fair is foul and foul is fair

Resturant, London. August 2006
‘I wish I could pay for lunch but you know I’m not working.’
So I Paid.
‘He likes you but I want you to know that he invited me over to his place but I didn’t go. I said it was because my mother is in town.’
So I shook my head.

Café, London. August 2006
‘OMG, I told him and his friend that you were seeing someone but he had no right to call you in anger about it. I’m happy you told him off.’
So I sighed.
‘He and I got talking and I think we clicked. Maybe I understand him more than you do.’
So I nodded in agreement.
‘That night, he walked me home and we had this moment where we nearly kissed.’
So I choked back the laughter and smiled.
‘I found out that he and Terry slept together that night that he walked me home. He went back for her. She knew he liked me. What a bitch!!!’
So I sympathised.

Work. September 2006
‘Come with me to Lyon. It’s my friend’s wedding.’
So I agreed.
‘It’s not that I cannot afford it but can’t you book my ticket with your air miles?’
So I made up an excuse and declined.
‘Well I told him we were going on holiday but I don’t know why he’d want to call you last night.’
So I told her it was to wish me journey’s mercies.

Airport, London. October 2006
‘The airline didn’t fly my luggage out on my flight.’
So I confirmed that it was on my flight and called her back.

Airport, Lyon. October 2006
‘You know that calling you about my luggage finished my credit’.
So I told her about roaming charges.

Hotel, Lyon. October 2006
‘I know we are sharing but are you going to pay for the hotel for both nights?’
So I said no and watched as she begrudgingly paid for the second night.
‘Thanks for letting me use your phone. I was going to call my brother because I need credit but I can’t get through. I am going to call Cee Cee to help me top up my credit. She is the one true friend I can rely on.’
So I rolled my eyes.
‘I am running so late. I thought we had plenty of time. I can’t believe I didn’t re-set the time when I arrived in Lyon. I’ll just jump in the shower and then we can go.’
So I waited.

Train Station, Lyon. October 2006
‘The train is too crowded. The next one will be too late to make the wedding. It isn’t worth going there just for the reception. Oh well I tried. It’s her fault for not sorting out things properly for the wedding.’
So I kept quiet.

Resturant, Lyon. October 2006
‘Who is calling you? Is it him?’
So I showed her that it was.
‘He is being a real asshole. I’m so done with him.’
So I frowned, knowing full well that she wasn’t.
‘Do me a favour and delete his number so I won’t be tempted to ask you for it.’
So I deleted it because I knew she didn’t want me calling him.

Hotel, Lyon. October 2006
‘I can’t find my money. I can't understand where it could have gone’
So I showed her my purse only contained plastic money.
‘Let me tell you something. It's not nice to hear you go on about stuff you've bought when I don't have money.’
So I stared at her in disbelief and then walked out to cure my blues with more retail therapy.

In the car, London. January 2007
Maizah: Shubby Doo, do you know that even though he refuses to date her publicly, she still cooks for him every week, packs it in plastic and carries the food to his house.
Shubby Doo: The whole thing is off but I’ve told her I want no part in the friendship she has with him.
Maizah: You know Hafizah has been bitching about you behind your back; that she can’t talk to you about him.
Shubby Doo: She is at his house now. She told me not to tell you. Sad thing is it is not us she is fooling but herself. She will be her own undoing.
Maizah: You know we fought about you. I told her that she was out of order about the things she was saying.
Shubby Doo: I’m not surprised at her at all. Please o!...What has she been saying?
Maizah: Things like you finished her cash in Lyon.
Shubby Doo: Hahaha…abeg what cash?!!! I'm always picking up the tab. I simply stood my ground about the hotel. She has been bitching about you too. Apparently, you have an attitude problem because you argue with her anyhow and don’t give her the respect she deserves as she is 2 years your senior. I was like haba...relax!!! I mean I know we all went to school together but you guys are family friends... despite all her nonsense nobody has Hafizah's back like you do Maizah.
Maizah: I guess Macbeth's witches were right; ‘...fair is foul and foul is fair...’

So we laughed.

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ciao

There are so many different ways to say it so I will only cover a few below:

Goodbye - English
Slán - Irish
Hwyl fawr - Welsh
Au Revoir or à bientôt - French
Auf Wiedersehen - German
Adiós or hasta la vista - Spanish
Adieus - Portuguese
Ciao or arrivederci - Italian
Yasou or andio - Greek
Näkemiin - Finnish
Dag or Tot ziens - Dutch
Hejdå - Swedish
Farvel - Danish
Żegnaj - Polish
Poka or Пока - Russian
Shalom - Hebrew
Ma'a al Salama - Arabic
Sayonara - Japanese
Zai Jian or 再见- Chinese
Paalam - Filipino
Sampai Jumpa - Indonesian
Namaste - Hindi... funny because Namaste is also the same word for hello in Hindi :-)

So I got this text message on Sunday from my razz cousin... who I am really holding back from doing a post on because it will always be one done in anger... her own is just to try and con me out of money and for that reason I haven't seen her in years... not since she begged me to give her some serious cash (which I did); only for me to realise her plan was always to abscond back to Nigeria the very same day she got it from me... no wahala sha but my own is once bitten, twice shy... *sighs*...

