simply oroque's view

you know, i find it impossible to read the absolute rubbish that we all so treat so laissez faire. i mean seriously, i'm trying hard not to burst a nerve. i'm usually one to give some benefit of the doubt to anyone up until they are caught with their hands in the cookie jar. i am full of respect for constituted authority and always expect the best from government even when i am proved wrong over and over again. but this has to be it. so just last week i got a text message from my pensions administrator telling i've got some six digit sum sitting in my pension account for when i grow old and retired. as you know, since 2004 the government set up a new pension scheme where you pay 7.5% of your salary and your employer pays 7.5% every month end unfailingly. actually, its not like you have a choice as it is deducted at source. to make sure this works, or so we were told, the money is kept separate from the place where your contribution is recorded and monitored. so, we end ...

this was a very long weekend. one of many weekends that elongate because of certain lifestyle choices and that test the limits of my resolve. i have a confession (yes, again). i hate generators. and its for all the reasons that you can imagine. i hate the contraption in and of itself, i hate the noise, i hate the fumes and i hate the fuel consumption. i hate the fact that i can literally see each puff of black smoke ascend into the upper atmosphere to devour an oxygen particle that was this close to repairing the ozone layer :)...and i happen to honestly believe that at the current rates of pollution, we will have no earth to call home in the next 20 years. however, i am unfortunate to come from, and live in, a country that cannot generate anything in sufficient quantity to ensure that its citizens do not have to fend for themselves with regards basic amenities. there are public systems for water, electricity and telephones but nobody has any ac...

i honestly hate to sound like a dumb blonde, but i can't ignore the matter on ground...actually, take that literally because that is the only thing i have been baraged with all day. unfortunately, people expect lawyers to have an idea about everything and would stop me on my way to raid the office snack bar   er...the gym, and ask me random questions about things they hear in the news which i am clueless about. so today the whole office is agog about the week long south africa/nigeria match. for those of you living under a rock/in other countries with your own problems/dont care, heres what happened (the nigerian version of the story clearly). here we were, sitting down minding our own business and dodging bullets from boko haram when we heard on the radio that over 125 nigerians had "AGAIN" been deported from south africa for the flimsiest of excuses. the word 'again' is used not because the same 125 had been deported before, but because nigerians have long bee...

ive never felt older than today. i swear. so there's this new set of youth service corpers that have been sent to my office for their one-year national assignment.  i remember having a conversation with the human resources people sometime ago and them telling me that they only take top notch, super achieving graduates to complete their service year with the company. well, i'm guessing that the word 'top notch' has a new meaning in the modern advanced dictionary because frankly, i disagree. firstly, i am struck by how young these kids are. they all claim to be about 20 to 23 but frankly i can almost swear they are younger (or maybe i am older) but you know, no problems there. i used to feel like a super chap when i graduated from law school at 23 so hey... naturally, i strike up conversation with them just to test the depth of the water and thats where it hits me. the times have really changed. to start with, everyone is an enterpreneur. when i was in school, i co...

i have now come to the point where i must admit that i have totally run out of the blogging spirit. :( i've kept up the hope that maybe it was just a dry spell, and that maybe it will soon pass but the honest truth is that i have changed. i have grown, and i have lost interest in those things that used to get me riled up enough to write the damn blog in the first place. everything that was weird has finally become so normal in my mind that i cannot even summon the will to write about the absurdity called nigeria. the daily killings by boko haram that has become but a blip in the news, the kidnappings in the oil industry, the blatant rigging of state elections by the ruling party, the inconsistent government policies, the overbloated government official appointments...nothing moves me anymore. and thats a dangerous place to find oneself if you ask me. i suddenly realize that no amount of screaming and blogging appears to change anything and frankly noone cares. people are so d...

so this morning i put up the following facebook status: "my very own Meryl Streep finally wins a long overdue "Best Actress" Oscar! woohoo! but why is it that all the black women who win oscars have to be fat (minus halle berry) and play degrading roles? monique, jennifer hudson and now octavia spencer. the angry black woman syndrome is alive and well, clearly. shame" as everyone probably knows by now, i would watch a movie with meryl streep in it even if all she does is sleep throughout the movie. i am that addicted to this woman's acting prowess. i feel blessed every single time i realized that i lived to see real acting and not the crap that beyonce everyone does these days by way of 'acting'. for context, please find below the women i referred to in my status:   monique in "precious"  monique winning oscar  jennifer hudson in "dream girls" jennifer hudson winning oscar   octavia spencer in "the help" octavia...

i've been tired lately. like super brain drained and weak as soon as its noon; and no, i don't eat pounded yam for lunch. to cut the long story short, i had to find motivation to go through the day today. i find that some days, no matter how much you have to do, or how hard you push, you just cannot get yourself to do any useful work (hi boss!). and so, i decided to write a few reviews about my trip earlier this year. i find tripadvisor.com to be a very useful site for travellers... the reviews and experiences of older travellers make it near impossible for you to get in trouble at your travel location...but it also makes you paranoid of the locals cos some people have had mad nasty experiences. in trying to get the pictures to attach to my review, i stumbled on the following pictures i have gathered over the years from the internet (i didn't take the pictures and do not own them in any way) and i couldn't help thinking about how much foolishness exists...

"thats how" (and its pidgin english version - 'na so') is a phrase that you often hear when people are narrating an event where the conclusion does not support the trail of the narrative. you know, when everything is going in one direction and you have almost predicted that you have no worries in the world, only for some dramatic event to step in and change all that. so, for example, imabong the housegirl will be telling the gate man how she was just having a blissful day and 'washing madam cloth for inside baff come dey sing mariah carey by myself, na so oga just come dey shout for my head say if i wake baby ehn, i go pack my load go village this night'. get it? often times, in nigeria, "thats how" stories often end with "see me see wahala", but thats another topic for another day. when we said happy new year at the beginning of 2012, i had no premonition whatsoever that there would be nothing but drama from the word go. the world was p...

i am pretty numb at this stage. this is that phase you get you when you speed past shock, anger, frustration and helplessness...you just feel numb. not sure you actually can comprehend what is going on around you, and not sure if your understanding really makes sense. not sure if you should yell and call out the obvious, and not sure if you should be silent like others. so, for days on end throughout december, i couldn't stop trying to get the christmas spirit going. i felt like it was a year that was worth celebrating the christmas holidays not only because we have survived incredible odds but because goodness alone knows if we will ever have the opportunity to celebrate christmas in the years ahead, going by the current economic trends. and i wasn't the only excited one. millions of nigerian children were already dropping hints for their parents and being extra nice in the bid to wrest a few minutes of attention from the ever busy adults towards securing a really festive ...

its world AIDS day today. a day that is set aside to bring to top of mind, the global pandemic known as HIV/AIDS. as with all things that afflict the human race, we have come from blame shifting, to research, to prevention...and we are inching closer to a cure. how am i so confident? well, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, in 2010 there were 1.8 million AIDS related deaths, down from 2.2 million in 2005. In Nigeria, we had roughly two hundred thousand deaths in over two million HIV infections for 2009 and that shows that our HIV counter programs work, or we are not reporting every HIV infection/death case... or we are lying to the united nations. either way, sounds like great news but that number remains a large fraction of the Lagos population for context and there is more to be done. however, my sincere happiness lies in the fact that for once, whether driven or led, nigeria appears to be doing what is right in terms of not bein...