Private thoughts of a young Kenyan...

Welcoming My Editor

2012-01-31T17:37:00.001+03:00

Yes, my little blog now has an editor if you can imagine. I like to think of it as a sign of the growing popularity of my work; but in reality it's probably the result of the frustration of one of my readers at my atrocious grammar and spelling. The problem is, I can never proof read my work once I've written my first draft and I don't pay attention to the intricacy of grammar and what not when I'm writing.

Before I introduce you to my editor, let me show you a snippet of the conversation that leads to his hiring; it happened on twitter:

Him: I want to be your editor
Me: Editor how? #interested
Him: Editor to your blog. Let's face it my grammar is way better than yours but you have better ideas than mine.

So without further ado let me introduce you to my editor!! @furry_kid (his twitter handle)!!!!! He comes to us from his own blog, called ummm… it doesn't matter anymore, he's with us now. He's an avid reader, video game enthusiast and one of my best friends (I should do a post about him soon). Wait, I've remembered the name to his blog, it's called My Beautiful Words.

Weird he should name it that, considering there's little beauty about his words J. Okay I'm kidding; but he did mention that my ideas were better than his (I loved that part the most)!!!! I'm going to think of him as my first employee ever (he'll hate that *evil laughter*). He'll be responsible for making sure that everything that appears on the blog, and in my name elsewhere, is proper: proper English, correct grammar and correct syntax. So if you see any errors in any posts henceforth, let me know so I can have a good reason to blast him!!

Finally, someone be a dear and leave a comment here welcoming @furry_kid. I'd really appreciate it! One last thing, my grammar and spelling isn't that bad, is it? Peace!!!!

Testing Friendship

2012-01-30T11:44:00.001+03:00

I was feeling extremely shitty yesterday so I didn't put up a post, I actually thought I had gotten malaria but I'm feeling better now. Also the heat around here was oppressive. There was no escape! It was so hot that even drinking cold water wasn't helping. Of course with the heat comes dust because most of the roads here are just marrum. My shoes can't stay clean longer than 30 seconds.:(

Enough about my weather woes and on to today's post. It won't be a long post because I really don't have much to say. I think I may be about to get into one of my broody moods. When I get into those I spend hours on my own thinking about whatever it was that got me in that mood. It can't be very healthy because usually the conclusions I come to are depressing.

Like this mood that's been hanging over me is about friendship. I've been contemplating about the people I call my friends and whether the sacrifices I'd make for them would be reciprocated. And how would you test it? How would you know? At what point do you call someone a friend? If you have to test it then it isn't truly a friendship because you don't trust them, is it?

I once read somewhere that you can count as friends those people you can call past midnight when in trouble and they'll get out of bed to help. I think that it's a very solid test, don't you? I've only ever been in such a situation once, of course. I had just dropped another friend of mine at her room after an extremely rowdy session of drinking in my room. I was drunk and on a whim called another friend of mine who lived in a nearby building. It must have been 12.30am. She came and kept me company in the cold for almost two hours mostly listening to me(I'm talkative me drunk). Yeah, she's a true friend.
So how do you decide who you call a friend? At which point, for you, does someone move from acquaintance to friend? Let me know in the comments or by email. Peace!!!

Why I got in...a relationship post

2012-01-27T06:59:00.001+03:00

I just came to the end of the longest relationship (of the romantic kind) I've had so far. I could never claim to be experienced in relationships; I mean this was only the third serious relationship I had ever been in. It last exactly six months, one week and two days. Wow! That's a long time for someone my age. There's a lot that I had wanted to write about while in the relationship but I felt it would better for it to end before I could start putting them online. While my girlfriend never knew of my blog I felt it would be disrespectful to the relationship to put such things in the public domain.

But I have got no problem with doing it now. So that's what I'll be doing for the next few posts, if I can, dissecting and writing about my experience in the relationship. I'll trying to write them as a block of continuous posts but that may not be possible. The post will be mostly in narrative form and probably pointless but I hope you'll, at the very least, be entertain. The may also be sparsely populated with advice (which you should write down and memorise because they'll be GOLD-yes I'm blowing my own horn)

This first post will be about why I got into the relationship. With the benefit of hind sight I now can clearly see why I got into the relationship. Some of the reasons I had at the time were clearly wrong and I was just fooling myself. There were also reasons that were buried in my subconscious that I only really discovered later.

So, as always, some background. I had gone to see my really good friend called Holly. Holly is one of my closest girlfriends. I've known her from almost 8 years. We grow up together. From hide and seek to kissing and sex; we been together through most of it. So while I was there I told her of this girl, who I'll call Fanta, I was currently talking to a lot and who probably had feelings for me but I wasn't acting on them. I've got commitment issues. She asked me why not and at the time I can't really say I had a very convincing argument except I was scared. Then she asked me as simple question "Why not?" Leaving her place later I kept thinking of that question and when I got home I called her and asked her out.

So you see the first reason in that background story? My friend. I let her talk me into the relationship which was a big mistake. You don't enter relationships because your friends talk you into them. I think this is a mistake many of us make. In my last relationships, while I may have had doubts I overcame them, on my own, and got into the relationship because of my own conviction. I'm not saying ignore your friends' advice, nah, they usually notice a lot you wouldn't, what I'm saying is don't let it be a major reason especially if you hadn't been about to do it yourself.

Also at the time I thought I had feelings for her. I didn't. What I had was the hope, or feeling, that feelings would develop once in the relationship. I didn't realize this until sometime into the relationship and I was asking myself, "Where are the feelings?" and them later, "Why haven't they come?" What I know now is that what I thought were feelings were actually me just loving the fact that I had someone (new?) to talk to who would listen to my bull. I should have, you too, examined my feelings much closer. This was my biggest mistake.

My parents have been separated for almost five years now. I've recently just realized just how much that affected me. I've become steadily more introverted. I could no longer –maybe didn't want to- put effort in relationships (of any kind) except those that I had the deepest connections to and who were connected to me. Several of my old friendships are no more. I think subconsciously getting in to the relationship was a way for me to get out of a rut. A way to prove to myself I still had it. That the extrovert hadn't died within me. That I could still charm and get a girl. It may have worked. But it makes me kinda sad that Fanta may have gotten hurt for it to happen.

Finally I felt that it could be fun and interesting experience. One of these things it was. I learnt a lot about myself during it. These are solid reasons to get into a relationship at my age, in my opinion. You need to experience life and everything that comes with comes with it. Don't limit yourself because you're frightened that only comes with regret. So go out and make your own mistakes.

By the way, I was thinking that I'll have the titles of all future posts about my relationship have it mentioned in the title, like this one. What do think? What have you learnt in your most recent relationships? Let me know in the comments or email me, 'kay? Peace!!!

The difference between best friend and best pal

2012-01-26T12:19:00.000+03:00

Hey everyone!! Miss me much? A little then? No? How's the first month of the year coming along for you? I trust that the year is coming along well. My holiday is over and I'm back on campus. The place is as dusty as fuck so my allergies are attacking up otherwise I'm feeling extremely good about this semester and everything I'll be doing during it. Oh and I just came out of my longest relationship yet, it lasted 6months, 1 week and 2 days, and I'm feeling quite relieved. More on that in other posts.

So I've received a few responses on the post I did about superstitions from my childhood. One person said they don't really have superstitions but just fears. Another mentioned something about now knowing exactly how she'll freak me out using them. However one thing that most people have been asking about is the part in the post where I say there's a difference between a best pal and best friend. Weird. That's what I want to clarify what exactly each meant at that time/age.

When you're younger most of time, if you're in a day school, and almost everyone in our hood was, is spent at home in your hood. Our hood had flats consists of 5 floors running from block A to J each with 10 houses. It was a massive complex with lots of space for us to play on. It wasn't like the flats we have these days that don't even have a space for football. Anyway my hood, called Zamsure Gardens, had a lot of kids I could play with of all ages.

Since most of my time was spent with these kids. I made several great friends who I still keep in touch with even today but there was one in particular whose name, ironically, I can't quite remember I was particularly close to. We were about the same age and of complimentary personalities. We like the same things and loved playing together (pretending to be Power Rangers, I was always blue, him red). He was my best pal.

Even as kids we realized that our lives couldn't revolve around the hood forever, we'd grow up and probably apart. More than that there was always the very high possibility that your family would move out and you'd lose touch and never see each other again. A best pal was local. It was understood that if you left the hood for good that title would pass on to someone else within the hood.

A best friend was different because this was someone outside the hood. That meant that your parents were friends already and so no matter where they were you could easily go visit them and keeping in contact- through your parents- would be easy or rather possible.

Don't get me wrong neither was more important than the other, then anyway, it's just that we both had best friends outside the hood and realized that our friendship may last not because we weren't committed but because our continued friendship depended on factors beyond our control. In those days there were no cell phones or emails or Facebook or twitter…

Now I'm missing him. Peace!!!!

Girls with small hands

2011-12-28T16:41:00.001+03:00

I'm at Java with a couple of my girlfriends and one's just told me that dudes like chics with small hands. Why? Because it makes our dicks look bigger when she's holding it.. :-D

I don't know, I'm just greatful I managed to get her to put her hands there.;) Peace!!

What I learnt at a funeral

2011-12-23T19:45:00.001+03:00

Again I skipped a day. Not good. I'm actually forcing myself to sit down and write something before another day gets away from me. The excuse this time is that I got home really late yesterday and was exhausted!! I spent the whole day with my mum at a funeral service. I didn't know the guy who was being buried personally but I had meet him before. He died in a car crash.

The guy was really young to be leaving the earth already, he was just 40. He left behind a wife and 3 kids aged 13, 10 and 7 I think. The turnout for his funeral was impressive he's family, friends and colleagues. He was general manager of distribution of his company and the board of directors were there and the CEO who flew in from UK. He had worked for one company all his working life, 16 years. He will be sorely missed by many.

What really hit me first was how young he was. Second was that he had lived his life to the fullest; he made time for his family, extended included, friends and work. He was even patron of a hockey team. He did all this and more and managed to touch the lives of everyone around me. As he was described he sounded like the type of man I'd want to be in future, someone to emulate, a rolemodel.

I don't know but he's death was like a wakeup call for me. Life's too short not to try doing your very best at it. To exist in this world for a short sliver of time is all we really have therefore we must do our very best to touch as many souls as possible while we here and only through that might our influence live on. Peace.

Living in your imagination

2011-12-21T14:33:00.000+03:00

I didn't put up a post yesterday, and I apologise for that, I'll try put up two posts today to make up for it, but no promises. So yesterday I was watching Penguins of Madagascar with my baby sis, an excellent animation for all ages, and when I left her there then went to take a shower I suddenly recalled an episode about a wishing well that would grant anyone who threw in a coin a wish. I thought to myself how come that such things never go the way the penguins want? In this particular episode the whole zoo discovered about the wishing well and then things just went wrong from there. Of course in the end things got back to normal at the end of the episode. I then reminded myself that it was just a cartoon and wasn't really but in that moment I felt what I was thinking was real.

After that I began to think of all the times my imagination went off in its own in such a manner. What I mean here is flights of fancy and not delusion. Delusion is dangerous, fancy is more fun. So here we go

I remember once my best pal (not to be confused with best friend) at the time and I had got it into our mind that under a certain concert slab in our neighbourhood was a secret lab akin to Dexter's in the cartoon Dexter's Lab. We thought we'd find chemicals that would give us super powers. We spent hours discussing what we'd invent when we finally got into the lab. We dug round the slab for days. And when we finally got underneath the slab just what we found? A water pump. Funny thing is we weren't disappointed, well not too much anyway.

Another time there before we knew how exactly the currency markets work we thought the world of the British pound. We had heard it was the most valuable currency in the world but the person who mentioned it failed to let us know just how valuable so we thought with a single pound you could buy anything you could desire. We spent a good amount of time thinking of all the things we'd buy if we had just one pound.

I have several more memories of flights of fancy I've heard. A place we called the bush that we thought had wild animals and was dangerous to go into alone that was really just an undeveloped part of our hood. Recreating one of raps biggest beefs, Eastside and Westside, I was from the Westside and we had several wars between the sides.

Curiously the fancies that came to me when I thought about it were all from my early childhood. It's like when you grow older you become less imaginative and boring. You say to yourself that what you're imagining could never be. Or that it's stupid. But when you really think about it such flight of fancy bring so much happiness to life, I know they did for me anyway. I mean it never really disappointed us too much when our fancy were proven wrong, we took it in stride. I guess that's what adult fear most when they begin to imagine something, that they won't be able to take the disappointment when the fancy proves impossible. I know I've been guilt of this fear but I say to you how will you ever know your limits if you don't dream beyond them? Peace!!

Stupid Matatu Strike!!! Or why cdooh needs a car...

2011-12-19T11:16:00.000+03:00

So it's about 10.30 in the morning and I'm only just sitting up in bed to write this quick post. The first I usually do when I wake up in the morning is grab my phone and check what's up online, you know twitter, fb and my blog feeds. I usually do this from underneath the bed covers especially on a day like today when I'm not really in a rush to go anywhere.

