Cheers!

“In the name of the new year…”

“I don’t do new year resolutions”

We have closed the year but we will be there in a couple of hours. The last person in this room, please dim the lights. And while at it, please check your egos at the door. We are jumping into 2016 fresh! There are things we wish to leave behind while we pack our loaded bags as we walk majestically to the new year with a spring in our steps. There are however, other important things we'd like to carry forward so that while we open a new leaf, we shall find a balance brought forward. Let's take stock. Grab your calculator, pencil and a spreadsheet. 

Please be sure not to tag your annoying fragrance that assaults out nostrils and reminds us of someone we’d rather forget. There are scents that remind us of certain memories. Of girls who offer you the tips of their cool fingers in greeting. Those girls should just stay with their sorry greetings. We wish them bad things because they are bad people. They will soon be trailed by a certified hyena. One who has been inducted in the Team Mafisi Hall of Fame. And he will break her heart so bad that the entire male species will be labeled ‘dogs’. She might try coming back after being wolfed and swindled by those men whose tongues are faster than their hired cars.

For the record, my blog is a girl. A pretty little miss thing. Our relationship is nothing but praiseworthy. Once in six months I whip up gourmets (blog posts) for her like never before. But mostly I don’t cook. She on a diet, this girl. It surprises me how a whopping 365 days go with only 4 blog posts. She is not surprised. She likes it that way. To avoid world conflict in the name of heated arguments, I comply. We thrive in silence. We communicate by observing our personal spaces. We flourish in tranquility. And we like our crowd kept to the minimum. We practically feel drained when in a large crowd of people. That is why we were hardest hit after 2013. We were already living in a gated community (to avoid too many people) before the fad hit the property market with a bang. We keep good company. This girl of mine occasionally brushes against my arm like a hungry kitten.

What a beautiful year it was. Too captivating and enthralling and fascinating and engrossing and captivating that I couldn’t keep up with its magnificence. Oh! There was something else I couldn’t keep up with. The Kardashians. Of course. I’m secretly jealous of their business model, those Kardashians. How do they make so much money doing nothing? I want a luxury yacht like theirs.

When life is doing you too good you can’t ignore the flow. You must get involved and cherish the moments. Sometimes hold them close to heart. To listen to the racing heartbeat. Sometimes you will set the moments free. Then you will run after them and capture them in photos. You will resist the temptation of flooding your little victories online for the world. Just because they are your moments. 

And then this lady who sits across taps my shoulder and goes like, “Hey, I haven’t told you!” Let me lean back and be told stuff. Not before I raise a glass to toast to my avid readers. Until next year, cheers!

Bleached Business

Every time I spot a printed copy of the Business Daily on newspaper stands, I remember high school. I remember a tattered chemistry book. You wonder what Business Daily got to do with chemistry? Hold that thought. Take a reminiscence journey with me.

Do you remember your ex’s phone number by heart no matter how hard you wish you couldn’t? Bad things stick around like super glue. When computer scientists and neurosurgeons marry, they will discover a special part of the brain, about 10GB of non-volatile memory that stores useless stuff.

I remember cold metallic stools that sucked the warmth out of us in chemistry labs. Those cold stools used to have sharp right angles at all four corners. You know how that hurts your behind? If you sat carelessly the edges would rip off your shorts. Yes, we used to wear shorts. In moody July weather, we suffered. I’m at a loss to explain how girls who wear short dresses manage to sit on cold metallic chairs unperturbed.  Now if you wore a short short (notice what I’ve done there?) your thigh would be rudely massaged by 10 degrees of cold metal. Tingly sensation.  The one good thing you got out of that stool is alertness. When the teacher taught polymers, you understood polymers. You never dozed off.

I’m not done with the stools. Most of them had stands that were unequal. Never balanced when you sat.  You seesawed throughout double lessons. Occasionally adjusting to make sure the aorta pumps to the feet. If it ever does that. That is if you were unlucky to grab a proper wooden stool.

Anyway, the Business Daily. Why is it printed on some sort of brown paper? Contrast with the Daily Nation. Those are the questions I ask my chemistry.

Then I remember sexy words like ‘bleaching agent’, ‘oxidation’, ‘chlorine and its compounds’ , ‘soap less detergents’, ’gas laws’, ‘alkenes’, ‘electrolysis of brine’, ‘Avogadro’ and ‘moles’. Not all words were sexy though. The mole concept was such a turn off! Especially the molar gas volumes. It marked the beginning of flunking miserably. Forty percent became the new eighty percent.

