Monday, November 21, 2011

Move Over Apple: Sony now moves into commodities

"Money has no sex...we are all in bed with it. A few with more *somes than others." Davis Musinguzi [Twitter: @Davisthedoc]

The man posted it in his "za twita" and I almost #died. Anyways, more on that later. But one can see the essence. We are all in bed with money, and some people have twosomes, others threesomes, others foursomes. Golola Moses just lets them hang on it, swing, and sing "siporingi". It didn't make sense when he said it at the time, but with all this load shedding and the global economy almost becoming as reliable as an old man's erection (which reminds me of a sweet joke Okonkwo's youngest wife makes about his guns that don't shoot in Things Fall Apart, prompting him to take out his rifle old and shoot), it follows that companies will look to expand production and diversify revenue streams.

When Sleek said here, that the one thing in Uganda that was all the rage was NRM sugar I thought he was joking. But when I learnt that M-7 traveled to Israel and was meeting with Israel top leadership not to discuss arms but economic support I had a change of heart. I knew my man Sleek was onto something. I assumed Rutanyarahansi had taken his long-waged threat to its ultimate conclusion: He had decided to export a finished product from Uganda. No its not a joke, the electricity we send to Kenya and Rwanda is not complete - it lacks load-shedding [for finished product ask Ugandans]

Anyway, I was quite proud of the man. But I was soon to discover that we had been played. You see when Sevo met with the Israelis, there was a Mossad ex-chief there who attended the meetings. I suspect this man took Sevo's finished product which was most delicately prepared at the high altar of Ugandan agriculture; our country's collective farm (dear old Rwakitura (which has a wiki page BTW)) and sold us out to the damn Japanese. Whilst I suspected this, I had never expected for them to hit us with such force so soon. Which leads me to conclude they outsourced to the China.So imagine my shock when I came face to face with this horror:


I mean, I know Apple decided to go into Lions, Leopards and the rest of the Feline Family, the New Vision moved from a crappy website to an even crappier website, MTN Mobile Money became like a campus chic whose phone number is never on after you buy her chips and chicken twice, Umeme... &*$#@%%^&*(&I^$^#$^**!#@#@.(That's wing dings, so no one gets arrested). I get it we are all trying to make a buck, but really?!!
OK, wait for our retaliation.


Have a nice day!

Saturday, November 19, 2011

The Urban Legend Party and Bad Black's Dollars

For those of you who weren't there at the ULK celebrating one year party a lot of things went down.

Well for starters me and the Good Doctor walked down there after judging the 3rd Annual National Inter-University Female Public Speaking Contest. A mouthful you think? Well, I wish the contestants had a mouthful to say. They didn't, which made the task a chore in tedium. But which had its redeeming moments of laughter, conviction, and eloquence. We had been tasked to deliver 20 out 87 students appearing from 17 universities across the country. Last year's winner was from MUBS (I don't know why they don't just build annex dormitories down there already). Makerere oyeee!!! But I digress.

So we got there and they had this beautiful TV slideshow rolling at the chic Boda Boda restaurant. They had cordoned it off for the VIPs and so we just stood in the "kirasha": the place where the general happiness crowd hangs out. And we stood there waiting for it to begin. And we stood. Polite smiles to old enemies. Annnnnddddd we stood. At some point in the evening, we were joined by more amenable company, a lady who is making her first appearance on this blog and will hopefully be making many others in the course of this blog (OK Carol, now you have appeared on the Spartan's blog). The evening lit up as friends started to show up and also make polite gestures. I had to wonder whether they too were making polite smiles at old enemies. But I learned a long time ago never to live without enemies, makes you soft. Ask Bad Black or Gilbo Mahogs.

The party began and the emcees took it away; I don't know who the male emcee was (and frankly I'm fresh out of rats, so...) but the female emcee, Marie just rocked the daylights off the party. It was really good. I can still visualize Streetsider trying to take on IamEnyma in Runya-flow; and almost conking out like a badly-serviced P.S.V. It was hilarious. As we stood around chatting, talking, and sharing the delight of being among good company came to me. It fell on me like the morning dew that always fell on my face in secondary school on Monday mornings because that was when I always read the news for the whole school. I had to be at school early. That's why the dew always fell on my face as I walked in.

