Tuesday, October 27, 2009

27-10-09

Tomorrow's P's birthday. I've not fully decided what to give her. The
day before my birthday, she invited me to hers to eat whatever I
wanted the next day. Being true to myself, I managed to be occupied
till it was late, then sent a text appreciating the gesture (and her
text - it was the first to come in), and give my apologies for not
taking her up on her invitation. If you have a good idea that will
work for a brother on a budget & with a deadline, please drop me a
line, ok?
Dropped by the General Hospital today to meet some folks & get a test
done (no, I already did one to check if I've a brain in my skull.
There *is* one, and it doesn't rattle around in said skull). There was
this little girl who couldn't have been 2 years old, brought in by her
mother. For some reason, the lab people needed to draw blood, and they
tried time and again to do so and kept coming up with empty syringes.
She kept crying, and her pain touched me. Like all those little things
that remind me I'm human though, I forgot her in the rush to achieve
my own ends.
I've a beautiful friend that is an indigen of Zamfara, and on learning
I was posted here, I sent her a text (thanks MTN, for not delivering
it) joking that I was going to the paradise of beautiful women. During
camp, I wanted to ask her if she hid them all. Now, I'd modify that
question: where're all the grown-up ones? I can't date teenagers or
younger (and why am I in a school - a *primary* school? I keep
thinking, I hope they don't marry off my girls while they're still
kids, that they get a chance to grow up & live life)!
I was caught with my shorts down taking a crap today. Make of it what
you will. It wasn't any of my kids who caught me, though, nor was it a
female.
It's raining and it seems there's a cat drenched. It's mewing outside
while the Nigerian U-17 team plays. I'm not watching. There isn't any
point. When our U-20 team played Tahiti, I sat in the common room
where the match was showing *throughout the match*, then had to ask
someone for the scores after the match. I just don't dig soccer.
My test came up negative for malaria parasites and 'too low' for
typhoid. That's odd because I had been having fevers on and off since
Thursday, and even went to sleep with one on Sunday, yet I'd taken no
medication. God must have smuggled something into my mouth ;). My
dreams of boiled sweet potatoes, fish stew & <efo riro> came to pass
this morning, too :P. Pity I didn't eat it warm.
Well, that's all for now folks. Be good, and don't let the bed bugs bite.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Batch C Passing out

Today's batch C's passing out. While it's long overdue, I feel
envious, because I haven't run my course here. I also feel some
relief, because I'll be rid of some people who have had a tendency to
do or say annoying things. A little green-eyed monster is lurking
somewhere around, because some people I'll miss, including the former
Corper Liaison Officer, and the former General Secretary, an
exceptional young lady who exemplifies what men call 'wife material'.
There are women & there are *women*. She isn't the best looking young
lady around here, but her attitude & personality are top-notch. I need
to work hard on myself so I can take care of someone like her (I'm
definitely going to marry someone like her. Who no like good thing?).
Anyhow, I's all good in the hood. Later

--
Sent from my mobile device

Sunday, October 18, 2009

MTN, like what?!?

I started an experiment today. Yesterday I got a call from a fella I
knew back down South. Said dude has since moved out of the country,
and called me about some help he wanted. My Gmail phone client
wouldn't download the attachment he sent, so I installed Nokia PC
Suite & set up my phone as a modem, connected to MTN & fired up Opera
10 with no images.
Before I started, my credit was NGN 1586. The Gmail homepage failed to
load initially, so I turned on Opera Turbo. I logged in to Gmail,
opened the fella's email & tried downloading his attachment (153kB).
The attachment failed to finish downloading initially & Opera
restarted the download. Once it was done, I shut down the connection.
Results: the attachment was corrupt (56kB), download speed was about
2.5kB/s (average) & I had NGN 1302 left.
Conclusion: MTN GPRS sucks majorly for modem usage & is *WAY* too
expensive for the QoS delivered.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Friday, October 16, 2009

Houston, need some help here...

So yesterday - in the immortal words of Angry Kid - "was an anus.
Horriblus. Horriblanus". I found my students - class 5 to be exact -
don't seem to know how to divide. For real, 4/2 gave then problems.
Plus, I was called upon to give the message during the fellowship
prayer meeting yesterday.

