to make my father proud

I've been self sufficient for a while now. Ok, not really, two months. But a glorious two months! Feels good putting food on the table (feels even better putting the table in the house first, hehe). But yesterday I had a row with the old man. I dint even know we were having it. We were discussing stuff about the future over phone then I started joking as usual, he got irritated and I couldn't tell so I went on then he swore he'd never talk to me about that future again, and hung up. And it still didn't click he was mad. So as it happens he told my mum who told me. I freaked out like even I didn't believe when I heard. Until I apologized I couldn't stop worrying about what I was going to say, you know, how he was going to react. We rarely kosana so it had been a while and I'd forgotten just how much influence they have over us. Or me, maybe it's just me. What's surprising is that they still do, even now after we've sort of stopped depending on them. I remember a time when everything I did I used to do so my father would notice. Before I was old enough to have dreams of my own his were mine. I used to say if it'll make him happy it's got to be good enough, and if he even so much as frowned I'd go back and change the whole thing. He balked at my handwriting once so I had to go and change it completely. I mentioned Starehe once and saw how his eyes lit up, so it became my goal (although it became a goal for real when later in class 8 I visited it and fell in love). I started ironing clothes because he strongly approved, and many other things. In fact I don't think there have been many major things during my growing up years I didn't do to get his approval.

I've been lucky, I guess, on two accounts: that I always managed to succeed at whatever I tried, and that the person I picked to be my beacon had a persona that could always find the true north. When with just one word a person can make or break you, it helps if that person's intention is purely to make you, and I'd say his has always been. And even after I was old enough to start having ambitions of my own I remember my father's opinion always counted. Like my first real love as a career was law. Actually I think it still is. I sit down and watch The Practice or A Few Good Men and I see people spit facts and argue law and convince juries and I can't help but think wistfully about what could have been. I know law isn't nearly as glamorous here as I see it on TV, but no one can contest the fact that enough of the great people of our times had a legal background - starting with the biggest one of them all - Barack Obama. I tell myself that could have been me (not the president, a lawyer!) But he didn't think it was a very good idea to go into law at the time. So I changed my dream to engineering. This one I held steadfast, coz I genuinely liked it and coz, of course, he seemed to like the thought. But JAB had other ideas. So when I finally settled on B.Com we both sat down and recharted my future, and so far it all seems to be going well. He's the kind of guy who seems to have something to say about like everything, so when Im in doubt about very many things it's never not come up to ask him. One of his favourite phrases when he was laying down the law and knew we weren't going to like it was "As long as you're living in my house, eating my food...", so there were times when all of us couldn't wait to go out on our own. Well, for me that time did come, and it came on good terms (which is abit more than I can say for my brother), but it still took me aback when I found out just how much Im still under the influence. I guess it never really ends, when you look up to someone as much as I did to him. The student never really becomes the master, especially when the master constantly keeps reinventing himself.

Anyway, I did apologize and now we're good so all's well that ends well. They keep telling us there's no teacher better than experience, but I think if you look really carefully and are willing to learn, you can find a few. And I think in him I found mine. There must be a reason why they say things like "like father like son". Or "the apple does not fall far from the tree". Fortune [the magazine] keeps running these features on the most successful people in business and asks them who the most influential person in their lives has been, and 9 times out of 10 they say their father. I know Iacocca did, Al Gore did, Trump did, Bill Gates did, and Welch did (Obama probably won't, coz he didn't really grow up with his dad :). But you get my point. I look up to very many people. I read about very many people. And when I grown up I have dreams about being very many people. But at the end of the day the one voice I want to hear sanctioning my hopes and dreams is still that same one I listened to when I was still a child - my father's. And this time I actually know for a fact it's not just me. There are very many of us. The title of this post is the name of a song by Michael Jackson. This is the guy who bleached his entire skin and put tonnes of product in his hair and almost lost his nose trying to make himself white just so he could look more like his idol [Diana Ross], and even he thinks about stuff like what kinds of things would make his father proud! Imagine that.

END

madness, and a little bit of hope

Im pretty sure this has been said like a million times by now already, and I know I pretend to be original and all but deep down inside Im really just a shallow flag-follower. (nah, Im not, but I still wanna add my voice to the mix). There's a black man in the white house. For the first time ever! I was looking at his story and I can't seem to be able to stop marvelling. I mean this guy is like 47, he's never been to Washington before, he was born by a Kenyan father (although I really do maintain, there is not a single drop of Kenyanness in the guy, why we're insisting he's a "son of the soil" is a bit beyond me!), this was his first time running for high office, he was also a first-time senator, and he didn't just win, he won by a landslide. He stands up to speak and everyone shuts up and listens. Back in '04 when he was delivering the DNC keynote address by the way me I think he even overshadowed Kerry himself. How does one man manage to do that?? These are some of the things you just can't explain, but you know you want to be a part of. Early on in the campaign the Obama effect became pretty clear, when he started to catch up with Hillary. He didn't bring an imposing larger-than-life presence to the table, he didn't bring experience, he wasn't as well known going in as was everyone else, and basically the odds were all stacked against him. All he brought was that one word: hope. The promise of a better tomorrow. And it soon became apparent that he had a gift - he could galvanise and excite people like no one else could. He was all about the future. And the longer the campaigns lasted, the more people, yours truly included, crossed over to his side. Turns out no one really stood a chance against the force that was Obama.

