It's a Man's World.

It's five of us; four men, one woman; one black woman, four white guys.

I don't get intimidated easily because I know my stuff but today seems different. I usually want to prove myself that despite being black and female, I have a right to be here, I have paid my dues and you have to listen to me. I don't care if your suit is Armani or if you graduated from Oxford and have a turnover of £30 million, you're still my client and you must listen to my advise...but not today.

Today, i'm tired. Today, I don't give a flying monkey about that new house you built in France. I just want to listen to you waffle on to your kinds who you think are more intelligent because of their colour, age and gender; are better. I just want to listen to you talk and then come back to me for my opinion. Today, I want to yawn in your face, pick up my laptop and shake my bakassi out of your office.

I am knackered!

Things You Probably Didn't Know About Me

1. I don't like Cardboards or metals rubbing against each other. For me, that is a phobia worse than falling off a tower.

2. I'm scared shitless of snakes.

3. I can be very shy but you might see me as been stand offish.

4. I am a very good vocalist. Yes, I do say so myself!

5. I'm terrible with callbacks. I just don't call people back except I really have to. I have lost a number of friends due to this.

6. I am fine by myself. I don't crave the company of others, I do well just alone and enjoy it actually. Although, a lot of people see me as an extrovert.

7. I am put off by women who only talk about fashion and their latest designer purchase. I see them as shallow and for some reason. I like balanced individuals who although like fashion and talk about it, but has something deeper going on. I like to have intelligent conversations.

8. I don't like girls whose lives revolve around their men alone. I can't stand them!

9. I can go to bed fully clothed.

10. I'm an Insomniac

11. I hate doing dishes.

12. I don't wash my face before bed.

I don't understand why the pretty girls are usually the ones left out, the last ones to get married or never at all.

A girl recently moved into a flat above mine and we've been bumping into each other without saying hello. We acknowledge each other and just move on. I have noticed also that she dresses really well too and she wears the hottest boots and of course she's fit! Don't get carried away, i'm still very much a heterosexual female but I tend to aknowledge beautiful women when I see them.

Anyway, so this day we happened to be at the bus stop waiting to catch a bus and she came up to me to say hello. I thought that was quite brave of her actually seeing that Naija chicks put up a nasty attitude when you approach them (don't ask me. It's just something i've noticed over time). She was really polite. She complimented me and I, the same then she complimented and then I did and then she did again and I did again too...until one of us of course had to say stop! Hahahaha...women!

We boarded the bus and got talking. I don't know how it started but somehow we digressed into relationship and she told of her last relationship which was in 2005! I looked at her and thought she must be having a laugh. She is well gorgeous and if I wasn't straight, i'd have her in my house!

We didn't get much chance to get into the discussion because she had to get off to catch a train. I looked out of the window to catch a glimpse of her again and just wondered. I still don't get it!

Wow! so blogger still exists?

You have it...but not quite.

So you've been wishing for something, praying for it, infact, begging for it but then it comes, it looks like what you've been asking for...but then you become afraid.

You want it, but then you are scared that it might harm you. why? There is no doubt that you want it but you are just too afraid to take that plunge just in case it hurts you, yet this is what you stay up most nights praying for...

It comes to you and then you think you don't deserve it, it's too good to be yours. Why?

Is it because you feel inadequate to have it? I wonder...

Nigeria beckons...

Shock Horror!

Having time off work, the plan was to go to the market and finally get the ingredients for my Hausa declicacy "tuwo shinkafa" as the rain prevented me from doing so the other day. So off I went to the market. However, on my journey to the market, I decided to go into a pharmacy to pick up sodium bicarbornate as it's been rated to increase water's alkalinity to say 10Ph which is quite good if you are a fan of the supergreen diet which has recently taken my fancy.

I did the necessary and made my way to leave and head into the hustle and bustle of my local market but at the exit, I noticed a machine that looked rather odd and given my curious nature, I made a bee-line for it to satisfy inquisitive nature. It was then that I discovered it to be a machine that measures height, give blood pressure reading and cleverly works out your weight and BMI. I was elated! I have read about these machines a few times but so far haven't been opportuned to come across one so this was really good.

I positioned myself on the platform, inserted my wrist in the wrist bag, band or wrap(whatever you chose to call it) but not before inserting a pound coin in the money slot. Off it went. With calcuations done, I was excited to get my result, infact, I was like a kid in candy shop for a reason that still isn't clear to me now. S

So the ticket came out and what I beheld was a shocker to say the least! No, my blood pressure was normal -thank God! You see, i've always fancied myself as a Naomi Campbell(in height, anyway) and thought I was taller than average but the reality was that I am merely a 5ft 7inc tall lady. That wasn't the disappointment though. The disappointment was beholding my weight!! Now, i'm thinking that there might be some mistake somewhere afterall the machine recorded my weight as 5ft 7in which i'm sure should have been 5ft 10 at least (:-)), so how am I to trust a machine that says i'm slightly over 1st overweight? Surely, there must be something wrong with the machine, so off I stormed to the counter only to be told that the machine is perfectly alright!

I was gutted to put it mildly but what hurt me most was the realisation that my Tuwo shinkafa wasn't going to happen that day and from then on, i'd have to put myself through the tough and rigid regime of raw food!!!

