Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses! You can also underline if it was so long ago you can't say for sure, LOL!

I Ladi Ajayi have read only 32! Not even half!!! Well...gives me a target before I turn 35.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights
8 1984– George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Travellers Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina –Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Willaim Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabrial Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far from the Madding Crowd _ Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaids Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan51 Life of Pi - Yann Martell
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love in the time of Cholera - Gabriel garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On the Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson
74 Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses-James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylivia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - Charles Mitchell
83 The Colour Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert (en francais)
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie & the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Day 4 - Yoga

I figured from my first crack at P90X that Yoga wasnt going to work for me. I kept falling over. So in the absence of a professional yoga instructor keeping me from tipping over, I will be doing the stretch routine in place of yoga.

But today, since I missed Shoulders and Arms from yesterday as I was down with the flu (manflu as Anahi insists it is) I dragged my coughing, sniffing self to the gym at 7pm and ran through that Shoulders and Arms! For the record, this is my favorite routine for the first three weeks. I keep coming close to hurling my protein shake when I do Chest and Back, feel a little bit like a sissy in Legs and Back and almost pass out with Plyometrics.

But Shoulders and Arms is the glamour workout. You do it and pretty girls walk up to you asking for tips on how to tone their arms. Guys steal sideways glances at you and inevitably compare their puny arrms to my shining sweaty guns! (ahem..)

But seriously, I am just glad and stoked I was able to do this. Loading Legs and Back on to my iPhone now so I can do it tomorrow Friday and I am back in line with the program.

Spent the day drinking lots of tea and honey and had to look after the tiger cub who was still persona-non grata at the day care. Took him to the GP in afternoon and she said he seemed fine to go back tomorrow. Sweet.

Had a phone interview today that seemed to go well. Will know tomorrow or early next week. Melbourne anyone?

Day 1

Day 1 started out a bit on the downside. Chelsea lost to Liverpool 2 goals to nil. Damn Torres to find form against us. Plus side is we ARE still top of the table and the Goners lost at home to Newcastle!

Tiger cub cut his first tooth last week. Me suspects it was why he was a bit down in the pits over the weekend. Might be a couple more teeth on the way. At 9 months, he is a bit late but they say the later the stronger! Tops called while I was in the middle of Round two at the gym that he' s got conjuctivitis. Means he wiped some snot into his eyes (wasnt me! Honest!) have to get home and decide who stays home with him tomorrow. Daycare wont take him with the conjuctivitis.

Suspected I might be getting a sore throat before hitting the gym but kept my focus and paced myself really well with the Chest and Back. Got nauseous slightly more than halfway through but sucked it up, drank some water and completed it. Could have been more intense but I think I will take good form with a successful completion rate than hard out, wuss out and demotivate myself. Consistency is key!

I also surprised myself with actual pull-ups! how cool is that? I have a good feeling about this.

I still need to figure out how to incorporate some running into all this. Day 91 is in early Feb but need to start on a 16 week running program from Jan 24 for the Half-Marathon in May. I figure I better start getting some endurance runs into the kitty from now.

Ah well... Day 1 ending with a 2 hour study for a Quantitative Analysis test I have tomorrow! 25% of total paper. Jeepers!

What Do Nigerians Really Want?

In a previous article, I made a wish-list of the qualities I wanted to see in the next Nigerian President. I posted the article on my facebook page and I got quite a number of comments on it. Comments that ranged from sheer derision and disbelief that any one individual could possess such attributes to more thoughtful comments by individuals who indicated they might start assessing potential presidential aspirants based on a more rigorous set of expectations.

One comment however that caught my attention in particular was one that questioned if Nigerians were indeed ready for such a leader. It is an old saying that a people will get the leader they deserve. If a people have absolutely no interest in the process that produces the leader of the nation and a thief and charlatan is voted in, one could argue that is the kind of leader the people deserve. If however, people take the time to understand what each candidate is offering, compares and weighs all the options, goes out to vote and then ensures that their votes are counted… well... you get the idea.

But this above scenario is an advanced stage of a process. Before we can assess what each aspirant at local, state and national level is offering, Nigerians need to define and clarify a few fundamental issues about what they really want. It is when one knows what one really wants that one is better equipped to identify who will best provide this to you and exactly how they intend to do this. I will give an illustration.

