Swine Flu Scare, Araromire and Wings Nite!

Hmn, another blog about 3 random things. I'm getting good at this.

Ok, swine flu first. You know in Nig, with the swine flu scare we just used to be laidback and all, after all na oyinbo pple dey carry all this exotic diseases. I remember when it was "mad cow disease" and then "bird flu" How many of u actually stopped eating beef or chicken? Infact most pple ate them more cos it was cheaper. Basketmouth even made a joke about it, he was all like we cant have mad cow disease in Nig cos those Abokis used to flog the cows all the way from Kano to Lagos, watever madness they had would've definitely left them from all that flogging!Anyways swine flu was never an issue for me back then, but now whenever i'm on the bus or a train and someone so much as sniffles, i start shifting. I even carry a hand sanitizeer in my bag and use it as often as possible. So you can imagine how my heart started to race a coupleof days ago as i was discovering the beginnings of that warning itch in my throat. People it wasnt funny o, especially when i started coughing cos i hardly catch coughs even when i have a cold, plus it probably didnt help matters seeing as i am a bit of a hypochondriac. Kia kia i went to check my symptoms on the swine flu pandemic site and out of like 10 symptoms i was exhibiting more than half. I was so scared, like hey, this people will soon come and put yellow tape across my door and quarantine me and be wearing space suit to shove meals and drugs through my door. It did not help matters when my friend from Dundee told me about a Nigerian girl who had caught the thing and lovingly passed it to her boyfriend and both of them are still lovingly sharing their viruses under quarantine. Na real for better for worse, in sickness and health o! Anyways me i dont think i have swine flu sha, i have bought myself some nice Lemsip and have been downing tea like the first queen who made Earl Grey the new pink! Since i have convinced myself that i so not have the dreaded flu i also noticed my "symptoms" have started reducing, except for my new husky voice which i quite like esp the double take when people call me, like "Ehm...hello...can i speak to Neo?" I swear if i had a bf i would so have a field day with this. Hehehehehe

Secondly, a bunch of us are going to see the premiere of a Nigerian movie The Figurine tomorrow and i so so hope that my expectations would not be cut short cos we've been planning it all week and i have gingered a lot of people to go so now i have started to feel responsible for ensuring that they all have fun. See me see wahala, how do i get myself into these things, I have become the mother hen of the whole thing, people keep calling me to ask how far with tickets? How are we goin? When are we goin? I tire o! Maybe i will be doing headcount by tomorrow nite. Of which a good friend of mine from Nig is around and i invited him and he was like lai lai, how can i pay 10 pounds to go see a movie that they sell for 150naira on the road. I get his point sha, chai I miss home o! I no lie u.

Lastly, it was wings nite yesterday at the bar in school. I hardly go there cos its usually tons of undergrads probably puking all over the place but as i loooooooove chicken wings nothin could have kept me away. My friends and i ordered a modest 20 wings and Coke, though i ate like half of the wings. There were these two guys beside us who had 50 wings between two of them, and if u see how these skinny oyinbos masticated the wings ehn, i swear the souls of those chickens can never rest in peace. They even had a pitcher of their weak ass beers each (i'm no connoisseur on beer o, i have a reliable informant sha) Speaking of beer, soem Chinese dude in the flat next to mine had a party and got so wrecked that he puked in front of my friend's door b4 he passed out. I was so happy to hear that the next morning the cleaner made him clean it under her supervision. I mean what did he expect? Someone else to clean his puke?

Anyways Thursday chicken wings nite have officially become my best night. Yay! Something to look forward to at least.

Okay, jus took Night lemsip and i think it has started working, so goodnight. Forgive any typos pls!

On Being a Christian

I've been inspired to do a blog on my faith for a while now, but i think i got the much needed push a couple of days back...

It all started with the Bus 25 again! After i solemnly vowed not to go on that bus again, see it was all Scribbles fault o! Anyways i got on the bus again headed home and this time it was a ...for lack of a better word..religious fanatic. He had this huge ghana-must-go bag with all his paraphernalia in it, placards and stuff. Now Oxford Circus to Mile End is roughly 30-45 mins and this man did not shut it for the entire journey. He was going on and on about free masons, dogs and the queen.He said they had killed some guy named Mark Quinsey feel free to google. Mark Quinsey was a soldier shot dead by IRA gunmen outside the army barracks in North Ireland, he was due to return to the Afghan war the next day. His family descibed it as an irony that he was killed on UK soil, I agree. Anyways i didnt know anything about Mark Quinsey till i heard the "prophet" on the bus.

He was quite hilarious frankly, he said the queen was a witch, a serial killer, that she killed 100 people in a year. I nearly fainted when he said people who didnt wear coats in this weather were practicing spiritual wickedness cos they wanted to control the minds of others so that they wouldnt dress warmly. He had a lot against the Free masons ( i no no wetin dem do am o!) called them dogs that would burn in hell. He also talked about Madoff who "made of with people's money" and Adam Levine who was "living with people's money" The pun is entirely his, by the way. My friend's and I had a laugh after we got of the bus, but long after that it still had me thinking.