Anyway I got her text and I started to laugh… so much so I couldn’t stop.

Farida: Hope u are good? Just checking on u. Call me! CHAO.

ROTFLMFAO… abeg which one be chao?… kai! I want to believe that it was a slip of the finger… simply a typo… but I have learnt otherwise with her… yarning with her for 5 minutes is pure hard work… she be village girl o! but dat one no concern am because she go just dey blow her own phonetics by fire and by force.

Please why do people just continue to bastardise a language in an effort to feel among?

SMDH

What the hell was wrong with just saying o da bo?!!!

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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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half

So I should be getting ready to go to my friend’s (i.e Pelagia) wedding pre-party but I’m mad…mostly at myself…so I’m venting.

I got hustled today…technically it was yesterday but I haven’t slept yet.

Don't understand why they picked me...ok I guess it is quite obvious here that I'm a tourist. Whatever sha...I'm upset because I’m a person that gives readily and I never expect it back. If I’m ever in a similar situation in the future, I hope that this approach will serve me well...I hope I’ll have built up enough credit in the world favour bank to withdraw some kindness and see me through it. In Jesus’ name I pray this will never happen.

Right now it feels like someone found my bank account details and siphoned out my hard earned cash. I don’t get how it happened...correction...I do not understand how I let it happen!

Istanbul is a place were you can barter and I have (or thought I had acquired) some hard-nosed negotiation skills being a Nigerian. Whenever someone tells me the price, a little voice inside my head shouts “half”. I then tell them that that is all I’m willing to pay. I learnt this method early on in my pre-pubescent years because my mother use to love taking me to markets in Lagos and Ilorin. As mummy's little handbag, I became fascinated with the way she always got what seemed to be good deals. The ‘the half technique’ was mine...plus I also thought the skill might prove useful in the event of a divorce…I’d have had enough practice to automatically shout “half” ...lol.

What is still getting to me is how can I be ‘the mark’ for a con artist? Seriously, they should have rules that you cannot cheat an honest person…‘the mark’ is greedy….‘the mark wants something for nothing’. I simply wanted to buy a nice rug for my mother so I'm taking offence to the fact that the fiends decided to exploit this sentiment.

So, I was in a good mood...I had stumbled on the old hippodrome and then I went to a museum called Haghia Sophia (the name means divine wisdom). What stands there now is the 3rd version after the 1st and 2nd structures burnt down. It used to be a church in its two previous lives. In its 3rd incarnation it has been a church, then a mosque and it is now a museum. This basilica is immense…complete and rich with both Christian influences (e.g. mosaics of Mary, Jesus, and Archangel Gabriel) and Islamic & Turkish decorations (e.g. a prayer niche called a mirab placed in the direction of Mecca). I digress…

Anyway, afterwards as I head over to the Blue Mosque, ‘the roper’ approaches me offering helpful suggestions (or so I thought). By pure chance, when the lucky bastard mentions carpets an image of my mother smiling with gratitude pops into my head. She has wanted a new rug in her living room for a long while. All attempts by my father and brothers have failed. She smiles as she accepts the rugs. Then they are laid down to check for suitability but very quickly all the rugs disappear never to be seen again. I’ve always wanted to get her a Persian rug…but they are expensive…so today I thought, this is providence...I’ll get a nice silk Hereke carpet instead.

I follow ‘the roper’ to the shop. There I am introduced to ‘the floater’....there is no ‘inside man’ but there is ‘the fixer’ who will secretly help to manipulate me later with his sleight of hand technique. I see ‘the temptress’ ...her agenda is always to get ‘the mark’ to let down their guard...sultry won't work on me so instead she offers me a small cup of hot apple cider tea...then she smiles knowingly as I accept the drink (which btw is not really tea despite its name).

Something is off...now I'm uncomfortable.

Then I meet ‘the grifter’…king of con...a real confidence man. He starts his sales story and goes on and on...I feign interest until I do actually see one rug that catches my eye. The the pattern is vaguely familiar but I cannot deny that it is a beautifully crafted piece made using unusual colour combinations. In this respect, it is unique. I ask “how much is it?” To his reply I say “half”… he says no...I say thanks for the hot apple cider tea but that is my final offer. After about 30 minutes of haggling we agree on the price....I’ve moved a little sha but I’m still happy at the thought he has had to move a lot. He says I have brought him “siftah”… meaning the fortuitous spirit from the first sale that brings good luck throughout the rest of the day.

I get back to the hotel...I want to know who got the upper hand with this deal...has he cheated me?...most likely but by how much? I check the internet for the price of Hereke silk rugs...I find out that compared with the price I paid, these things are being sold for “HALF”.

I hope very soon these guys come to understand that bad behaviour breeds bad luck.

I better go, I’m really really late.

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