American politics can be very partisan and broad lines are drawn between Republicans and Democrats. With decades of political rivalry between them some of the lines have deepened into chasms that stretch and divide opinion on social, economic and political issues. Do we allow private citizens to bear arms? Do we want to allow gay couples to get married? Should abortions be legal and available for free? Do we want to increase taxes and provide more funds to programs such as Medicaid? Or reduce taxes and let market forces determine who gets the best type of health care insurance? How much interference do we want the government to have in our affairs? Is Lady gaga truly reflective of how we want to be portrayed in the world?

Depending on how you answer the above questions usually determines which part of the political spectrum you will be buttonholed in. Polls indicate that a lot Americans consider themselves centre of the spectrum (Independents) lurching a little to the right or left on specific issues.

Underlining this whole process is a common theme. Despite the sometimes bitter debates and hot air blown about by Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike, Americans are united in the pursuit of a common goal. They call it, ‘The American Dream’. This is more than just a single goal or objective. It is rather more a philosophy and way of life. It is the belief that no matter where you come from or what god you believe in, if you work really hard and take your opportunities you WILL build a better life for yourself and your family. If you plan properly and make a few sacrifices, your children will go to a better school than you did and attain one higher level of educational achievement, thereby getting a better job than you did. If you display exceptional talent in an area of life, that talent is nurtured and built upon and celebrated when it reaches its full potential.

Of course the above is a gross simplification and there will be any number of groups who complain that the American dream has passed them by. Or that some segments of society have hijacked the dream and don’t want to let it go. But the fact is that the American dream remains the goal and the how to achieve the goal is what dominates political discourse.

I believe political discourse in Nigeria is severely limited to how to acquire political power. The attainment of political office is an end in itself and not a means to an end. Politicians in Nigeria spend lots of money, energy and manpower to gain political power and then once they have it, have absolutely no idea what to do with it. In countries with a bit more maturity in its political theatre, the election to office of a group of politicians is a sanscrosant contract between the government and the people. The people say, ‘this is what we want to do with our lives. We want to work hard, send our children to good schools and watch a good football game at the weekend’. Do not interfere with where I go to worship on Sundays, provide me with the roads to get to work, affordable schools for my children and deal with those noisy neighbouring countries on our behalf’. The government in turn says, ‘No problem, it will cost you this much to build those roads, maintain those schools and ensure that the banks are able to give you a good loan for that business you want to start’.

Once the government in power forgets or refuses to listen to the demands of the people, they are quietly (sometimes loudly) told to pack their bags at the next election and let someone who will listen to them take over. And sometimes, the people just tire of the same group and say, ‘Give the other chaps a chance’.

I sincerely believe the lack of a common goal/dream/objective for Nigerians is a severe limitation in how we choose our leaders. If we don’t know where we want to get to, how do we know the type of person to lead us there? Nigeria like the rest of Africa suffers from the legacy of the colonial masters who drew arbitrary lines across the continent and mashed up diverse nations into contraptions that served their economic interests at the time. This however fails to become a valid argument in the task of nation-building. The USA as an example again is made up of a potpourri of nations and peoples. Diversity is celebrated and woven into the unique fabric that is the American dream. Do you want to work hard, buy a house in suburbia and drive an SUV? Call yourself African-American, Italian-American, Irish-American or Mexican-American you are and will always be an American.

I have lived with Igbos, Hausas, Ebiras and Tivs. In the day-to-day grind of everyday life our aspirations were remarkably the same. We wanted to succeed at whatever it is we did. We wanted to gain a university qualification and get a really good job that would enable us to splash out on a big society wedding and move into a fully furnished house, furnishings that didn’t include a generator because the power supply was constant, reliable and affordable. We wanted to take holidays to the UK and enjoy the beaches of Cornwall and the Edinburgh comedy festival but be eager to return and still catch the Star-Mega Jamz at the Bar Beach and attend the Night of a thousand laughs in Muson Centre. We wanted to be able to drive to the Muson Centre in VI and return back to the mainland without having to avoid the Ikoyi link bridge because of the fear of a thrown tyre rim. We wanted to have kids safely in hospital and be secure in the fact that the teaching hospital was up to any complications or conditions in our health.

This isn’t too much to ask is it?