So a few thing's hit me this morning. First North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, has died of heart related complications. A sad day for that country and the entire neighbouring region as well. It's sad for the country because that it has lost its leader, the visible head and voice of the country. Of course he didn't run every single detail by himself but the way I've heard it told he was very powerful, clever and ruthless. I'm sure his people will mourn deeply for him. It's a sad day for the region because without him no one is entirely sure what happens to North Korean. His son, Kim Jong-un, is supposed to take over but who knows how that politics of that secretive nation will play out? Also this means that control of the country's nukes is up in the air and no one knows what the next leader will do to demonstrate his strength to his people and the world. South Korea and Japan are on high alert.

The other thing that hit me, that has a very direct effect on my life is that our public service vehicles are striking. Apparently they're doing this because of the continuing rise in the cost of everything. They want to blackmail the government in to regulating the cost of petroleum downwards and this will have a trickledown effect on the rest of the economy. Away from the dangers of having the government regulating things and whether this will work or not, do these striking idiots realize just how much they're putting me at a disadvantage?

Now I'm still young enough that most of my costs are covered by my parents so the state of the economy does not have a direct impact on me until it gets so bad I don't see my next meal on the table or can't go to school. But this strike…I've only just gotten to Nairobi city. I have a bunch of people I want to see before I have to go back to the country house. The only way available to me currently is by public means. This strike means that I'll be stuck at home. All the plans I had already made will have to be cancelled!! Also it means that I'll be dying of boredom as soon as afternoon reaches!

What do these strikers think they're doing messing up my holiday? They need to get back on the road so I can have the means to get where I need to go!! I mean now I can't go get that slushy I've been dreaming about for the last 5 months. I can't go shopping for the shoes I promised my brother. And by far the worst thing you guys are doing is keeping me from going to see my mother!!! That above puts me in such a temper.

I don't need to remind anyone that the people they're hoping to blackmail with this action all have tinted vehicles and their kids have drivers to take them around, they don't care about you!! After all when was the last time industrial action with such vague demands work? When I get a car you can go back to striking all you want I won't need or care about you then. But for now GET BACK TO WORK, IDIOTS!!!! Peace.

Random Sunday Post

2011-12-18T21:36:00.000+03:00

I didn't put up a post yesterday, I was lazy and it was Sabbath, so I guess I can say it was a resting day but I'm back today. I don't know what I'm going to write about because I'm totally blank. Today we were travelling from our country house (shags) and back to the city house for a few days. I, however, will be staying on to spend some time with my mum and my friends.

I'll glad to be back in the city because it's been over 5 months since I was last here and I've missed all my friends, my sisters and most of all my mother. It is been way too long. Having to go to school so far can be a major disadvantage because you're so far from the people you're so used to having near.

In other news, I had the most awesome dream in the morning today. It involved a white redhead model selling airtime, me, her hands and our lips. Of course mere words can't describe the epicness of this dream or how this girl inflamed my passion. So I won't even try. But I will say this I didn't finish the dream because I was dozing in the sitting room and couldn't have stuff "coming up", could I?:-D Peace!!!

Superstitions from my childhood

2011-12-16T16:33:00.001+03:00

I figured out what today's post will be about. My childhood superstitions!!! I lived in Zambia for most of my early childhood, 10 years to be exact so these are mostly from there. Recently I was about to about to go under a hanging cable and a thought came to my head, "DON'T DO THAT!! You'll never grow you'll if you do!!" I was shocked and amused that I would still have such thoughts at my age. I used to believe this so very vehemently when I was a child (I still am a child but then I was like 8 or younger). The superstition was that if you went under something you stopped growing from then on.

So how do you counter this? I mean you can't really avoid going underneath things if you actually want to live a normal life, right? Well the trick was to go back under the thing from the direction you exited it from. Ridiculous, right? WRONG!!!! I remember a time in my life I spent keeping track of all the things I went under!! I was always frightened of remaining short while my friends went past me.

If you want a put a curse on yourself or someone else just write your name or the other's outside and a witch will come do it for you. It was more dangerous though doing your own name. It has to be in a way that can't be deleted easily. This is one I'm not sure that I'm entirely free of. Let me explain why.

I had a friend, a guy who was a little old than me at the time. He's name was written in concrete somewhere in our hood (It was a really big gated community) and we all joked about how he'd be cursed. Suddenly (at least to us) he started falling really sick and weakly. His mum fell sick and died. And he moved away from our hood. I never did find out what happened to him, in those day cell phone where the size of bricks and could only be bought by the super-rich. I hope he's okay though and thing become better for him. Because of him I rarely write my name in public places.

Finally almost every culture has a superstition to do with black cats. I'm not sure why, perhaps because of their colour and the fact that all cats can look at you in a way that makes you feel they're scrutinizing your soul. Also in our hood they all seemed to appear at night. Anyway we believed that black all black cats where witches that had turned in to animals so that they can curse their victims. Why they needed to cats to do this we never questions just believed. So how exactly do you get cursed?

They have to go in between your legs after which you'd have like a week to leave because all bad luck would fall on you soon. I remember we'd walk around with our legs tightly pressed together when we saw a black cat. You couldn't hit them or try to chase them away because that would just be tempting fate. I never did see a cat try to dash under someone's legs but we never gave them a chance!

Well there you have it, 3 superstitions I still have with me, always in the back of my head. Of course most superstitions are hogwash but that never stopped anyone from believing something, did it? What superstitions do you still (or used to) believe in? I'd love to hear about them, e-mail me or comment below. I may make a follow up post of them. By the way have to ever wonder why people say "Bless you" when you sneeze? Well it's because it was believed sneezes where violent enough to remove your soul from your body and it needed to be blessed back in. Amazing huh? Peace!!!

My stepmother: what we think of her

2011-12-16T00:05:00.001+03:00

If you're a regular reader of this blog you should already know that my parents split about 5 years ago. I don't really want to get in to the details of what happened and how I felt in this post. But I do want to talk about something that was a result of that separation: my step mother.

I met her first while in boring school and my dad came to visit me with her. I remember wondering who she was and what she was doing with my dad but I was afraid to ask because I feared to find out the answer(I was, still am, afraid of my father and I didn't want to know that my parents were over). While I mauled (Is this correctly used?) over it latter during evening preps I wondered if it was he clande/mistress.*Anyone else feels that it was a really unfair that he never explain her and just brought her to my school where I couldn't protest?*

All that is besides this post's point. Today I want to talk about the relationship my brother, sisters and I have with her. Or rather how we behave towards her and what we think of her. Why am I telling you about it though? I don't know, do I really need a reason?

My baby sis, Agujuu, is now 8. Being so young she shouldn't really have the capacity for any sort of emotion towards my stepmother. (un)Fortunate she's extremely bright and perceptive for her age, I know everyone says this about their baby sis' but in my case I'm not exaggerating at all. I'm probably even understating it. While in her face Agujuu never shows any outward signs of hostility she doesn't like her very much. I think it's because she treats her worse than her own son (not overtly though atleast when I'm around because if she did I'd snap her neck, just saying) and because she knows that this is an imposter in our mother's place. She does however call her mum, the only one who does among us.

My kid bro, Ambros, is just 4 years younger than me he just hates her and shows it. He's rude and abrasive towards her. He doesn't show it too much though because he knows that she'll go running to my dad if it get to much and he doesn't want that. He behaves like this because he puts everything that happened with my parents at her feet. It's her who drew our father away and currently makes our lives so miserable. I can't say I blame him.

Mukade, my kid sis, comes right in between me and my bro. Her behaviour is the one that amuses me the most. Looking at them together you'd think they're friends. They laugh, talk and even share shoes sometimes. They actually spend time in each other's presence telling stories and stuff. But underneath it all my sis' attitude is exactly like my bro's except, perhaps, more intense. I think she's just looking for the tiniest thing so that she has a good reason to beat her senseless. It always makes me smile when I hear how she talks about her when she can't hear, lots of expletives.

Me? Well I just don't care about her. Not even a little. I feel nothing. No hate. No hunger. No nothing. I just don't think she's worthy of my emotion and I treat her as such. I answer her with mono-syllable answers. If she talks to me my next statement doesn't exceed 5 words. I feel that it may not be her fault my parents split. More than that I have a very good feeling she won't be very happy in her marriage for too long if knowing my dad and he's plans. I do feel she deserves whatever unhappiness comes her way not because I hate her but because I feel it was extremely unhonourable of her to get a married man. I just that's what I feel about her, that she's an unhonourable woman.

So there you have it. I've only recently began to realise how my parents separation affected me so I may be writing more about it. Also I guess at some time I'll write about my stepmother and her personality from my limited point of view. But for now this is all. Peace!!!

Statements that don't help me...

2011-12-14T12:01:00.000+03:00

"Do you know how many people are dying of hunger, while you sit here sating you're full and you've barely touched your food?" My mum used to tell me this a lot when I was younger. In those days my food was served for me so I had no say in what portion I wanted. I can however say that whatever I was served was always enough to hold me until the next meal, I wonder how she always knew… That's beside the point though and the point is that statement.

Recently that statement has been on my mind a lot, I've been thinking about whether it was adequate or even useful. I mean, think about it, your mother probably used the same or similar statement on you, did it ever work? Or did you finish your food just so she could stop bothering and you could leave the table to go play outside or watch TV? For me it never worked and I knew I held out long enough she'd give up and chase me off the table with a stern warning not to come complaining of hunger before dinner or morning.

Another statement like this one which I hear a lot is "No matter how bad it looks/feels there's someone going through worse" I've come to the conclusion that like the earlier statement they do little to comfort or help the person that they are made to. I know because I've had this statement said to me and all I remember thinking at the time was"Yeah, really? So what? I don't feel that way and either way I don't know this person who has it worse than me. Why should I care about them now?"

This does mean that I didn't appreciate the concern it's just that that particular statement didn't work. I mean why should I care about nameless faceless people I'll never know personally? How would you know what that person is feeling? I mean perhaps they've come to terms with their situation, or maybe gotten used to it. I don't mean to be callous here but those are the thoughts going through my head whenever you say such things to me. Perhaps I am heartless, or do you actually feel I'm making sense here, sound out in the comments.

So what statement should you use in cases like this to remind people that it's never that bad? I feel in such cases it's better to give a personal example so that they can know at least you've had some similar experience to them. In my personal experience it's more soothing than saying someone has it worse than me. It enables you to bond over a similar sad experience, just as you would over happy ones.

Now I'm not sure what I'll tell me kid to make her eat all her food but I'm envisioning something with a cane and me suggestively tapping it against my thigh while glaring down at her.:-D Let me know what you think in the comments. Peace!!!!

P.S This post is brought to you because of @Duchess4life she asked yesterday why I stopped posting, that she enjoyed my posts(I smiled idiotically at this point and felt a flash of pride that always goes to inflate my ego) and I should post more. I don't have a good reason because I have everything I need to be regularly posting I'm just lazy I guess. I'll try to be better in future. Again peace!!!!

What is poetry?

2011-11-15T14:59:00.001+03:00

The other day I attended a meeting for our school poetryclub. I had wanted to see the performances and a friend of minehad said that they were beginning at 9 am. I arrived at 10 because I had spentthe night before not in my room.;) Turns out my friend had it wrong, idiot!!!,and this was actually a meeting between the school club and the guest artiststhat had been invited. Since I was already there I decided to stay.

Since I’m so very poor with names I won’t be using any herein case I get them wrong.

Anyway at some point we got into groups to discuss variousmatters like what poetry was to each of us, mediums used in poetry and poetryin the bible. It was an awesome discussion that included other aspect such aswhat poetry/art we all practiced and what we loved most about our chosen artform.

For me the most interesting part of the discussion was whatwas poetry and a question that arose from that discussion, asked by me, is atwhich point does poetry stop. At which point do we say stop, what you’re doingisn’t poetry so stop calling it that!!

Check out the cool logo from Wamathai.com

A little background first. I can’t stand written poetry. Inever like it in high school and I don’t like it written on the web. This is nooffense to the writers I’m sure some of them, on the web, are quite skilled(Ithink we can agree if you actually get published you are skilled). I prefer when poetry is spoken out, read orperformed, that’s when I get it. Anyway a while back there was a sudden upsurgein poetry blogs, I blame Wamathai, and it would annoy me because most of theworks there were, err, in my opinion, either not poetry or just whack!!

This left me wondering at which point do we say this isn’t poetry.So we set out to answer that question.

First we each defined poetry. I’ll put here an amalgamationof what we all said Poetry is words in a beautiful way. It is freedom ofexpression and personal. It is a way to express self about the world, in anindirect way. It’s rhyme, word play. It’s standard, stanza, rhymes andarrangement of word, a way of expressing uniqueness. It’s the art forexpressing feeling, any manner. It’s expressive uniqueness.


This is Wamathai, the poet

As you can see those are rather broad. So of course thiscaused me to ask where do we stop. I’m a blogger, a writer of sorts you couldsay and I express myself, my uniqueness here does that make me a poet?

Well we talked about it and a lot was said that I wish couldbe put up here but that would take several posts and my memory just isn’t thatgood…but I took notes JBack in the day there were standard rules decide by academics and elite of thattime. Anyone who branched out of those rules could be easily dismissed and Iguess everyone at the time could easily call someone a poet. However these daysthere’s more people defining the genre hence we need to be more accommodativethan dismissive. Poetry is personal in that it’s about how you feel. Poetic,poetry. I guess you could say that poetry depends on how you see yourself, ifyou call yourself a poet you are.

