sometimes you can't make it on your own

Friendships are hard. Relationships are even harder. Marriages should actually come with the NIH sign [Not Invented Here]. I've always wondered why. It should be one of life's great paradoxes - that man was actually created with fellowship in mind, and yet finds it the hardest to relate with his own kind. Of course if you believe in evolution then understanding this shouldn't really be a problem for you, you know, coz of the whole natural selection thing... But that aside, there seems to be a plethora of explanations out there for why interaction is so hard between people. Out of sight, out of mind. People always leave. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. You never miss the water till the well runs dry. In fact, Allan Pease (is that his name? I forget) has a whole series on the two genders: Why men don't listen and women women can't read maps, Why men don't have a clue and women always need more shoes, Why men lie and women cry, Why men can only do one thing at a time and women don't stop talking, or Why he's so last minute and she's got it all wrapped up. The list is long. It's like everywhere you turn in this arduous journey of life you find a shaded resting place with a couch, a cool drink and a pamphlet listing 27 reasons why you're better off on your own.

Are we really? I was privileged to go to Starehe for high school. Now as far as associations and disparities go, it doesn't get bigger than Starehe. That school has like a thousand students. Literally. The whole brotherhood theme is so hammered it's like it's up there on the list [of priorities] and academic success comes a close second. We all live in the same rooms - prefects, captains, high schoolers and collegers. There is no such thing as bullying. We eat at the same tables (most of us anyway). We live by the same rules (although here I should probably add seemingly). We don't put on the same uniform, but the times when it needs to be on are the same for everyone. We are taught to share, to depend on one another, morally, mentally and physically. We are taught that the differences we see are only superficial, and that deep down inside, we're all the same. That when the game ends the king and the pawn all go back to the same square. That we're all the same color once you turn out the light. But best of all, after all this education is done, the final decision to relate is left up to the individual. No one gets forced or otherwise compelled. Those who want to be snobs can actually be snobs, and the social bees can do their thing. So if you leave the school having learnt anything, it will be because you chose to, and those are the lessons that stay with us for a lifetime. It was in Starehe that I first heard the long version of no man is an island: No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...Therefore send not to find out for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. (or something like that)

I think mostly the thing we're afraid of in relationships, is the possibility of getting hurt. Apparently if you don't expect anything you don't get disappointed. While they last, judging by consensus, relationships and friendships are the isht. But when they end, there are few feelings that are worse. I guess they called it a heartbreak for a reason. It would seem then that every song's gotta end some time, but is that reason not to enjoy the music? It could also be a question of misplaced priorities. In today's world, money seems to be that answer to all of life's problems. Get enough of it and there's really nothing, or no one, else you need. That those who say money cannot buy you happiness don't know where to shop. The American actor Groucho Marx once implored the Good Lord, "All I want, God, is a chance to find out for myself if money really doesn't buy happiness." Modern society even has a skewed view of family - father, mother and children. Strictly. These days we don't so much live together as simply coexist. We're all just victims of circumstance in where we find ourselves. Is it us? Are we our own worst enemy? George Bernard Shaw may have been right:

As we strain to grasp the things we desire, the things we think will make our lives better - money, popularity, fame - we ignore what truly matters. The simple things. Like friendship, family, and love. The things we probably already had.

END

boulevard of broken dreams

I got turned down recently at a job interview. I assume so coz they didn't get back to me like they said they would. But that wasn't my last hope so I'm still ploughing on as I know best. This is about the third time that's happened to me so far, and it's really been eye opening, I like to think. I'd like to believe that I'm learning new things every day from all these missteps. Coz otherwise then it will all have been for nothing, and that is not a particularly awe-inspiring prospect. We learn from failure I guess that the world doesn't begin and end with us. We learn that life doesn't stop. We learn that when one door closes, if we look carefully we'll find that another one opened. And most importantly we learn to believe in a higher power, coz it would appear that we did everything we could and somehow still didn't make it. That our best wasn't good enough. It's supposed to teach us perseverance. If it doesn't kill us it's supposed to make us stronger. It's supposed to stretch our limits, and make us discover heights we can reach we didn't think possible. And when we finally do succeed, and find that the success is even greater coming at the time it did rather than earlier on, it's supposed to show us in hindsight that all things really do work together for good for those that love Him.

