yahoozee

Last Christmas, I was rocking in places like Bacchus & 6 degrees North, Volar, No 10, Caliente etc… mainly to the tune of Olu Maintain’s Yahoozee but little did I think that dem yahoozee people wey dey UK fit do me 419 this Christmas!

Today I panicked when I checked my account and saw and an unknown debit… with work paying my December salary in at the end of this week on Friday, and me leaving on the country on Thursday, I started thinking I for just come back from Lagos see say dey don clear my account finish…

I don’t know why God told me to check my account today…at first, I was like why is the ID for that transaction written weirdly as ‘WWW.TOTALLYSHOES.C, O.UK’?… then a small light bulb came on and I was like I don't know them so why have they taken money from my account?… I clicked to investigate further and then I was like hell no…uh uh… I didn’t buy anything last week on the 11th.

So I called the bank and found out that on Thursday, after I had endured my 2nd pointless meeting of the day at work (I guess I should back track and correct that because the 1st meeting was quite necessary and it proved useful)… @ 13:58, my bank card was used to buy something off ‘http://www.totallyshoes.co.uk’... I assumed this to be the real website address sha because the one above didn’t make sense…

Now with only 3 days before I was to leave for naija… I had to cancel my bank card… I checked all the pending transactions on it and confirmed the remaining were mine… they were thank goodness… I confirmed that the bank could report it as fraud to the police… I then started to look for my oga to say I’d be finishing work early today to enable me to get to the bank before it closed to make a bank declaration…

I’d been spitting mad since I looked at my account… I’m normally so cautious… who likes being ‘had’?… not me.… I remember laughing long and hard at an oyinbo guy at work about three years ago who got hustled… for lack of common sense IMO… he and his partner accepted £5000 from a nigerian asking them to transfer about £50,000 into a nigerian's account for the promise of £100,000… na so money just dey rain from the sky?!… I wasn't surprised to hear that in the end they got nothing back in return… the cheque bounced… but after loosing £45,000 the police started investigating them for money laundering activities… me, I don't want wahala so I promptly report all suspect e-mails as phishing scams.

To protect myself from opportunists, I take precautions such as shredding all my card receipts… I never send my banking details in e-mails... I only do internet banking from work because of the nature of the secure work we do… same goes for internet shopping… I've signed up for secure online card verification systems with all but one of my cards and that is only because they are yet to offer it. I rarely do internet shopping with that bank card but I did err two weeks ago and then I ended up cancelling the order because the company was useless…

So upon all my precautions I sat at my desk completely miffed… the recurring question in my head was... of all the cards to all my accounts…why e be de account dat my salary dey enter dem go put hand enter, comot carry go?… I know people can beat the system but I felt so violated… I kept thinking thunda fire their yansh 1 millions times over…

I also felt bloody insulted… I would never shop on that site… not my style… not at all… I get taste better pass dat o but how I fit use dat theory as proof for bank?… I know say I no fit.

Then I started thinking maybe they’d be able to track them down with the delivery address used for the purchase…yes, perhaps… and I hope they lock them up and throw away the key when they find them… I just wanted my money back.

As I got to the end of this post I started thinking of all the things I was yet to get for myself and others for my trip to Lagos… I’d made a list and my eye caught a glimpse of one of the things I had gotten already… yoghurt for the kids… this time a big 1000 watt light bulb came on in my head with a very loud ‘ping’… I remembered an internet transaction I’d made on 11th December @ 13:51 for yoghurt mix… no no no no… but it was with a company called fraser simpson… they sent me an e-mail saying the transaction would show as ‘Totally Commerce Ltd’ not ‘WWW.TOTALLYSHOES.C, O.UK’… WTF?!!!

I’m going to call fraser simpson and check but the amount is the same and the time stamps kinda match so I guess it was probably me afterall… lol…

If it is I’ll call the bank back and explain… to think that all that wahala was for nothing… & I'll still have to wait for a new bank card no matter what, which won't arrive before I leave for Lagos… *shakes head*… I did all that for nothing…

Where is Afrobabe?… Afro… Afro… you sure say no be you wan do me juju like this because I no dey carry you go naija with me for Christmas?!!!

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winter wonderland

On sunday, I woke up shivering from the cold so I got out of bed to turn the central heating on but I found that the breath of winter still lingered outside my window. I looked down below and realised that this time it had brought with it a healthy dusting of icing. Tree branches, previously naked were now covered with a fluffy blanket of snow. The small lanes of the quarry looked like Eskimo way. In that instant my irritation, caused by the incessant shrill of the wind the night before, disappeared. Instead, I stood there marvelling at the transformation; there was certainly nothing bleak about this mid-winter morning because my small world now glistened outside the transparent globe. Then I felt that familiar childhood thrill, whistle through me; to run and play outside, in this bright and beautiful winter wonderland.