But my absolute favourite part of that night was when the legends started making it rain on us with Black dollars. OK, the money was black on one side, But the front had Bad Black. The one and only Shanifa Nalukenge. 
One Black Dollar from Bad Bank
Yes, that was the highlight of my evening. I am easy to amuse and that's proobably because there things about me that are impossible to change. Its the ying and yang that balances me out. Those of you who don't know Bad Black and all the acrimony she has caused read her life story here

I eventually walked home that night when my ride was unceremoniously hijacked by a wily and sharp witted damsel. I'm quite sure he had his reasons. And besides, who needed a ride anyway? Right?

So Thank you ULK for a glamorous party. Incidentally, I noticed while taking a long stroll with a fellow writer friend of mine recently that of the 5 legends, 4 went to the same school. hhmm... But my theories on that later.

Till next time.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Gratitude

grat·i·tude 

[grat-i-tood, -tyood]

noun
the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful: He expressed his gratitude to everyone on the staff.
Origin:
1400–50; late Middle English  < Medieval Latin grātitūdin-  (stem of grātitūdō ) thankfulness, equivalent to grāt ( us ) pleasing + -i- -i-  + -tūdin- -tude
 
 
And just like sand through the hourglass, so are the days or our lives. I remember when i first heard those words. There were very foreign to me, I found them quite touching. Till I found out there were taken from "Days of our Lives". Apparently a great show as well.

Its coming to the close of the year and I have so much to be thankful for. Its been a year of discovery, testing boundaries, exploring, recovering, and motion. And when it was all done, just do it all over again. I've had my moments this year, good moments of almost sheer brilliance and the not so clever - no wait, moments of just being dumb. 

But I want to talk a little bit about gratitude. Just a little. I quit my job a while ago to do start consulting. As a result, I spend a lot more time at home. Part of that time is designated as cooking time. I love to cook. It brings a darkness inside me to the fore. I guess that's why i love food: because its sweet and keeps my mouth shut from saying things that I will regret.

Never before in my life have I had the experience the last few months have given me. Spending time to look up a nice recipe, takign the time to go through it and then preparing mentally to execute. The feeling was like an Ad Campaign on juice! And tehn cooking it. But I have found that no matter how good a chef you ae, its a long time u til you strat to understand what it takes to eat and ppreciate your own food. 

its not like just about your locus of identity being external, its also linked to being able to say, no one has to see how good my cooking is. I just know its good. So it is. And that right there comes from a long way off. It came from a place of accepting taht I can't draw and well the other things my hands are good at would not fit in the spirit of this post. (adult material just)

Anyway, this is a thank you note, because as I was going through Twitter i realised that the 5th trending topic was #WomenWhoDontCook.  iIts quite easy to ignore  but as i thought about it and all the things that were being said, i realized, that I never cared about women who couldn't cook until I met a woman who could (No, you bastard, it wasn't my mom.)

Its not big till you realize not a single girl who you have gone out with this year has stood in your kitchen and cooked or made something to eat. Was i wrong? Was i capturing it out of context? Had I created a slanted view by discounting the fact they all almost came at night and left 24 hours after that?
 
I have nothing against women who cant cook as i am sure they have nothing against men who give them orgasms because still they stay, and so will I. I just think they have missed an opportunity to strike at the heart of something special. But I also know that they then hold no allure for me. Nothing. 

So thank you for teaching me how to appreciate the value of the time that goes into making a meal for a loved one, or anyone really. I always could cook, i just never had seen as a form of self expression. Thank you for the patience. And thank you for, without any of us both knowing it, raising the bar.

If presentation is everything then Soho Cafe and Grill got it right with this all day breakfast




Thursday, August 18, 2011

I Was Terrorized

Well have been terrorized for a long time now. Every time I open the newspaper there is some sort of new direction in editorial policy that the newspaper has taken without informing myself or any of its over 30,000 readers. One almost feels like they are attempting to just test how far we will go before they finally recant their bad manners.

1.       Take for example what appeared in the New Vision yesterday when the president joined deputy speaker of parliament Jacob Oulanyah and family to cute the caking during the thanksgiving ceremony at Bobi County. Really?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!! It is hopeless even despondent to even try and say that this news on page three is worth the paper it was printed on. I was not surprised by the New Vision’s murderous ways with the English language. But then again it might be the result of having charlatans at the head of an organization that requires experience, brains, and dedication. I might be a clichéd out twat but I know that news editors never go to bed before the paper goes to sleep. They don’t go down to UMI or 2nd street and order goat balls and millet bread if the paper looks like this the next day!
2.      




