “lesbos probably need a dick whipping” I meant that lesbians would most likely have a change of heart on their sexual orientation if they had mind blowing sex with a guy.

If I’ve hurt anybody in the process I’m sincerely sorry. But I still don’t think homosexuality is cool. Since it matters so much to a lot of people what I think about gays, I’m ready to change my mind if the price is right. In the end it’s all about the Naira you know.

For peeps who still think I’m homophobic check this: I’ve started reading afrohomo’s blog! Dude’s writing is simply captivating! And also check this:

I flow straight and precise, like a man killing device/
Fuck with me I’ll take your life, cos my heart’s as cold as ice/
My mouth’s raw as Obie Trice, I love dykes I ain’t biased/
Wanna battle (me)? Come on be wise, I’ll fuck you (up) like a fly ass/

“Dyke” is a slang term for a lesbian.

Thanks for all the love and hate. And Yes I still think hip hop and soccer is life. If you think otherwise, keep it to yourself. It’s a free world.

Although I’m not much of a soccer player, soccer is still the love of my life. It’s the greatest sport in the world! One of the things I really like about it is the celebration that ensues when a goal is scored. It’s not a high scoring sport like basketball so goal celebrations are really wild. The crowd goes crazy and the goal scorer (along with his team mates) gets to celebrate in (almost) any way they like. I’m really really loving the goal celebrations in the on-going African Cup of Nations. Most of them involve a little dance and right now they are the coolest thing on earth!

See Nigeria’s Taye Taiwo’s celebration after scoring against Ghana.
See Côte d’Ivoire’s Drogba’s celebration after scoring against Libya.
See Senegal’s Henry Camara’s celebration after scoring against Zimbabwe.

The list goes on. For my Nigerians who want to get every detail about our ACN campaign Kickoffnigeria.com and forum.cybereagles.com are the very places to be at. Peace!

The Super Eagles celebrate after Taye Taiwo’s goal

My fellow soccer freaks I hail oh! The 25th African Cup of Nations: Egypt 2006 is nearer than you think. And our dear own Super Eagles take the field for their first match against Ghana on January 23rd. As you must know the team list for the tournament has since been released. my prediction was 78% correct; 18 players I named in my list made the final 23 squad. Not bad hey?

Anyway the main gist for today is that we all should get ready for a 4-3-3 formation in Egypt. Because going by the team list released, that’s the formation coach Eguavoen is going to make the Eagles play. Traditionally the Eagles play a diamond 4-4-2 formation. However Eguavoen has switched to a 4-3-3 formation in his last two games against Algeria and Zimbabwe. The team list with the player’s squad number is like this:

1) Enyeama Vincent
2) Yobo Joseph
3) Taiwo Taye
4) Kanu Nwankwo
5) Odiah Chidi
6) Enakarhire Joseph
7) Utaka John
8.) Mikel John Obi
9) Obafemi Martins
10) Okocha Austin
11) Lawal Garba
12) Ejide Austin
13) Ayila Yussuf
14) Nsofor Obinna
15) Obiefule Paul
16) Oruma Wilson
17) Aghahowa Julius
18) Obodo Christian
19) Makinwa Ayodele
20) Odemwingie Osaze
21) Nwaneri Obinna
22) Kaita Sani
23) Aiyenugba Dele

Too bad Ifeanyi Udeze opted out of the squad. We’ll miss him; at least he would have been a good cover for Taye Taiwo. Paul Obiefule is the odd man out if you ask me, he’s a defensive midfielder! But sha i hear he can also function as a right back (he even played some games for Nigeria as an attacking mid-filelder), that means he’s a cover for Odiah. Over all the squad is great. In my opinion it’s the most talented Super Eagles squad that has ever been chosen for a tournament. Anyways this is how they’ll play. Against each position is the squad number of the player(s) most likely to play them.

–left wing forward(17,19)———-center forward(9,4,14)————-right wing forward(7,20)–
——-left attacking midfielder(10,16)———–right attacking midfielder(18,8)——————–
————————————-defensive midfielder(13,22)—————————————–
—-left full back(3,11)————————————————————-right full back(5,15)——-
————left center back(21,6)———————-right center back(2)———————-
——————————————–goal keeper(1,12,23)———————————————-

Some people think life is black,
Some people think it’s white,
We all know it’s black and white,
FORZA JUVE!!!

