Can you relate with this?

“The tellers and customer service ladies of Bank EW are just plain rude; imagine going to withdraw your own money and being told to wait for hours or to come back tomorrow because the servers are down; I don’t remember them telling me that when I came to open the account!”

“My sister I cried to my creator from the bottom of my heart today. I was made to feel subhuman just because I went to one office to submit my CV”.

“I can only blame myself for taking my own two feet into that place. The reply I got was so cold and unhelpful just for the simplest of enquiries. It was a total waste of time and energy.”

“Why do these ISPs keep employing clueless and dumb people? Can you imagine the guy at the help desk telling me “I was not trained to activate this plan on a phone. I can only activate on PC. Please go and bring your laptop”. Source.

“My people I don’t even know why we waste our time on this the Police is your friend mantra in Nigeria. Do you know that I always have to make sure the money in my pocket is enough before going to the Police station to report a genuine issue? It’s like those guys work on a pay as you go basis.”

If you can relate with all these read on, if not please quit reading.

Colleagues we’re in that shoe now with our present job, we can either prevent people from further experiencing and saying the same or we can tow the status quo. Let’s do away with the “everyone wants to fix humanity; no one wants to fix themselves syndrome. It begins with you, change begins with us.

Just like relationships crumble if one party doesn’t offer to say I’m sorry, or a traffic jam gridlock persist if one driver doesn’t say “I’ll be patient, you may go first”. Things can only be better off if we decide and start to make an effort.

Like the hotel bell boy let’s learn to work like our only form of remuneration was based on tips arising from the level of satisfaction our customers get from our service. Let’s learn to treat our customers like we would treat our mothers

Let the below thoughts and often made statements be things of the past

a) Nkemakonam Ezidinma Ifejika opined on facebook that for Nigerians anywhere in the world, customer service is a gene extracted at birth. That is to say Nigerians are incapable of being consistently polite and helpful. They are the kings and queens of mood swings.

b) In Nigeria there’s no place for merit. We can’t queue or be patient. Everyone wants to cut corners and get served before others. It’s like a “my family comes first” credo. And that’s why poverty persists because those in top positions don’t allow for the wealth to flow down to the bottom, hence everyone wants to be at the top and so corruption is birthed. We were brought up this way and so bring up our kids in like fashion too. A vicious cycle.

c) There’s a deep rooted rat race or jungle mentality in Nigeria that impedes development and breeds nepotism and tribalism. Like Mark Shuttleworth said: “Tribalism is when one group of people start to think people from another group are “wrong by default”. It’s the great-granddaddy of racism and sexism.

d) Nigerians are only bothered about the self, there’s no sense of concern for maintenance of public/company property. That’s why the civil service is in shambles. That’s also why the white man is brought in to instil discipline; we then fight to go abroad to enjoy the perks of a disciplined society we have denied ourselves.

In line with the above and bringing the matter back home mycustomer advocates the following

1) And end to the “applications are not working please call back” sing along. Especially when we don’t even bother to get them working in the first place, have no idea of their workarounds or can’t even be bothered to remember our passwords. Food for thought: Do you know that telling a customer that the applications are not working please call back is akin to telling a pensioner who invested a lot of energy and money to go back home and come tomorrow because the bank for some flimsy reason or another cannot pay today.

2) It’s good to pick 200 calls a day but it’s even better to pick 150 and deal with them decisively. We’re lucky to have a strong brand and a consequent low elasticity of demand but we should bear in mind that ultimately customer service goes a long way in determining customer retention and business profitability.

3) Stop leaving your mails unread. You stand to keep yourself ignorant (no product knowledge) when you do so consequently manifesting in frequently putting your customers on hold and running around the call center asking questions. You also leave the knowledgeable customer shaking his head on the opposite side lamenting your cluelessness.

4) An end to the “I’ll end call on you”, “I’ll block your line” incidents. Let’s learn to manage our irritations and show compassion to the slow to comprehend and confused. You become a better person, the bigger man when you learn to tolerate customers venting their anger on you yet reply politely to empathise and educate. It shows there’s substance in your character; consequently you’ll see that people will want to look you up for a repeat dealing.