But time and time again, the political elite exacerbate divisions of ethnicity and religion in a bid to acquire power. It would probably be more satisfying if a section of the country was a nirvana because a son of the soil had acquired power and accelerated development in that region. But this is not the case. Power is acquired and used for self enrichment. Mansions are built with high fences around them while the gutters right outside the gate contain the dregs of society hoping for a handout and the mansion owner dares not go out freely in the fear that he will be targeted by the victims of his corrupt practices. Or he goes out in a protective security bubble, ignoring the world around him.

I just wonder about one thing. The different ethnic groups I lived with were in cosmopolitan Lagos and also the melting pot of the University of Ibadan. One could argue that these individuals were like me and constitute just one part of society. That of the urban middle class. An urban middle class that has been decimated true but that is a story for another day.

What about the 60% of Nigerians that live below the poverty line? Does the mechanic in Beere Oje in Ibadan share similar aspirations with the shoemaker in Langtan in Jos? Would the almarijis who cluster round the big man's house every Friday abandon a life of handouts if the opportunity to go to school or learn a trade was offered? Would the area boys in Idumota Lagos, rather set a goal of becoming master craftsmen rather than dealers of violence and thuggery?

I sincerely do not the answers to these questions. At least not yet.

What I do know beyond a shadow of doubt is that Nigerians have to define what we want. We need to identify those who are most likely to lead us to that desired state and ensure they have a chance to lead. And I choose my words very carefully. Lead us there. Moses led his people to the promised land. But the people still had to follow. They did not sit in Egypt and send Moses out to look for the land and come back with Ekenedilichukwu buses to ferry them there. They braved 40 years in the wilderness before arriving at their destination. Nigeria has added on an extra 10 years to that record. And Canaan is still not on the horizon.

So yes we are still in the wilderness. We need to start defining the things that unite us, pool our aspirations into cohesive plans and lay out road maps on how to achieve them. Only then would we be able to start fulfilling our potential and be recognized as a true giant of Africa.

The Qualities I want in the next Nigerian President

The quite excellent article by Amara Nwankpa contained an action for readers to click on a link and have their say on what attributes the next Nigerian President should have. That got me thinking on what an attribute is.

In philosophy, an attribute is an abstraction of a characteristic of an entity or substance. Or perhaps even of a being. Dictionary.com defines it as a ‘quality, character, characteristic or property’

With this mind, I have thought long and hard about what qualities I would want to see in the next Chief Executive Office of Nigeria Incorporated. These qualities would be intrinsic and be sort of a base level of attributes regardless of your ideology, political, tribal and/or ethnic affiliation.

A lot of the ideas for the attributes I want in a President below have been influenced in some measure by two things. The first are the conversations I have had with my friend Kenechukwu Umeasiegbu. A consummate intellectual and knowledge-seeker for the sake of knowledge-seeking, Kene is also one of the most single-minded and driven individuals I know.

From his days in student politics at the University of Nigeria Nsukka where he graduated with a 2-1 in Geology (hons), to when he contested for a position on the National committee of the International organizations for students AIESEC, Kene has always been driven by the force of ideas. My conversations with him are always refreshing, highly anticipated, catalysts to more thinking on my part and always over far too soon.

The second is an article by a Professor of the University of Ibadan (I forget his name right now) writing for the Comet newspapers of Nigeria. The article in question must have been published more than 10 years ago but I remember being powerfully moved by it and considered listing the attributes outlined in it back then and plotting how to acquire each and every one of those attributes. And yes… I (once) harbour(ed) dreams of becoming President of Nigeria. We are all allowed to dream.

The rest of the ideas I have put down here are a result of my travel and experiences in Europe and New Zealand; of living in societies where the rule of law reigns supreme and society has inbuilt characteristics that enable it to continually renew and improve itself. Based on these and so much more, the following, in no particular order of importance are the attributes I want in the next Nigerian President.

Ideas-driven. The next Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria must have ideas; Ideas that drive him towards a vision. A vision that he has put a lot of thought into and that he believes in. A belief and commitment to his vision is of course vital. It should be a vision that he has articulated and laid bare for the whole world to see. He will have ideas flying out from his head and these ideas will be the drivers to his vision. A widely-read individual, he will devour information and have a pulse on global trends and an active involvement in local ones. He will know the value of an education (either formal or informal) and be comfortable in the presence of members of the intelligentsia.