Today is my first day on the raw food diet and so far, i've had a packet of plantain chips, jollof rice with fried meat and i've just taken a bite of the left over pancake I made on saturday with no greens in sight if I may add.

Our diet is going just fine, isn't it? Yeah right!

Tuwo Shinkafa.

It's spitting rain!

It was all planned out. To go to the market, buy Jasmine rice, beans and ewedu so I could make Tuwo Shinkafa. Not now, though. The rain has messed it all up. My mouth is watering, can't get the image of tuwo with gbegiri and ewedu soup out of my head and I have virtually nothing in my pantry. Mo is gonna be gutted when he gets here and all. I got him dreaming about it too. Maybe some other time, some other time, maybe.

Bummer!

Night Owl.

I'm fed up of staying up while others are sleeping. I sleep in the evening just before 8 and stay awake at night! How I manage to get into work can only be described as a miracle.

I really am tired of this so I ordered "Supergreen" from innerlight today. It's touted to boost energy and aid weight loss. Also, it supplements vitamins so i'm hoping that with vitamin replacement, things would return to normal in the body thereby aiding good rest and hopefully my body clock will stabilise.

Mo and I are back in full swing and things are going great so it's the best of times.

Nigeria Vs The World.

I bet a number of us must have read about the recent maltreatment of a particular set of Nigerians aboard a British Airways, flight, right?

Well, it has got me thinking deeply than I previously did. I am really sick and tired of the stigmatisation, the stereotypes and generalisations. I am Nigerian and I am proud of it (though I almost choked on those words). It is a very difficult time to be Nigerian now. If we are not being deported, we are being done for fraud or our guys are hated by other black men because they believe they steal their women or other national females think Nigerian men are dogs and not good role models, all sorts, you name them! Nigerian women are either prostitues or plain gold diggers.

How long are we going to seat back and have countries in the world drag our name in mud? How long are we going to accept being disprespected by even the likes of Tanzania!? Recently, Wole Soyinka was undignifiably searched at the South African Airport, why? Because he is Nigerian of course! It's only a Nigerian that would die on his way to being deported back home without it's government batting an eyelid! I was shocked to read on a Nigerian forum, recently the comment of another Nigerian like myself who thought the Nigerian who was thrown out of the BA flight deserved it perfectly well! I was shocked! She even went on to suppor the treatments being metted to us in the diaspora because as she saw it, we are unruly individuals! I wasn't able to reply to her comment because I am not a member of the forum, otherwise I would have given her a piece of my mind, but I digress.

Now, it has come to the crux now that I personally have to be a doer rather than a mere talker. I have taken part in heated debates in the past about Nigeria and how I think it's a great country with vast potentials but where am I now? I'm still in a country which isn't mine. I went out recently to vote for the current mayor of London, however, when such event happens in Nigeria, I never return to at least exercise my rights as a Nigerian. What we need to know now is that this world is borrowed from our children. Whatever we do now, is what our children will come to find. If we live little for them, they get little.

A lot of us are here in high flying post, we love starbucks, we love French connections, we love walking into Gucci and feeling among, we have bought into the western culture that ours seem so backward now. Even in Nigeria, you see how the western culture have infilterated ours. When they ask a lot of us why we are are not at home, we moan about security, lack of light and all sorts yet it's in this same secure land that our children are been killed. I guess you didn't hear of Damilola Taylor or the recent wave of gun crimes which is claiming a lot of black children's lives, eh? Security isn't guaranteed anywhere in the world!

I recenctly learnt that in the last one year alone, one thousand Nigerians have lost their lives to robbery and attack in SOUTH AFRICA!!! Can you imagine that? We are hated even in our own continent! Why exactly do we feel the need to travel out of our shores? Fair enough if we want to do so for exposure, the education that the likes of Britain gave. Hmm...even the thought of that brings to mind the amount of money ordinary Nigerians contribute to the British economy in terms of visa fees! Not all these visa applications are successful, mind you. A lot of Nigerians made noting less than 3 applications before being eventually granted a visa! Yet we say there is poverty in Nigeria, I say where? Why do we fork out all this money so as to be disrespected and maltreated, so?

Isn't it this same Nigerians which do not provide opportunities that South Afrikaans are milking from its economy in terms of telecommunications? I just think we need to change our orientation. Nigerians are a very dynamic people, we are a people who do not settle for less but we never see diamond in the rough! We are always after the Diamonds that have been polished and shiny which of course was taken from our land and using our people to do the hard work of making it what it is!

Talking of diamonds, isn't it just at our backyard in Sierra Leone? This same oil, before it's discovery, i'm sure we would have travelled to Saudi Arabia for opportunities just because it has oil, if we hadn't found it on our own land! There is still alot that we are yet to uncover but no, our people fail to see it. We want to come to a place where it's already being laid out. Who wan suffer, abi?

Anyway, enough of my ramblings. I just thought to let you know that I am tired of this stigma and I wanna return home. I wanna die at home! if there is any death that would kill me, I want it to be from home and not from these yobs or hoodies! Yes, I am fed up of this all1 Nigeria is great! I am great!