I now hope that upon everyone reading this, this other incidence that some of us regularly experience will decrease: “customers asking for a way to get back to us directly as they are afraid of speaking to others because they have no confidence their queries will be resolved on a random call back.

“Like the hotel bell boy let’s learn to work like our only form of remuneration was based on tips arising from the level of satisfaction our customers get from our service. Let’s learn to treat our customers like we would treat our mothers”

Right now I’m grinning from ear to ear, feeling like a girl with small bust who just came out of augmentation surgery . My life’s much more organized now, specifically email wise. As a follow up to my previous post I just upgraded, got with the IMAP movement, figured out Thunderbird and migrated fully from Yahoo Mail to Gmail.

Prior to this and after my previous post the situation I found myself in was similar to this:

How can I import old emails into Thunderbird? I am trying to import emails from ALL of my folders and subfolders into Thunderbird, however, it’s not working at all. The only mail that is imported is from my “Inbox” all other mail is stuck on my old e-mail service. It is just one e-mail account. There is the main folder, which is the INBOX where all incoming e-mail goes. Then there are a series of sub-folders. For instance, anytime I send an e-mail a copy of it is in my “Sent” folder. Also, if I get e-mails that are specifically work related or school related sometimes I send them to sub folders that I created (i.e., “School”, etc) So these folders encompass everything from the default folders of “Sent” “Draft” “Outbox” etc. and ones that I’ve created which are like “saved” and “school”. When I set up Thunderbird it only imported mail from the “Inbox” not any of the other folders. This is a school email address (that is, .edu). When it expires I don’t want to lose all of my email memories. You know, it’s kind of important.

Worried was I and so I reached out to more knowledgeable people. Oluniyi David Ajao responded with this advice:

Try using IMAP as your “server type” instead of POP. IMAP should download all your folders exactly as they appear on your webmail. Best wishes.

Yes, just like Yahoo Mail can be tweaked to work with POP it can also be tweaked to work with IMAP. Gmail explains the difference between IMAP and POP thus:

Unlike POP, IMAP offers two-way communication between your web Gmail and your email client(s). This means when you log in to Gmail using a web browser, actions you perform on email clients and mobile devices (ex: putting mail in a ‘work’ folder) will instantly and automatically appear in Gmail (ex: it will already have a ‘work’ label on that email the next time you sign in).

And so I got working. I met with success, setbacks and ultimately perfection. It took a tip from the master Bijan Soleymani himself to set me straight and towards the finishing line though.

Here’s how I did it. I first of all installed his modified Thunderbird 3 for Windows XP, found here.

Then I used this to set up:

Incoming server: imap.mail.yahoo.com (IMAP port 143)
Outgoing server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com (SMTP SSL port 465)
Username: Yahoo username@yahoo.com
Password: same as yahoo webmail

Of course remembering to select IMAP when setting up the account (add mail account).

I then set about making the Yahoo Mail to Gmail switch. This article should guide you. It did for me though copying stopped working after a while. What I did was to break every thing down into small pieces and copy batch by batch via creating new folders and then consolidating them all into one once they were into Gmail.

Voilà I’m good! I now have all my Yahoo Mails (6 years thick) into Gmail, and with Gmail’s Mail Fetcher I can operate my Yahoo account plus my other two email accounts all from my single Gmail account! Gmail is brilliantly yakpayaski!

If this post sounds like gibberish to you don’t be alarm, people have different interest and we’re probably not operating on the same frequency. Some others though could read this and be like “kini big deal?” But anyway considering the problems the issues I’m about to discuss posed for me and factoring in the time spent researching and looking for a solution I think it’s wise I put this down to help all those going forward that might be saddled with this same issue.