The president must be a sweet talker. Charismatic to the point of being a cult-personality, the President must be able to pull attention to himself and using this quality force disparate groups of people, interests and motivations to listen to and buy into his vision. The force of his ideas and vision (mixed in with his personal charisma) will stay with people long after they are no longer in his presence and engender a loyalty not to his person but to the ideas he proposes. He will inspire people beyond their immediate needs and make them feel like their actions need not be for their personal gain alone but for the greater good.

He must be a ruthless bastard. The President will encounter stiff opposition from groups as equally committed to maintaining the status-quo as he will be to changing it. He will have the mental aptitude to recognize these groups quickly and will not hesitate to either under-cut their authority as to render them insignificant in the larger scheme of things or completely eliminate their resistance. He will not play to the old stereotypes of nepotism and mediocrity but will deal with allies and foes alike with a firm yet fair hand. He will be a man of his word, saying and doing exactly what he means. He will be an extremely hard worker, one who can function at high levels for most of the day and who firmly believes in the value of a good’s day work.

The CEO of Nigeria Plc. will be incorruptible. He will completely disprove the old saying of ‘Power corrupts…’ In order to do this, he will have a well grounded connection to reality with relationships that serve to remind him every single day why he does what he does. This relationship could be with his children or grandchildren or with someone who embodies the phrase, ‘future generations’. He will lead by example and have zero tolerance for members of his team or inner caucus who deviate from the path of righteousness. He will have character of spirit that transcends the physical and allows him to wield great power and yet remain aloof to the allure of misuse.

The leader of the most populous black nation on the planet will be a compassionate individual. He will have a genuine empathy for people and be sensitive to their needs. There will be times when he has to take action that results in collateral damage either politically, militarily or economically. And although his ruthless streak will allow him to take the right decision for the greater good, he will feel the consequences of his actions within his very being which will stand him in good stead for future difficult decisions. He will wear this cap of responsibility stoically and without complaint. He acknowledges that the buck stops at his table and has enough character of spirit to cope with these kinds of decisions without buckling under the pressure and be unable to take future decisions. He will have a common touch and be seen as such by the masses. In deed and word, he will be able to connect with and speak to the dreams and aspirations of a wide range of society. He will place value on hard work and have belief in a system that rewards a certain input with a commensurate output

The Commander-in-Chief will be able to spot potential from miles off. In people, situations or circumstances, the President will have the ability to recognize talent in people and use them; read a situation very quickly and react appropriately and; analyze prevailing circumstances and plan for them. He will actively seek to encourage the people around him to reach for stretch targets and in the process develop their talents and enriching their experiences. He will not be afraid or threatened by people smarter than he is but actively court them either as allies or even as political opponents. This is because he recognizes that open and constructive debate and challenges to your ideas can only make them better.

The President will be a strategic and pragmatic individual. Without compromising on his ideals or betraying his vision for the country, he will be practical enough to recognize when things will work and when they will not. He will be willing to completely change his tactical plan if it will consequently benefit his overall strategy. He will not be afraid to admit when something has not worked and he will take the learning from each failure and use it to build on his subsequent successes. He will have the mind of a chess grandmaster able to see the overall strategy but possess enough tactical nous to adjust his game plan. His ruthlessness will let him sacrifice a pawn (or two) in order that he might capture the King but his compassion will ensure he does not do this lightly and only when the alternative would lead to an even worse outcome.

A reflective nature. In the high pressure atmosphere of statehood, the President will have the ability to practice self-reflection and meta-cognition. He will have the ability and schedule the time to take a step back away from it all from time to time to evaluate and come to objective conclusions about the progress (or otherwise) being made.

The President will have a belief in and readiness to sacrifice for the greater good. Although a supremely confident individual who knows his limitations very well and his strengths even better, the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria will have an unshakeable belief in the rule of law and the fact that no one individual or institution is above the law. He would be willing to make personal sacrifices in order to achieve the goals he has set out and when he invariably asks sacrifices of the citizenry, there will be a clear perception that it is no sacrifice he is not willing to take or has taken himself.

These then are the attributes I believe the next President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria should possess. For the ease of writing, I have used the pronoun ‘he’ throughout this write-up but of course these attributes are not gender-specific.

So… DO you know someone (or two) with all the qualities above? If you do, ask them if they are interested in applying for the job. If they are, they will of course then have to convince a few million voters HOW they intend to use the attributes above to do the job!

Enough is Enough!

Rhetoric is a fine thing.