I guess poetry is personal. What you call poetry is not whatI poetry so don’t judge. However there is something that was said that reallymade sense ”Before you break the rules and branch out, be able to show you canfollow the rules.” I think we all need to remember that, no matter whatwe’re trying to do!

One last thing “Poetry is in the audience” Thinkabout that. Peace

Taming Cdooh

2011-09-04T21:00:00.000+03:00


I think I should get a T-shirt made!!

It’s nearly 2am as I begin writing this post and it’s thesecond time I’m attempting to do so. The first one was lost when the battery ofmy laptop mysteriously fell out when I was moving it from my lap to the couchwhen I was done. I hadn’t saved. I was using Notepad. This time I’m using Wordjust in case something happens. Now in to the story…

A couple of weeks, or more, back I happened to come across abook by Deepak Chopra called ‘Why is God laughing?’ It isn’t a bad book but Ireally didn’t get the point of it or even why God was laughing when I finishedit. What I did get from is was a lesson,a lesson about ego.

In the book there’s a point where the hero, let’s call himHaman, was asked, by his spirit guide, to do a task that he felt was stupid. Hewas famous and not accustomed to being treated that way. He was later thenasked to at random to make two people in the street laugh, which he should havebeen able to as he was a comedian. He couldn’t. He was then told to think abouthow he felt when he failed.

His spirit guide then told him, what for me was the mostuseful part of the book, something that went like this (my own words but theyshould give you a good idea of what was said): Our ego makes us believe that wecan’t live without it, to protect us from the world but what we don’t realizeis that that very ego is what makes us vulnerable to the world.

This really got me thinking about my ego. Anyone who’s readthis blog for a while can attest to the fact that I have a huge ego!! I’vewritten about it and mentioned it in several posts. Even if I don’t talk aboutit directly it somehow comes out in most of my posts. I’ve always felt thatI’ve need it that it protected me, my emotions. How wrong I was!!

The book caused me to take some time to really think of myego and how it affects my life and my environment. What I found out was alittle shocking, though now with hindsight perhaps it had been coming for along while. My ego is fed by the things I do, the things I tell myself-in frontof other people- and things other people say about me.

Now that isn’t necessarily a bad thing but look at likethis. Because my ego said I was very good a certain things I actually shiedaway from doing the very things it said I was good at because if I failed atit, it would mean that my ego was wrong and that would hurt my feelings. Thismeans that my ego was actively stopping me from being spontaneous, random andexperiencing new things and people in life. It was providing two conflictingemotions, you’re awesome at this but if fail then perhaps you’re not.

It showed me that my ego was generally fuelled by otherpeople, what they said about me and how they re-acted to me. I was basing myactions on what/how other people may or may not react to me. Basing yourfeelings on what other people think is a definite recipe for unhappinessbecause you have to get a certain, constant continuous, reaction(s) to maintainthat happiness and that’s impossible.

That’s why I’m embarking on a journey, a journey to try tamesomething so big it’s essentially me, my ego. I can’t have something limitingme from experiencing life to the fullest, or from being happy. It’s not goingto be easy, I know, but it’s something I have to try. It means from now on nolonger talking of how awesome I am in front of other people. Or how handsome.Or clever. It also means no longer listening to that voice that tells me I cando this but still goes on to add if you fail you’ll be hurt and sad, crushed.

Just so we’re clear I’m not talking about self-confidencehere. Self-confidence is good, and essential, but you have to careful with itto because it can totally led to you boosting your ego. In my case they’recertainly so tightly entwined together it’ll be a task disentangling them. Sowhat’s the difference? I think self-confidence is you knowing you can dosomething but ego kicks in when you get the thoughts that if you fail perhapsyou can’t really do it. I mean failing once doesn’t mean you can’t dosomething, right? Confused? So am I!!! I’m still trying to figure this out.

Yeah, it’ll definitely not be easy. Peace!!!

PS: has anyone else noticed that if you lose a post, try todo it again it doesn’t sound quite as awesome as the first? Let me know whatyou think of this one in the comments or if you’ve ever experienced what I’mtalking about. Peace!!!

The One that Got Away pt 1?

2011-09-02T18:08:00.000+03:00

I wrote long long ago, when I was a younger more innocent version of me... It was long long before my first post or even knowing blogging exists. Why I'm posting it here, I don't know. I haven'e posted in a while and this was there read type. I'll appreciaate any comments you have on my juvenile writing.

Now I feel like writing but what about tomorrow? How will I feel then? Today I texted Belinda and she was not amused that I told Victor about her almost getting pregnant. She says she forgives but doesn't trust me at all. Perhaps her anger is justified but really its a bit of an over-reaction because she really didn't say it in confidence just in passing. And DAMN that shit was bloody shocking!!! As in WTF?? How was I supposed to react? How could she be soo stupid as to actually let herself in a situation which could get her pregnant? In this era of condoms,contraceptives,e-pills and abortion?I told Ross and he, in his infinite stupidity, goes and asks her!! Well that leaves me with some serious serious anger!!! Unfortunately for Ross am plotting revenge!!!

Now what am I planning...a damning rumour? Or mess up one of his friendships? Or screw with his reputation? Am not sure...I can remember the last time I had this type of thoughts but I can't remember why I had them.I remember I was even more mad than I am now! But no!! Our friendship endures despite everything...even as I write this I can feel the anger ebbing away with every breath.

Now back to Belinda... She's "the one that got away" due to my infinite childishness and naivety. And by the time I realised the opportunity before me it was gone! I tried to make her feel the way I did but nothing! She had moved on. So then we depreciated from something more than friends less than lovers to just friends or even less.

I often wander if I'm obsessed with her. If am unable to let go but I'm quickly discovering that failure to let go is something I do with most chicks I've been intimate with or have/had feelings for. But really why is it I'm stuck on her?Is it that am just not one to accept defeat easily? Or is it that I like to end things on my terms so that I don't feel anything afterwards?

Even as just friends we were still close as close possibly gets as boy and girl get as friends. But somehow over time we began to see less each other and talk much less. Well, recently I had decided to resuscitate our friendship to its old life...then this happens! Nktest!! But this is not the end of this story.... am not one to give up easily!!!

Now which would be the best approach? Chuck Bass style? Or just be persistent(nice guy act) 'till she gives in? Looking at the two options am thinking Chuck Bass would be the best way...Why you might ask why? Well lets review the options:

The nice guy act: This has some very obvious flaws.First,it strips me of any pride I might have(which btw is a lot, it'll comeback).Second it gives her all the power to use and mis-use.Third she can total ruin my rep.Fourth you can never be sure wether she's really over it as she might just want of get you off her back...Fifth I have very little control if she does crack...

Chuck Bass: First it could totally mean that our friendship is gone for good.Second it comes off like I don't care making her conscious of approaching me. Third it could ruin any future relations with chicks in church.

5-3 Chuck Bass wins but I'll keep track of how things are and decide things when I see her next!

I was watching Gossip Girl at the time and was quite fascinated with Chuck Bass -I've been told I'm so much like him, I hope I don't come off as that arrogant though- he had effortless swag that I liked. Anyway what would you have done if you were me? Sound off in the comments. Peace!

Small update: I've enabled Disqus comments

2011-07-26T16:24:00.000+03:00

Hey guys!! People have been complaining about how difficult it is to comment on the standard Blogger template for a long while so from today we'll be using Disqus comments which should make it much easier for anyone to comment. Let me know what you think of it by commenting or by e-mail. Peace!!!

Weird keywords that lead poeple to my blog

2011-07-25T07:39:00.001+03:00

So I was randomly checking out my analytics-something I do to make sure at least one person has checked what I've written- and noticed among the reports the search engine Keyword traffic the most hilarious thing. Some one googled "I'm in Kenya, I want a girlfriend" and landed on my blog.

This got my thinking about what this person was thinking when googling this and the post he may have landed at. I decided to do a whole post on the Keywords that had landed people on my blog.

A girl asked me to come to her room at night - I really can't imagine how exactly this lead to my blog, I mean sure I've spent my share time in girls rooms at night but I've never done any posts on it...yet.

fucking.younglive.priveta.com -This one was obviously looking for porn of some sort. I'm guessing, by the way the link looks, he/she was trying to get on one of those webcam site. Don't ask me how I know, it's an educated guess.

guava kisumu - Uhmmm, what? Really? Weirdly this query also had one of the highest times spent on the site. I love guavas by the way, reminds me my childhood stealing fruits from the nun seminary next to our hood. They had a rather vicious dog. Funny times!!

i've been papped - I know exactly where this one landed, here. I don't even wanna think of the context of this search. Had she(I'm relatively sure it's a she) just had a romp and thought to search for similar stories? I'm not sure but it's a lot of fun to imagine.

kenyan women who want call boys - Self-explanatory search term, Dear googler, if you come back may I suggest Adult Friend Finder.

puting susu angelina joulie - This is NASTY!!!! if it's what I think it is.

'what are kenyan women like' - This searcher must have landed on this post.I get a lot of heat for that post. I still stick to my hypothesis though because it works...well. I think if the person who did this search took my advice I think he was well served.

So those are the more interesting searches that landed on my blog. Something else that shocks me in my analytics is where the traffic to my site is coming from; while Kenya is still obviously my number one traffic source number 2 is USA and number three....France!!!! Yeah!!! We're on every continent!! See the map below for overall traffic to my blog for the last year:

The greener parts have heavier traffic. Also in the last week Ukraine has brought in the 3 most traffic! Hallo Ukraine!!**WAVES** I love you! #Nohomo. Peace!!!!

Sgyreju's Questioning Week: Conclusion

2011-07-22T06:34:00.019+03:00

First I'd like to thank Sgyreju for allowing me to put up her posts on my blog and I'm sure all of you thank her too. She wrote them almost a year ago but the ideas and questions she asks are priceless and I'll continue to cherish them forever. Second this is an edited conclusion of what has been a very fun week of posts that Sgyreju originally had on her blog. It contain mostly her thoughts interspersed with mine.

Questioning does not have to be about changing everything. It is about asking questions one does not usually think of asking, about not being content with assumptions, but trying to figure out the truth. About knowing yourself. The conclusion of the questioning process can very well be that one was right about oneself.
Questioning may also not always end in clear answers. Accepting that this is all right is not easy, but it is important to do so. Sometimes it is better to acknowledge that one is confused than to try to stick to an identity which does not fit any more. Sometimes it takes time, and finding more information, in order to figure things out.

Questioning does not have to be merely about sexual orientation or identity – it can, and should be, be about anything, like social norms for instance. There are many things we do not do even though doing them would not harm anyone, either directly or indirectly just because they are social norm. Maybe we would discover that other people do not actually care so much when we do not follow all the social expectations.(this is actually true I once walked into a super market with multi coloured platform shoes and no one seemed to give a fuck!!!) And if they do care, maybe that would be a good opportunity to tell them about questioning.

The key point of questioning is awareness. One cannot question something if one cannot imagine another possibility. One cannot question something that has always appeared unquestionable. It is therefore very important for all minority orientations, identities, and practices to be visible, so that people know they exist and are able to include them in their list of possibilities when they try to figure out who they are. Conversely, it is useless to know about those possibilities if one does not know that everyone, including them, can (and maybe should) engage in some questioning from time to time, that things are not always certain, and that what once was one way may now be another.

It's best to question things that confuse you and see if you could get honest answers about what you think and feel about various things that you've always taken for granted. Peace!!

Sgyreju's Questioning Week: Day 7 Gender

2011-07-21T06:21:00.013+03:00

Gender is something I have only begun to think about very recently, and I still have work to do in order to understand better where I stand in relation to it. But, even though I have only been exploring my own gender identity for about three months, I had known for a while longer that it is quite a complex matter.

The first thing to know is the difference between sex and gender. While sex is a biological fact, gender is an identity; it is about how one perceives oneself. For a long time, I did not know about gender; this is not a widely known concept in mainstream France (recently, someone I know wrote a survey with a question about “gender”. She told me her professors had said it was the politically correct word to use for questions about biological sex.). I knew about transsexual people, but I only knew about them as “people who feel they were born in the wrong body and need to change their biological sex”. As to myself, my being a girl was just a fact, like my height or my birth date – a fact about me I had no control about, and which meant even less to me than my height or my birthdate do – and I could not imagine it mattering at all.

I eventually discovered the concept of gender, and came to understand it, but for a long time, I did not think much about my own gender. I knew I was not transgender or neutrois, and until recently I was not aware that there were other possible gender identities. More important, I was not aware that gender is something that does matter to most people. But lately I have been spending more time on the gender subforum on AVEN, and reading the threads there made me realize how much some people care about their gender identity – how important it is to them to be perceived as their real gender, and not as their biological sex. Some of the things I read there made me realize that it might be a good idea to explore my own gender identity. I am still working on it, as I have not had as much time as I wished to think about such matters lately, but so far I have understood that my biological sex means nothing to me. I do not feel male or wish to be male, but I do not feel particularly female either, even though my biological sex is female. In my head, I am neither male nor female – I cannot relate to either identity. But I wish I could adapt my gender expression to the circumstances – play a female part one day, and a male part another, and be just myself – and not be perceived as female by others, but as neither male nor female – most of the time. I doubt such a thing is possible, though, so as it does not distress me to be perceived as female, I have not yet tried to change anything (I do enjoy it when someone addresses me as though I were male, though, simply because it is not the obvious assumption).