Props here will be going to Gmail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Google Search and the host of geeks, nerds, software developers, bloggers and helpful people online who bless the internet with useful tips here and there on ICT focused websites. While proper disrespect will accordingly be going to Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo! Mail for their shortcomings. Ok let’s go there…

It so happened recently that in one of my usual day to day sniffings around the World Wide Web I decided to finally try Gmail in-depth and as faith would have it I saw the light this time around. It was fun discovering all the cool things Gmail could do which Yahoo! Mail couldn’t. Of particular interest to me was Gmail’s Mail Fetcher feature and in exploring it is when I got reintroduced to the world of Post Office Protocol (POP). I was smitten so much by Gmail and this particular feature that I decided to consolidate all my emails into one account, the biggest task of which would be integrating my over six year old Yahoo account. Google Search always being my friend unlike the Nigerian Police and there always being so much information online from geeks and nerds alike I discovered that there was actually a way to get POP access for free Yahoo Mail accounts. And that is simply by changing your preferred content setting to Yahoo! Asia (Note: this might not work for some newly created accounts).

In the end after several tweakings and trials I decided against accessing my Yahoo Mail via Gmail and instead turned my focus to re-establishing my use of email clients which I last utilized at my former job. Microsoft Outlook being what I was used to I decided to set it up on my system. Set up was easy and automated (here’s the manual setup instructions) but little did I know that one of its default setting was that it does not leave a copy of messages on the server! Man I was screwed! On seeing my inbox depleted I felt empty as if a major part of me had been ripped out. Luckily though it had only downloaded 72 messages from my inbox before I discovered and rectified. But still the big issue now was getting those mails back to my inbox. All hope seemed lost as via research it appeared the only hope was manually resending the affected mails to myself vis-à-vis the labourious and risky option of resetting my system date and time while doing so (to get them back in their proper positions). And so I embraced Google Search some more and when it seemed like all hope was lost I finally found meaning in the phrase “Mozilla Thunderbird”.

Open source and Mozilla, the Firefox people rock! The solution was to be found on Mozilla Thunderbird (an alternative email client) via its “Mail Redirect” Add-on. I simply followed this tutorial but with the additional tweak of doing so with the current versions of Mozilla Thunderbird and its “Mail Redirect” Add-on. (After installation I first of all synced it with the downloaded messages on Microsoft Outlook, then I set up/added my mail account followed by the actual redirecting). And everything was back to normal! The only difference spotted being the Return-Path and Resent-From values in the full email header. This though is largely insignificant. And consequently I lived happily ever after.

the summary

Anyone that really knows me in person should be aware that I like to be on top of things information wise. Like the seeker I take great pride in getting relevant info and go to great lengths to organize that info for effective use (I think I got this quality from my dad). And feeling particularly generous or scholarly today I want to bless you with my “Seven habits of highly effective information managers”; hereby referred to as HEIMs. On a Zain level I’m in a frenzy like one of my previous bank big boss, who was twice flown in from Lagos to lecture us in training school, and on both occasions ended up basing his talk (both talks independent of the other) on Stephen R Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. So let’s get started on capacity building information management wise.

1) HEIMs abhor illiteracy in all its forms because to really appreciate the importance of information management one has to be technologically aware, pragmatic and open minded. HEIMs would probably work in intelligence if they were in the army. For the young ones in secondary school my advice would be not to limit oneself to only reading the Bible, religious books and self help books but to explore the world of contemporary Nigerian fiction. Personally my favourite reads are informative/write ups/novels which come with a heavy dose of humour.

2) We would all the more be HEIMs in Nigeria if we probably had a good database management system in place. All my analysis leads me to the conclusion that if we fixed that we would be on the road to resolving a lot of our national problems. From census and population planning, to voter registration, to crime detection/prevention, to fiscal control and bank loan supervision, to academic records availability and so on and so forth. That’s why it behooves on us to take the issue of record keeping and maintenance seriously in our daily dealings. There are little things in life as sweet as being updated about the past in a jiffy and thus being privileged to make inform choices in the present that will affect your future positively.

3) HEIMs excel in phone bookkeeping and are forever grateful for the miracle that is telecommunication. They understand the beauty of talking the talk and getting thoughts across at the touch of a button. So characteristically they are always reachable by phone, text and call generously as the need arises, excel at colleting contacts of useful people and those they just must deal with on the daily, have a good contact backup culture, have more than one line considering the peculiar unstableness of our telecoms networks, and understanding the importance of networking strive for phone number retention. Some extra tips: for ease of backups you might want to jot down your numbers daily as you collect them and exploit the PC suite and sync function of your phone. Also aim for hand sets with unlimited contact storage. To get ahead 200 SIM memory plus 200 phone memory handsets are not the way to go. Additionally learn to save names in full or with descriptive suffixes for ease of recall.