Failure tests our faith. Our resolve. How badly do you want something? You never really realise that until fate tells you you can't have it. Then you get to find out just how far you'll go to get it. You also get to find out that it's never all going to be in your hands. You'll always have to leave something - however small - to chance. I was watching Prison Break way back when, and Scoffield said something I found interesting - preparation can only get you so far, then you have to take some leaps of faith. And this was a guy who didn't even empty the trash without it being some part of a grand plan! If because we failed once we become afraid to try again, to take a chance on life, then we shall truly have failed. Otherwise it's all education, not failure per se. I find that success isn't about never falling. It's about rising up one time more than however many times you fall. It's starting from scratch and keeping on scratching. "...If you can make a heap of all your winnings/And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss/And lose, and start again at your beginnings/And never breathe a word about your loss/..." goes that Rudyard Kipling poem.

The older I get, the more I realize that dreams don't always come true. Occasionally dreams get replaced by even greater ones. And at other times they just die. And it's all ok. That is as it should be. One does not always become less of a person for letting go. One isn't less worthy for changing course. If we always got everything we asked for when we asked for it, I think we'd become ungrateful. We'd start to take things for granted. Sometimes loss teaches us to value things more. You try and you fail and you try and you fail so that when you finally do succeed, you can truly appreciate the grandeur of it all. You can take a step back and take stock of all your efforts and treasure your achievements.

Sometimes when you're young you think nothing can touch you. It's like being invincible. Your whole life is ahead of you, and you have all these plans. Big plans. To become this successful person. To find your perfect match, the one that completes you. To write the great novel. To invent something new. But as you get older you realise it's not always that easy. It's not until the end of your life that you realise the plans you made were simply plans. At the end, when you're looking back instead of forward, you simply wanna believe that you made the most of what life gave you. You wanna believe that you're leaving something good behind. A legacy. You want it all to have mattered.

END

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

all these things i've done

I'm rude, so I've been told. I don't answer people in a polite manner. I speak without thinking, and end up hurting people's feelings. Ok, I'll bite. Am I really? When someone sees you busy eating lunch, then they ask you what you're doing, are you at fault if you tell them you're practising crop rotation? If you were clearly waiting for a bus at the bus stop - one of the few that's actually labelled, mark you - and then you were asked what you were waiting for, would it be impolite to answer "The turn of the century."? I ask

Apparently Im also selfish. I think only of myself, and no one else. Everything I do I do with myself in mind. I cannot undertake a kind deed that will not at least benefit me in some way. Well who isn't? The English have a word - altruism. It means "showing unselfish concern for the welfare of others." Doing good just because it is, without expecting anything in return. They also have a phrase: white unicorn, being "a rare mystical creature only rumored to exist but highly sought after," or "the perfect person, your dream person." The same English have another word: utopia. It means "an ideal and perfect place or state where everyone lives in harmony and everything is for the best." Could it be that the perfection and elusiveness of altruists, white unicorns and the place called utopia are somehow connected? Hmmmm...

I am not christian. I listen to rock music. I associate with non-saved people. I do not read my bible everyday. I do not attend bible studies and/or other christian events. I don't even go to church where I stay. Is my understanding of christianity at fault? coz I believe it should be a way of life. It should not really be something you explicitly say. It's the sum total of everything you do, and everything you omit to do. So I don't preach, or witness or sing and dance. First I have two left feet [why BTW do we say left and not right?], physically can't dance :). Birds have gone deaf listening to my voice singing, so that's kinda out as well. I find the bible is best read when you're not discussing it with folks. "And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all," goes the Bible. I hate the [pretentious] holier-than-thou attitude exhibited by most of the members of so called C.U's, and it is that, rather than the christianity itself, that I try to dissociate myself from. But apparently to those who would judge me, the two are one and the same.

It's said that there are many paths to success, but the quickest way to failure is to try to please everyone. It would seem that I can't win them all. Mother Teresa once wrote a poem [actually she wrote many, but this one kinda stands out]:

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered,
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives,
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies,
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you,
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight,
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous,
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow,
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough,
Give the world the best you have anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God.
It was never between you and them anyway.

How true.

END

so a stranger can live

As human beings, we are naturally predisposed to act from a vantage point of self interest. We do things in a way that will yield most benefit to us, and if there's harm to others, this is very often a secondary consideration. That must sound horrendous, but it is "only human" [that little phrase that was invented to cover every mistake man makes. apparently there's an entire website dedicated to them!]. There is however another class of person. People to whom sacrifice is a way of life. People who think of others before themselves. The United States Coast Guard has one such class: an elite group of swimmers called Rescue Swimmers. Not surprisingly, their mantra is "So a stranger can live." There is a song, by Bryan Adams called Never Let Go, that was probably written for a movie but really got me thinking:

Can you lay your life down, so a stranger can live
Can you take what you
need, but take less than you give
Could you close every day, without the
glory and fame
Could you hold your head high, when no one knows your name
That's how legends are made, at least that's what they say

I don't know, these sound like important questions for all of us to ask ourselves, because it seems to me they go to the very core of our humanity. This self-serving predilection was actually not an intention of the creator. Man was made with fellowship in mind. How much would we really be willing to do for others? In fact we could even [for the sake of our sanity] set the bar a little lower than the song, how far would we be willing to go for our friends?