I cannot write much more on the topic yet, as I have only began to explore it myself. I hope to be able to gain a better understanding of my gender identity in the months to come, since I should now have the time to think about it. I will certainly keep you posted.

This is the last post in the series, tomorrow's post I'll be putting some of Sgyreju's conclusions on questioning week as well as my own. I'll even have a talk with her if any of her views have changed. Stay tuned for that and check out her blog. Peace!!!

Sgyreju's Questioning Week: Day 6 Friends or Lovers

2011-07-20T06:19:00.008+03:00

Most people divide relationships with people who do not belong to their family in only two categories: friends and romantic partners. A specific set of expectations and “normal behavior” is associated with each category, and transgressions are frowned upon: One is not supposed to kiss one’s friends, or hold hands with them, for instance, but on the other hand, it is not considered “normal” not to kiss or have sex with one’s romantic partner.

Interestingly, the strong limit between friendship and romantic relationship has been bent a little – and by sex.
I am talking, of course, of the so-called “friends with benefits”. True, that kind of relationship has not entered the norm and is not exactly widely accepted (most references I have found to it in the mainstream culture were negative), but at least it is known.

So that got me thinking: if it is possible to have a kind of friendship which includes one element from romantic relationship (sex), why not try to make up other kinds? What about friendship with the same kind of emotional involvement, support, and care for the other person as is expected in romantic relationships?

Ever since I got over the whole friends/lovers view of relationships, I have been interested in exploring new kinds of friendship further. I think there are so many possibilities there – that if the people involved care to build a relationship based on their specific connection and needs, there could be as many different friendships as there are people.

I am involved in two non-typical friendships, and they are very different – but then again, my two friends are very different. They are both guys, and that is about the only thing they have in common. One is someone I have known for a bit less than five years, and have had a strong bond with nearly from the moment we met; the other is someone I met more recently, and the connection took longer to build and, in fact, took me completely by surprise when it did.

My relationship with the first guy actually confused me for a long time, and it is because of it that I eventually understood the need to get over narrow relationship definitions such as “either friends or lovers”. I felt comfortable with him from the start; I enjoyed our long and easy conversations, his warm affection and generous understanding, and very much admired the way he could dedicate himself so completely to things he really cared about. When I met him, I knew no other way to be close to someone than to be romantically involved with them, so of course I wanted to date him. I also loved him – something I had never experienced for anyone until then, and assumed to be romantic love because I did not believe that there was any higher kind of love.

We ended up not dating (we considered it, but I eventually called it off when I realized that he wanted more than I was ready for), but becoming close friends instead. For years afterwards, that closeness, and the love I still felt, confused me greatly. How could I love him so much but not be in love with him? But, if I was in love with him, then why had I – twice – refused to consider dating him? Eventually, I realized that love did not always mean romantic love, and that love did not always require a romantic relationship to be expressed.

For a while, I tried to find a word to describe him better than “friend” – because I have other friends, and what I feel for them is nowhere close to what I feel for him. I finally realized that what I felt for him was close to what I feel for a female cousin who is about my age and with whom I grew up and am still close to. So I decided to refer to him as my cousin (he had once jokingly introduced me as his sister, probably in order to deflect possible assumptions that we were dating). I am not yet fully comfortable talking about him in those terms with people who do not know about our special friendship, but with people who know the whole story, it is very easy to say “my male cousin” and refer to my childhood companion as “my female cousin” (I do have a male cousin, but he is much older and I do not know him well enough to ever talk about him with people who do not know him).

My second non-typical friendship began as a typical one, and when it moved into new territories I had already replaced the traditional views of love and relationships with my own understanding of them. As a consequence, it was much easier to adjust to my growing love for this guy, without ever misunderstanding it for romantic love. I never wanted to date him, but only hoped to build a non-typical friendship with him; as he is an aromantic asexual, he is very open to non-typical friendships, and the fact that I am also an aromantic asexual reassured him that we did want the same things and mean the same things when the word “love” was mentioned (meaning non-romantic love). At some point, I also began feeling that “friend” did not describe him accurately anymore, and I eventually asked his permission to describe him as my non-romantic significant other (as “significant other”, before meaning “romantic partner”, simply refered to a person who was very influential in someone’s life, and he certainly has been that for me).

Both of those friendships are long-distance relationships, although one is way more long-distance than the other, as my “cousin” lives in another country, and actually on another continent (but for a year, we lived in the same town and attended the same university, and our friendship grew during that time). I do wish sometimes that one or both of my special friends lived near Paris like me, and that I could take a walk with one of them sometimes, or invite him to my place for dinner and a long evening of discussion on every possible topic. But the Internet makes it easy for me to communicate with them, so I only miss them when they are not online for a while.

Although, as I said, these two non-typical friendships are very different, there are some common points between the two relationships. First, I love those guys, I do not merely like them very much (which is how I describe my feelings for my closest other friends); I could not tell how I make the difference between the two, but it is obvious to me – I could never mistake one feeling for the other. Both are people I trust and can confide in; I have told each of them things I have never told anyone else (if the two of them ever met and exchanged information about me, what they would put together would represent nearly exactly everything there is to know about me). I value their opinions more than anyone else’s, mostly because they know me better than anyone else. I know that I can tell them anything, and they will understand it right away, which is not the case with other people, not even my parents, even though I am quite close to them.

I also value my friendships with them more than my other friendships, simply because I am much more emotionally involved in them than in my other friendships. It often seems to me that with those two guys’ support, I could do anything. They both bring so much to my life, and in turn I want to give more to them than I am usually willing to give anyone.

Often, when I describe this to other people, they tell me that I am in love, that this is what a romantic relationship is like at heart. It always greatly annoys me, because I do not think this is the same at all. If I described the same relationships as romantic relationships, I am quite certain that most people would tell me that they are not romantic relationships at all, but friendships! I would say that they are neither, but since they have both grown out of friendships, I prefer describing them as special friendships; I do not think that “romantic friendship” would be appropriate here, as I tend to understand it to mean a friendship including behavior usually associated with romantic relationships, like kissing or holding hands, and there is none of that in my two special friendships. They are not “committed friendships” either, as no formal commitments have been made, and indeed those friendships are not exclusive; my “cousin” will certainly get married and have children some day, while my non-romantic significant other has other friends who mean as much to him as I do (and of course, I am involved in two special friendships at once!).

As my “cousin” is not asexual or aromantic, and tends to understand relationships in the traditional way, I do not think that I am likely to explore non-typical relationships further with him. But with my non-romantic significant other, and maybe some day (I hope) with other open-minded people, I do have a chance of defining new kinds of friendships. It is quite exciting, and now that I am aware of such possibilities, I confess that I cannot see the appeal of a typical romantic relationship anymore.

Comment then go check out her blog here. Peace!!

Sgyreju's Questioning Week: Day 5 Relationships

2011-07-19T06:18:00.005+03:00

Very often, people use the word “relationship” to refer to romantic relationships – just as they use the word “love” to refer to romantic love. It rather annoys me to see those words trapped into one of their specific meanings, especially as this specific meaning is not one I can relate to. So, be warned – in this blog, “relationship” refers to all kinds of relationships, and “love” refers to all kinds of love.

And in fact, I will certainly write much more about all the non-romantic kinds of relationships and love than about the romantic ones.

It bothers me that romantic love and romantic relationships are now considered the main and most important kinds of love and relationships, so much that it is necessary to specify that one is not talking about romantic love or romantic relationships in order to be understood when trying to discuss the other kinds. I have nothing against romantic love and romantic relationships – I do not seek them and I consider both highly overrated and the product of social and cultural conditioning, but I respect the fact that they are real and important to other people – but I wish they did not push the other kinds into the shadows so much.

Most of the time, it seems to me that romantic relationships are considered to be the only valuable kinds of relationships. Whenever I hear someone saying that they fear they will remain single, the main reason they are afraid appears to be that they do not want to “die alone” or “grow old alone”. But who says that they have to? Are romantic partners the only people likely to stay by their side? No. Nothing actually prevents friends from staying by their friends all through their lives – nothing, except the fact that it is not what is expected of them. Friendship is not considered to imply the same kind of long-term commitments romantic relationships do, even though some friendships last much longer than some romantic relationships – I know many people who have a best friend they have known since childhood, but none so far who have a romantic partner they have known for so long. Of course, maybe that is because most of the people I know are younger than thirty and, thus, are very unlikely to have had the same romantic partner for a longer time than they have known their childhood friends.

Very few people put the same expectations into their friendships as they do into their romantic relationships – and ever fewer are ready to fulfil the same expectations for their friends as for their romantic partners. They obviously wish some kind of long-term, permanent connection to someone, but since romantic relationships are expected to provide that, they do not turn to other relationships in order to get that connection if they have no romantic partner. And even if they did consider it, even if they were willing to put that kind of energy and dedication into a friendship rather than a romantic relationship, they would not dare try it, because they would not believe that any of their friends would be willing to do the same – they would expect their friend not to give so much of themself as they would be willing to, or to withdraw it in order to give it to a romantic partner the day they get one.

This makes me sad. I wish that all kinds of relationships – not just romantic ones – could be highly valued by the people involved, no matter what kind of relationship they are.

One of the reasons romantic relationships are so highly valued, I think, is that people expect their romantic partner to fulfil most of their social and emotional needs – to be someone they can plan the future with, and also have fun; someone they can share activities with, who will always understand them and support them, and so on. Basically, finding such a person would mean not needing another person anymore. Besides the fact that being so dependent on another person seems more scary than appealing to me, I dislike this ideal because it seems totally unrealistic.

Rather, I very much like the idea of relying on several different people for fulfilling one’s emotional and social needs. For instance, I do not engage in the same activities with all my friends, and I like it that way. I also like the fact that I do not have the same emotional connection to all of them, that we do not discuss the same things and that I do not behave the same way with all of them; I never play a part or pretend to be someone I am not, I simply do not show the same facet of myself to everyone. While only two of my friendships are truly deep and close, none of the others are casual (or else, I would not refer to these people as “friends”) and they are all important to me. Maybe my two close friendships fulfil more of my emotional needs, but that does not mean that I am not emotionally involved in the other ones.

I also dislike the idea of needing only one person to fulfil one’s needs, because I have never been looking for people to fulfil my needs (they are pretty low in the first place, and only grow when a relationship develops and more than fulfils the needs I have) – I have met them by chance, and those friendships often developed without my expecting them to (especially the most emotionally involving ones). Why should I have refused to let the second one develop, for the only reason that I already had one close friendship? Why should I have put an end to the first one in order to allow the second one to grow? My having a second close friend did not weaken my relationship to the first one. They are two very different people, and my relationships with them are totally different as well; I enjoy both, and would not want to choose between them. And if I ever were so lucky as to develop a close friendship with a third person, I would not give up any of the first two either. This is not a matter of competition; just as my social and emotional needs grow as I develop new sources of fulfilment through new or deepening friendships, the affection and attention I can offer my friends also grow with my friends’ needs for them. I am quite certain there are limits somewhere, but as my friends are not that numerous yet, I am quite sure I have a long way to go before I reach them.

Once, I wrote on AVEN, on a thread about polyamory, that I did not think I could be polyamorous, as I did not need more than one person to fulfil my emotional needs. I was mistaken about this for two reasons: 1) I had not yet become aware that I was aromantic, and 2) I had only one very close friend at the time, and never dreamed that I would ever be so lucky as to have another one. Now I do, and I realize that I really have no need for a romantic partner in order to feel loved, cared for, and supported, or to love, care for, and support another person – and that, while each of these two friendships alone would make me very happy, having both makes me even happier.

I was right about one thing, though: I could not be polyamorous, as I am aromantic. But I am polyemotional. I do not need several deep emotional connections to be happy, but I do not wish to limit myself to one when I am fortunate enough to have an opportunity for two. And both my friends, although they do not know each other, know about my close friendship with the other, and are happy for me. One of them has other close friends that he values as much as he values me, while the other will certainly get married someday. I am fine with both. I certainly do not believe that I am awesome enough that they should need no-one else beside me, and knowing how happy these two friendships make me, I can only wish them the same happiness (or happiness of a similar kind, for the one who wants to get married).

I am not saying that people seeking romantic relationships should give up and be content with friendship. What matters is not the kind of relationship one is involved in, but how satisfying they are. Rather than clinging to a relationship label, I would suggest they make a list of what they want from other people (for me, it would be mutual trust, understanding, fun, support, affection, among other things; for other people, it could also include great sex, romantic weekend getaways, someone to make plans and build a future with, someone to raise a child with, or someone to sail across the Atlantic with) and try to find that – not focusing on the context in which they get it, but simply on who can give it to them. They could be surprised.

And I would also suggest to remain open to what people have to offer, even if it was not on the list. I never thought I wanted someone to remind me of my dreams, show me the signs and push me into the right direction when I am confused about what to do with my life. And yet, now, I am glad I have him – for this and for many other things.

All I can say is...and go check out her blog. PEACE!!!

Sgyreju's Questioning Week: Day 4 Love

2011-07-18T06:10:00.013+03:00

I did not always identify as aromantic.