But one might perhaps think I am being too harsh for a slight error that could just as easily be on any newspaper in the world. I do not disagree. I just think if you are slowly trying to turn the nation’s lead newspaper into some sort of child porn front, you need to be more discreet than that what the New Vision did a few weeks ago. So what are we telling the Red Pepper? That they should just up the ante?


 Till later


Orbis non Sufficit


Monday, August 8, 2011

THE REASON WHY EVERY GIRL SHOULD ASK HER MAN FOR A SOUNDTRACK

I was going about my weekend when a track started playing incessantly in my head. It brought an idea: every man has a soundtrack in his head when he is taking his woman. It may be an obscure, poor quality scratched CD version but somewhere you have your lashing soundtrack; the one that plays when you lash your woman.
I also got to thinking about when I didn’t have a soundtrack how it went. It was alright. However every time I had a soundtrack it had been a more than stellar performance. You gotta think about it. Certain music makes you a god.
There are things that make the music die, like bad head, like smelly armpits, like grime on the neck… there are other things but I will let you fill in the blanks. I found it frustrating every single time my music went out. It gave me that sense that a guy gets when a woman accidentally flicks her tongue around his crack – fear and instant blood flow to the muscles to feed the sudden adrenaline rush in preparation for flight. The problem with that is that it gives you a flaccid dead fish right in the middle of a nice hot romp (NOT COOL).
I also found that my soundtracks even though auditory were photo chromic. They were affected by light. For enduring performance, light had to be largely dimmed and ambience enhanced. I thought I was getting insecure about what I looked like or what my woman (or women, whatever) looked like. Then I set up a control which involved doing it in the daytime with the curtains drawn and with the curtains open. The latter proved to be almost impossible (damn the landlord’s dog!). Dim works for me.
Knowing this, I then delved into the investigation of what I really thought was my soundtrack. I particularly like Klaus Badelt’s soundtrack to “Pirates of the Caribbean” even though I found it a bit fast to lash your woman to. Then my mind moved over to another track that’s actually an old favourite – Ekikere kirikumbaata (the frog is mounting the duck) which is a nursery rhyme of questionable repute ; too funny but unfortunately not applicable as well.
As the search for the soundtrack continued, I remembered that one time I heard a long piping tune, from somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind. Brandy’s “Come a little bit closer” called out to me and whispered to me like a siren only to get closer and find the mind had tricked me and was actually playing Julianna or Grace Nakimera (this especially sucks because Grace Nakimera has no Wikipedia page) or some such local Ugandan diva music. Eeewww!
I have arrived at my conclusions for this lesson:
  1. The soundtrack is defined at certain critical points when definitive sexual and sensual moments are afoot. Women, ensure your man knows your soundtrack.
  2. Some will how do I do this? Well, when you guys are getting freaky, play it off the stereo or your phone, in the post-coital afterglow (while he naps), make sure eth songs you like are on repeat, that way it subconsciously seeps into his mind. He will never feel right humping another woman with that music on. It short circuits his cheating mechanism.
  3. Assuming this is hogwash is the kind of foolishness is what will get your guy getting freaky to any type of trash music because he has no soundtrack. Listen. Get a freaking soundtrack.
  4. My advice is don’t play it off the radio especially Capital FM because of all the bubble gum music they play. You don’t want the guy stuck on Alex Ndawula’s or Jimmy Jones’ soundtrack (both of whom have no Wikipedia pages). You’re trying to improve the bastard, not main his psyche for life.
  5. Invest in a quality, distinctive, unique soundtrack. Remember that soundtracks are a series of songs often with a similar theme and a strong undercurrent that should be able to deliver the same feeling every time. So one song will just not do. Buy a memory card, an iPod, a stereo or start eating bananas to sharpen your voice. You need at least a whole album.
  6. Whenever people tell you “that’s the song we danced to the first time we met”. They are lying. Curse them to hell because really what they are saying is that it was the song they first “did the deed” to.
  7. This is a warning to all player boys out there – stay away from other people’s soundtracks. It may seem smooth to be soulless by being able to relate to some random guy’s soundtrack while you do his woman. But it isn’t. These days you hear girls talking about how “shallow guys are”. It’s because of you twats. You guys give us a bad name. You have to be able to enter a woman’s universe and she can feel how palpable your soundtrack is. All of a sudden the music in her life seems to have twang of you in it. Hence when you are gone, so is your music, your soundtrack and your essence. Even though you remain in her subconscious (*snigger snigger*)
  8. Movie soundtracks are cool, you know Hans Zimmer on Megamind but you don’t want to mess with Gladiator, The Dark Knight or even Inception; the darkness might be too much. I just recently graduated from the Mission Impossible soundtrack because it wasn’t working – face it, no one will let you hump them to Tom Cruise’s pattering feet. Feel free to experiment with a variety mix but I would generally steer clear of entire movie soundtracks. Sit down and compile something that’s you.
  9. Even though when we are growing up we are inevitably exposed to our parent’s music and influences, you should, as you grow, strive to veer away from this acidic leverage. Or else you end up…