And then I was thinking about his kids. Im moved by the guy and Im all the way across the Atlantic. So how must it be for them, right there in the same house as him. I mean, how do you not excel? How do you not turn out phenomenal having grown up in such an environment? With a father like that, and a mother like that? In a country like that? I saw the sixth season of The Apprentice and on there Trump brought his daughter Ivanka to be his eyes and ears, the thing George used to do, and she's a bit of a story herself, having gone to the Wharton School of Business. Same as Bill and Hillary's Chelsea. Hillary wrote a book, about her life, and she called it Living History. And I find the title so apt, coz basically as the president of the United States you have a say in like everything that happens of significance on the world stage. How beautiful is that? To be able to say you've lived history, you know, that you were right there in the center of it all when it happened. It's a many-facetted thing, history. So much so that even Fidel Castro knew it had a place for him when he told the court after being arrested for leading a rebellion against the government of the time:
"I know that imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty. But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me."

Anyway, Obama. The stories about people who get inspired aren't false. I know, I've felt it too. Having read about him and Welch and Iacocca, Im starting to think that maybe I do want to be in public arena. Im still sure it's not politics, but Id really like if one day someone walked up to me and told that they're who they've become because of me. Id be overcome! I wanna find out some time that parents tell their kids to go study if they want to be like me. And I'd like to know that all those people who used to see me as an underdog now wish they were me. One day. We get these instances every so often in our lives, that arouse feelings within us. They stay with us. As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered. And remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped. And movement stopped. For much, much more than a moment. And then all of a sudden, the moment's gone. But at the end of it all, I like Barack, still believe in a place called hope.

END

uptown downtown (misery's all the same)

It's official. If I never count stock again it'll be too soon! I was out on one all this
weekend, and it was apparently an exotic place - flower farm in naivasha. But as im
finding out, the exquisiteness (is that a word? hmm) of a place massively depends on the
reason you're visiting that place. Naivasha to Crayfish - rocking place. Rocking
weekend. Naivasha to count flowers - not so much! I swear we were doing that stuff all
night. They wait till 12AM to start the process (who does that?!?) and so as to preserve
freshness and all the rooms are temperature-controlled - 2 DEGREES!! You put on like all
the sheepskin in the world but still when you just go in like this it's windy so when
tears start chucking from your eyes its ice droplets. I kid you not!! Ok, I do, but it
was REALLY cold. That coupled with the fact that there was about a million flowers
distributed all over the country and did I mention it was one in the morning? OMG! Have
you ever gone back home and just wanted to collapse on your couch and realised you don't
have one yet coz this is your first month living on your own so you're still working on
the whole furniture thing? Yep, that was me. :( Then Monday morning I get a new email
from our office admin with an attachment - new schedule for stock counts in Dec. No
prizes for guessing who's on that list. Thrice! Altho in all fairness so is everyone
else. I guess misery really does love company. But either way, Murphy must have been a
very wise person.

Anyway, do you find it odd the way everyone is all US elections and how they won't go to
school/work/the bar on Wednesday if McCain wins (actually the sisters have remained
strangely silent on the subject of bars on Wednesday - turns out ladies' night [read
free entry] is quite addictive.. :) ). It's been happening every four years for two
hundred years, but apparently this year there's a twist - the boy we want to win comes
from here. I mean, seriously, who're we kidding?? HIS FATHER came from here. The boy
himself was once here for two weeks trynna trace his genealogy (I hear for his MBA
project) and all of a sudden Kogello is now being renamed Obamaville. That road has been
tarmacked all the way from the airport to the grandmother's house. Can you believe!??!
Anyway, Im not complaining about that one coz apparently it was done by the British
government(!) I just want all us people to get our heads out of the clouds, and realize
that that boy is an American citizen running at a time when his country is tumbling down to
the doldrums and there are american-grade problems for him to think about and so all
this camaraderie and warm feelings of kinship coming from us will probably remain very
one-sided. The way I see it, when he keeps talking about a father from Kenya, the point
is usually not supposed to be the "from Kenya" part, the way we'd like to believe, coz
he never misses to also mention "a mother from Kansas". The point he's usually trynna
make is parents from two different worlds. His father could have been from The Gambia,
and he'd still be telling the same story. I know victories are pretty hard to come by thisides and
we need to celebrate the few we get, but seriously, they need to be clear and present.
And REAL. But hey, that's just me.

END