When properly executed, it can inspire a whole generation. Or two. Gettysburg address, 'I have a dream...', 'Ask not what your country can do for you...' and so on and so forth. These three examples all come from the US of A.

The same US of A that the half-Kenyan dude took rhetoric to whole new levels two years ago and got himself the job of the most powerful man in the world. Jury is still out on if action is matching all that lofty rhetoric.

Which is always the problem with rhetoric of course. By its very definition according to Wikipedia, "...the art of communicating effectively... to move audiences to action with arguements". It becomes very difficult (in my opinion) to sustain that action you have moved your audiences to take. So while it might stir the heart and emotion and get otherwise warring factions to sing 'kumbaya' together, after a while rhetoric becomes inadequate to achieve real change.

Unless each rhetoric piece contains a nugget of directed action.

Stir the heart, stoke the emotion, swell the head and take this specific course of action. This is how persona cults develop around these intensely charismatic individuals and you have people commiting atrocities or showing saint-like behaviour on the say-so of a rhetoric-driven individual.

Which is why I really like the piece below. Some of you might have seen it already. If you haven't, you're in for a treat. It stokes the right embers of nationalistic fire and caresses the right parts of your ego while still containing a simple course of action for you to take to back up the rhetoric. It's brilliant.

The one thing I found annoying about it was the insertion of the mantra of said half-Kenyan above. I mean, its all very well to 'borrow' the idea but to import it wholesale without editing? Almost threw me off the patriotic horse it had put me on but didnt.

Enjoy!

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Feel free to share this on your Facebook wall, blog, website or newsletter. Copy and paste it into emails and blast it out to all your chummy paddies who you’ve been sending all those silly, annoying forwarded messages to.

By January 08, 2011, there will be approximately 35 million Nigerians between the ages of 18-35. We will embody the hopes of another generation, a generation neither touched by the civil war nor old enough to have enjoyed the brief period of prosperity that followed the oil boom.

We will represent a generation that cannot remember any cross country journey we undertook without encountering craters in the middle of the road. A generation that inherited broken down schools, discouraged teachers and a confused education system. A generation, forced to compete in a world they were not adequately prepared for.

We, 35 million of us, are an advance guard for a generation of Nigerians who grew up drinking from boreholes, streams and ponds, who lit their way at night, and in the early mornings with lanterns, candles or torches. To whom luxury meant to sleep in your own bed with the, ironically, comforting noise of a personal generator providing the assurance that your home appliances will be useful, for a little longer.

Our generation has been unfortunate to emerge in a time when the HIV/AIDS pandemic is at its peak. Gripping fatally at the lives of our contemporaries, cutting them down at their prime. To make matters worse, we have the added misfortune of being born in a place where the healthcare and social welfare systems either do not exist or are incapable of protecting us from the fate imposed by this or any other ill of its nature.

We remember the police for bribery, politicians for corruption and the public utilities for ineptitude. We will insist that we have survived so far in spite of, not because of, the contributions of these people or institutions.

For our generation, a great Nigeria is a dream or a collection of stories and doctrines handed down by our fathers, read in textbooks or chorused out in the National Anthem. It has never been our experience. We have experienced no greatness from which we can weave stories to inspire our children or grandchildren. Our memories will be of malnourishment in boarding schools; violence debauchery and strikes in University; robbery, rape and death at home and in our neighborhoods.

We have never voted in an election considered to be free, fair or credible. We have never controlled our fate.

But we can rewrite our own story.

We can respond to our challenges together, like the great Nigerians we so desperately want to be. We can shake off complacency and embrace collective action. We can become the heroes of the great stories we will tell our children.

We are doctors, lawyers, engineers, planners, musicians, actors, models, handymen, builders, cleaners and students. We are the minds that will imagine a new dawn. We are the hands that will make it happen. 35 million of us. We can tell a better story than our fathers told. Our children can inherit a greater Nigeria than we were born into.

Yes we can!

And we must!

For none of our individual brilliance, or industry will amount to anything if the collective wellbeing continues to be at peril. For even if we attain our individual dreams, our marble palaces will be surrounded by slum, and stagnant gutters. Our walls and shadows will be hounded by robbers, and hoodlums who – having been denied existence by society – will seek to prey on our success. For survival is a basic natural instinct, and when it is not guaranteed, it expresses itself in vice.