Well let’s just say it won’t end well.
My thoughts end here.
Have a nice week.



Orbis non Sufficit


Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Failure: An Open Letter to My Yet Unborn Son - Choose To Be Worthy

Failure is a way of life for a lot of people. But it is a path that we all like to deny, even though we all take it. I was telling some friends a couple of weeks ago that as an African man you are born with so many disadvantages against the guy born in Europe, Asia, south America or even north Africa that often you have to work twice as hard to even get at par.
I am serious. The American kid has a strong education culture and a functional education system should he so choose to ever attend or focus on that. The opportunities to excel in sport abound, the remuneration of which is staggering.
The girl from Asia might not have these abundant privileges, but she does have a culture, an ethic, a family support structure that allows her to work harder, want more and, be assisted to achieve higher than other people she competes with. Her culture’s history is written and dated for the last 8 centuries, in china its 30 centuries! She is grounded on where she is from and is not confused about who she is.
The same boy from Schengen will have arguably some of the best and free education on the planet. With resources and amenities that allow him to travel abroad on summer immersions and the drive to expand global influence through aid, he will probably work for his government, oppose his government or simply live on unemployment benefits and still be fine.
Now let me talk about the boy from Uganda or sub-Saharan Africa. He is born as a statistic where 1 child dies every 4 seconds. If he makes it to the first year, he will have survived being among the other 10% who don’t make it out. If he make sit out of the age 5 category, he will have almost have escaped the infant mortality. Then he will struggle with the education process, rote memorization, and the possibility of never making it beyond primary school, because if he does, he will again be part of a statistic that climbed one more rung up the ladder (with 121 million children out of education). His ascent into secondary school will be plagued by the glaring absence of critical thinking technique, the presence of biology teachers who failed to become doctors or physics teachers who did not make it into engineering.
As he climbs higher into A level or tertiary education, he becomes parts of the thin air constituted by the small numbers where spots are few; the funds even fewer. With no scholarships, he will likely go into vocational school, or go into a teacher training college or hopefully make it into a university where he will study a Bachelor of Arts degree in Arts or in Sciences or Social Sciences.
With no infrastructure for him to get gainfully employed, he moves from his rural home to the city, when he lives in a slum. With drainage, water, sanitation, hygiene, resource, ventilation, rule of law and societal challenges, the hope of making it out wanes.
His girlfriend mothers his first son before he can plan to properly take care of them both. He has to do a side job to make ends meet. Take a bribe. ”Do a deal”. Cheat a little here and there.
Why?
So he can give Martin his son the chances he never got. Get him the toys he never had. Pay the bribe for martin to go to the school his father never had the ability to do. Pay for the university course that Martin wants so he can really excel. So Martin can take care of him. So that Martin can live the dream.
He will make some money in his middle years as he gets the hang of things. Eat red meat every day. Drink a beer with his friends. Drive everywhere goes. Drink full cream milk every day.
At 45, he will have ulcers, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, gout, chronic back ache, visual impairment, loss of hearing, or all these. He will probably die at 60 of these or related ailments.
This is unfortunately the story for a lot of our generation. Has the boy from sub Saharan Africa failed? Could he have done better?
He might have done better. He could have worked harder and slept less in school and gotten better grades. And then a become doctor or lawyer, an engineer. He would then have migrated from this profession into politics and then maybe he wouldn’t have had to toil tirelessly to give Martin a fighting chance.
I am not this man. But I have failed. I was looking at my life and I thought about all the things I could have done better and why I might see my life as Martin’s father.  The chance to make a difference lost to expedience and the practicalities of survival in the African environment.
I have failed so much in my life that when this recent failure came, it did not come as a surprise. It just hit me so hard that I couldn’t imagine that everything I had lost in my life had come down to and could be surmised up into this one rejection. Below are 20 colossal failures that I want to share:
1.       I thought about the shoes I lost in P.1 – which I never forgot because my father talked about them until I was 20!
2.       I thought about that incident in P.5 when I betrayed my best friend to a girl we both liked. We both never got the girl. He was never my friend again. And what that taught about loyalty.