For a long time, I did believe in the whole romantic myth that one is truly happier with a romantic partner, and I wished for one. I longed for the time when I would finally live those idealized shared moments with my beloved: having breakfast together, taking long walks hand in hand, talking about everything and anything for hours, kiss passionately like in my favorite love scenes in movies…

Each of my attempts at romance destroyed those ideals.

My first attempt convinced me that romantic gestures (offering flowers, for instance) are often not done out of a genuine desire to please the other person, but dictated by conventions which force people (whether they are actually in love with their partner, wish they were, or only want to appear to be) to act the part. The second one showed me that a close friendship was as rewarding a relationship as I could wish, and that there was no need for more. The third attempt finally made me realize that I did not want a romantic relationship, but only some of the things that are associated with it – and not enough of those to want to make a romantic relationship worth all the trouble that came with it.

Once again, the problem was that I did not want a romantic relationship for itself, but for everything that I had always seen associated with it. And it is hard to avoid those associations. Romantic love (like sex) is everywhere – in advertising, in fiction, in magazines. It is usually equated with happiness (very few books or movies have a happy ending which does not include the main characters being romantically involved) and represented as one of the most important personal achievements; the idea is that finding true, mutual romantic love is pretty much the most desirable event that can happen in someone’s life.

Of course, I wanted to be happy. And I had low self-esteem for a long time, so when I daydreamed about finding romantic love, I imagined finding someone who would see something valuable in me, who would love me for who I am, even though I did not really believe that could ever happen.

I am not sure I know exactly how I got over that. I remember two moments, both related to the person who was involved in my third and last romantic attempt, but I had had thoughts about aromanticism before, although I do not remember them very clearly. The first of those two moments happened when I realized I was interested in him, and thought he was not and would never be. I was very upset for a few days, and then I told myself it was ridiculous to hope for something that would never happen and to only get unhappiness out of it. I reminded myself that I had friends who did care about me and value me, parents (and a dog) who loved me. I vowed to stop daydreaming about romantic relationships and to dedicate my energy to being a good friend, someone my friends could count on. Then, I found out that this guy was in fact interested in me – very much so – and immediately I forgot my resolutions. Until about a week before seeing him again, when doubts began creeping in. I told myself I was a coward, afraid of change, and went to meet him. About one hour after, I realized it was a mistake and ran away (no, not because I had anything to fear from him – I was perfectly safe -, just because I really did not want to be there and could not bear it one more second).

It turned out that this guy was not a suitable partner for me, for several reasons. But I also realized that I was not suited to romantic relationships. The first time he mentioned a future visit (before I had actually gone to meet him and ran away), I felt trapped and pressured. I also realized that becoming romantically involved with him came with expectations that I was not sure I wanted to fulfil. It was all going too fast, I was no longer in control (not to say that he was; rather, the romantic relationship we were building was), I could no longer do my own thing… It was unbearable.

Going from one near-extreme to another, I have become rather cynical about romantic love. I now tend to say that romantic love probably does not actually exist, but that we are conditioned to want it and believe in it by our environment. I do believe in love in general – I love my parents, I love my dog, I love two of my friends -, just not in romantic love. To me, romantic love is just love with added expectations and behavior – both things which do not suit me, so I have opted out. I do value love very highly, but to me, romantic love is overrated.

Let the author know what you think about her views on love, in the comment section below. You also find her blog here. Peace!!

Sgyreju's Questioning Week: Day 3 Sex

2011-07-17T06:12:00.007+03:00

Sex is a complex matter. It is hard to define – for some people, only genital penetration counts; for others, anything involving someone’s genitals is sex. It also has several meanings: an expression of romantic love, a fun activity, a way to experience pleasure, a way to prove one’s worth… and many more. Some use it as a means of pressure (withholding sex in punishment or offering sex as a reward in order to obtain something), while others plan strategies to obtain it.

One of the reasons why it can be so difficult sometimes to come out as asexual is that most people cannot imagine that some people might not want sex. It is assumed to be a universal truth that “everyone wants sex”. Yes, there are a few exceptions – deeply religious people, artists and scientists so committed to their life’s work that they are aware of nothing else, victims of sexual abuse – but those only prove that the rule holds: Everyone, except people who have very good reasons not to, wants sex.

But does it mean that they all want the same kind of sex? I doubt it. Many people have strong ideas on what is “right sex” and what is “wrong sex”, based on religious, moral, legal, and health reasons, or simply the idea that it should be done with the “right person” and when it “feels right”. But what if, in some cases, the “right sex” is no sex? Well, it appears that, for some people, even the “wrong” kind of sex is more acceptable than no sex. A bi-asexual woman told me that she first came out to her mother as bi, and later as asexual. Her mother’s reaction at the first coming out was negative, but she reacted to the second one by saying “I liked it better the time you told me you liked girls”.

I am not sure I understand why people (supposedly) want sex so much. Besides biological reasons like having a sex drive, I assume it is partly because it feels great, but mostly I think it is because of the many meanings that people associate with it. This is why I wanted sex before I discovered I was asexual. I wanted the wonderful, perfect love-making that romance novels describe; I did not want actual sex, but only an idealized representation of it. I wanted the full experience of love and shared pleasure, but there was no-one I had ever actually wanted it with. I never wondered about it, because I thought those kinds of desires only happened with the “right person”, and as whatever feelings I might have had in the past had never been returned, I was not surprised I had never experienced such desires. And yet, the actual sex acts disgusted me. Whenever I read about them, in biology class (I never had a sex ed class, only biology classes dealing with puberty, human reproduction, birth control, and STDs) or the rare times curiosity made me look for sex ed information online (I was over 19 the first time that happened), I felt uncomfortable and sick. The only reason why I still wanted the perfect lovemaking from romance novels was that, in my mind, they were two totally different things. The day I finally forced myself to accept that they were basically the same thing, only described in two very different ways, my romantic ideal of lovemaking collapsed and I never desired it again.

Maybe other people desire sex, not for the sake of getting body parts in contact, but for the sake of what sex means to them. It can be a way to express love or share something special with a romantic partner. It can be a way to feel good or have fun. It can be a way to raise their self-esteem. Sex has none of those meanings for me, though. I am aromantic and dislike physical touch in general, so I cannot relate to the idea of expressing love that way (although it would certainly be something really special and quite a gift to the other person to be able to want that kind of touch from them), and I can think of several other ways that would be more meaningful to me. There are many activities I enjoy that make me feel good; from what I heard, sex is even better, but as I do not know what exactly I am missing, I cannot really miss it, can I? As to self-esteem, I do not base it on my attractiveness to others, so getting laid would do nothing for it.

But wanting sex is not enough – people who do want sex do not want it with every person of their prefered gender(s) that they meet. There has to be some sexual attraction too – and that is the other thing that makes people want to have sex. I have never experienced sexual attraction, but I know what it is to want something very much, so I can try to imagine wanting someone in a sexual way being like wanting a gorgeous high-end laptop (yes, I know, the comparison is weird). It is not something I can really control – most of them do not catch my attention, while looking at some others or reading their technical specifications make me immediately think I want that one and start imagining how it would be to have it (how it would look on my desk, how well The Sims 3 would run on it, and so on). That makes me wonder, though, if someone who could experience sexual attraction but did not relate to any of the other reasons to want sex would actually have sex in the end or not (admitting that the other person involved was interested in having sex with them). After all, I still see some laptops that I want, but my current laptop does everything I need and more, so I do not actually want to get one of them; the attraction is there, but I do not wish to act on it.

Becoming aware I was asexual required to work out where I stood on both aspects (wanting sex and experiencing sexual attraction – the answer was no to both). But I do not think that not wanting sex is a natural consequence of not experiencing sexual attraction. I have talked to asexual people involved in romantic relationships with non-asexual people and who had sex with their partners, not as a sacrifice or a chore, but as something enjoyable they did want to do, although not for the reasons most other people have sex (usually, their reason was that they knew it was important to their partner). Asexual people may also want to have sex for the purpose of experimenting – to see what all the fuss is about, what it is really like. But at the time, even though I had read the official definition of asexuality, I was convinced that one could not actually want sex and be asexual (so, when I once wondered if I might not want sex after all, in some specific circumstances, I first had to get over the fear of not being asexual anymore in order to really explore the matter).

It seems to me that many non-asexual people just take their own desire to have sex for granted, and do not think about it much. Maybe it is easier for people who lack one of the two kinds of incentives to have sex (sexual attraction) to think about the other one (the meaning one can attribute to having sex, and which is, for me, the main reason why people actually have sex). From what I have heard, some strategies that asexual people in romantic relationships with non-asexuals use to deal with the whole “you don’t desire me so you don’t love me” issue is to discuss the fact that sex does not have the same meaning for them. And, if stories I’ve heard of people having sex with someone and thinking it meant they were a couple while for the other person it simply meant having fun are any indication, maybe non-asexual people would have an easier time dealing with each other over sex if they tried to figure out what their motivations for having sex are, and discuss them (preferably before having sex).

Excellent post, don't you think? Drop the author a line in the comments and on her blog. Peace!

Sgyreju's Questioning Week: Day 2 Questioning Your Identity Is Good for You

2011-07-16T06:08:00.006+03:00

I will not lie to you: Questioning one’s identity is scary.

The evening of June 4, 2006, when I finally became aware that I probably was not heterosexual as I had always assumed, and the night that followed were, at the time, the scariest moments of my life. Now, four years later, they have only been pushed to second place by another evening that I do not want to talk about (and anyway, it has nothing to do with asexuality or any of the other matters that I wish to discuss in my Petri Dish).

Why is questioning scary? Because it requires accepting that some things one believed in and thought unquestionable are, in fact, not certain at all. It means accepting that one may not know oneself as well as one thought. The first time it happens, it can be quite a difficult experience – it certainly was for me.

It can be difficult especially if one considered oneself to follow the norm in something, and suddenly realizes that it may not be the case after all. For some people, accepting that one might divert from the norm is very difficult. There is something comforting in fitting in, in being like everyone else. People who are different in some way (whether it is sexual orientation, dietary choices, religious beliefs, reading preferences, or pretty much anything else) are often asked to justifiy their difference to others. Their difference is also often assumed to be playing a part in pretty much anything unpleasant that may happen to them.

(An example? The keyboard layout used in France is AZERTY; I, however, use the Swiss-French one (QWERTZ) for personal convenience when I need to type in French. So, at work, although I have a standard-issue AZERTY keyboard, I changed the Windows input language settings to QWERTZ; I know that layout well enough that I don’t need to look at the keyboard to type. People only know about my unusual keyboard layout preference because they run into difficulties when they try to show me something on my computer and happen to have to type, or when I need to use a different computer and stare at the keyboard in order to find punctuation marks instead of typing like a machine-gun like I usually do, and thus have to explain that sudden slowness to whoever happens to be witnessing this pitiful typing performance. I cannot count the number of times I have had to explain (usually several times to the same person) why exactly I use that layout and how come I find it easier to use than the usual AZERTY, and my use of that layout has been blamed for every issue I may have run into with my work computer, especially authentication issues (and it always turned out that my password had been typed correctly and that the cause of the problem was elsewhere). And this is nothing compared to what I hear when people find out that I am a vegetarian…)

For me, when I first wondered if I might be asexual, my problem was not to accept the possibility of diverting from the norm (I had been doing that all my life) but the fear that I was not really asexual and only wishing to be in order to be different. First I had to get over thoughts such as “you’re not anything special, what makes you think you can be part of a one-in-a-hundred minority?” in order to fully accept that, yes, I was different. The issue was not wanting to be like everyone else: it was the possibility of wanting so much to be different that I might be making it all up.

But this first questioning experience opened the door to others. Realizing that some things could be questioned allowed me to question others later on, and to get to know and understand myself better. The following questioning experiences became easier, too. I wish I had become open enough to question everything on principle, but I am not there yet. So far, I have questioned the so-called universal truth that everyone is interested in sex, the idea that romantic love is the most desirable feeling one can have for another person, traditional relationship models that follow the friends/lovers binary, and pretty much everything I thought I knew about gender. I may have not fully figured myself out yet, and at the start each questioning process may have been a bit upsetting, but in the end, I feel better trying to really understand who I am and who I want to be, rather than remaining stuck in a mold that may not exactly hurt me, but which does not exactly fit me either.

Having a comment for the author? Drop a line in the comments and I'll make sure the author gets to hear about it or you could go check out her blog here. Peace!

Sgyreju's Questioning Week: Day 1: What Exactly Happened on June 4, 2006

2011-07-15T06:03:00.003+03:00

Since today is the fourth anniversary of the evening during which I realized I needed to reconsider my assumed and never questioned heterosexuality, I thought I might as well tell the story of what exactly happened then.

I had a LiveJournal account in which I wrote regularly – and there are entries about that event. The first one was published at 10:18PM that night, which means that the event happened before.

I remember writing a journal entry (which I intended to share with my LJ friends) about movies – more specifically, the different ways one could like a movie, comparing them with the different ways to relate to a person (an old favorite being like a childhood friend, for instance). I was really getting into this idea, and thinking about a specific movie, I wrote something like “And with some movies, it is like being in love with a woman” (I cannot get the exact quote, as I deleted that draft later on that night). Then I realized what I had written, and alarm bells went off.