4) HEIMs understanding the reality that is information overload, trash programming and junk content are constantly trying to stay geeky/nerdy yet work and leisure balanced. By analyzing and sieving what is available before brain consumption they stay on the natural high. Personally I try not to over indulge myself and stay away from things that don’t add anything substantive to my IQ. This means I’m constantly battling procrastination in favour of studying and computer programming. And when it comes to news feed, favouring blogs with original content as against gossip blogs and news recyclers.

5) HEIMs being aware of the power of the world wide web/computers practice the complete use of it as a means to an end. Here’s what you’ll find them doing. They streamline their email addresses as much as possible and harness the powers of Gmail and email clients. You’d be hard press to find them on the loosing end of domain drops because of unread/unreceived renewal reminders. They are on top of password management (at my former job FinnOne, a banking suite software failed partly because of the issue of password forgetfulness). And they embrace the idea of website and company portals as information nests. A case in point: it’s dumb…almost criminal for INEC not to publish the list of qualified candidates/test invitees on its website during it recent recruitment exercise. Also as seen in many companies the issue of sending out important memos/policy updates only via email without repository on the company’s portal for easy long term reference is akin to dishing out instructions and the receivers inundating it from one ear and letting it slip out through the other.

6) HEIMs are by nature effective. In line with this they wholly embrace the use of a diary in their day to day planning. Not being cyborgs people grapple with the issue of forgetfulness but HEIMs keep on top of their schedule and plan accordingly with diary entries and reminders. Be them electronically on phone/computers or in hand in books. A follow up trait of effectiveness is getting things done without having to be prodded and doing so as if the direct gain was for oneself. In other words HEIMs treat with dispatch issues which require their attention. And in doing so they keep it scientific, scientific in the sense that their workings are carried out in a way that on analysis a third party can easily understand what has transpired thus and take relevant follow up action.

7) Lastly but also very importantly HEIMs don’t have an attitude problem. With globalization should come the common sense that nobody’s indispensable and that we all need each other sooner or later and as such we should treat each other with courtesy and respect. On a Majek Fashek-2face Idibia tip, little little patience and cordialness in our conduct now can have big positive implications later. Tolerance, politeness, a thank you here, excuse me or sorry there can in some way get you that information when the need arises that’ll help you break fronts.

The world Cup South Africa 2010 being now 40 days away, the true Super Eagles fan should have these three World cup songs on his/her playlist:

1) Power of Naija. Guinness commissioned World Cup song performed by Omawumi, 2face Idibia and Cobhams
2) Waving flag (Nigerian Version). Coca-Cola commissioned K’naan’s World Cup song performed by Banky W & M.I.
3) Goalaaaso (Inside The Net). Paj featuring Tolumide. From Paj of “Ghana go hear wien (2006)” and “skatta dem (Ghana go hear wien part II 2008)” fame.

At my former job we once had a customer walk into the bank and try to create a scene in the banking hall. The issue: he was a debit card holder from another bank and while attempting to withdraw money on our branch’s ATM he was debited but cash was not dispensed. The Issue happened over a month ago and after repeated complaints at his bank in frustration he decided to come over here to see how he could get his money back. Ideally such issues are resolved thus:

-Customer complains at his bank giving ATM officer there all necessary details of the incident
-ATM officer of his bank logs complaint into Interswitch website.
-Interswitch forwards complaint to “erring bank”
-Head Office of other bank liaises with branch (branch ATM officer) responsible for particular ATM
-issue is investigated and if other bank’s claim legitimate entries are reversed and feedback given to Interswitch
-Interswitch in association with customer’s bank makes sure customer is credited (pay back) accordingly