3.       I thought about everything that happened when my family left me alone in a new school with no friends and left the country. And how that affected my take on education, authority, and being the new person.
4.       I thought about losing the vote for assistant head boy by 3 votes to a guy who today is a senior network engineer with a telecom company. Maybe that would now be me.
5.       I thought about failing my primary exams and how for the next 6 years I dealt with my father nagging and nailing it home. It was a 6 for Chrissakes! Not a 12!!  And why my definition of success is my own.
6.       I thought about my first day in secondary school and listening to a young man who would later become a pastor (albeit disgraced) at a church I would try to attend. Reading the schedule, and life at the great college, talking about tradition, and self reliance. I remember him picking me out and saying I was the paragon of what a “St. Mary’s boy” wasn’t. Him pointing to my shorts and saying they were what not to wear. And what that did to my opinions on appearance and presentation before people.
7.       I thought about my first pair of glasses that didn’t work and why for the first two terms I couldn’t see what was taught in the great lecture halls at the college, or the messed up sleep schedule I kept which meant I literally slept throughout my whole first year. And why I was not surprised when I was asked to repeat a class with an average of 58.7% with a 60% pass mark. And the lesson of exacting standards which followed.
8.       I thought about coming back to school the next year, when my parents thought it was too much work to bring me to school, so they sent me off with my foster parents to report because they couldn’t be ashamed. And what that informed me on shame and togetherness.
9.       I thought about where I was standing when the van of buns was robbed. I remember 2 boys who would later become lawyers whispering the plan and the flurry of activity as the van was raided. I remember the punishment and the “superman” in the school compound. And how I learnt that no matter where you are, you will stand alone, you must always be responsible for your actions.
10.   I thought about an acronym that I carry seared into my left wrist. Burnt in there by a young, nice man who would die in our fourth year of school after an accident because the ambulance couldn’t pick him up. Because he had no insurance. He would bleed to death on the tarmac. The acronym reads CAT. The first two are my given names. The third a name I took from a young man who would go on to join law school and a fantastic practitioner with enormous peer reverence. Back then when I took his name he had saved my life – as in literally carried me off the edge of death thrice. He didn’t know me. He knew nothing about me. He was simply being friendly to a guy who looked like he needed someone to talk to. He would never know I took his name and owned it to forever remind me that no matter how tough it got, life would always prevail – and because of him I would never give up. The name means “we are beloved”. And whether I had failed him in giving up along the way.
11.   I thought about the day I walked out of school and knew I would never come back as a student. With an indefinite suspension and no knowledge of where to turn. The bleakness of the future and how the resilience of the human spirit is amazing.
12.   I thought about the Adventist school where nothing was what it seemed. The teachers who married their students, the drug and alcohol abuse that abounded, and how I was not able to resist the peer pressure. And when, as I walked out of the school, I thought about short appearances, life choices and why I would choose differently next time.
13.   The thought process then led me the conversation I had when I was being told that I would not be going to school anymore. I was being shipped off to the village to stay with my grandmother. My failure to resist and beg for another chance, my inability to see that education was the key to being successful – at least back then. I remember what this taught me about humility and courage.
14.   I thought about the two weeks I stayed on the streets. The prostitute who fed me, the boy who shared his cardboard box with me even though I had invaded his street. I thought about working in Owino in the day and coming sleeping at the foot of the independence monument at night. And the irony of that situation, and life in general.
15.   I thought about how ironic it was to be a new student in school in the village. From wearing blazers with emblazoned “Duc in Altum” to wearing pale fifty-count thread-bare black cotton shorts in a little known school as the last bastion of learning for me. The lessons, the courage it took to show up for my classmates. Often in bare feet. Not slippers or sandals; just their feet. I remembered the energy, passion, effort we all, as a class, put into our classes. It didn’t matter where we were from, where we were headed. It was a class of 96. 40 of us were offering physics and chemistry at O’ level. Our science lab had only 15 pipettes and burettes with a little fewer than 50 test tubes. I remember the look in our faces as we learnt something new. The rancour in my gut when I thought another boy in another school had electricity and a backup generator where I had a pressure lamp that sometimes didn’t have kerosene. Selling bananas to eke a living, to get by, pay dues. I have an underdog mentality. It stays with me everywhere, allows me to challenge establishments, to go against the grain, to want it more than the next guy, to will things I want into existence. And why I think revenge, in any form should be slow in coming. Very slow.