Now, I had never, ever considered the possibility of being in love with a woman. I had liked boys, so I had always assumed I was straight, and never questioned that. I would not, I think, have had a problem with discovering I liked girls rather than boys (my parents had always told me that it would be fine if I did), but I did not know it was possible to like bothboys and girls. I did not know much about bisexuality and I thought (incorrectly) that it was only about sex, not about feelings. And I had never really thought about sex in relation to specific people – I only thought about sex as something that would happen some day, but did not imagine I might desire it with a specific person in the present. So I could not relate to liking men and women for sex only.

At first, I wanted to erase the sentence. Then I thought that I had no reason to be ashamed of it, but added something like “well, I suppose so, as I have never been in love with a woman”. But it did not ring true. And, with a rising feeling of dread, I realized I could not ignore this.

The reason why I compared the specific movie I had in mind that night with loving a woman was quite clear to me, even then: that movie stars a female actress who, I thought, looked quite like a woman I knew and admired very much at the time. Well, a bit more than that. My feelings for her were confused, because she was older than my mother and not someone I was close to, so I did not quite know what I felt for her. But I had never thought my feelings might be romantic – not even after I got carried away while talking about her to someone and said that if I were a guy I’d marry her, not even after I once felt jealous of someone she had just hugged and wished she would hug me too, not even when I wanted so much to get her attention and earn her respect. (Now, I do not think that those feelings were romantic, actually – I think it was more like a squish than a crush. But back then I did not know about squishes or aromanticism). That night, though, after writing that sentence, I began thinking that maybe my feelings for her went beyond admiration and were more similar to what I experienced when I had a crush on a boy (well, if it is possible to compare a crush on a boy my age with those feelings for a woman older than I).

I tried to consider that possibility. It terrified me. If I really had a crush on that woman, then it meant I was not straight – but why had I not discovered this sooner? Why was I feeling this way only now? How could I have not known this about myself? Which other things did I ignore about myself?

I remembered other events. A girl I always hoped to see at the dining hall. A female friend I had in high school and how I loved our talks about not needing boys and touring Ireland on a Porsche when we were older, how I had thought many times that if I liked girls, she would be the type of girl I’d like. A woman at a party who had insisted to make me join others on the dancefloor, and how I had thought I would not have done this for anyone else but would do anything for her. A movie I had seen about a newly-married man who falls in love with his mother-in-law when he meets her for the first time on the day of the wedding, and how I had thought that it was impossible not to fall in love with that woman. I had thought these were nothing unusual. That evening, for the first time, I was not so sure anymore.

What terrified me was not really the possibility that I might be attracted to women – it was the fact that I had discovered something about myself, something which might have been there for a long time without my knowing about it, and for which I had no name. Suddenly I felt I did not know who I was at all. I was not sure what it all meant.

I cried myself to sleep. I had the most terrifying nightmare of my whole life (a nightmare which involved a woman with superpowers who used them to kill many people, took me hostage, and with whom I fell in love before she killed me, and then I became her), so terrifying that when I woke up from it, I could not tell if the dream was over or not, if it had been a dream or if it was real, and did not dare turn on the light as I feared seeing the woman in the room (something which had never happened to me with any of my previous nightmares).

In the morning, I was still confused and afraid. I cried several times that day. I felt I needed to talk to someone, to get help make sense of this, but I did not know who to ask, and I feared that whoever I would talk to would try to put me in a box and not really understand me, so I decided to work on this alone.

It took a week. The process was both scary and exciting. I created a new private LiveJournal, searched the Web for information on sexual orientations and more specifically bisexuality, and wrote my findings in the new LJ. This is how I discovered the sexual attraction criteria (bisexuality was always defined as “being sexually attracted to both men and women”) and that it made no sense to me. And this reminded me of an article on asexuality I had read a few weeks earlier. I read the article again and found a reference to AVEN. I went there, read the FAQs, read some members’ stories, and then I knew where I fit.

A week later, on June 11, I wrote in my new private LiveJournal: “I am bi-asexual”. I knew who I was. I had a word for myself. On June 22, I joined AVEN. The next day, I joined AVEN-fr.

I have questioned my identity several more times since that night. I no longer identify as bi-asexual, but as aromantic asexual (and some other things besides, but let’s keep it simple for now). I am less repulsed by sex than I used to be, and I know more about sex than I used to. I have discovered new concepts - squishes, non-romantic love, Boston marriage, among others. That first questioning phase opened the door to others, and each time it became easier to accept that what I had always taken for granted might not be true.

On June 9th, I wrote this in my shared LiveJournal: “Question what you always took for granted. You will learn a lot about yourself that way, maybe things you would never have suspected and that will surprise you, but if you accept them, you’ll be fine, because this is who you are, who you have always been – you just didn’t know it.” I still believe it is true.

So what do y'all think? If you have anything to say, please drop a line in the comments. Be sure to check out the authors blog here! Peace!

Sgyreju's Questioning Week

2011-07-14T06:59:00.005+03:00

I've been wanting to do this for a long time. For the next week,every day, starting tomorrow, I'll be featuring a number of posts that I read a long time ago from Rainbow Amoeba's Petri Dish . She called it Questioning Week. They really inspired me, so much so that I started my very own Questioning Week inspired by the series of post I'm going to share with you during the coming week

So a little history; Sgyreju had just moved her blog to a new site and was also celebrating the 4th Anniversary since the evening in her own words

"during which I realized I needed to reconsider my assumed and never questioned heterosexuality, I thought I might as well tell the story of what exactly happened then."

At the time she identified as asexual. But after questioning herself a little more she dropped the asexy tag and refuses to identify with any groupas she feels it limits here. I trust all of you will enjoy her work, she's a really talented writer and one of my favourite bloggers. Check her out starting tomorrow! Peace!!

My blog was nominated for...

2011-07-12T16:53:00.000+03:00

...the Storymoja Monthly Blog Posts Expo. Yeah I was nominated along with a host of other more talented writers such as Savvy Kenya. Yeah someone considered my writing to be at the same level of Savvy!! Yeah I'm feeling rather good about myself right now. You can read about the nomination here, doesn't seem like there's any prize to be won though.

Here's what was said about the nominees

"...today, all I wish to celebrate like we have every month on the Storymoja Writers’ Community, is the diversity of writing and the creativity of forming that can be found on the Kenyan blogosphere.

Now some of the blog posts I found are fiction, some are opinion editorial, some are more personal writing. Some of the posts were nominated by readers, others I just stumbled upon and loved."

Yeah I'm creative or at least that's what this nomination means for me. I'm jazzed!! If you're the one who nominated me thanks!!! Peace!!

I have Commitment Phobia

2011-07-05T13:32:00.001+03:00

I've recently come to the conclusion that I'm commitment-phobic. I couldn't believe it, it's something that has been having a subtle effect on all my relationships. I'm calling it subtle because I didn't notice it but I'm thinking someone else may have.

I've always complained of how I don't have a girlfriend and to realise that I've been sub-conscientiously sabotaging my own chances makes me laugh. Anyway so I did some research into it (Google/Wikipedia of course). The description I've written below is interspersed with commentary from me with how what I've written best describes me and how I've seen it in my life. These comments will be in brackets so don't skip to the end hoping to see what I'm thinking.

First before I tell you what I found let me first do a little attribution to me sources. Since I'm blogging from email I'm putting the full page urls. Fear of Commitment on Wikipedia. Commitment Phobia on www.anxietymatters.com. I used these two pages because anymore would be too many for me to read, also the where the top pages when I googled "Commitment Phobia".

A phobia is similar to a fear in that the mind perceives there to be a threat. The difference is, that in a phobia, the level of anxiety felt is disproportionate to the actual threat. So commitment phobia is a mechanism put in place by the brain to protect us from something that -for some reason-, it has misjudged the threat of.
The term commitment phobia was coined in the popular self-help book Men Who Can't Love in 1987. While popular media has made it seem that it only affects romantic relations it can affect any part of someone's life that requires a long time obligation such as work and school. Since on this blog post I meant commitment phobia on a romantic level that's what I'm going to concentrate on.

Commitment phobic people claim that they are eager to find a lasting romantic attachment, yet they fail to find appropriate partners and maintain long lasting connections.(Defines me perfectly) Ironically, in these romantic relationships, the commitment phobic partner craves what he/she fears most: love and connection. This paradoxical craving for a frightening reality leads to a confusing and destructive pattern of seduction and rejection. The results are emotionally devastating. (I can't say I'm emotionally devastated but I can imagine the other parties in my potential relationships may have been)

It should be said that there are as many possible causes of commitment phobia as there are people suffering from it. That's because each of us have different experiences as we grow so no two people can ever be the same. However there are some things that appear common in most cases. People with commitment phobia in adulthood, have often experienced one or more of the following experiences in their earlier years.
-A significant loss or bereavement
-A childhood trauma
-Parental separation (This may be the major cause for me. My parents have been divorced for the last 6 years or so, which is, coincidentally the last time I can say I was in a relationship)
-Unpleasant step-parents
-Poor role models (I don't look at my dad, as the man in my life, as a good role model for personal relationships)
-Abuse of one form or another during the formative, childhood years.

The symptoms of commitment phobia are wide and varied, and are only really limited by the imagination of the commitment phobic person themselves. Commitment phobia symptoms often appear as a sudden feeling of uncertainty, and sometimes the feeling of being trapped in the relationship. Such feelings are rooted in fear—fear of lost options or fear of making poor decisions. The commitment phobic mind sees decisions as permanent, opening the possibility of being caged or trapped.

Many commitment phobic people become fantasy-driven, using their active imaginations to fill in for the lack of emotional security and closeness in their lives. These fantasies pose additional problems because no potential partner can ever live up to the fantasy. Commitment phobic people are also prone to self-destructive behavior, such as walking out on partners. (Yeah this is so very true, in my experience, you build such a perfect fantasy of what you're looking for that no one can ever live up to that vision. More than that is that you suddenly get scared that if you get into a relationship this mythical perfection you've come up with will appear-or at the very least, someone better than who you're with- and you can't get out of the relationship you're in.)

One potentially misleading aspect of commitment phobic behavior is that the partner who is actively running away from commitment is the only one with a problem. In fact, commitment phobic behavior includes "settling" for inappropriate partners, pursuing unattainable partners, and engaging in instant relationships as well as fleeing from what might have appeared to be a stable romance. Any persistent behavior that actively prevents a person from making a commitment or allows a person to make excuses for not having made a commitment can be considered commitment phobic.

So there you have it as a definitive a description to can get on commitment phobia anywhere. I'm currently trying to get over my phobia one small step at a time. Any tips you may have on how you've dealt with your fears or you just want to share your experience be sure drop a line in the comments.(Or email me) I'd be most appreciative! Peace!!!

Dealing with platonic relationships with the opposite sex

2011-07-04T22:14:00.001+03:00

This post is inspired by some tweets I saw in my timeline by shee_wanjiku. She was complain that one of her friends, a dude, didn't understand that she just wanted a platonic relationship and not anything else. She was saying that dudes need to realize that just because a chic is nice to them it doesn't mean she wants to jump your bones. There's also I heard somewhere on TV "There's no way a dude and a chic can be just friends" a dude told his date. I thought I talk about these things but in relation with what I've experienced myself.
I've said severally here that I'm someone who really enjoys the company of girls infact I can as far as saying that I have more girl than boy friends. I'm not entirely sure why that is. I'm by far more selective of my guy friends. I think it's an ego thing I get from the company of girls.

So in all my interactions I've become aware of one thing. If I hang out with a girl for long enough I'll eventually, at some time, develop feels for the girl. I only came to this realization recently and I've been blown away by it. It explains a lot that I didn't previously understand. I doubt if girls feel the same though but I can't be sure.
With this realization has come insight into my platonic relationships with my girl friends. If I don't want to develop feelings for these girl I shouldn't hang out with the for prolonged periods of time. But that can't work because despite what feelings beyond friendship I feel for these girls I genuinely enjoy spending time with these girls. So what's to done.

Suppression. I mean I need to become aware of these feelings before they lead me to do something stupid, like making a move that will ruin a friendship with extreme awkwardness and embarrassment. Realising these feelings I should make an active effort not to let these feelings, and their attendant thoughts, overwhelm my conscience. This seems like the best course of action, of course I'm welcome to suggestions so sound off in the comments.

This doesn't mean that you shouldn't make advances on your girl friends I'm just giving what to me seems a viable way to avoid ruining your friendships with girls. I'll leave you with some advice that a good girl friend of mine gave my while in school "If you think you may wanna hit that you'd better persue that, making your intentions clear from the begin than starting out pretending to be friends then trying to get into a relationship"Peace!!

Why I read so much...

2011-06-29T23:38:00.000+03:00

...and how I came to be short-sighted.

why am I talking about these things in the same post? Well It's because one is related to the other. I bet you're wondering how.

When I was younger, much younger than I am now, I'm guessing when I was about 12 and a half, the TV in out house broke. My baby sis, whom I love very much, while in the stage where babies are beginning to walk using other objects as support, was leaning against the TV and pushed it over.

I wasn't there when it happened but that single event had a massive effect onn my life. At the time my parents didn't have enough money to replace the TV (It was a very cash strapped time in all our lifes) so we stayed without one for over a year.

Since we didn't have a TV, it fell upon me to find other ways to entertain myself when I got back from school. I spent a lot of time trolling the school library for Hardy Boy books. I read the entire series-the original one-and even some of the new ones.