If you hit a 41% you were badass. A Saudi prince of sorts. The emperor of Ethiopia. Haile Selassie himself.  The Mexican drug lord. Guzman.  You were Walter White (from Breaking Bad) and Jesse Pinkman combined. When you talked we listened. The earth rotated around your desk. You and your moles. You were the shit.

I suppose the only group that fell in love with chem and carried the relationship past the school gate were the shisha lovers. I imagine they used to look at the volumetric flask (or is it the round-bottomed flask) with such lustful eyes. There is something peculiar about love and how people manage to hide it or rather deny it a chance. Those chaps were not necessarily excited by the idea of a chemistry practical. What with wafting poisonous gases. They secretly admired the burette. From a distance. Titration experts those ones! They calculated molar gas volumes with their eyes. By just staring at the pot. Then there was the fume chamber. Call it shisha lounge.

Chemistry and I had an on-off kind of relationship. I never got madly in love. I wonder what I’m missing from not inhaling perfumed shisha smoke. 

Who is fooling who...

Let’s talk about two things. Teachers’ strike, and about that expose NTV aired last night trending under the hash tag #ServeAndSuffer. 

Of teachers strike.

A friend of mine is convinced that teachers should not get a penny more on their pay slips because apparently, they have not shown the cause for such increase. While this argument is premised on good faith and sounds ethical, it is fallacious in form and substance. No one would want the current impasse to last a day longer but truth be told, there’s no better time to demand for what is rightfully theirs than today.  The government needs to sit back and cut excess pilferage and wastage of resources because that’s what they are mandated for.  Tie the noose on those plundering the economy under your noses.

It is embarrassing to look at what those noble professionals make in a month vis a vis our most hardworking legislators and commissioners in public offices who are very quick to convince the masses how ‘broke’ the government is and how we have to finance mega development projects-as a matter of priority- if only to transform our loving nation into a newly industrializing, middle-income country providing a high quality life to all its citizens. Have you checked how ‘under paid’ the Salaries and Remuneration Commissioners are? Care to know how much they bag per month? What about the perks that go with the job. There are barely surviving because the love they have for this country cannot be fathomed.  How can teachers ask to be paid while our County budgets can only afford carcinogenic wheelbarrows?  The normal wheel barrows don’t cut it anymore. Where can we get all that money to buy ordinary wheelbarrows? We must be a considerate nation that does not ask for money at a time when Facebook accounts for our beloved governors have to be ‘opened’ right from Silicon Valley.

Problem is that we have a bunch of leaders who are not in touch with reality. The purchasing power of money is ever dynamic. You do not need to have stepped in any economics class to know that there will always be persistent increase in general price levels and the subsequent fall in the purchasing power of money. Even the most stable nations in the world have to deal with inflation at some level which is almost impossible to eliminate. Now, back to teachers. If say a P1 teacher used to earn X amount of money as her gross income a decade ago, it implies therefore that now she should be earning X+n, where n is the relative component of inflation added to cushion the subject. That increase does not in any way constitute to a pay increase.

Teachers, don’t buy that tired line that “there is no money!”  

Are the leaders aware of what the hell development means? The process of making the world more humane. How many people work in hospitals they can’t afford to get sick in? How many people work in schools they can’t afford to get educated in? How many people work in entertainment joints they can’t afford to party in?

Of police spokesman

Ever heard someone talk and felt an intense urge to clap their face with a chair? That sensation hit me last night as I listened to Larry Madowo interviewing the police spokesman. I didn’t know whether to be mad or sad, or both.

That guy has the worst job description. Probably there is a line that goes like; ’the ideal candidate must have the ability to shut off practical reason from time to time in order to maintain the image of the police force.’

On the fringes of Boni Forest, brave Kenyan officers fight to protect us despite great odds. The shocking bit was during question time. I was waiting for the usual PR but the man in question could not hide the fury and agitation he got from officers who are supposed to be so patriotic as to survive without food and water. Nothing seemed to work. What with the broken down police vehicle? Faulty communication equipment. The tired typewriter working way past the manufacturers had intended.    

The spokesman kept repeating how we are not a developed country.  Couldn’t help but draw parallels with operation red wings which was conceived by the U.S. Marine corps and utilized special operations forces units and assets. It is true that we cannot compare to that but surely we can do better logistically than what was aired last night.  