After some questioning it appeared ATM officer of customer’s bank had yet to log in complaint or did so erroneously as though our ATM officer observed the error he hadn’t prior being petitioned about it. Customer in lamenting the situation brought the “do you know who I am” angle, and in response a good number of my colleagues went cold towards him and thought the man was making a mountain out of a mole house (paltry 15 thousand Naira), especially for someone of his calibre. This is where the peace of mind angle comes into play. My money is my money, be it six hundred naira or sixty thousand Naira and I have every right to be extremely cross by its perceived theft. The right way to handle the situation was to empathise with customer (no matter the extent of your own perceived personal problems), explain to him the process flow for resolution and to truly show you understood his plight and to prevent him from continually running from post to post offer to speak on phone to ATM officer of his bank explaining to him your findings.

More often than not we’ve complained about treatment meted out to us by perceived aloof bodies, but on occasions when the tables were flipped we did the same to others. The inspiration to write this arose out of the recent experiences I had with my website in regards to its Registrar and its hosting.

I’ll be forever grateful to Chippla Vandu for taking care of my site’s registrar bills for the first 5 years and Kayode Muyibi for doing same hosting wise. The favour was truly invaluable. But alas we at times sadly fumble in an otherwise smooth long run. To use some economics jargons (hopefully correctly) Kayode went beyond his elasticity and the economics of scale proved counter productive. This is where Nigerian entrepreneurs (a good number of Nigerian web businesses are solely run, or handled by 2-5 hands) must beware, try and expand within your capacity so that you don’t get overwhelmed in providing support to your clients. Else it would be a case of abandoning your solid bowl in place of a porously leaking bucket in your attempt to fill your water drum stationed in your kitchen. The issue of Oluniyi David Ajao (owner of web4africa.net) versus Naira.Kbps (first register of nairabytes.com) is another sore case. It’s truly shameful the way the issue deteriorated. Even if it was against Web4Africa’s policy to refund hosting payment the moral thing to do was to push the domain name ownership to Naira.Kbps, as against the case now where the site’s registration having expired has been acquired by a domain parking shark.

So in conclusion for your peace of mind I strongly recommend Netfirms and Hostgator to Nigerians resident at home when it comes to the business of Domain name registration and hosting respectively. Slightly expensive they might be for some people; the truly informed and knowledgeable know that no price is too expensive to pay for peace of mind. And that it’s better to be a king in the jungle (run your own shit, have full ownership/control) then to be a dog in the city. Props to Sound Sultan.

Domain name registration on Netfirms is presently one of the cheapest on ground. You can easily pay with your Nigerian bank issued VisaCard or MasterCard. But be sure to have a scanned copy of your ID and your card available for confirmation purposes. And you can easily search online for coupons to reduce you bills. Props to Sawyerr Ken for the plenty tips.

Hostgator is undoubtedly one of the most reliably Domain host in existence. Their customer service is second to none. Tickets are replied typically in less than an hour and you can even chat live with a support staff 24-7! Site content transfers can also be done free of charge for new customers, who also get the advantage of price coupon discounts on their first signup. Like on Netfirms payments can easily be made with your Nigerian bank issued VisaCard or MasterCard (this time preferable issued in your own name). And be also sure to have a scanned copy of your ID and your card available for confirmation purposes. In extreme cases and sadly due to the wide spread fame of our 19 boys Nigerian customers have been known to be asked to send in pictures of them holding their ID cards. Cost might be pricey but peace of mind is guaranteed! In this case props to Udegbunam Chukwudi Emmanuel for the plenty tips.

True peace of mind is people helping people

I joined Facebook some two weeks back because of all the hype about it and I didn’t want to appear odd; but now I can truthfully say with all due respect to the site’s founders, staff and members that I don’t find Facebook useful anymore.

I’ve realized that I spend a lot of time on Facebook getting nothing constructive done, in other words I accomplish nothing by being on Facebook save for feeding my hunger for junk info. That is browsing profiles, finding out who knows who, reading people’s lifestyle updates, trying out applications and observing people try to outdo each other with pictures in a bid to look cool or hot. I’ve now come around to my senses to realize that all these are things I can really live without knowing/doing.

