simply oroque's view

okay, to be honest i have no reason to give for the silence on this space. truth is, from as long as i can remember, i always have long spells of time when i switch off from everything and everyone. when i just sit still and take stock of all the commitments i have going, all the stuff i do and all the people i surround myself with, and find a reason for each one. it usually gets most obvious with church and religion, because as anyone who reads my blog often will know, i have something about religion that i cannot put a finger on but i will not give up on either. the sorta "love God but not sure about his kids" feeling. and i know its bad, but thats what i've been doing. i have spent the whole past 2 months on a break from everything and everyone. i have cut off all the hangers on, and stopped going to church altogether (minus once or twice when i would enter during opening prayer and leave during closing prayer) because i feel really monitored and choked and constantl...

I have been on leave for about a week now and had decided that this time, I would not broadcast it on my blog. I was hoping that I will get a complete shut out by just plugging out of everything…and no, everything does not include facebook. And so just this past saturday, I stumbled upon the fact that it was actually the birthday of a wonderful friend of mine - Chinene. She being one of the few people in my life who’s presence is so silent, and yet most powerful towards influencing my actions. I recalled with pride, for the first time to a worldwide audience, how she actually used to be so happy to have me drop by at their family house (unannounced and always hungry) and she and her brothers would welcome me as if they’d known me all their lives. I never for once felt out of place with them. This then brought to my mind the thought of all the people who have actually fed me at one time or the other… especially through my difficult university years (thanks Gabriel and Yinka, you guys...

i remember two years ago, when i had retired into my sleep at about 10pm, and a close family friend came knocking (and ringing my phone off the hook) to tell me that his wife was in labour. this is a couple that had spent 4 years of marriage trying to conceive (i often wonder why legitimate couples struggle to conceive while layabouts get pregnant especially when they don't want it, but hey, another of life's ironies). his wife is so lovely and a really great person who helped my sister and i settle in quite well, when we first moved back home after such a long time in Abuja. so, he was there to seek our financial assistance as it had become an unusually protracted labour and they needed to buy some additional medical supplies and all. fortunately, my sisters boyfriend (now my brother in law) was there that night and had enough money on him to salvage the situation. naturally, we woke up the next morning and flew to the hospital to behold the new bundle of joy. everyone was sm...

it has been so busy lately, that i cannot even begin to think about it. as i write this, i am smack in the middle of my 8th Agreement in 2 days. you know, those very complex contracts that you have to pay attention to and cover all the possible things that could happen in future. not cool. but hey, i guess i have to earn my salary...and i have no complaints about my salary. so there. i havent even had a moment to observe goings on around the world and in nigeria. there was a bomb blast in abuja on independence day, and the way the government is not letting the matter die, is impressive. i hear some folk are trying to politicize the incident as elections are due next year, but i hope to God that it is a one-off incident that will never occur again. like i said in an earlier post, nigerians are copy masters, and once it appears possible to implement a vice and get away with it, it suddenly becomes the rave. we have come from forging naira notes, to cutting human parts for rituals, to...

going through my past blog posts (and yes, i'm vain like that), i realize that i have made promises over time, to narrate an incident as part of a larger topic, or to tell a joke i heard, or critisize new music. half the time, i find that i just move on to another topic by the time i am writing my next post and thats that. so i will try to fulfill a few of the promises. before i got my car, i used to follow a lot of different people to work. my neighbour upstairs told me a joke that was relayed to them as part of their induction programme into an oil company. so there was this guy who liked this hot lady from a wealthy home very much and had been trying to get her to date him. the lady consistently refused any of his invites for a date and almost made it super clear that she was not interested in him as he was not "her type". well, so dude assumed it was because he lacked the refinement necessary to date a woman of her class. and so, although he would totally have die...

for some unknown reason, i wasn't going to join in the political hullabaloo going around especially as i have a strong feeling that something is amiss. i mean, you tell me, if the constitution was hurriedly amended, a new electoral law passed speedily, an election date fixed four months away, and registration of over 70 million potential voters within a record-breaking period, would you honestly believe that the elections will indeed hold without drama? there have been all sorts of rubbish talk going around. firstly, some unknown party (PPA) suddenly decided that they would up and merge with the PDP. the PPA was headed by the former governor of Abia State, Orji Kalu, who is now being kept busy with the case of a woman who died in his overseas home (how convenient). the party ruling in lagos state, the Action Congress (ACN) has flooded the state owned television with hourly documentaries on the success stories of the government in lagos. other than that, nothing. the eerie silence...

its my birthday on saturday, and its impossible for my dad to forget it now, cos everyone goes "oh, 9/11", "osama" etc...well thanks mr.bin-laden. like they say, any publicity is good publicity (just ask paris hilton if you doubt me). so i'll be 31 this year. nothing has changed so don't even ask. truth is, if i wasn't african, i'd be having a blast and be super excited. but as a nigerian, the only benchmark of success is being married, and so far, so not happening yet. but hey, like they say, never say never! i always baffle at people hiding their ages. growing up, even kids as young as 18 would rather be hanged on a stake upside down than tell you how old they are. i thought that maybe when i grow up, i'll appreciate why i shouldn't be so open about how old i am, but till now, no luck. i'm the first to tell people exactly how old i am, because like i always say, you'll find out when i die anyway so what da heck. i've heard peo...

...this is Lagos Nigeria, in 2010 with the tons of LASTMA traffic officers who jump into the cars of law abiding citizens as soon as they inadvertently miss a turning. We went over the entire stretch of 3rd mainland bridge this morning driving behind this 12th wonder of the world. thank God for Blackberry, otherwise i don't know how i could have described this to y'all...or if anyone would have believed me. i guess they are right when they say that a picture does indeed say a thousand words. see y'all peeps!

nigerians really like to feel cool. thats a fact. if you are nigerian, or have lived in nigeria long enough, one of the first things you'll notice is how people just like to identify with whatever the rave is. seriously, even ridiculous trends just catch on like wild fire down here. good example was the time when suddenly all the young girls who managed to gain admission into university felt that it was a show of americanism to use the phrase "like, you know" in every sentence. for no apparent reason, and with no heed to grammatical correctness. you'd hear an over made up girl telling her friend: "so the guy told me, like, you know, that he wants to be my boyfriend, so i'm like i beg your pardon, and he was moving back and feeling cool, like you know, walking away from me until he just fell into the gutter, like you know, like this". i mean, damn. thankfully that passed real quick (or maybe i just grew too old to notice). and so yesterday, someone who ...

okay, so i came up here today hoping to write about something lighthearted, you know, like how the rain won't stop even though there used to be something called "August Break" when we were younger (maybe we should take all this environmental talk a lil more seriously), and how tiger woods deserves what he got when he forgot for a moment he was a black man, and black men are full of testosterone which the average tepid white woman cannot handle (no racism intended) or even about the very stupid hostage rescue job carried out by the phillipino police some days ago, which left 9 people dead at the end of the dramatic/mission impossible style rescue. i daresay, for once and maybe never again, that i am proud of the nigerian police in comparison to what i saw of the phillipines. even i was doing a much better job with my mouth while watching the thing on television during lunch break at work. but interesting as all those almost-topics may sound, the news story that interests...