They say that there is some truth in the ramblings of a mad or drunken man. There was a lot of truth in what that guy had to say but much of it had been buried under a burning hatred, misguided passion and i dare say mild lunacy! He was what some would call a "fire and brimstone preacher" Change, repent or go to hell.

I was born and raised a Christian but my beginnings were not so clearcut. My Dad was a staunch Anglican, we went to church at 8am and stayed till 12noon cos he sat through the English service and one in my native language. He donated generously towards the harvest and building fund, so much so that they used to beat my brother and I in the junior church cos they were so certain Chief had given us more than 5 naira for offering (they were right though!)My Mum was a Catholic who later went pentecostal, actually so did my Dad a couple of years later when he suffered a stroke and often woke up at night to find out that the group of people praying around his bed were from my mother's church and not his.

As a child, in church i was at the forefront, in the choir, choreography, drama and all, but mostly it was because i loved the spotlight. I have been a person of faith for so long now, what i am not so sure about was whether it was myself i believed in or if it was God. I always had this calm confidence that i would get those things that were important to me, especially as far as my education was concerned. I didnt fret about exams or other things that should have made me anxious. I do not know exactly when i made the transition to a person that has so much faith in God on the other hand i think, maybe i have always been that person.

Dont get me wrong, i am far from perfect in my walk with God, i'm not the girl that sits in the front row of church or falls under the spirit every Sunday but my relationship with God is clear. He loves me, completely in this way that amazes me, that makes me wonder if i'm worthy, that breaks my heart every time i fail HIm, because i know that He is the only one that sees all of me, not just the side i want to show and yet He still loves me. I constantly crave a complete connection with God cos thats the only time i feel truly secure. How do i know this? I'm alive, in good health, food on my table, clothes on my back, studying under a scholarship at one of UK's top 15 law schools.

How do i know that its God, not just some coincidence to have been blessed this way? I just do, there's a strong conviction inside of me, something that is so hard to explain, something that i wish i could share with the rest of the world and this brings me back to my point, the man on the bus. He believes in what he was saying with all of his heart, so much that he risks questions to his sanity to shout it out in a bus full of about 200 people (or more!) So then i think maybe he's not crazy, maybe we are all looking at the same thing from different angles and seeing it differently. I think we all just need something to believe in, and for most of us its a struggle to explain the basis for our beliefs. In all this what scares me the most is that there are people out there that dont believe in anything, how do they get by???

MY GAYMOMETER, THE BOBBIT AND A MILD CASE OF OCD

This is going to be a very organised random post about mainly three things, anything else wouldn't fit into the title and would totally mess up my zen!

First, the gaymometer. I invented this device like 2 or 3 weeks ago, precisely when it dawned on me that i would be living in this freezer for the next year (or more)Anyways sitting on the tube or the bus can be so boring at times (at least in Nigeria you could buy anything ranging from gala to an LCD TV in traffic)so i decided to invent the gaymometer. What the gaymometer does is to measure any random guy on a scale of 1 to 10 on his gayness level. It started this one day when i saw a guy on the bus in tights (manty hose) a knit dress, knee-high lace up boots and the cherry on the cake, a patent bag. Instead of thinking about the tax class i was running late for, i started analysing what category he fell into, was he gay, tranny, psycho or what. I mean gay men are usually meticulous (the ones i want to be my best friend, in the style of Will & Grace at least) and that knit dress was way too shabby, so i just concluded he was either a tranny, a psycho or a psycho tranny. Since then the gaymometer was born! It's actually fun using it, i give a point for anything patent leather, shoes or bags, 2 points for a man-bag! Ultra-skinny jeans get 2 points, 1 point for slick, nicely put together hair, another for eyeliner and recently eyelash extensions! I hear that is all the rage now. Oooh and my personal favourite, a crisp shirt with an argyle sweater tied loosely around the neck. I mean that is gayer than Carson from the Fab Five.

Second random, you know those thingies people put up on the dashboard in their cars, maybe like baseball stars, with a skinny body and a huge head that just keeps bobbing up and down? Anyways i call them bobbits and i've seen a life size one. It was my Commercial law class and i sat next to this babe that kept nodding at every sentence the teacher made. I mean, i get it that sometimes you totally agree with or can identify with something your teacher says and then you nod your assent. Well this babe nodded at every thing and i mean EVERYTHING. Even when the teacher said we might need to change venues, she kept nodding till i started to feel sorry for her, i mean those were some vigorous nods. Now anytime i see her the word "bobbit" just pops in my head. Hope i dont call her that one day!