16.   I thought about our very first physics practical exam. As the leading student, the onus was on me to hold it down. The other students would be watching me for guidance, for fortitude. I remember Didas looking at me from across the room. Without the shoulders or the mental strength to bear, the levees burst. And the consternation in Didas’ eyes as he saw the invigilators bring a basin for me to stand in and finish the exam. Walking out of the exam, knowing I had nailed it but failed to hold my piss and making a promise to myself. And what I learnt about presence of mind, mental fortitude, and excellence.
17.   I thought about the first time I kissed a girl. The awkwardness, the trauma, the clashing of teeth. The strange nervousness after and the shiftiness that had enveloped that affair since. And how I never know when it’s time to let go.
18.   I thought about Namilyango days and the bogus literature teacher who had tried to hoodwink the class. Telling her to never step into our class again. Being the rebel, the inciter, the instigator. And what that taught me about peer leadership.
19.   I thought about university. How far I had come to get here, where I had had to dig myself out of. Every day. Every fight. Every scrape. Standing at the university grounds on graduation day two years late because of lascivious exchanges that didn’t happen and as a result, stuck in a placement that neither allowed growth, rewarded excellence nor recognized effort. Two jobs later, that paid a little over 100 dollars a month for the first and a job that would turn me into a work addict, 7 days a week for the second, I walked away from it all. And what that taught me about pain and loss.
20.   I thought about one night when as I walked with my best friend on the university campus the university security patrol truck swung around the corner. We ducked for cover because we had been on the back of that truck before. I remember muffled sounds as the guard shouted, I remember kneeling and shouting “We are students! Please don’t shoot.” My arms raised in the air. I can still hear the bullet whizzing past my head and sharp crack as it exploded through my friend’s leg, with a shattered femur. I remember calling the one friend we both had in common. I can still hear the cackling laughter as he switched off thinking we were joking. I remember holding my friend in my arms, taking off a new t-shirt I had and tearing it to wrap around his bleeding leg. I will never forget Vincent, the cab driver who picked me up. And at the sight of the blood started crying immediately. I would never use another cab driver if I could for the rest of my life. Entering the casualty ward, no attention, shouting voice. “Can I get some help!!? Where the F** are the doctors in this hospital?!!!” I still feel the cold stainless steel table on which they lay him. Me holding his hand as they dressed the wound and as they stitched the 5 inch scar in my skull. And the long wait between 3:20am and 8:00am when families started arriving. The wait, without a bed sheet. Without a blanket. No shirt for me. No trousers for him. Delirium at 6:00am as the biting Katanga breeze rushed into ward 3C. I remember someone saying “it was your fault” and I remember saying “but the guy who shot at us appeared in court and you didn’t even turn up!” “It’s none of my business” And why there are things that should never be forgiven. Ever.
Why do I tell you all this?
Because no matter how much you think you have lost, you never get used to it. No matter how much you think you know failure, you don’t.
I tell you this because my failings are not even half of this list. The things that make me insecure, afraid, and terrified, smile, laugh, stress, bounce or even just stay still. Because for the first time I was faced with a loss that I felt I totally had no control over and no matter what I said, I was just giving an excuse, which wasn’t enough. In a moment of darkness, I reached out to a friend, who incidentally is called Angella, and when I thought I had failed again, extended her hand.
The loss will be a story for another day.
For today my story is that I have failed too often, come from too far, and beat such incredible odds, that on any continent I have done my dues to deserve to be at par with any one man my age. I am the African boy who has the same dreams as the girl in Asia, or the man in the Americas. I am not Martin’s father. I refused that lot a long time ago. I have demanded for more soup. I will have a bigger piece of the cake, not because I am entitled to it, but rather there will be no one to give it to. I stand among the ranks of those who have failed enough and are not ashamed of it.  Today I stand before you, all failed out.
I am worthy.