Another reason why I don’t find Facebook useful is their collection of too much data than is necessary; scaring the pants out of those who want to be incognito online. Their real name policy for account holders is the starting point of many people’s privacy concerns.

Yet another reason: I had sworn off social networking sites after Blackplanet.com. During my late teens in 2002 Blackplanet was where I cut my teeth as an internet citizen and got to know how the system works before aggressively familiarizing myself with other corners of the internet (wasting a lot of time and money in the process). That is to say I’ve been there and done that and so I can’t afford to go backward by getting addicted to another Social Networking Site with all its vices when ideally I should be progressing.

One more reason: I’m now of the conviction that if one wants to be cool (that’s a large part of what Facebook is about) it’s better done in more profound means by putting more effort into writing in one’s blog, selling products and brand advertising on one’s website, hosting one’s recordings on one’s music site etc (whatever catches your fancy) than by uploading pictures and making ego statements on Facebook.

To round things up I’ve now resolved to stay clear of Facebook. Instant Messaging (Yahoo Messenger), blogs, forums and email are better alternatives to me for social networking. I’d now rather sleep, read, study, listen to music or watch a film than do anything Facebook related. Don’t get me wrong though Facebook will no doubt still make a lot of people’s day but for me I’ve outgrown it. I don’t find Facebook useful so I’ve deactivated my account. I’m looking forward to completely deleting it soon. Cheers.

And talking about love, it’s now official! After years of languishing in singledom and waiting on love I’ve got me a girl. It feels good to finally find someone who I can afford (to keep). My new boo is a laptop, the Toshiba satellite A110-195! I’m still trying to get to know it better, do a little tweaking here and there and install one or two stuffs. I wish us many fruitful years together (I’m monogamist oriented, hope I don’t have to get a second wife or upgrade too soon), and now just like Globacom I can truly rule my world! “No be small thing oh!”

My mum’s passing away got me feeling all religious or more correctly coming into contact with a lot of religious…paraphernalia. In my usual religious musings way (don’t mistake my brief writing for simplistic analysis, I’m not one to expound too much in blog posts) I now strongly subscribe to the thought that atheist are getting it wrong big time by living in ignorance. I’m saying the Bible…Koran is too much of a highly structured literary work for one to still doubt that Jesus existed (or that there’s no God/Creator/Supreme Being) and still think that all that are in those books are mere fiction. I mean we’re talking about decades of logical history here, clearly the Bible is no super James Hadley Chase (bookworms fix your favourite author here) novel. Another point is the Mastermind argument (which I’ve always loved) which counters the Atheists’ claim that life just evolved on its own and as such there’s no Supreme Being. The argument goes thus: on sighting a television set common sense tells you that with all its complexity it must have been created by someone/something, it didn’t just evolve on its own. Thus common sense should also tell us that the world/life we live in was orchestrated by some Supreme Being. Yet another point is the barber story. An atheist who was a barber kept blabbing that with all the suffering in the world that surely there’s no God but someone shut him up by asking him with all the mad scruffy haired people on he streets will it be fair to say that there are no barbers? On the other hand…like some atheists I do have good reason to (partially) doubt the Bible and question God as to why he no longer reveals himself as explicitly as he did in the past; but with my Liberal Christian ideology I’m happy to say that I can sleep in peace at night. My brother/sister “no be small thing oh!”

P/S: No be small thing oh! (Nigerian Pidgin English) = It’s not a small matter. The phrase is increasingly popular these days due to 2face Innocent Idibia’s extensive use of it in his new album (titled Grass 2 Grace).

With all humility: The Toshiba satellite A110-195 “no be small thing oh!”

Teaching as I see it is basically explaining what one knows to others. What you give your students they imbibe; you become the Alpha and Omega…students are so manipulatable! Anyways looking back at things now I feel that I could have done a much better job than some of the people who taught me when I was in school.