We live in a time and society that worships star power. Name recognition. Celebrity. So when someone does a kind deed, they are like companies - they probably want the media there. To, you know, let everyone know. It is, after all, news, [that someone has committed a random act of kindness]. Or maybe even on a much less grand scale, we'd like our friends to know all the things we do "out of the kindness of our hearts." In fact, this public acknowledgment is ostensibly so important that the Reader's Digest has these days created an entire regular column called [aptly] "Kindness of Strangers" [but at least to the Digest's credit, it is the recepient of the acts who write to this column, not the doers]. But assuming there was no fame and there was no glory attaching, would we still do the things we do?

I heard this story in January about this woman who, watching Bethuel Kiplagat talking, called the network and asked how she could get in touch with him, she wanted to help. She's a counsellor by profession, and apparently by April she'd seen over 4700 people and couples. I cannot even imagine the tragedies she may have in so doing averted. Just one person, who decided to reach out to a stranger. How many of us keep asking ourselves "Really, I'm just me. What can I do?" Apparently a lot. And until we try, we can never know. Hellen Keller was an american woman who turned deaf and blind at age 2, and so this of course meant she also couldn't talk. But she did not let this deter her. She wanted to change the world, and change the world she did.

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can
do something; and just because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do
the something that I can do.

END

the trick is to keep breathing

Im just recovering from the worst attack of malaria like ever. So bad in fact the doctors couldn't even see it in my blood - it's learned how to play dead!! Yikes! Or maybe it was just burnout. Either way, I was six feet from the edge for quite a while, and it was not heaven. Musta had something to do with that night shift I'd been working lately. Id like to say I took the time to sit back and reflect on my life, and strategise for the next phase just about to begin, but nooo. I spent the time under the influence, and those times I wasn't I took sleeping pills, or hit my head really hard against the table. That's how bad the pain was. But having gotten better, I have realised one thing, Murphy be damned, when things appear at their most hopeless, that's usually when our miracle comes. Ever hear the saying "It'll get worse before it gets better"? Ya, there's apparently a ceiling as to how much worse it can get, so you can actually get to that point where it can't possibly get much worse, and the only way to go is better. I was there, although only for a day, and let's just say I've had better days.

The thing you really need to do is to not give up. To hang in there. The trick is to keep breathing. When life throws you a curve ball and you can't hit back. When you get dumped (or dumped on - never exchange words with the garbage man BTW, take it from me :) ). When there's too much month at the end of the money (that might actually be all the time). When the examiner tests everything you dint read and ignores everything you did (perhaps because it was all FHM and Sports Illustrated - these examiners can be such a drag sometimes! :) ). When you find you haven't landed your dream job, and are instead stuck selling insurance to people who would much rather have bread and milk. When the one day you're late for an interview is the day an oil tanker falls across the entire road. When you do get your dream job, but get the boss from hell who never lays off. When the bank forecloses on your house, or the landlord doubles the rent. When the person you love does not love you back. When you're handed lemons, make lemonade, and then find that people actually prefer icecream. When you land in the taxman's radar. Or when it's just one of those days. The trick is to keep breathing. Everything else will work itself out with time. You just keep breathing.

Fleetwood Mac were right on the mark. (that's a fun phrase, Fleetwood Mac on the mark :D) They say in their song Don't stop:

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow
Don't stop it'll soon be here
It'll be better than before
Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone.

The trick is to just keep breathing. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.

END

ideas are like stars

It's been a while since I wrote, and with good reason - I got a job!! See ordinarily that would be a good thing, but when they said be careful what you wish for coz you might just get it, I think they were onto something, coz get a job I did. And the night shift no less! You know the way when you sleep at 8 and have an early morning the next day the night seems to last like 15 minutes? Trust me, it's all in your head. Nights typically last for three weeks each - at the very least! There have been times when I've stayed up, dozed, taken coffee, dozed some more, put on thirty pounds, and looking at my watch, found it to be only thirty minutes later. You actually start to crave for mornings. And of course fate being fate, the sun does not rise. Ever.

