Jan

28

Shakespeare

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Today Sunday I spent largely in the office. Earlier in the morning I saw Shakespeare in Love. What the picture lost in soapiness it gained in the take it took on historical materials. I especailly enjoyed the references to Christopher Marlowe and Webster…. Really good to see how the young Webster ratted on Shakespeare and Viola. Yea, the warped historicity is what does the trick with the movie.

Read on the New Institutional Economics and its application to Anthropology. I am thinking of combining that with the latest theoretical developments in Rational Choice Theory in analysing informal trade networks. Oh yea, I finally sent in the book Pinky helped me with today. That off my nexk gives room for some fresh breath.

The week starts tomorrow. I am not expecting much to happen. All through the week I will wake up early in the morning to go the language school and spend the afternoons at the Institute. I don’t know if I should pray for things to happen so I can fill my blog, or if I should simply keep reporting the simple things that happen to me. Yea, everyday things.

Alright, back to the books. Will go home in about two hours, make some food, eat, watch CNN or BBC, and hope to have a nice night rest.

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Jan

27

On Friendship

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Another week is at an end. I have learnt more German this week, and things are generally going ok. I am even scared of saying that things are going fine, thinking that saying it might somehow jinx things….. Talking about feeling good and happiness brings something else to my mind. I had a strange feeling yesterday morning. I woke up feeling happy, feeling good with myself. Now, I don’t mean to say that I am never happy, but waking up in the morning and feeling really happy is just not my thing. I had to run through my brain to see why I was feeling that good with myself.

The previous day, Thursday, I talked to some of my old friends who are in Nigeria over the phone. I realised how much I missed them, but at the same time I realised how great it is to have friends who are willing to help when one is down. I was typesetting a book and getting it ready for publication, the deadline was the following day (yesterday) and I couldn’t get it together. I was feeling really down, and since I had a call card with me I decided to call some friends. It was great to find out how they were doing, and to hear that despite the social and political problems in Nigeria things could still be fun. The last person I talked to was Pinky. I don’t know if you guys know the cartoon Pinky and the Brain, but I call him Pinky, or whenever it seemed like he was more like Brain I called him Brain. Ok, I called Pinky and Pinky offered to help with the Typesetting. I emailed the stuff to him, and he even called me at home later in the night to tell me that he had got it and he would work on it. Isn’t it just great to have people who would feel happy to do these kinds of things for one?

The little things of life are the things that make us happy. For instance, knowing that when I need to understand something better I have someone to ask, and whenever I have a problem with something there is someone who would be able to help with it, and gladly, makes me feel happy. But then, are these really small things? Are they not the stuffs of great things? Do we have to wait, for instance, until we make our first millions before we feel happy, or until we achieve whatever is our dream? I think that all these are great but the thought that we might actually be able to achieve them, that we might get someone who might assist us to achieve them, is often greater than the achievements themselves. Don’t we all know about the disappointment of finding out that the achievements don’t bring as much pleasure as we thought they would?

Phew! Ha ha… I have finally become what I always was afraid of becoming: a stupid motivational bore! Back to reading on Rational Choice Theory!!

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Jan

22

Happy New Year!

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Yea, it is belated but isn’t that better than nothing? That is presumptive me again, thinking that I have an audience. But what is better than positive self-deception, especially when one knows the true picture?What have I been up to apart from generally not blogging? Well, I was in Uppsala for the Christmas. You know that was where I did my masters. I went there to meet old friends and to have a taste, no, a taste of a pinch, of what I had when I was there. It is always nice to go to a place where one used to stay. You know that when a person first gets to a place, if they are observant, they see things that even the natives don’t see; and when they return there they see changes that natives would probably have lived through. I saw some changes, but most interesting of all, I met old friends. It is so funny how places look like they have changed and people just look the same. The same old angers and frustrations, the same old resolutions, old aspirations. But do I love the people! I really missed them. One is now married and another is on the way to getting married. Some have changed jobs and moved/ are planning to move to Stockholm, and others still are now on some university courses. And I said they haven’t changed? To illustrate I’ll use myself. I went to Nigeria, got a job with a company, worked with them for a while, left again and now I am in Germany. Changes, right? Yea, changes, but have those changes really changed the Me? I guess not. I still have the same aspirations as I always did, the same frustrations, the same bitterness. I think there is just something inside us that refuse to change despite the superficial changes. Yea, there have been changes but my friends, the friends that I had, and the things that attracted us to each other, haven’t really changed. Maybe the same thing goes for cities too. Maybe if we know a city well enough we probably would find that it never really changes. Perhaps it always retains its essence – whatever that means – even in the face of what we would consider near-extreme changes. Let us ask our geographers and urban planners.

Yea, to more current things. I now attend a Deutsch language course five days a week. And after I discovered that I had added some weight I have joined a gym. These all are avenues for stories so I should be giving you some sometime soon.

Two days ago, I had some colleagues over to my apartment and made some eba and obe egusi (for those who are not Nigerians this is a Nigerian dish), and suggested that they ate by hand. It was a fun time. It is always great to have people visiting, and it is always good to cook for people. Yea, that is a really, really short summary of what has been happening to me.

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