deep enough to dream

Over the weekend, I was out house-hunting. The reality that I need to learn to stand on my own hit me, and it hit me hard. See I cleared uni. Four years seems like a really short time in retrospect, even counting that one class that never really used to end [or in my case 6 - Im a difficult guy to enthrall :) ], and I know that sounds cliche, but it's true. I cannot believe it's all over. No more waking up at ten to bask in the sun. No more fast food lunches every day. No more 'borrowing' stuff from the friend next door. No more skyving classes - something liberating about that, never quite known what. No more paying half-fee at concerts coz I have a student ID. No more people to make fun of. No fences around me offering the promise of security from the vagaries of the world. No more staying up all night staring at the stars just talking (Ok, I never did that. That would be completely cheesy!). Anyway, it appears I will be unable to do very many things I used to be able to coz I was still just a student, what did I know? Now I know. And soon Im going to be given the power to read (that's what they tell us when we graduate, like what have we been doing these last four years?? duh!), and with great power comes great responsibility... teren teren!!!

So the agent at the house quoted a pretty insane figure which they demand upfront as deposit for the houses, and I was hit with another reality - I NEED A JOB, FAST!!! It's like the rat race never ends. You work hard at primary so you can go to a good high school, you work hard there so you can get a good course in uni, which you do well so you can get a nice job. You'd think it was all over, but apparently you still need to work hard, perhaps now more than ever. When I was a kid I used to envy my parents, coz they used to have all the fun at work and I had to spend the day in school. It seemed they didn't have teachers hiding in the eaves with sticks waiting to pounce for even the smallest reason, or a boring monotonous timetable that never stops, or constant examinations. But mostly it was that school ran from 6AM to 6PM and work only seemed to run from 8 to 4 :). Now that I've gone through all that and Im on the verge of entering the working world, those days are starting to seem pretty idyllic. No landlords asking for rent, no pesky kids wanting to go to the park, no bosses breathing down your neck about deadlines, no insurbodinate juniors making you look bad, no needing to budget with fewer resources than requirements, and three school holidays every year to look forward to. Perhaps the grass really is always greener on the other side, even if you've been there and back.

On the job front the competition is pretty cutthroat. It's more than just survival for the fittest. Everyone wants a piece of the action, and it doesnt seem to be enough to go round. Natural selection is supposed to sharpen the edges, to ensure we are constantly getting better and better, and that every subsequent generation advances one step further than the previous one. But no matter how thin you slice things, there are always going to be two sides to them. The other side of natural selection is it kills potential talent. It squashes latent dreams. It diverts focus from the things that are important. People spend so much time learning tricks of the trade they never get to know the trade itself! It destroys the team dynamic, and turns everyone into a potential enemy. There are times, like now, when I wish we could all win. Yes pressure turns coal into diamonds, but it also collapses lungs, which I hear are very important! Like Martin Luther King I have a dream. But mine is that everyone will be able to find their place in this world. And that they will be able to find it without stepping over anyone else's head. And that we shall all be happy where we are, and be satisfied to advance as we walk step by step. And that we shall all strive to in so doing leave the world always a better place than we found it.

Ronald Reagan once postulated his life philsophy in a speech, and I found it quite admirable:

The house we hope to build is not for my generation but for
yours. It is your future that matters. And I hope that when you are my age, you
will be able to say, as I have: We lived in freedom. We lived lives that were a
statement, not an apology.

END

the world spins madly on

The other day I had an interview. My very first interview ever!!! I kid you not. You'd think being where I am I'd have done thousands of these things. I should be an old salt by now, but noooo. Bad things still happen to good people, and the employment system still shuts out some of its best potential talent (i.e. me, haha, I wish :). So it's only natural that I was freaking out, you know. coz asides from it being my first interview, it was kind of a big deal since it's a large company, but more importantly, since it's been my only call back since I started doing this. I've just been sitting in the sun watching everyone else in sharp suits go live their lives as mine passed me by, and now my chance was here.