Orbis non Sufficit


Monday, July 18, 2011

The story continues.

Then there was the scenario when an ex girlfriend of mine sent me a text on one of those Bubbles’ quiz nights. She asked where I was. I said I was at Bubbles. She asked if she could come. I said she could. When she texted me in an hour from that time, I said I was heading home. She asked again if she could join. Somehow in my mind I thought she was asking about whether to come to Bubbles. I said yes. This should have been fine except there was already someone at home waiting for me; which is how it got so dramatic.

I get home hug the bowl as I wretch, and go off to sleep. Imagine what I was like when I woke up a couple of hours later to find that the wench who was waiting for me at home and the ex with an axe were seated on the bed asking me to explain what they were both doing in my house.

In that moment I realized that everyman dreads this moment. You live your whole life dreading it. In the post mortem of the situation my best friend then said to me something that I had never understood before:

“Every man dreads it but deep down, deep where no none but he only can see, he wishes it happens to him so he can say “it happened to me and I lived it down”.

In the heat of the moment, though, you never understand how that moment will define you. So I started debating the choice on who to demonize and who to save.  Damn the ex, she would be easily expendable. She was the ex after all. And for causing this drama, she deserved it anyway. Or damn the new girl. She knew nothing of this whole drama and her search for answers was met with consternation and derision from the ex. I then had a “Prince-of-Persia” moment where my body almost shifted out of itself and assessed the situation.  Which is how I came to one of those king Solomon-esque ideas.

Damn them both.

So I opened my mouth and what happened next I don’t remember but all I remember was it went something like they both needed to leave my house. I didn’t give a shit and I needed to sleep. My alcohol-addled brain seemed to comply with the request to deliver terse, curt and abrupt life lessons. I then dozed off and woke up at midday the following day.

Both were gone.

Frankly I actually thought it was going to get physical and I was worried whether in a moment of drunkenness a man could ever justify an inexcusable action. When it didn’t, I learnt these lessons:

1. The reason why the greatest lovers are stone cold sober is because they cannot afford to have situations they can’t control happening to them.

2. When in doubt about choices, walk away. Everything is dispensable – so is everyone.

3. Never EVER fool yourself that you know what it feels like to be in that situation until you have been in it. And if you have been, wear your badge with pride.

 4. If I didn’t work in the industry in which I work, my phone would religiously go off at 12:00. That way I would be unaccountable for all goings on after this time. But mine doesn’t, so here is a word of advice, don’t ever pick calls from our ex after midnight. It’s a trap. It’s always a trap.

5. As I found out, sometimes your ex doesn’t even want to have sex with you, she just wants to make your life miserable and assuage their insecurities. In The 48 laws of Power Robert Greene says in law 40 “Despise the free lunch”. Master this law. Never forget it. If it’s cheap, ignore it. If it’s free, run.

After all that drama everything else seems to pale in importance.  But I would be foolish if I did not tell you about this new girl. She is wonderful. Nice MILF with great character. I was thinking I will tell her a story with some spiel about what I have been through, my life story yada yada. She will probably buy the story and before I know it, we will be prancing around town in search of the next best thing. You would think I would want more out of life, wouldn’t you, but quite frankly I don’t.

And that is all I have to say about that…

 

Orbis non Sufficit

 

 

Friday, July 15, 2011

A long long story...

I have been here in a while eeh?? It feels good to be writing again. Well actually I have only written  one sentence but that still feels better than what I have written over the last half year.

My life has been dramatic as you might expect. Up and down. Here and there. But mostly in and out. Well, it’s almost half year and I am thinking about things people who would normally read this blog would normally be looking out for.

A new house

I moved out of my house. Well the other one where I lived and again to a new one. Quite nice actually. I was able to get a house with two bathrooms but one toilet bowl. So what the hell does one do with two bathrooms? Wash your feet in one and the rest of your body in the other? Then I discovered that when you host guests over, it serves well for you to use different bathroom coz then you both ruminate on your iniquities of the previous night separately. No shared guilt. Also after one of the guests run away with my special Radox weekend strawberry smoothie, it became wise to split the bounty so as not to inspire larcenous feelings in people.

Then there was the issue with the new account at work that caused a lot of excitement among my colleagues and forced there to be screaming and wailing and tears.