Owino (police spokesman) beat Pastor Ng’ang’a by answering questions that were not asked. Actually, Owino ran the show. He asked more questions than he answered.

Sample this:

Larry: Did you see that typewriter?

Owino: Do they have power?  

Those gallant soldiers earn 600 bob hardship allowance. 20K salary. There isn’t a better description of disgrace.

The problem lies with us, the citizenry. Why? Because come 2017, we will elect the same guys back to office by 6am. Who is the fool?

You tell me.

Steal the glory

You’re having a lazy Saturday morning as you lay in bed thinking about how much more sleep you need to reclaim out of a hectic week that has left you battered to the core. As is the norm,you reach for your phone across the bed only to be hit by a string of notifications. You skim through and get that annoying forward from when Kenya became a British protectorate. You start to mull over it. You realize it is a trend burning like bush fire. If you do not nip it in the bud, you will become a victim of all the forwards doing rounds. Again, you do not want to appear as a mean, repelling and unappreciative being.

That tired message that has been passed from host to host, peer to peer, through all Kenya domains, passing from one East Africa core router to another, to yonder lands and back via undersea fibre, hitting China and bouncing off North America’s West Coast, year after year. A joke perhaps squeezed off all the juice. Chemists would call it amorphous. No form. No water. A tired ass meme that you saw on twitter the first few days you joined. That Facebook story that Mark Zuckerberg must have read when the app had less than a 100 users back in 2004. That Instagram picture from last elections. How do you deal with it? Do you ignore? Do you reply? And if you choose to reply, do you sugarcoat it for friendship’s sake? Stick around for ‘Introduction to Neanderthal Media Content 101’. If you feign excitement when you’re staring at a meme you have seen 10 times in 2 weeks, be assured that you might be reserving space in the hottest spot in hell. Why can’t you just be honest? You’re worried that you will break the sender’s heart? Please break it. Stop the vicious cycle to save a soul.

Depending with the season, you might choose to react different though. During Christmas or Easter, you might get a forward from 2012 that was redone in 2013 and is still alive and kicking. And you can be sure it will outlive the ambitious LAPSSET project. In the spirit of baby Jesus or the risen Messiah respectively, you just have to be nice and argue in the lines of, “After all, it’s the thought that counts!” Some circumstances necessitate recycling. That is an exception.  

What if it is ordinary time? In the middle of June. Someone hits you up with a looong text which you are familiar with. You curse under your breath. Here we go again! Then you reply so smoothly as if it was the first time you’re seeing the message. My friend, that ain’t right. I wish phones could capture our facial expressions when we receive messages. Those WhatApp blue ticks should be accompanied by that smirk!

You ever receive that old meme from a friend, or a close relative or someone you really respect and end up replying with a smiley :-) but deep down you can’t wait to free up your phone’s internal memory. Please, next time count the bytes, do the math, raise a claim form to be refunded.

In these good times of information technology, it happens quite a lot. Too much data available resulting to analysis paralysis or too many beaten up jokes. The most annoying are the religious one’s that come with punishment at the end if you fail to resend. Story for another day.

I will not name names. I will not give fictions characters either. If you find a behavior that resonates to you, you’re most welcome to ring me and probably we can diarize our meeting to discuss further. Do not sue me for defamation as I don’t intend to injure your reputation in the estimation of right thinking members of society. I hear defamation is pretty expensive and the way my bank account is set up, I might not afford to pay the damages.

The world has space for everyone nevertheless. There are people who enjoy those messages I love to hate. Depending on someone’s personality, something can remain relevant and funny over and over again. We’re wired very differently. I know of someone who can watch a movie over and over and over again. Each time getting cracked up afresh. How now??? You ask. I think such people are lucky to have their critical boring ratios (I don’t know what that is, don’t ask) default setting set up waaay to near infinity.    

I for instance can’t repeat a movie. Anything predictable is a no go zone. Unless it is a high school set book and the English teacher is breathing down my neck! Funny thing is that even after reading I-don’t-know-how-many-times, the probability of missing that dondoo is still high. If you get bored easily, you can either negotiate to have your critical boring ratio increased, which is impossible, or be a ‘bad’ person to save yourself of any avoidable Neanderthal media content.  

And, if you’re human enough you don’t want to burst another human’s bubble. You don’t want to steal their thunder. You don’t want to steal their glory. You let them shine. But sometimes we got to be honest. We got to burst their bubble. We got to steal their thunder. We got to steal their glory. Enough said!