I agonized over even seemingly small things like what-sized brush to use to polish my shoes. I wanted everything to be just right. I was slated for late afternoon so it was a pretty long morning, and as I found out later, our memory does NOT get better with age - in the one hour I spent in the waiting bay coz we started a little later than scheduled I forgot quite a bit of the material I had prepared! :( But, as it turned out, I didn't even need the stuff. I found that if you're really telling the truth and are really driven by your convictions then you've known yourself long enough that you'll be able to handle anything they throw at you. Maybe not as impressively, but it's gonna be pretty tough for you not to be able to say anything at all. You'd actually have to be actively trying to not get hired (in which case the question begs why you went to the interview in the first place :). Unless they decide to ask you about the budget. Or the East African Community. Or Chad. Ya, interviewers can get mean like that sometimes. So another thing I learnt is to always be a step ahead, answer the question and provide just a little bit of extra information. Little enough that the next question might actually come from your last answer; and then to make sure you stay off Amos Kimunya! Worked for me ;)

I also got my half-year results for the first semester, and they were less than exhilarating. It's a bit dishearting, considering those will form a big part of my average grade at the end of uni, but what can I do? They say the only way to live happily ever after is day by day. I want to be happy, so Im learning to take every moment as it comes. Making the best of a bad situation, that is the one thing you can only learn if you actually have bad situations to work with.

Now Im really trying to stay positive and not interpret it as a bad sign that my interview lasted twice as long as others', and that I wasn't asked any of the standard interview questions like what are my weaknesses and why should they hire me, but it's tough. I have a lot of things to think about, like how Im going to recover from my first semester goof-up, or what else I can do to enhance my employ-ability rating, or what's going to happen if we don't win the SIFE national exposition this weekend. And I would really have liked to be able to go back in time and change a few things, but on and on the clock ticks. Im finding that no matter how apprehensive I get, no matter how much I'd like to undo, time does not stop. The world spins madly on, sing The Weepies.

END

black holes and revelations

Last year at around this time, I found out I was going to New York City. I remember at that time being in like a daze of sorts, being unable to grasp the enormity of the news. I've won awards and competitions in my life before. Many, many times. (so they were almost all academic - sue me!) See I grew up blest. But this right here, this was different. It was like the culmination of a lifelong dream of mine Id had from way back when. To fly. And not just fly, but to NYC no less!

By the way, if you read this and you come from there then don't laugh, please understand where Im coming from. Here we consider 10-floor building skyscrappers. Ours is the epitome of insecurity - all one has to do to attract mugger detail is step out into the sunshine. If a road has three lanes on both sides we've outdone ourselves. It's virtually impossible to make jaywalking a jailable offence, coz then we'd need like twice as many cops as there are pedestrians - its like a way of life here to cross the road wherever. Traffic lights have only recently (3 months ago) been elevated above eye level, but even then it's still not unheard of for them to blink both red and green at the same time, or for two lights to blink green on opposing streets. Even something as simple as calling from a public payphone is an exercise in futility. The city (and I use that word loosely) is so hapharzadly planned that you'll get lost with a map, a guide and a gps device with two large blips, one for where you are and the other for where you want to go. But don't get me wrong, I dont not appreciate this place. I count my blessings everyday. Anyways, NYC. It meant we were going to need to work round the clock to come up with a world class presentation, and that for that reason I was gonna fail my exams (reading wasn't exactly priority at the time), but who cared - we were going to NEW YORK CITY!!!

So, three months flew by in a breeze, we managed to scrape together like 30K (A week's expenditure, mind you), and a truckload of work and a few sleepless nights later, we off to the city that never sleeps (turns out the sleepless nights were not wasted - they were actually good training :). And the rest, as they say, is history, the stuff of legend.

Ten months down the line and I can still see every second of that week as though it happened yesterday. The subways, the fast food and coffee, McDonald's, Broadway, Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue and the Trump Tower, The GAP, Dolce and Gabbana, Chanel, the NY Public Library, the fluid public system, Times Square, and the Manhattan skyline from the top of the Hilton. They easily count as the best days of my life so far. And I swore to myself I would go back, even if its the last thing I do. I still want to. Me by the way I actually want to move there. There's something alluring about a system that works, and things happen the way they should. You work hard you get rewarded, you don't you end up on the streets. Coz I know I can work hard. I can do it, but Im one of those idealistic people with their heads in the clouds. And where I am right now, those clouds are a little beyond my reach.

But Im a little wiser now, and Im learning that happiness isn't getting what you want, its wanting what you've got. So even if I never do get to go back, I hope it won't change me. And I hope I always know who I am.

I'm a saint and I'm a sinner
I'm a loser, I'm a winner
I am steady and I'm stable
I'm young but I am able
I, am Alividza's grandson,
The spitting image of my father,
When the day is done my mama's still my biggest fan.
Sometimes, I'm clueless and I'm clumsy,
But I've got friends that love me
And they know just where I stand
It's all a part of me, and that's who I am.

END