Our standing in the world will continue to plummet. We will continue to be treated as lepers - the butt of cheap jokes and scathing satire. And we will not have a better story to tell, to balance any of these.

Unless we say Enough is Enough!

So come October, 2010, just as our nation celebrates 50 year of little or nothing after independence, we will come together as the most numerous political force in its history. We will take the opportunity of this unique anniversary to start a quiet revolution that will spin this country on its head.

We will find the nearest INEC registration center, gather our friends, colleagues and family and go Register. Then we will spend the next few weeks (after registration) scrutinizing the field to Select credible candidates who speak to our issues. During the elections in January, we will come out (with our friends, colleagues and family) – in the rain, sun or sandstorm – and Vote for those whom we have selected. Beyond casting our votes, we will stand firm and together to Protect our vote. Ensuring that it counts for whom we have cast it for.

This RSVP will be the start of our quiet revolution.

For when we have shown our numbers at the polls, we can now collectively demand that our issues be addressed. We would have shown that our generation cannot be ignored. We would have started a journey to take back Nigeria from the mischievous minority that has held her hostage.

And if we succeed, we would be the ones who our children will be singing about in the 5th line of the national anthem: “…the labor of our heroes past shall never be in vain”.

So if you agree with me that “yes we can”, you must forward/share this message to 100 more people within the next 24 hrs. (LOL)

If you are interested in leading the RSVP effort in your neighborhood or vicinity, you can register here:

http://www.enoughisenoughnigeria.com/register/

If you want to find out where your INEC registration center might be, check here:

http://www.inecnigeria.org/election/find_polling_station.php (polling stations are used for registration too)

Start expressing your opinion by partaking in this poll: “What attributes would determine your choice of a President?”

http://twtpoll.com/r/z8gsg2

To learn more about the campaign focused on one of the major issues going into the 2011 elections (electricity) visit:

http://www.lightupnigeria.org/

Yours Sincerely

Amara Nwankpa

Praise Poetry

My mother in law arrived to Auckland last Tuesday.

It's been drama of shakespearean proportions to get her here a la immigration New Zealand. But the important thing is that after a 36 hour journey which included 28 hours of flying time, 3 stops and endless cups of airline tea, she arrived safe and sound to the Auckland international airport.

The tiger cub and I were on hand to welcome her at the airport and it was very moving to see her take Anjola, go down on her knees and give thanks and adoration to God Almighty. I guess the sight, sound and feel of your first grandchild on your breast will do that to a person.

A few friends I had been excitedly telling about the impending visit had asked me rather cheekily how much patience I had gone to buy from the patience bank for the visit. I didn't need to pretend how much I was looking forward to her visit. I have known couples who are always at daggers drawn with their respective in-laws but in this case, I can safely say there is a lot of mutual affection between my wife's mum and I. A bit about her:

A bustling middle-aged woman with the beautiful dark skin of the kind that glows, you can see that she lives for her children. Stylish, modern and extremely fashionable, she has a laugh and quiet intensity to her that creates a connection between her and individuals who have been a bit over-pampered by their mothers.

She also has a command of the Yoruba language that I stand in awe of.

People my age and generation, especially of the middle urban class in Nigeria while mostly bilingual, sometimes still struggle with our mother tongue. Take me for example. I speak Yoruba fluently-ish. I can read it fairly well, a bit haltingly and with only occasional mis-pronunciations and I am unable to write it with the correct inflection marks and phonetic sounds. And besides the variation of Yoruba I speak is the 'bastard' version. The marketplace Yoruba which is spoken and used by the different sub-groups.

I almost exclusively think in English as well.

No surprise there as living in New Zealand, surrounded by English speakers, working, communicating and reading (writing) in English, it becomes normal to start to think in English. Back home in Nigeria, surrounded by more people speaking Yoruba, one starts to think (as well as interchangeably speak) in both languages which is perfect for a growing tiger cub to pick up both languages.

So one of the first requests I made to my mother-in-law was for her to speak exclusively to the cub in Yoruba. She's only here for a short time but my cub is at the stage where he is actively interacting with his environment. Everything... and I mean EVERYTHING is this intensely interesting phenonenom to explore. And stick in his drooly mouth. You can almost see the synapses firing away in his brain (and being extinguished when we sit him down in front of the E! channel).