That wasn't so bad, except someone right in front of me seemed more
interested in looking outside. I do suppose it's marginally better
than that time I was called upon to give the message during Party
House morning devotion. Then, I think someone walked out once I
stepped up. Then again, yesterday, the person couldn't just walk away
- Party House is over 10 minutes walk from the church we use for
meetings.
Today was much better. A showed up at PH, planning to spend the night
with me. I went to prepare a meal without inviting him cause my last
real meal was yesterday morning, and I'd just come back from my PPA.
Had to give some students 6 strokes each cause they didn't attempt
their Science homework. Wasn't pretty.
Mallam SK put on the gen for almost 7 hours today. Good thing too,
since both my phone batteries had run down by last night. Spent some
more time on C#, lambdas & LINQ via LinqBridge. Then wasted quite the
rest of the time watching Kurozuka.
Odd thing happened this morning: yesterday evening, my roommate went
to get water from the borehole @ the local government office. Today,
he suggested I use some of it for my shower this morning so I didn't
need to stress myself for water. Forgot all about it till now. Thank
God for favor. Well, I'm having dinner, so some other time then.

--
Sent from my mobile device

--
Sent from my mobile device

Monday, October 05, 2009

To join, or not to join, that is the question

Erma Bombeck said, "Insanity is hereditary, you can catch it from your
kids" . I agree. There are few human beings as crazy as kids. I should
know. I teach Social Studies & Science to kids at the moment. I hope I
was never a kid. I like to think of myself as always having been sane.
On the issue of kids, we had power yesterday morning & this morning in
Tsafe. It was a miracle. Someone had to have done something *REALLY*
good to have offset all the candy-stealing (from kids) I've done in my
life (maybe Jesus died?).
On the subject matter, I'm wondering if I should join the League of
Nonpaying Mobile Internet Users on MTN. I realize I called them niggas
a while back. Then I got off my high horse for a bit. There's little
difference between software/media piracy & stealing bandwidth. One may
be bytes stored, and the other bytes streamed. Same difference. And
since I've been branded as an unrepentant pirate (I wonder when I'll
kick the fansubbed anime habit, for one thing), I belong in the same
class.
Anyway, I'll be nodding off soon so I can get up early to prepare to
go to the asylum-sorry, school. Later.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Saturday, October 03, 2009

Somebody help!

About 7.30 this morning. A cold breeze is blowing & I'm sitting in
front of Party House swatting away flies that land on my legs. Despite
all I know about this place, I'm still wearing shorts. Maybe I'm just
used to them.
I have a bit of a headache, I've no idea why. My roommate just said
hello. I waved back, but remembered that last night, he asked someone,
'she Dipo na human being?'. It feels difficult to stay positive here.
More & more, this place shows me my flaws all too clearly: my tendency
to look for a crutch, to lay blame, to find excuses, my selfishness,
indecisiveness...my dirty laundry is being exposed. So far, however,
only I see it.
I've been sleeping with someone - literally. At least half of my
room's population is made up of corpers yet to relocate to their
places of primary assignment. One used to be in my platoon. On the
strength of that, and because there was no other free space in the
room with a mosquito net, I invited him to sleep with me on my bed -
and have been regretting it since. Mostly due to my reduced personal
space. It sometimes makes me consider him a nuisance. Now they won't
be leaving until after clearance. Yay. Be still, my expectant heart.
Someone once said it seems to be a crime to supply power to this part
of the state. I remember someone telling me she was posted to a place
where there's power 12 hours daily. I wish that were me.
I feel I'm slowly going crazy here. On the 1st, people were playing
draughts around this time. Shows what the place is like. I've cooked &
eaten out of boredom a couple of times.
I really wish I've something upbeat & positive to say, but it's hard
enough not being actively destructive. There are some good things
about here - you'd be suprised just how many potatoes I got for N100
here; or some of the kids where I teach.
Well, I've gotta go now. I've run down my phone battery writing this.
Have a great weekend.

--
Sent from my mobile device