It all started…

So when I was hired as Business Development Manger I was not told that things would be as difficult as they had been over the last few months. I really needed an account. A new paradigm, some salvation, anything! If you are in this business, you know that once you draw two salaries and stuff ain’t working, you know that your pitches need to get better or you need to get going.

 I was getting used to the place. I was starting to like this place, as I am oft wont to do. I liked the people, had made some friends. I had gotten attached. Then one day the owner of the money descended upon me in a dark alley at the office that has no CCTV (yes, there is CCTV, and this conversation “never happened”). And there it delivered with a clam, death-defying tone that I would not be tolerated anymore if I was not getting any clients. As I looked into the facts surrounding the lack of clients, it was not because clients were afraid of working with us, it was because they actually had and were happy to stay with whoever they had at the moment. So when I went into “pitch” mode for a beverage company, I was truly frightened that things would go awry since I would inevitably fall at the helm of all pitches for new business… we went in. pitched for the business. And went back home.

They called us two weeks later to say we had won the business. We were called and that is how after almost two years of being out of the business, I was thrown back into the tumultuous and high-octane world of Public Relations. Things like these sap your soul, one thing at a time, one day at a time. This is what we did.  And we hope to do more.

 

(To be continued…)

 

Orbis non Sufficit

 

 

Thursday, February 10, 2011

UBL UNVEILS THE NEW LOOK BELL LAGER BOTTLE!

The new Bell Lager bottle

Uganda Breweries has unveiled a refreshed Bell Lager complete with a slim long neck bottle, in a move brand officials say will reinforce the premium quality attributes that the flagship brand has been
associated with over the years.

Unveiling the refreshed Bell Lager bottle to the Press at Serena Hotel - Kampala, EABL Marketing Director Marion Muyobo said, "Uganda's oldest brew which has been perfected to international standards by the best brewers in Uganda has now reached the height of quality with the new look." She
attributed the innovation to Bell Lager consumers. "As we follow Bell Lager's foot prints over the years, we owe the brand's success story to its loyal consumers. It is you who have made Bell what it is today. It is you who have continued to define the direction the brand will take. As you hold the new Bell Lager bottle in your hands, we can tell you agree that the brand has achieved what it set out to achieve.eight of quality", she said.

The old Bell Lager bottle
Bell Lager has spanned over 60 years in the Ugandan market as a premium quality brand of international repute that epitomizes Ugandan heritage and has won numerous Monde Selection awards. EABL Uganda Managing Director Alasdair Musselwhite said the Brewery found it inevitable to refurbish the packaging to match the ever changing consumer preferences, lifestyles, and trends. He was quick to note that the new look Bell does not in any way compromise on the taste and quality of the brand.

"The premium quality lager is made from only the finest barley, hops and water to produce a world class beer, unrivaled in freshness. All our processes work together to give you a world class beer, now in the new longneck bottle.


Thursday, January 20, 2011

These Tears

These Tears
Its oft said men cry no tears
That like silent cars shift gears
And with the softest thump bears
The greatness of the world on his shoulder bears
Lest the world should at him leer

But these tears I cry?
These tears are for no man
They are not tears of men
They are not tears of pain
These tears are mine

Feel the nacsnt abortion ripped from you
Reel as the words tear each morsel
Keel they spirit as its its crushed afoot
Real people, telling things unreal
Roil in fury at the betrayal of trust


I ask not and I give not
My trust be for me to be
For worse it is to have loved and lost
Than it is to have a love lost
But a job is merely is merely but a job
These tears I cry?
I will never cry them again
Not for her or any woman
Not for it or any job
Not for them any colleagues
And not for Him or any dream.

I am a select first born son
I am a survivor of a gun wound
I have looked poverty in the face and stared her down
Knowing what need is, being needy, hating the neediness and all the while doing the needful
I’m not a weaver of dreams
I’m a catcher of them

Casting out a thin fine mesh
Trapping them, netting them, and
Slowly sorting  them with errorless trance

I will take these tears and dry them into crystals
Like the crystals from the tears of a thousand angels
Out of these crystals I will build a diamond jacket that I will vest around my most tender spot.

I will take these tears and replace my aborted heart
Wash it in  the healing salt of these tears
Make it untearable, for when the war is done,
 The heroes lie on the field while the one-legged coward tell the tale.