But talking about the present you should see the way I’m respected here. Good morning sir this, excuse me sir that. It’s all new to me and it’s a really pleasant surprise. Another pleasantry is going to be having a room to myself for the first time in my life! On the unpleasant side is the fact that there’s no strong FM radio or TV signal here! I never taught I’d find myself in such an information poor situation . Anyways thank God for compact discs. Hip hop album check: Modenine’s “Pentium ix”, check; Freestyle’s “free at last”, check; OD’s “don’t hate”, check and Pherowshuz’ “House of raps (rap-representaTIVs)”, check. I sure do hope to have a “SOUND” service year . Nice play on words huh ?

And for the really unpleasant: we’re “loosing” a lot of quality bloggers in the Nigerian blogosphere; it pains me a lot. Back in the day it was Teju Cole, Obifromsouthlondon followed suit weeks back and now it’s Sir Aihammed Delot. Because of that let me put you up on some (if you’re down with the blog thing). Your blog is meant to complement you and not to stress you. What I’m saying is blog easy and on your own terms. And please don’t put stuff that’s too personal online or stuff that you’ll regret later…especially when you’re not blogging anonymously. The internet has a very good memory you know…Ok class dismissed, i’m out.

To Sir with Love; great book, great film.

In light of the fact that a number of the Nigerian bloggers I read recently spoke on religion I’m seizing the opportunity to say my own religious bit. If one was born a Christian he’d love Christianity and think it’s the one true religion. If born a Muslim he’d love Islam and think it’s only way to go. Likewise if born a pagan like in the days of our forefathers he’d love his gods and think that’s the shit. Crazy ain’t it? But bro the fact is that religion is like college fraternities. You join and subsequently follow the rules of whichever you choose. All have unity in mind, all worship the same God and all have their various highs and lows. In fact the biggest bad of religion is that all claim to be un-contradictory and perfect as a way of life when in fact none is perfect. Don’t get me started on the imperfections, Google is your friend. The funny thing is as much as they have contradictions we still need ‘em. So do your thing people; for me I’ll most likely be found in the Catholic Church.

When it comes to male-female stuff it’s often the guy that initiates the topic for discussion and then both get chatting (especially when they’re at the getting to know each other stage). But there’s room for exception, we love a girl who keeps us captivated, listening, laughing and going with her flow. In fact I really hate it when a girl calls me and has nothing to say; you know expecting me to dictate the flow. Bitch you called, speak to me, stop making me look like a jerk, I’m not Dave Chapelle you know, I don’t get paid to talk. Wallahi such stuff makes me want to decree that if you ain’t calling me about money (money coming to me, if you’re a guy) or sex (if you’re a girl) then don’t bother calling me.

Perfection can only be found in football, music, pictures…things of that sort

I swear it’s cool watching football with no strings attached. Patriotism can be a real muther******. I remember our loss to Côte d’Ivoire at the ACN2006 semi-finals; I’ve never been as annoyed because of a match as I was then. I was raving and yelling through out the game and at blast of the final whistle I felt like crying. Added to that Momsie teased me after the loss and I stormed out of the house angry. But you should see me now; I’m a big flirt football wise and its fun!

As much as the WorldCup is a melting point of cultures, the national teams are melting points of another kind. You can find peeps of all types repping one country. And it’s courtesy of the mix-raced thingy, immigration and emigration, acquired citizenship and footballers playing for the countries of their parents. Checkout Figueiredo and Ricardo of Angola or the black dominated French squad with space sef for the Indian like Dhorasoo to fit in. it’s a beautiful thing ain’t it?

I think it’s about time God sent me a laptop. Computers are so much a part of my life that it’s criminal for me not to have one. There’s only one PC at my crib and PHCN issues coupled with sharing issues often deny me the chance of enjoying the damn thing to the max. I swear PC waiting is worse than TV waiting (sitting through a boring program on TV and not being able to change it cos someone else is watching it). Just as some Nigerians like to say “South South for Presidency in 2007, non negotiable!”; I’m saying I need to use the PC when I need to use the PC, non negotiable!

I’m tired of reading/hearing stuff from people (arguing with people) at the opposite end saying Hip hop is bad, Hip hop is dead, Nigerian artists sound and sing too Westernized, Hip hop artists swear too much, TRAE stop swearing…whatever man. “That’s how it is” by OD is just what the doctor recommended. Over and out.

The Black stars of “Africa”, una well done