So I reckon we better make the best of my mother-in-laws presence here and get some Yoruba lessons in at this stage. I mean, you should hear my mother-in-law pray in Yoruba. It's one of those goose-pimples, shivers along the back, head swelling experiences. And its a skill Tope and I can only dream of having.

Of course, we will make every effort to continue his Yoruba education when his grandmother leaves but for the reasons above, this will not come easily or naturally to us. One thing she will leave for us however is the tiger cub's Oriki!

A cultural phenomenom among the Yoruba in South-west Nigeria, a person's oriki consists of the achievements of a prominent ancestor; the portents of achievements to come and; recording of achievments actually made.

By the above definition, an oriki is therefore a constantly fluid and updated piece of work. Usually rendered in poetry, it is sung as a sign of praise and is a favorite for grand parents especially to soothe and encourage a child.

My tiger cub has the beginnings of a solid foundation for a long and varied praise poetry...

...Olufela Anibi juwon...

...I am unable to give anymore as an oriki also doubles as your true name. And we all know how powerful those can be. If I told you anymore, I would have to kill you.

What's your own oriki?

Substance Over Style

I can be very charming when I want to be.

And I want to be almost all the time. I have always been an attention-seeker, right from childhood when my mom's friends would exclaim, "oh what a cutie" to yesterday when I made the pretty 17 year old Indian MacDonald's worker blush. (pushing the boundaries there I know)

Being a shameless attention seeker, I have discovered ways in which to attract, retain and feed on said attention. My personal style accounts for a large part of that process. Sanguine, open, friendly, dominates a room if I have to and yet can blend into the background waiting for the exact right moment to give a booming laugh and announce my presence to a hitherto unsuspecting public.

And all that affable personal style had absolutely no effect on the spreadsheet I had to work on today!

Spreadsheets are amazing tools. The vast amount of information you can package and present using a spreadsheet is nothing short of miraculous. A reporting analyst I work with swears that with the right commands, not only can you turn last year's dairy product volumes into a pretty graph, you can get Microsoft Excel to also make you a cup of coffee too...!

Four hours I spent collating, copying, pasting, cross-referencing, transferring, filtering, and proof reading this damn spreadsheet! 'Where's my bloody charm to help me get through this one now?' I muttered to myself intermittently. When I started seeing the figures and numbers start forming into battalions on their own accord and screaming lines from various Disney movies, I quickly got up and took a 15-min break.

But of course, when my manager met me at the coffee machine and asked how I was going, on went the charm switch and I smiled confidently and assured her it was all hunky-dory!

I knew a long time ago that I really didn't like detail work. Or routine work for that matter. Give me detailed routine work and expect hari-kari within a very short time! But if I have learned anything at all in this life, it is the fact that you CANNOT avoid the detail work. It usually is where the substance comes from.

Long have I admired those with flamboyant personal styles. But scratch most of them below the surface and you find very shallow individuals. When I call all that attention to myself, I don't stop people at the front door but like to invite them all the way into the vast recesses of my personal being. It galled when as an 18 year old, I was described as shallow. It is a moniker I have consciously tried to correct ever since. I mean, whats the point of inviting all that attention to yourself if there's not something for everyone to snack on?

So I have learned to love detail work... OK... love is a very strong word. But there is a certain kind of satisfaction in clicking on that send button with a well ordered spreadsheet attached complete with graphs and pivot tables and a little summary table in the corner. And when you have to give a presentation based on that spreadsheet, why right there is a lethal mix of substance and style. You kill all them doubters right dead I tell you!

I heard Warren Buffet makes a whole lot of intuitive and instinctive decisions. What they don't tell us is that he employs an army of statisticians and number crunchers who work on providing cold hard evidence on why the decision was a good one. And if there's no hard evidence forthcoming, the 'instinctive decision' is very quietly dumped and no one talks about it anymore!

Style will only take you so very far. Substance will take you much much further. And if you want to go far and have more fun doing it... then build up substance and hire me to coach you on the style!

Tales of the Tiger Cub

Have you ever lost touch with someone for years and years, not even consciously thinking of the person but upon seeing the person, instantly recall their full name and all the good times you had together?

Happened to me today.

Adaeze Achinivu. One of the funnest(sic), funniest, life-loving, big buxom ed girls I have ever had the pleasure to call friend.

