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May
27
Tagged - 6 Quirky Things about Me
Filed Under Humour | 5 Comments
The rules:
1. Link the person(s) who tagged you… Aloofaa
2. Mention the rules in your blog…
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours…
4. Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them…
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged…
6 quirky things about me
1. I think of depression as some form of excess energy, energy that can be worked away by doing something physical. Since I am not registered with any gym here, walking is a good way to spend the energy. A couple of nights ago, in Cotonou, I did a two hour walk. Some of my friends thought I was crazy when I told them. Coffee also helps.
2. I have paunchophobia. In normal English, this means that I have a fear of developing a paunch. The fear is related to the fact that
a)my father does
b)I love fermented drinks of almost any taste.
Doing anything about it? Not really. I do some sit-ups sometimes.
3) I enjoy watching romantic comedies (I have even watched The Prince and Me. Yea, it is that bad. Don’t worry, I don’t cry when I am, or after, watching them), but I can’t stand mushy mushy love songs. And can you believe this? I read a couple of Mills and Boon romance novels as a teenager.
4) I am not religious, but I think it makes a lot of sense to believe that the world was created by someone. Or who else would one blame for this mess?
5) The next time I return to this world - if re-incarnation is real - I would like to come as a woman, if I had to be human.
6) I am sometimes hopelessly naïve. How else does one account for a post that seeks to invoke the ‘responsibility to protect’ clause, or for a belief that world peace is possible?
I tag Omodudu, Damilare, Nneoma, Virginie, and Afolabi, and Akinlabi
May
23
Mein Kampf, and Assorted Thoughts about Deutschland
Filed Under Experiences, News, Opinion | 2 Comments
Image via Wikipedia
The topic used to be taboo in Germany… mere mention of the name even gets people cringing. But it seems the Germans are learning to deal with their history. I just heard the news that some German movie makers are making a film of Hitler’s early years. They are even naming the movie after Hitler’s anti-Semitic book, Mein Kampf. It is thought that the movie will be controversial, just like other German movies that have been made about Hitler – you remember Die Untergang?
Not limited by the past
I think it is good when people are able to get to grips with history, and to examine it closely enough to get more comfortable with it. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that a Nazi past is something to get comfortable with; I can only imagine how that affects the way people think about the ways others perceive them. Yea, that was twisted and convoluted, but it is just like I can imagine the feeling to be. But then, a subject that is taboo, and that nobody ever wants to talk about, or even think about, is not easy to deal with.
Not that easy, really
Sometime ago, a German housemate, his Turkish wife and I were discussing over dinner. Somehow we ended up talking about the War. The husband stood up shortly after that and went into his room, saying that he wanted to go watch football. As he left, his wife told me that he did because he was not comfortable with us talking about the war. My housemate is over 50 years old, but this also happens with the younger folk. In a sense, I understand the touchiness of the subject for them; sometimes, the perception of Germans that people often think that they are racist is not unfounded. I have been asked by many people in Nigeria about how I cope with those bloody Germans who are all racists. I simply tell them that I don’t encounter that kind of reception.
Even westerners
In a funny way, that is the kind of reaction I get from Germans from the western part of Germany, the former West Germany. I live in the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) – the former East Germany – and whenever I am in other parts of Germany, it often happens that when we talk about where I stay westerners ask how things are there. Many think that Nazis march in the streets of eastern cities. Ha… I remember someone telling me that many people refuse to put the word wieder – which would roughly translate as ‘again’ or, more succinctly, ‘re’ in English – in front of Vereinigung – which means unification. That is the official word for re-unification, the bringing together of the two Germanies. She told me that the wieder displays an emotion that many Germans from both parts cannot claim to have. You can only be happy to be re-united with people you really want to be with, and are comfortable being with.
Enough of the rambling. I am happy that people are ready to look at the past, like this new movie shows. I hope that sometime soon, when people are going to Germany, they will not be warned that Germans will clamp up at the first mention of The War; I also hope that it will be a subject that can come up in normal everyday discussions.
May
18
Myanmar and the Responsibility to Protect
Filed Under Opinion | 7 Comments
China has had her mistakes too, no doubts. Ready examples are the cases of the 1975 earthquake in Tangshan, where over 250,000 people died because the magnitude of the incidence was kept under wraps, and the cover-up of the SARS outbreak. China seems to have indeed learnt from her mistakes.
What now?
The Economist has suggested it, just like I had thought about it, that countries that have ships close to the country could force aid on the country. Even Bernard Kouchner, France’s foreign minister, has hinted at it. I didn’t even realise that there was an international principle of ‘responsibility to protect’ until I read the story. The principle was agreed upon in a United Nations summit in 2005, and it says ‘that the international community has a responsibility to act when these governments fail to protect the most vulnerable among us’. Now may be the time to test the resolve of global leaders. If the Burmese government continues to be obstinate, and to sacrifice the lives of Burmese citizens, that option should be taken up.