But I digress. I was looking at the US polls (Zimbabwe have censored all their news so it's not that Im being unpatriotic - it's that I don't own a news agency so I have to watch what CNN decide), and I noticed Obama has now eclipsed Hilary. All that talk about him creating a new wave, a movement, has started to come to fruition. I learn the thing about movements is that you're either in them or in the way, much like the Japanese Shinkasen (trains). In the movie V for Vendetta, he was faced with all these british cops who had guns and told him so, and he said, "No what you have are bullets, and the hope that by the time you're empty Im not still standing, because if I am you'll all be dead before you've reloaded." So they fired till they were empty, then he just says in that chilling voice, "My turn," and what happens next was just poetry, literally, there was even an opera playing in the background. The lead inspector was the only person left, and was firing shots at V and V just kept walking towards him, so he was like "Die! Die! Why won't you die??!?", and so naturally V took it upon himself to explain (of course while strangling the guy): "Because beneath this mask is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof." - of course in V's case I think it also helped that he was wearing a steel breastplate that tended to stop the bullets :)

And apparently that applies even in life. Obama is just one of those people that exudes confidence. He has that look in his eye that tells you he really believes whatever it is he's telling you. He actually respects the opinion of experts (do you know how many leaders of latter days actually do that? You'd be surprised!). He places a lot of faith in people's intelligence and their capacity to make the right choice given favorable circumstances, and, he tells it like it is. Obama is a classic modern-day idea. In fact, it was from him that I first learned that governments aren't supposed to build an economy, they're supposed to create an environment fitting for the private sector to thrive, and for a middle class to grow (Ok, maybe Id also heard that from Economics class, but it was much less interesting then). That is one thing we are lacking in Kenya - a middle class (actually we currently also don't have a chain of command that extends beyond the president, but that is another story for another day). We have the rich, and those who literally live on faith - I guess coz everything else you have to buy with money which they don't have. Real sad.

Victor Hugo said, in 1870, that there was nothing more powerful than an idea whose time had come. Not even the sound of marching armies. And he was right. We've seen it time and time again. With broadcast TV, with internet music downloads, with (napster and kazaa) file-sharing networks, with democracy, with unions and collective bargaining. Give the masses hope, provide meaningful challenges and rewards, trust them, then get out of their way - they'll knock your socks of. Is Obama really really the next big thing? He certainly does represent that new principle.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once described the measure of a man:

Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy... The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Obama has certainly made it clear where he stands. From the beginning. No black has ever before him done what he's done. Parallels are already being drawn between him and Dr. Martin Luther King. If he's an idea whose time has come, Id go to church if I was Hillary, or McCain.

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forty is the new twenty

So as it happens, another semester has just ended, and as always Im jubilant, have collected quite a few movies and series to get me through to the next exam season, and I've made those resolutions I always make at times like now - to be a better student, go to the lib, attend all the classes, even the 8 O'clock ones, et al. But this time it's with a twist - I've started applying to companies that are hiring. See this is my final year, and this being the second semester of that final year, it's also my last one as a student. There are times when I sit down and dread the days I won't be student any more. Being a non-student brings with it a lot of freedoms, but it does carry a truckload of resposibility, and methinks that truck is larger than the one carrying the freedom :) I cannot for the life of me imagine how Im gonna support myself for the first few months if things don't work out like they haven't been working out quite a bit in my life. I've embarked on a few personal projects and I've invested quite a bit of time there, but like all other upstarts there is always the what if's. What if there are no takers? what if we overprojected our cashflows? What if market acceptance is just a little bit harder to secure than we foresaw? And what if it takes longer than we anticipated? Anyway, the good thing is the chances of success are just as equal, being that the future follows a random walk. Although Murphy would have us believe otherwise, Im staying postive on that.

At some point over the last few weeks the government had reached an agreement on cabinet, even down to specifics (ya, my fixation with News is now completely over so now my knowledge is limited to petty neighborhood talk - although my neighbors thesedays are very intellectual people), and then that govt spokesperson went and told people that there was going to be no difference in the way cabinet was run, that it would be the same way financially as a twenty-person cabinet. It would seem that our government spokesperson, in his infinite wisdom, would have us believe that 40 is the new 20. Really?!!? Now granted most of us Kenyans haven't done those doctorate degrees he's done, we should be at least a little less bright than he is right? You'd think. Hmmm :/

Anyway, on one of the jobs I was applying, they needed no experience, which obviously rocks coz I don't have any (used to spend my long holidays at home during the junior years) but they had a maximum age limit. Now Im on the periphery - Im 24 and their max was 25, but I was thinking, following the lesson we've learned from our government recently, shouldn't we all be able to, you know, lie about - no Im gonna go with 'favourably restate' - our ages? So that really, it stops being a disqualifying factor. After all, age, just like the number of cabinet ministers, ain't nothing but a number, right? Riiiight??? :)

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