Last but definitely not least. Hi, my name is Neo and i have an obsessive compulsive disorder, albeit a mild one. I'm not as bad as people who count steps or turn on and off lights a certain number of times. I dont carry plastic cutlery in my bag cos i cant use the ones at the takeout place. I dont scrub my bathroom floor with lysol everytime i have to take a bath. My OCD is a very mild one, some of the things it makes me do include the following:
1. I like the front of everything facing out, like my cereal box, how the hell am i supposed to know its Frosties, if its turned the other way, right?
2. I cant stand cancelling a word or sentence in my notebook, if i do it just stares at me and picks at me, till i've torn out that page and done it all over again. Sometimes it may be my writing that picks at me.
3. I fold my clothes in a particular way and put them away blunt side facing me, no layers (which is why i knew that the cleaning lady had looked through my african print clothes!)
4. I cant stand using a toothbrush without a hygeine cap, sometimes i buy really crappy toothbrushes just for the hygeine caps and then use them on my good brushes.
5, This is probably the strongest of them all, I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT SHARE THE SAME SPOON FOR CEREAL OR GARRI WITH ANYONE! Not my boyfriend (whom i constantly excahnge oral fluids with btw) or my closest friends or my 11 month old newphew who slobbers baby spit all over my face! I can share a spoon for rice and anything else that doesnt consist of 80% of water. It just seems like the person would be rinsing their...arrrgh! You get the point. This was such an issue for my ex, who thot maybe i didnt love him enough to get over my "little phobia"

The list is much longer but i'll stop here before i start to realise maybe its not so mild afterall. I do have this friend though that will fold all her clothes all over again if you so much as touch them! See i'm not so bad after all!

The Evil that is Bus 25!

Ever heard the saying “be careful what you wish for”? Well someone could say that to me now, but I still wouldn’t mind cos even tho this isnt exactly what I wished for, I’m still loving it. I love whining about money, and complaining about how expensive everything is, I love trying to plan a budget and then absolutely ignoring it when those lovely shoes seem to be screaming my name. I love being able to eat what I want anytime I want.

It’s week three in London and I’m still going strong, I mean the last time I was here 10 days couldn’t end sooner, but this phase of my life marks the beginning of my independent life and I’d sooner choke than say I preferred my old life (at least for now) I’m all settled in, past the phase of buying silver pots that turn black when hot (I have since convinced myself that it is some sort of technology that tells you when the pot is really hot but I still pray a long prayer before I eat anything cooked in it, I’ve seen way too many episodes of Grey’s Anatomy) and irons that you could leave on your shirt, take a shower and come back to finish your ironing. What can I say, it’s the student life. I put up a notice on my pin board to remind me NO MORE CHEAP STUFF. Isn’t it ironic how I’m willing to skint on the basics but when it comes to clothes and shoes, no holds barred. Even considering the fact that I’m supposed to use the 3 pound iron to iron a 35 pound shirt…geez okay that’s a question for my therapist.

I have also been well acquainted with the evil (on is it 8 wheels now) that is called the Bus 25, this bus runs down my road and can get me to my classes and my favourite place in London, Oxford Circus! However, it is a rolling advertisement for every freakshow in London, see now the last thing I can be labeled as is rascist (I mean I am willing to marry a whitie for the sake of my future half caste babies) but that bus seems to draw out everything that should stay underground. This particular day my friends and I decided to go to Stratford Shopping Centre cos there’s this store that sells Nigerian foodstuff (I mean right down to our breakable bottled Fanta!) Immedaitely we got on the bus we were assailed by this stench that would make even the strongest cologne flee from the body of its wearer. I mean it was undescribeable, think of every bad smell you can think of, mix them up and it still wouldn’t smell that bad. It was awful and I noticed half of the people in the bus had their heads hidden in their clothes. I was tempted to get off at the next stop but decided to hold out cos our stop was just up ahead. As usual the bus was so full that there was no need to hold on to the bars, each person’s body was a support system for the next person, it was like some kind of garage band dance, grunging, I think they call it. Anyways as soon as someone got off his seat, feeling like a sharp Naija babe I jumped on it. I noticed my friend was giving me some weird look but I couldn’t figure out why, till I heard him. Oh Lawd! I was sitting next to the harbinger of the smell, he was a BUM!!! Drunk as hell and as stinky as Satan’s curse! I jumped off the chair and tried to make my way to the front of the bus but there was no safe place from that smell. A couple of people fell victim and sat next to him but none lasted a full minute, the guy could have taken a nap across two seats if he wanted. When we got off it was like swimming under water and then surfacing for air, I thought my lungs would burst. We bitched about it for a while, my friend said no way that could happen in Naija, a bum wanting to enter a bus or even molue? Even if the conductor let him on, the passengers would throw him right out. Here, I’m sure they even have one law like The Protection of Bums, Destitute People and Bag Ladies from all forms of Discrimination 1809 and if you so much as turned up your nose at him, na that time the sepe go clear from the guy eye and next thing you’re before Lord Mansfield trying to explain why legal proceedings should not be commenced against you.

On all other fronts, I’m doing well. Will soon commence OPERATION MARRY ONYIBO MAN FOR THE SAKE OF MY FUTURE HALF CASTE BABIES. (me sef no say i no well)

Resurfacing

I was going to apologise for being MIA but then i realised i wasnt the only one and that i wasn't missed so i've decided to save my apology for my next big screw up. Wow, i cant blive its been only 2 weeks, it feels like years since i was last year and i have really really really missed blogging. Well a lot has changed and apparently studying for a masters in law is not beans o! I have had a hectic month from preparations to travel, settling down and all. In fact my story long well well. I will have to sit down and dedicate one weekend to a 2page blog.

So look forward to it.

Ciao!!!