That goes out to c0dec and Chxta my Juventus FC crazy friends. I like Juventus too but only for one reason…They got Trezeguet (somehow he’s my namesake) in their team…and he dons the number 17 jersey (my favourite number)!

You think say na beans to drop 16? Those are the words of Terry tha Rapman. It’s in Nigerian Pidgin English. Translated to Queen’s English he’s simple asking rhetorically “do you think it’s easy to drop 16 bars (16 lines of rap lyrics)? While I’m asking: do you think it’s easy to bring traedays.com to life? The answers: no be beans at all…it ain’t easy. It takes a day to learn how to play Chess but a life time to master the game. It takes a day to learn how to rap but a lot of effort to really excel at it. And it takes less than 10 minutes to register a domain name like traedays.com but mind, body and soul to make the site worth anything at all.

I’m relieved to have got the site really of the ground in a record time of six days (In the same way a US soldier serving in Iraq would be relieved if he was sent home. Or better yet as relieved as Alamieyeseigha or Dokubo-Asari would be if discharged and acquitted. And that’s after having invested a lot of time, money and energy into the site. I.e. Designing the site and moving my stuff from Blogger to WordPress.

I couldn’t have done it without the trio of Kazey, Yahoo Messenger and my brain. The guys who created Yahoo Messenger should be honoured by the UN. Yahoo Messenger helped me kick convo with kazey and other peeps who were giving me feedback on site. Kazey himself was ever ready to help me out and give me advice. Without his expertise in these internet matters i wouldn’t have done shit. I owe u man. I also feel like patting my self on the back. If not that I’m a surfing freak and familiar with the ways of the internet and elementary HTML, I would have made next to no progress. But sha I still got some little (or a lot of) tweaking to do here and there. Wish me luck.

What’s it with the Nigerian Football Association? Dem guys are disorganized to the core. First we were to play South Korea, then it was changed to DR Congo and now I hear we’re supposed to be taking on Romania today! I wonder if the game will still hold, if it’ll be televised and what manner of players will file out for Nigeria. I heard the match deal was struck and invitations sent out as late as yesterday! Any how sha, I hope all goes well at the end. Almost all countries are playing matches during this FIFA international friendly/game window, so we deserve our own too!

Blogger to WordPress. Nice move, but not always smooth.

I’ve definitely had my ups and downs these past days. And that’s as a result of stuff such as fighting (the animal instinct-fuck it), a reoccurring fever and feeling appreciated by the African Hip hop forums. I was made the moderator for the Nigerian Hip hop section and named best Hip hop analyst…That’s crazy. What better way then to cheer myself up than ranting about soccer.

If according to Jay-Z: “I sold kilos of coke I’m guessing I can sell CD’s”, then “I brought y’all soccer stuffs in the past, I’m guessing I can also bring y’all soccer predictions for the future”. Thus the great Houdini…“traedini” brings you Nigeria’s 23 man squad (with numbers and all) for Egypt 2006. Being nuts about soccer (especially when it comes to the Super Eagles) I’m 80% sure that this will be Coach Eguavoen and Co’s final team list for the tournament (African Cup of Nations) taking place in about 3 month’s time..

A soccer prediction: Nigeria’s 23 man Squad for Egypt 2006

Goal Keepers
1 Enyeama Vincent
12 Etafia Greg*
22 Ejide Austin*

Defenders
2 Yobo Joseph (Vice Captain)
3 Udeze Ifeanyi
23 Taiwo Taye
5 Ordiah Chidi
6 Enakarhire Joseph
21 Nwaneri Obinna
15 Abbey George*

Midfielders
7 Utaka John
13 Ayila Yussuf
14 Olafinjana Seyi
18 Obodo Christian
10 Mikel John Obi
16 Oruma Wilson*
11 Lawal Garba*

Attackers
9 Obafemi Martins
4 Kanu Nwankwo (Captain)
17 Aghahowa Julius
20 Odemwingie Osaze
8 Aiyegbeni Yakubu
19 Makinwa Ayodele

-Players marked with an asterisk (*) will likely not make the team.
-Aiyenugba and Vanzekin might be considered as 2nd and 3rd choice keepers instead.
-Okocha will most likely retire. As some Cybereagles members believe “Egypt is not a place for him to play three or more testimonial games”.
-We sure have a Left and Right wing crises on our hands. With Lawal and Utaka being the only guys who regularly play them wings. Aiyegbeni, Aghahowa, Osaze or even Taye might be adapted though.
-Note that these days Nigeria plays a 4-4-2 diamond formation most of the time.