May
14
I had discussed the poor state of journalism in Nigeria just a few days before then with a journalist. It is interesting to see the wide income gap between reporters and their editorial bosses. Some reporters earn as little as 50 thousand naira a month – and many of them are MA degree holders – while the editors, apart from getting money from politicians who want favourable reports, have all the perks enjoyed by their counterparts in, say the banking sector. Of course, this means that over time, those who are good and are really interested in journalism are discouraged from pursuing careers in journalism simply because they cannot get an income from the sector. And those who stay have to resort to accepting ‘brown envelopes’. By the way, I was an intern in a newspaper house at some point so I have first-hand knowledge of how this works. At the end, journalism becomes a tool for the promotion of certain interests – don’t worry, I know that it is so all over the world, but it is sometimes disgustingly so around here – either because the editor has been bribed so that the paper does ‘features’ on certain persons or issues or kills a story, or because the reporter has been offered a brown envelope so that they present a favourable point of view. It also leads to simply making news stories out of press releases.
(Click to enlarge)
L-R, Mr Dapo Olorunyomi, Chief of Staff of EFCC; Representative of the Dutch embassy; Mr Muraina of ThisDay; Mr Adebayo of FRCN; Mr Akinlabi of Tell; Mr Badmus of Channels TV; and Mr Dewar, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria.
This background info makes the works that were rewarded at the ceremony even more impressive. The winning entry in the prints category is a series of stories on Iyabo Obasanjo, whose name keeps coming up like the proverbial bad coin in corruption cases. The series of stories were written by Mr Muraina Olufunso of ThisDay newspapers. The prize for the photo journalism category went to an entry from Mr Ademola AKinlabi of Tell. In the radio broadcast category, the prize went to Mr Solomon Adebayo reporter with the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Abuja, who did a story on the Abuja Environmental Protection Agency and hawkers in Abuja. The series of reports he did showed depressing levels of corruption in the Environmental Protection Agency, even up to the point that some workers in the agency kept private, illegal detention centres to hold hawkers who refuse to bribe them. The report led to the intervention of the police force, the release of the detainees and the arrest of the officials. It was even more impressive that the entry was from the state-owned radio network.
The winning TV entry, which was also the overall winning entry, is from Mr Deji Badmus of Channels Television. The report was on the Police Equipment Fund. It showed different layers of corruption, layers too nuanced to write about in this short space. Suffice it to say that the report was really impressive, in the coverage of the issue, and in the presentation of the efforts of the reporter and results of the investigation.
At the end of the programme, I asked Mr Steve Aborishade, the coordinator of the awards, why there was no prize for online journalism. He replied that there was only one entry in the category. I promised to post about it and to encourage bloggers to submit entries for the next edition. Bloggers, even if you are not in Nigeria you can still submit an entry here.
May
12
A Talk on Blogging
Filed Under News | 10 Comments
I thought about these and decided to do an email to one of my former teachers in the department. Dr Ayobami Ojebode, the teacher I emailed, told me that he too had been thinking along the same lines. He conceded that it was still expensive to get on the internet in the country, but added that he had ‘decided never to allow any of those hindrances to hinder’ him, and so would go ahead with plans to include blogging as part of the lower level journalism courses in the next semester. He also added that he expected things to be easier as from the next session because the university recently decided to open cyber cafes in each hall of residence. We met when I was in the university about a month ago and I agreed to give a talk on blogging to the final year students of the department.
Normally, the final class produces a newspaper, but according to the teacher, they were unable to do so in the last one or two years because of the cost of production. He also said they were considering the option of online publishing. I had the idea that they could be made to publish the paper as a blog. Online publishing has the added advantage of the potentiality of being read by a much wider audience than if they had published in paper. It is only a potential though, because it also depends on the ability of the group to successfully market their blog. Thinking wildly for a moment, I thought that it would also be a good idea to make them learn how to promote their blog online. At least marketing is part of the curriculum of the programme.
The talk
It went really well. We had the problem of power, as usual, but the teacher, Dr Ojebode, had brought his own generator from home so we were able to power my laptop and the projector. There is wireless internet for the faculty, but even then, it was too slow for me to be able to show the students the process of opening a blog with blogger.com. I had to explain it to them, saying that it was relatively easy. All one has to do is to follow a couple of steps, not very different from opening an email. I also encouraged them to use the help feature of blogger whenever they have any problem.
I got the question about how to make money from blogging and I replied that it was possible to do that. I explained to them how Adsense works, but said that it was better not to think about making money from blogging, at least at the beginning. I also told them that I personally don’t like the idea of having Adsense on my blog. Apart from the fact that I find adverts on blogs distracting I think that thinking of making money from blogging is going to turn blogging into a job. I want to blog because I enjoy it, not because I want to make money from it. There are other things to do that from. At least that is what I think at the moment.
Some of the students were really interested in creating personal blogs, and I told them to send me an email whenever they had any problems with creating the blog. For those who are interested, the powerpoint presentation, in PDF, is here.
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