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Another reason this post is titled ‘winter wonderland’ is because I’ve been meaning to take part in Geisha's ‘12 days of Christmas’ production.

On Sunday, again, she asked if I was still interested so I downloaded some recording software, off the internet... the free one sha… with track times limited to 1 minute… a fair compromise, I thought... since I didn't want anybody to have to endure my tuneless rendition for any significant length of time... lol... Anyway, I decided to record a song that captured the joviality in my spirit that morning.

So… for the minute few wanting a direct link to my contribution, 5th day of Christmas, click here.

p.s
Remember that ’tis the season of love and goodwill… so please o!... easy on the yabs =)

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problem solving

Problem solving is considered one of the most complex of all intellectual functions. It is seen as a higher-order cognitive process that requires modulation and control.

So I have a small problem at the moment… my root cause analysis of the situation concluded that I over-indulged during my birthday trip… yay. However, if left unchecked, I will look like a beached whale in my bikini this Christmas… boo… besides Sod's Law dictates dat na facebook dem go use to expose me…

So I’m on a diet… The Food Doctor’s Diet… I’ve lost 3 kg in 3 weeks. Not bad but I’m not quite where I want to be yet. The process involves following some simple rules:

• No sugar – I miss cakes
• No caffeine – I miss drinking tea & coffee… especially at this time of the year… I need it to help combat the cold… mehnn I couldn’t feel my feet last night… seriously, it was like they were encased in ice despite the fact that they were supposedly insulated within a pair of thick socks, a 15 tog duvet and a pretty solid bedspread… I was that cold!
• Eat fat to loose fat – I no sabi dat logic sha but wetin concern me… if it works I'm down!
• Eat 5 times a day – yes o…5 times!… 3 main meals (each two palm/hand size portions) and 2 snacks (each just a palm/hand size portion)…
• No smoking – I don't anyhow
• No stress – Wish someone would tell my boss that
• No simple carbs - I've waved bye bye to white bread, white rice and pasta
• No starchy carbohydrates for dinner (I can only have that for breakfast and lunch) – this means that I cannot look forward to dishes like jollof rice in the evenings :-(
• Increase intake of complex carbohydrates – but I broke my Jack La Lanne juicer as I was cleaning it – I had to stop and ask myself… ‘Shubby Doo how does one break the rotating spring casing while trying to re-assemble it?’… how I did it I don’t know… what I do know is if I was to use it now I’d electrocute myself… I’m bummed out by it because it was the only way to make sure that I got my daily intake of fruit and veg…it’s now a struggle because as a child I was never any good at eating my greens… to be honest I wasn't good at eating full stop…hence the childhood name bone-ga-fish…
• Exercise at least 3 times a week for 20 minutes minimum – so I’m doing my pilates workout (that includes cardio!) every evening. The definition is slowly coming back to my body; I’m toning up and my muscles are leaner ;-)
• Pareto Principle – if I'm good 80% of the time, the other 20% doesn't matter!

I’ve applied a simple formula to a small problem (admittedly to do with my vanity) but I’m very sure that I’ll end up with the right result.

These last few weeks I’ve been overwhelmed by the number of bigger problems out there in the world.

Two weeks ago - I sat, flabbergasted, as I watched the documentary on the practice in Akwa Ibom, Nigeria… a classic case of how a perspective on a phenomenon has created one… I mean how the fuck does a community continue its barbaric practice of branding its children as child witches and then torture and kill them?!… in this day and age?! haba…

Last week - I was utterly confused as to why those retards entered Mumbai, India… solely for the purpose of reeking havoc at the taj mahal hotel, oberoi trident hotel, caman hotel, nariman place and café leopoid… I keep checking the news and still opacity… so I’m asking WTF for?!

Over the w/e - I was monitoring the religious/ ethnic violent riots in Jos, Nigeria… a result of the contested elections… all the time knowing that the deaths were preventable and absolutely senseless!

Today is World AIDS Day – but I still cannot fathom why people choose to have unsafe sex…people should fucking double bag IMO!

Ever heard of the joke ‘why is a maths book so sad?… well it’s because it contains so many problems’… but isn't maths supposed to be ‘the’ universal language of the world?… correction…of the universe as we know it… one that needs no translation to be completely understood… Especially in relation to the examples given above; I mean why can’t the foundations of mathematics be used to teach people that the axioms that they hold true are massively flawed. Simply because each is a starting point from which nothing else logically follows… *sighs*

Generally, I live my life holding steadfast to a lesson I learnt in church many years ago… ‘if you’re not part of the solution you are part of the problem’… but like Shakespeare pointed out in Hamlet… ‘ay, there's the rub’… what is the solution?… I remember this textbook I had in university… Stroud's Engineering Mathematics… we called it our engineering bible just because it had a detailed worked solution to everything.

Good Shepherd, why can’t there be a finite answer for each and every one of the world’s problems?…only one right non-elusive answer no matter the method of derivation.

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