————9——————–8————-
——————–10————————-
–11————————————-7—-
———————4————————-
——3——————————-2——–
————6——————–5————-
———————1————————-

-With some friendlies coming up (against South Korea and Egypt) there’ll be some chance to experiment and things might change a little bit.

as simple as it gets: a soccer-prediction

Yep it’s as simple as that, we ain’t going to the World Cup in Germany next year. We fucked up; Angola beat us to the ticket. Some peeps might want to blame the new head to head rule. Well whatever, our final game against Zimbabwe was nice. We won 5-1 and I watched it live at the Abuja National Stadium. I hit the spot with my cousin Arinze and I met up later with my pal Josh from Xanga. He’s a cool dude, he brought along his digital camera. And thus I got me self some real neat pics as you can see below. We had a full strength team, but it’s a pity my favourite player Julius Aghahowa only came on with five minutes left to go in the game. Being that to make the World Cup we needed to win plus hope for a favourable result in Kigali, peeps kept in contact with happenings over there. And there sure were a lot of false reports cos peeps were occasionally jubilating as if things were going well for us in Kigali. Towards the end of the match the real news came in and we all left the stadium disappointedly. By the way, my fellow Nigerian fans e never reach wey we go begin rock our national jerseys/colours come watch match?!

Nonetheless the evening was nice. I attended some diplomatic party (more like get together) at Minister’s Hill Maitama with Josh. I was invited by Jeremy Weate. He’s a Brit working in Abuja and he blogs! I haven’t been around so many white peeps/foreigners in a very long time man! The stuff was cool though, but unlike a typical Naija bash this party was all chit chat. No loud music, loud noise or dance floor action (but there was lots to eat and drink). Plus the celebrants/hosts were a couple (white dude, black chick), thus it was all kinda adult like. Well whatever, before I bore you lemme hit you with my closing thoughts. Don’t you hate it when peeps, especially a girl you’re digging fails to keep to appointments repeatedly? And what’s it with El-Rufia and co, and the privatization of houses in Abuja? The prices for the houses are crazy don’t you think?

Start of the Nigeria versus Zimbabwe game. October 8th 2005 at The Abuja National Stadium.

Have you ever been damn broke and down to your last kobo? Well I was constantly in and out of that situation recently. I was a broke ass nigga for sure and man it wasn’t funny. But I guess it was a good lesson in life; cos I’m usually not the prudent type when it comes to managing stuff but now to some extent I am. I was really stressing that I had to limit my non-food related spending, hanging out with girls and stuff of the social type in general. Cos man I couldn’t even buy mami a drink if the need arose. It could be financial suicide! Naturally I despise begging/borrowing/hustling for free stuff cos at times it can be really degrading. But I had no options; I just had to reach out to my fellas for help. It was that bad that I was hitting my Uncles in town real frequently to get that free grub. And my Moms who can be difficult at times ain’t help the situation out much. She thinks when I ask for money it should be mainly about feeding. I guess TRAE’s an animal who just all about feeding and sleeping, ha-ha. But on the real I need to stand on my own two feet as a man pretty soon. Yet upon all this any little dough I got was spent going online. As rappers would say “TV/The Game/Hip hop needs them”. In my case the internet needs me; I had to get my ass online man. Ha-ha.