And to make it even more interesting, I didn't meet her in the flesh but online. I was logged into my email when the new message ping sounded. I looked at the screen name and Ada's face jumped into my mind. I instantly recalled every single bit of skulduggery we got up to in AIESEC (where else?) but couldn't immediately recall her name "Amaka?" I thought to myself. But that didn't sound right.

She typed one more question and her full name suddenly flashed in my mind like neon lights on a popular Vegas strip joint!

Adaeze is doing very well indeed, lives in the UK now has a Masters degree I believe and works for some fancy company I didn't quite catch the name of.

But I remember her from a more innocent time of my life. When the most important thing in the world was how to get to the next AIESEC conference. I took a few road trips with Ada and she it was who introduced me to the taste of fried snail. (of the Giant African variety) on the highways of Eastern Nigeria. We didn't have a lot of money but we were also debt-free. We didn't drive fancy cars but seemed to get around much much more. We didn't plan beyond the next weekend but there was never ANY doubt about what we wanted to do and become in life.

How things have changed in the last 5-10 years.

I am 29 years old. I have been married for 2 years or almost 2 years depending on how you look at it. I have worked for the same company in the same business unit for the last 4 years. I have recently started a part time post graduate program at the University of Auckland that will earn me either an MBA or a Masters of Management in 3 years. I have a six month old son.

My Tiger cub. Born in the Chinese year of the Tiger, he constantly amazes, amuses, inspires, and motivates me.

It's a cliche I know but my life has not been the same since he came into it. I have heaps of single friends who make it clear they are in no hurry to jump into parenthood. But who wants to do this in middle-age? My tiger cub is slowly starting to show me exactly what "the energy of a toddler" really means. I am humbled at the thought that of all the prospective ones out there, he chose me to be his progenitor. His pack leader.

So these are no longer just 'my' stories. They are his. Everything I do, touches upon him. Daunting for some individuals to be laden with such a huge responsibility and some even label it a burden. I consider it a privilege.

So watch out for our stories. We have taken too much time off from sharing. Those bestsellers are NOT going to write themselves.

13 out of 20

The plan had been to write a blog post about each of the secrets of happiness stolen from the Time website, add my own unique slant and nuggets of gold to it and then wrap up with a grand finale-post celebrating how happy I was.

That was 5 months. Got through 13 out of 20 secrets. Story of my life.

Full list (with Time.com commentary) can be found here:


1. Count Your Blessings
2. Hear the Music
3. Snog. Canoodle, Get it on
4. Nurture your spirituality
5. Move Your Body
6. Laugh Big
7. Do Something Nice for someone Else
8. Make More money than Your Peers
9. Seek Positive Emotions as a Path to Success
10. Identify with your Heritage
11. Use a Happy Memory as a Guide
12. Play the Part of an Optimist
13. Try New Things
14. Tell Your Story to Someone
15. Balance Work and Home
16. Be Like the Danes: Keep Expectations Realistic
17. Make Time
18. Visualize Happiness
19. Smile
20. Marry Happy

I had been looking forward to writing on "Tell your story to someone" but ah well...

Try New Things

The story of the mid-life crisis is a well known one.

Man in his 4th decade of life, looks back and suddenly realizes he's halfway through his journey. He's a mid-level functionary in a vast evil corporate empire, he's got a beer gut the size of Texas and his once prom Queen wife walks around in a faded robe, with curlers in her hair and her 'assets' drooping south.

He gets a tattoo/haircut/stud in his ear, buys a Ferrari and trades in his wife for a much younger model.

In essence, he attempts to try out new things that seemed to come so naturally to him in his 20's but that he must now work much harder for and attempts to use these to validate his life.

Skip all that.

Everyday, every week, we should try something new. Rollerblade, Scuba Dive, play the guitar. According to Time Magazine...

"...Psychologist Rich Walker of Winston-Salem State University looked at 30,000 event memories and over 500 diaries, ranging from durations of 3 months to 4 years, and says that people who engage in a variety of experiences are more likely to retain positive emotions and minimize negative ones than people who have fewer"

And now I have the ultimate "new" experience. I am responsible for a life. Both literally and figuratively. And everyday is a new experience. First bath, first poo, first time he peed on me, first time he grabbed my finger in his hand...

...and I have the rest of my life to look forward to these new experiences.

So no you dont need to have a baby to have new experiences. But rather look for the new experiences in the every little facets of your life.

PS
Has it been that long since I blogged?