What has all this got to do with why I now wear glasses now? Well when I finally got into reading Hardy Boys, a couple of friends and I used to compete on who would read the most books. This lead me to do a book a night! It's probably also the reason I can read I read much faster than most people.

However in the beginning I would still have a chapter or two to go when my bed time would came. So I'd leave the door to my room open so that I could use the light from the corridor to read my books.

Unfortunately this light wasn't very bright so it caused me to squint when reading and so I slowly spoilt my eyes this way. After more than 6 months reading like this I couldn't see the classroom board even if I sat in the front.

I don't regret that my eyesight deterioated becausse of books. The pleasure I derived from the books I read and the knowledge I continued and continue to get from them continues to feed my soul. Sounds like non-sense I know but books are the one thing I can always turn to to take my mind of things. to emmerse myself in someone else's thoughts and escape reality for a little bit. Peace!!!

Tobiko's dilemma

2011-06-27T22:52:00.000+03:00

So I was just watching news at 9 on NTV, first time in maybe in 2 months or so. I feel that watching it is pointless as most of it is political bullshit and the rest depressing. But today two things caught me First the murder of post graduate student, Mercy Keino, who died in rather mysterious circumstances over the weekend. Was actually going to do a post on it until a second story came along.

Keriako Tobiko

Our newly appointed Director of Public Prosecution, Keriako Tobiko, was saying how he needs more money to hire more lawyers to help reduce the backlog of cases that he's newly created office has to deal with. First of let me state that I don't trust him, all those accusations made when he was first nominated, he looks shifty and that accent!! Eww!!

Anyway I was wondering why he couldn't just turn to the the private lawyers in this country to do some of the work pro-bono at least until the case load gets under control. I mean anything to get the case load under control right. . I don't know if the law allows it though but it seems to me a great idea. What do y'all think? Let me know in the comments. Peace.

Random update

2011-06-26T23:38:00.003+03:00

It's been so long since I've updated this blog, I don't know what's wrong with me. The psych to do anything has been at nil recently. I can't seen to find the psych to do much other than look at what other people are doing. I check into twitter only to watch the tweet stream not to contribute.

I went for Bake happy hour quite sometime back and was inspired to statrt blogging by seeing all those bloggers gather. I didn't really keep that promise to myself did I? Perhaps I should make a resolution to start doing so. You can read all about Bake here on Savvy's blog.

I should warn you all before I leave, if I'm going to be updating this blog more often I'll be writing about pretty mundane stuff. Of course I’ll be try make stuff as interesting so you don’t pass out reading what I have to say.Also I'm think that if I'll going to be blogging as regularly as I plan to I can't be putting images in every post.

I know how images are there to hold the reader but since I'll be too lazy to go to a cyber I'll be working from my phone most times and it's functionality is rather limited. I'm looking forward to bring back more regular updates to this blog if only for deadly_halo who seems to have missed me!;)

Experiencing someone else

2011-05-23T06:19:00.002+03:00

For the second time in as many weekends I found myself in the boot of the car because the ride was already too full in the front. Well the cars were hunchback so it was actually quite comfortable.
This actually besides the point but on the second trip, lying on my back looking at the ssky, admiring the car and skyscrapers rushing by I began to comtemplate something that I've thought about on and off for a little bit: I've always wanted to experience someone else's thoughts.

There are times when I'm in certain situations, like when talking to a girl or even just sitting watching telavision, when I wonder how someone esle thought process would be under the same situations. Other times when I wonder if my thought process is actually normal.

While this mostly happens when I'm in one of my more depressed moods, it also happen when I have a particular nasty, and funny, thought. I mean have you ever wonder whether 'normal' people really think like you? Chime out in the comments. Peace!!!

It's time for a holiday

2011-04-26T06:22:00.001+03:00

Hey y'all. I know it's been a while since I've posted but I've been busy with exams which, between you and me, I think I've aced but don't remind me of this when the results come out next semester saying different. So now it's the end of the academic year as a fresher and I can tell you for someone just finishing their first year I've done it all.

This year, I've helped a friend I had sex with have an abortion, made new friends drinking and got my laptop stolen from me. As the semester's come to an end I've found myself falling for one of my friends and I must say things are looking rather promising from me...and her.*knocks on wood*

Lately have been in a splendid mood that I'm hoping will continue through out my holiday. So what are my plans for my holiday you ask? For most of the first month I'm hoping to be going to driving school so I can finally get a driving licence. It's been so annoying that all of my older cousins can drive and I couldn't. Also for the first month I want to spend as much time as possible partying and getting wasted weekends. After this month of generally doing nothing I'm hoping to find some internship job, preferably tech-related and paying(I need a pair new shoes, or 5).

Finally I'll be going back to Nairobi, so expect to see a lot of me at all the tech events and tweet-ups. In fact if your organising anything let me know. You know where to find me on twitter and my e-mail address is easily found. I hope to meet some of my readers too. Laters y'all!! Peace!!

What women want

2011-04-06T14:07:00.000+03:00

“Sidney, why do you think a girl would fall bad boys?” she asked me as I escorted her back to her room at midnight. I won’t go immediately into what I told her or how that conversation went but I feel that question is the perfect way to begin this topic. It’ll make sense in a minute.

I was having an argument with one of my friends a couple of weeks back that started with her complaining of her ex-boyfriend. She was complaining of how he forgot her birthday. Apparently on her birthday he had to go to Kisumu to see his mum who was feeling unwell. Her problem with this is that he didn’t think to even call her to wish her happy birthday. He didn’t get a gift or anything and when she called him the next day he said, “I didn’t call because you expected me to”. This wasn’t the only thing he’s done wrong but I don’t really want to go into all that. The reason I’m mentioning all this is to point to what women want.

I asked a couple of my girl friends what they would consider the perfect boyfriend. One called Emily said, “My ideal boyfriend would be one how would be one who cares about my feelings, thoughts and what I hold dear. Understanding, one who includes me in his life, listens and respects my beliefs. One I don’t have to beg so that he can spend time with me. A fun person”

What ladies don’t realize that don’t really want the perfect boyfriend, the ever thoughtful dude, and gentleman and never forgets anything. What they want is someone who will mistreat them a little. I’m not talking of out-right physical or verbal abuse, I talking about forgetting to call, a little rude to them and maybe even cold and distance. Like said nice guys finish last all the time when it comes to women. It’s a universal fact.

When he includes you in his life, you’ll find the girl complaining something like,”He’s smothering me, I need space to breathe!!” When he cares about want you think and feel you begin to hear, “He’s such a push-over, he can’t seem to hold an opinion of his own” and so on blah blah blah.

Look at something I saw in a paper once:

Hi,

This movie is awesome, everyone should watch it.

I’m a 34 year old women married woman. I’ve been married for 5 years and have a two year old daughter. I have a problem. My husband is almost perfect; he comes home immediately after work every day and never stay out too late during the weekend. He brings home his check each month so we can plan and budget with it. My problem with him is that the sparks in the bedroom are gone, he just doesn’t please me as he used to, and it’s been over a year since he properly satisfied me. It’s getting so bad I’m thinking of cheating on him. Please help me, because I love my husband and don’t want to hurt him but temptation grows by the day.

Thanks,

Unsatisfied.

Now I ask you, how does one help a lady like this? I mean really? Even I’m not that perfect, and I consider myself to be the perfect gentleman. What does this woman want? Does she realize that the problem may just be her; I mean the dude doesn’t seem to be complaining. In the comments section she had a bunch of replies asking her what’s wrong with her but I’m sure most of those women if in the same position would still find something wrong with him before long.

What am I saying women may know what they want from their perfect man physically (tall, athletic, good looking), mentally (must have a masters, this level in such a company) and materially(car, house, money) but they have no clue what they want from him emotionally or rather they never think about it apart of course he needs to be funny. Really, that’s why women stick with men who physically and emotionally abuse them.

This answers the question my friend posed to me; girls just dig bad boys because they want to be a little mistreated. At least when they realize this they can really begin to examine their potential boyfriends knowing what to look for and what to avoid. I think this is why mothers always tell their daughters not to make the same mistakes they made and what exactly to look for in a man.

So what is in store for the good guys? Well, there’s always the best friend position. She wants to keep you close enough to keep treating her right, holding the door for her, remembering the birthdays and anniversaries but you’ll never be her boyfriend. This is the sad truth, don’t you think? Let me know in the comments. Peace!

Random post

2011-03-13T21:51:00.011+03:00

This is one of those posts where, I just talk randomly about whatever is on my head, as I have nothing of much significance to talk about. Usually when I a have random stuff to write down it’s about one specific topic but today, I’m going random about random.

Random like the colours in this picture

I was in Kakamega over the weekend visiting my cousin; it was all kinds of awesome, drinking and raeving and hanging out and drinking. While on the rave, I happened to dance with a big mama by big here I mean fat. This girl had big everything; big boobs, big ass, big thighs, big stomach; big everything. While she was grinding on me and I’m starting to get a little feeling in my nether regions, I realized that big women may actually be able to be able a rouse something in me. I didn’t know that, I’ve always found fat girl’s unsexy, this weekend is causing me to re-examine that.

I’m currently crushing on one of my classmates, that’s what that last post asking for your advice. I actually want to take this one to the next “level” something I’ve never done before, I’m kind of scared. I mean this could mean a whole new type of responsibility I’ve never had, or the crushing feeling of failure and rejection. I’ll let you know how that one goes. If you still have some advice for me the comment section is eternally open here, or on the other post.

One of my neighbours, a friend of my is in a dilemma of sorts. He has met this girl, she’s all class, swag and sex in a single package. He describes her as a girl whose personality screams adventure. His problem? He’s scared that if he gets with this girl he’ll not be able to get out and it’s too late into the semester. He’s worried that if he goes in he won’t be able to enjoy all the fresh fruit coming in next semester. Childish really in my opinion, he should just commit, after all he can’t be sure about next years bunch can he?

So my laptop got stolen yesterday, I'm dramatised but I'm still hoping it'll be found before too long. Pray for "loverboy"(my laptop's name).

Oh one last thing, I'm thinking of changing up the blog colour theme drastically, when I finally do it, I'd really like it if you let me know what you think. Peace!!!

I need your advice

2011-03-03T06:52:00.001+03:00

So yeah I need your advice but for I get into that let me show you a bit of an SMS chat I was having with a friend of mine:
Lilly: Hey you, now can you break the ice, I hate being anxious, it makes me miss me moments in bed
Me: Which moments in bed are these? Can I join you and see? :)
Lilly: My moments. I have a thing with my bed and we don't need company.
Me: I don't think it'll b too hard for me to get in between you.

I have to admit I thought that last line was genius! I totally surpassed myself with that one and it’s difficult for me to impress myself, trust me. What do you think? Am I just being conceited? Let me know in the comments.

If you can remember I had this to say about dating. I still stick to what I said then. However being the heterosexual human boy I am I still find myself wondering and longing for the typical relationships that I see around me amongst my friends. Call it peer pressure or whatever it's still something I want to experience.

However I recently realised after much thought that I have no idea how to go about getting a girlfriend, you know, asking her out, to be yours. That's where I need your advice. Don't get me wrong I'm not asking for pick-up lines or even lessons in charm and game, just the final step where you ask her to be your girlfriend or whatever. I mean is there a procedure, a method, or algorithm? A best way? Let me know in the comments.

I need a girlfriend with a body like this

Oh, I know this is kind of sexist but I'd mostly really appreciate female voices in this. I don't mean any disrespect to men but you may think you know what you're doing but maybe you've been doing it wrong for years!! Still I'd like to hear what you have to say so don't be shy. Peace!

Her eyes...

2011-02-28T06:46:00.002+03:00

This is a description of the eyes of a girl I know, she's beautiful but one of her striking feature is her eyes they contain so much that I fear this description falls short of what they contain but I've tried my best and thought I'd share it with you:

These aren't her's but they give you an idea

Deep,drowning with a sort of simmering energy behind them like they could instant explode into intense emotion...they know what your thinking and it amuses them...calling,daring,dreamy and ever so seductive.Enigmatic a twinling of mischieviousness in them,playful

There's more in them but I lack words...

In other news, people will be standing together all over the country, Kenya, to sing the national anthem to show against divisive politics. "At 1pm Kenyans will unite to sing all three verse of our beautiful and powerful National Anthem. On the 28th February 2011 the world will watch as Kenyans stand UNITED; 1pm, 1 nation, 1 people, 1 anthem, united in 1 prayer for 1 Kenya."-taken directly from their website. I'm still debating whether I'll be joining them. We'll see, I'm building syke for it. If I do I may just blog about it. Peace!!

Green park

2011-02-26T19:13:00.000+03:00

Ladies and gentlemen last week on Friday, for the first time, I went to one of the locals around school for drinks with a new friend of mine, @joeemgee, at a place call Green Park. Yup, it was awesome up so I want to tell you about it.

We were supposed to meet there at 8, 8.30 but somehow I only got there at 9 and Joe around thirty minutes later. I check in and well to tell you the truth it looked better than expected. Clean and very simple. I saw one of my classmates, a girl, who seemed to be on a double date. Wait can you really have a proper date in a bar? Of course, I planted myself right there while I waited for Joe, I don't think her date liked it.}:)

Joe checked in and I left my classmate, Joe immediately ordered our drink and we joined one of his friends at his table. Now from here I generally just kept quite and observed everything going on around me and trying to keep up with the conversation going on on my table.