empty pockets. nobody wants to be a broke ass nigga

Fuck all that, I’m still eager for Naija to qualify for the World Cup. The Greatest sports tournament (after the Olympics) in the world! And that’s through the African World Cup qualifiers. Actually it’s a joint World Cup and African Cup of Nations qualifier. The scenario was real Interesting this weekend and I savoured it all. I watched three games. South Africa’s flop away to Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire cracker with Cameroon and Nigeria’s superb victory over Algeria. There are five groups in the African qualifiers and the winner of each group books a World Cup ticket. So far no team has qualified from Africa for the World Cup. They all gots to chill till the last round of matches in the first weekend of October before a winner is decided. Mathematically, those that stand a chance of booking a World Cup ticket are Togo or Senegal in group 1, Ghana and DR Congo in group 2, Cameroon or Côte d’Ivoire in group 3, Angola, Nigeria or Zimbabwe in group 4, and Tunisia or Morocco in group 5. For Nigeria, our destiny is no more in our hands. We gotta do our best in our final game at home to Zimbabwe and Pray Angola slip up away to Rwanda. Nevertheless we did superlatively well away to Algeria yesterday; we beat them 5-2. We (Super Eagles’ Team A) haven’t scored that many goals in a match in a very long time. From the game I made some observations. Eguavon’s a pretty good coach. He sure looks in charge of the team selection wise. Martins is now undoubtedly our number one striker, the boy’s simply good…that sure is some competition for Aghahowa when he’s back. And I take back my Kanu dis. He might be a bench warmer at his club but as a sub in an Eagle’s shirt he sure knows how to turn things around.

Also I take back my Play Station 2 (PS2) soccer dis in one of my former posts. I’ve been playing a few soccer games on PS2 recently and man the game ain’t bad at all. The graphics are neat (it makes the game look so much more real) and the stats as well. Plus the mobility of the players is actually good. Thumbs up to the PS2 makers. Damn, I hope say I no be Johnny just come cos i heard PS3’s already in the offing.

Inter Milan and Nigeria’s ObaGOAL! (Obafemi Martins) after one of his goals against Algeria

The notion that our leaders don’t care was partly proved wrong to me recently. I received a mail from David Clark in response to a post made on my blog where I explained why I ditched my MTN line for a Globacom line. He’s the Operations Manager for MTN in the Western Region and he’s based in Lagos. He wasn’t happy that I was abandoning my MTN line for a Globacom line and he wanted me back. We exchanged ideas on the MTN and Glo subject matter via e-mail and on phone (he should be a white dude from his voice). And it all amounted to him sending me 6,000 Naira airtime credit to recharge my MTN line. That’s about two months of validity/access days! I was stunned cos it’s girls that normally receive such stuff from their numerous admirers. But all the same I’m highly grateful to him for the kind gesture; though I sold the credit cos I had more pressing financial matters to deal with. I will recharge my MTN line with a 400 Naira air time credit later on. That’ll guarantee that my MTN line will be active for another four months and make everybody happy . Final word: if MTN rocks your world big ups to you, but as things stand now I’ll still be using my Glo.
An MTN kiosk. One among thousands that are situated all Nigeria

So much for MTN making my day, now on to being gay (not the sexual type, embrace your dictionary)cos of football. The Nigerian Under-21 team: the Flying Eagles have been making our day here in Nigeria for weeks. Under the tutelage of Coach Samson Siasia (an ex Nigerian international) they’ve been excelling in the FIFA World Youth Championship: Netherlands 2005 and are into the final which is to be played today. They’re a wonderful squad full of talented players. Here’s our journey so far in the tournament
The Flying eagles before one of their games.

0-0 versus Brazil (Group stages). Cautious game, once it’s Brazil, whether it be the Under-13 or Over 50 team it calls for caution.
1-2 versus South Korea (Group stages). Painful loss, lost concentration and threw away our lead in the final minutes.
3-0 versus Switzerland (Group stages). Handled their biz well and spanked the Swiss, to send us into the 2nd round.
1-0 versus Ukraine (2nd Round). Nice game, Taye Taiwo saved the day with a wonderful free kick.
1-1 [10-9] versus The Netherlands (Quarter finals). Nerve racking game, beat tournament host on penalties.
3-0 versus Morocco (Semi finals). Very sweet game, taught our North African brothers the game of soccer.
?-? versus Argentina (Final). Big one, reminiscent of the Atlanta 96 final. What’s it gon’ be? We pray our boys prevail. The match’s coming up in a few hours time. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed and wish our boys the best of luck. Peace!
The Flying Eagles celebrate after scoring.

Valentine’s Day, February 14th with its entire hullabaloo has come and gone. And luckily for me I had the best Val ever this year. I went dancing with this girl Maura at Jives (a joint on campus, DJ FX2 held things down) and had a real swell time. It seems I’m on some love shit, she really is my type. Got similar interest with me, a nice character, good looks-banging body and most importantly she’s real fun to be with/flow with. I got asking out plans but the only problem is I’m up against some working guy, damn. Well I don’t blame girls for going for business men/working (financially secure) guys over students cos we all love money. And besides they got the marriage shit coming up for them much earlier than for us; so it’s like the earlier the better. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally against the man being the almighty provider idea. Me thinks relationships should be some’n of equals in all aspects. I would love me girl working and making dough too. Damn, i needs to get me ass outta school (don’t wanna over stay my welcome) and start making that cash independent of my parents.

Still on cash I just gotta warn guys that it ain’t all about the dough when trying to get laid/a girl. You gotta work on your game, although dough helps sha. I got this friend who’s spent a fortune/investing big on this girl (she’s a playa big time) and she still refused to give him head. So he beat her up and it’s causing some real nasty probs right now. My advice to him was to suck it all up and move on. He’s lost and like totally, and there ain’t a damn thing he can do about it. But it’s a good lesson learnt and it’ll help him strengthen his game. And if he starts playing his cards right he’ll be sure to score big in the future. In fact I ain’t gotta talk too much; mistakes are never the end. Learn from God’s son himself: Nasir Jones a.k.a. Nas:

“A quiet man who used to be alone planning
Baby moms thought I was too quiet, couldn’t stand it
She hit the streets, later on she hitting the sheets
With a rapper who wanted me on his songs, thinking he strong
I taught her how to watch for cars that might follow
Taught her street shit that I know
Her weakness was shine yo
But that’s her, I ain’t mad baby, it made me stronger
Now I get my paper longer”
Nas in the song “Last Real Nigga Alive” from the album: God’s Son.

Yep we was exactly like this (not quite as wild as this couple though) on Val nite. Stealing the show on the dance floor for sheezy. Love, such a beautiful thing. But I wonder how many peeps in Naija ever get to really experience it.

Now on awards. The Okocha situation really is fucked (He once again lost out on being crowned the CAF African footballer of the year to Cameroun’s Samuel Eto’o). Agreed he’s not in the best of form right now but he should have won if performance in the year 2004 is the award criteria as we are made to believe. He had a great Cup of Nations and did spectacularly well through out the year. Awards! Always some shit gotta pop up. Its how Ghana’s Samuel kuffour missed out in the 2001 awards to Senegal’s El-Hadji Diouf. It seems either the organizers were biased and influenced the selection of the winner some how, or maybe the voters were to blame. Since the voters were national football federations it’s most likely they weren’t really fair to themselves who the best player was and went ahead to vote for who ever they personally liked. Anyway enough of the heat. I’m happy that kanye West copped some Grammys last week and didn’t go 50 Cent‘s way when he didn’t win any award in last year’s event despite unarguable deserving it for making great strides in the Hip hop scene. Kanye really deserved it. I can’t get enough of his College Dropout CD. It’s among the few CD’s I can listen to from start to finish loving all or almost all the songs.

Nigeria’s own Enyimba of Aba, holders of CAF Champions League trophy want to win it for a second time, and back to back for that matter. The decisive date is Sunday December 12th. It’s the “D” day for the second leg final. And guess what? It’s holding in Abuja. The Aba stadium was banned due to the poor quality of the pitch. Trust Nigeria and maintenance now.

Truly Enyimba have been trying. Kudos to the boys, the fans, the club management and the Abia State government. They really impressed in the first leg, they played some pretty skillful football. At least much better than in some of their previous matches. And since they scored a goal away (they lost 2-1), a one nil home win would be enough to clinch the cup (the away goal rule in international tournaments). Peeps shouldn’t complain too much of hostility in Tunisia. It’s just the fanaticism and passion of the wonderful game of football. After all we should thank our stars for getting a goal…, which looked offside. Etoile deserved their win sha. No thanks to Obinna Nwaneri’s over busy body, which caused us a penalty for their first goal.

Anyway all that is gone. Fans should look forward to the final and go out and cheer Enyimba in full force. We shouldn’t disgrace Naija. Fans should fill the stadium and show the world we got love for our home teams too. If I’m in town by then u bet I’ll be there.

Enyimba celebrate after scoring a goal in the first leg of the CAF Champions League final 2004 away to Etoile Sahel of Tunisia.