So now a quick recap of the night

-There was this girl, obviously drunk, who was wearing a white dress. This dress was so short it might as well have been an oversized t-shirt. It kinda had this night dress fabric thing going on(yup, see through) and it was those flowing type, which you'd think she'd consider when she dancing but no it kept raising threatening to reveal all but somehow it didn't. Oh and it low cut, and she had massive boobs. Oh and she was kinda beautiful. More on her later.

-We spent quite a bit of time scanning the bar commenting on the hotness of the girls there. In fact there was one particularly well blessed one, chest-wise who Joe commented "Matitty pap!!!" and when ever she came to our table he'd openly stare at her chest which I was shocked she didn't notice. I looked too, trust you couldn't not stare, they where that big, but I like to think I was more discrete.

-Other girls where standing at the bar seemingly doing nothing and not really drinking anything. After looking at them there for like 10 minutes I asked Joe, who was my guide to the compass bar scene, about them and why he didn't vibe them and he told me those were to be stayed away from. Apparently they stand around waiting to get vybed then they ask for drinks, which of course if you wanna keep vybing them you have to buy:-D so generally you wait for someone else to buy the drinks then you do the slicing!:)

-But I swear I could have gone blind that night, you know the way your mum told you if you saw a grown woman naked? Well at some point the chic with the white dress came over, put her leg on the arm of the chair of one of the dudes at my table and let him finger her, right there. This was like in the very center of the room and this bar is really well light. I turned away before my mums promise(curse?) of blindness came fulfilled. NASTY!!!

-A fight almost broke out because of some idiot who didn't know when to shut up. I mean even me, in my inebriated state, could tell that if the nigga shut up he wouldn't be in so much shit. He got kicked out. Idiot.

-Oh and I saw a lecturer so drunk he was falling over himself. If that was one of my teachers I doubt I'd ever be able to take them seriously ever again.

Okay then enough about other what did I do and learn? I drank, obviously. What were supposed to be 2 drinks became 7. Joe and his friends are quite generous :) I danced with that classmate of mine, and realised I really like dancing...with girls. I learnt that I will never be a heavy weight drinker, the guys at my table, including Joe, those are the really drinkers and finally if I fall asleep high and get woken up I'll puke.

All in all it was a really fun night! Mad thanks to @joeemgee and his pals!! Maybe this weekend I’ll go drinking again, apparently that Friday it was rather empty. That should be fun:) Peace!!!

The players wife

2011-02-25T15:21:00.001+03:00

First, I’d like to apologise to you, my readers, for not updating this blog for so long. I don’t know why but I've been extremely lazy to do stuff recently. I have no syke for school or lessons. But still I promised more regular updates and I plan to keep that promise. I have a laptop after all.

Anyway away from that and on to today’s topic: The player’s wife. I have a friend; he’s the player (Kelly*). I have another friend (Dina*), she’s the wife. And why is this spectacular or note-worthy?
Kelly is the type of dude who on a typical weekend could bed 2 different girls and then not call or talk to them ever again. He’s a player and he’s not ever abashed admitting it to anyone who asks him (It’s weird that girls never think to ask questions until his already bedded them). He’s a nice guys to hang around and he’s one of my close friends here in uni.

Dina is the good girl of our class. Polite, honest and dresses conservatively. She never misses class and you can trust her to have up-to date notes in every class even the obscure ones like HIV&AIDS(which, fun-fact, I’ve only attended a single lecture of).

So how can she be his wife? Well she’s not really his wife (girlfriend) but she is the most consistent girl in his life. She’s the only one he calls on a daily basis and he almost always knows exactly where she is at anytime of the day. She’s the one girl whose calls he always picks, and he sees her everyday. All this is because she’s the one who gives him notes and keeps him up-to date with what’s happening in class. She’s the reason he’s able to pass any classes (he misses most). His life would fall apart without her

It’s only this week I began to call her his wife. She’s like that girl in the movies; she’s the assistant or friend of the dude who’s a player and she’s the only reason or thing in he’s life that keeps him stable. Of course in the movies the dude usually falls for the dude or vice versa. That parts bullshit but the rest is pretty sound reason, I've seen it with my own eyes. So have you guys notice this too with your friends who are players? Or are you a player with a similar experience? Let me know what you’re thinking in the comments. Peace!!!

*Not their real names

Suicide

2011-02-12T13:47:00.000+03:00

Today I'm in a sufficiently depressed to post this rather dull post. I wrote it when I was going through a really bad time in my life. I'm feeling right now something similar to what I did then.
Has any of you really contemplated suicide? As in really really thought about it? I have. Sometime I feel it'd be better than all the sadness in the world. Where everyone's life seems to be going better than yours?

No, I really don't want to hear that crap of there people out there going through worse! I really don't care about them do I? I don't know them.

Death would be sweet release, from worry, from probelms, from uncertainty, from pain, from control, from sadness, from fear, from feeling, from thought.

And so what if I go to hell?(I believe in it) It'll not be forever and anyway my version of hell, the one I believe in, any pain would be instant before I become nothing. That isn't so bad. Infact it's perfect! Just a few moments of judgement, a chance to know that the people I care about most made it to heaven and then blank. Relief.

I've thought about it, as in really thought about it, how best to do it so it's least painful(I have a morbid fear of pain) if a note would be left, what would be on it. Who'd really miss me if I was gone. How the funeral would be. Who'd be there. What I'd want said about me. Which one of my parents would consider it their fault. In less words I mean I've thought about it a lot.

I'm not going to kill myself. There's something you could say anchoring me to this life. If that anchor disappeared, I'd die, I don't think there'd be much to live for. No point of going on.

I'm leaving comments on this but I'm asking that the sympathy be kept to a mininum. After all it's never that serious:) Peace!

Am I being an asshole?

2011-02-10T07:34:00.000+03:00

Hey y’all! I’ve been on a kind of high since the weekend. I finally got off my ass and went for the shopping I should’ve gone for 4 weeks ago meaning I have some food in my room finally. I went shags(the country house) for a day so that I could have a bit of solitude and found my dad there, he gave me some cash:) which for someone my age is better than solitude. Also he gave me something even better than money; my own laptop!!

Is this true?

It’s a beast and then some. It’s a tablet convertible. I’m absolutely in love with it. I may do a post on it someday soon just so that you can turn green in envy. You guys refused to donate to my laptop fund, now I have one I want to rub it in your faces…hard!!*evil cackle* I didn’t even get any spam messages from it. NKT! You guys are mean. Where’s the love?

Anyway that’s not why I’m writing this. I’m writing this because I’ve been feeling rather bad recently. And I know where it’s coming from, it’s cause. My laptop.

I know, it’s so unfair that something I’ve wanted for so long, and love, is giving me grief. Allow to explain. Due to my laptop’s unique nature (I think it’s the only one of its kind on campus) and my generally friendly nature everyone wants some time with it. Unfortunately, I’ve been feeling very mean and protective of it. I don’t want anyone but me to use it or even touch it.

Take example one friend wanted to install Virtual DJ on it and I felt like shouting, “Why the fuck would I want to out that on my machine? Just because its touch screen?” but I just said rather forcefully I think that I wouldn’t be installing it. Or another friend wanted to install Fifa and I didn’t want to because it’s a huge space hog and it’d mean this friend may be borrowing my laptop more than I’d like.

So what’s the point of tell you this? I want/need your advice because I’ve been feeling that I maybe just being mean to people who want to use my laptop. And it’s not just with my laptop but with anything of mine especially when it’s still new. I mean am I being a jackass for being stingy with my stuff? And also at which point would it be people taking advantage of my generosity? While I don’t want to be mean, I also don’t want to be uncomfortable or taken advantage of because of my generosity. Help? Peace!!

Campus Drama: My thoughts

2011-02-04T07:15:00.000+03:00

So while I was narrating this story( Catch part one here) to you guys-and girls- I've tried to as objective as possible and tell the story as I saw it then, through my eyes, without giving you too much of what I thought of the situation after really thinking about it. So that's what this post is about.

I don't know about you but I've always been of the opinion that get pregnant at my age-which is rather young, think kid, baby-is stupid. Yes, I'm saying that Q was stupid to get pregnant. I mean think about it in this day and age you only get pregnant if you want to, what with condoms, contraceptives, e-pills and of course abstinence, it's either that or you're stupid. I told Q as much.

Finally, if I ever got a girl pregnant, I have two options and option 2 is only taken after 1 fails.
Option 1: I ask the girl to marry me. Really. I was just raised like that, it's something that has been really drilled into me by my mum, also it's something I'd want to do because I wouldn't want any child of mine born out of wed-lock and anyway it would be against my honour not to at least try and ask. All this is rather old fashioned but that's just me, this is a decision I made and I plan to stick to it if it ever comes to it. Anyway people can grow in love, right?
Option 2:If she doesn't like option 1 and is not planning to keep the baby do everything on my power, limited right now though they are, to give her all the support I can, financial and emotional. Be there for her as much as can. You can chalk this one up to my honour too. It'd be pussy to leave her in such a state. I probably couldn't look at myself in the mirror again!(And I like looking at myself in the mirror!!)

That's why what E did pissed me off so much. You make a girl pregnant, you refuse to go with her to take a test and then you have the audacity to ask she goes through another test? The fuck! I mean, do you really think she wants to go through that again? Is it even fair? Then refusing to help clean up your mess, that's just wrong! I still can't walk past E in school without grimacing. He actually disgusts me. I hope he knows it.

Finally, I'm pro-abortion, how ever in a discussion with one of my best friends, she told me that there was no need to have aborted, that these days getting pregnant wasn't a big deal and it wouldn't have been as bad as Q envisioned. What do yáll think? Let me know in the comments. Peace!!!

Why a Kenyan revolution will never happen

2011-02-03T20:16:00.000+03:00

I needed to out this up quick which is why I’m doing this on a day I already have on post up but I feel the longer I wait the less relevant what I have to say becomes. Also I'm not a political scientist or any sort of expert on revolutions and such matters, these are just my thoughts.

Recently, ever since the Tunisia and then Egypt protests and revolts there’s been a lot of chatter on my time-line(Twitter) about whether such a thing can be repeated in Kenya. Today there was even talk of one on 28th February. I don’t know where this one came from but there were a lot of tweets tagged with it in the morning.

I kind of found this laughable because I knew it could never happen, not yet anyway. Why? Well that’s why I’m writing this to explain why I know it could never happen.

We don’t have the balls. We’re way too comfortable to have a citizen-led revolution. We’re too scared to do what it takes. The post-election violence that happened in 2008 has put in us a health fear of such “revolution”. Even today, when the #feb28 tweets were flying around tweets going around begging for calm, that there were more peaceful means to change the piteous state our country’s in. Someone mentioned the new constitutional implementation as a way to change things.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very pro-peace but what I need my fellow Kenyan’s to realise is that for change to come, a revolution to take place you have to be ready to make sacrifices, I’m not talking about money but lives. Yes, I’m saying that for change to happen in a revolutionary manner we must be ready to die. Until that day we’re ready to lay down our lives to see change we’ll have to be content with the manner that reforms are being implemented in our country, snail’s-pace and probably a couple of generations out.

I’m not saying that the revolution must necessarily be violent but I am saying that we must be ready to die for it. I say this because the system we’d want to change, the corruption and impunity will not want to change. The people who back it will not want to change, they will fight back and do so violently. We all saw it during the post election violence. They have the power and means to hire and entice people to kill and intimidate anyone who tries to change the system that has given them vast amounts of wealth and power. Case and point the Ocampo six.

These guys have managed simultaneously make their prosecution and tribal and political debate and coerce the government to somehow consider their defence one of national pride and honour, hence pay for it, simply because they’re part of the government. I mean are you fucking serious? Crime cannot be protected simply because it's committed by the government or members of it.

Also for this country to undergo a revolution the middle class needs to take part in it. We won’t. We’re too selfish. We all only ever think about ourselves and/or our families. Think about it. Sure we’ll complain about the corruption, the sorry state of our judicial systems and poor infrastructure but when it comes down to it we all manage to living with them, quite comfortably I can add. We’re not ready to lose that comfort. I think this still goes back to what I said before.

I’ll leave you all with this short story from the post election violence period:

Kibaki had just been declared president and sworn-in in increase darkness. We saw on TV that Kibera was rioting. Looking out the window you could just make out the smoke in the distance( we stay liked 20 mins walk from Kibera in those days).

Later that night there was talk that Raila had called a rally at Uhuru park, that he was going to swear himself in. My aunt and mum made plans to go. They weren't going to stand for their election being stolen.

Morning came. They woke up syked, charged. They dress in jeans, t-shirts and running shoes. There was talk of “If there’s no transport, we’ll walk. Even if the police come there we’re prepared to stand our ground.

They left the house and out of our court. I immediately put on the TV to find out what the situation around Uhuru Park was. A ring of police and GSU all round the place, armed to the teeth.

3minutes later the door opens and there are my aunt and mum. Apparently the GSU(General Service Unit, special police unit used in special situation mostly riot control) men had chosen outside of gate to deploy to stop protesters who were trying to make it to Uhuru park on foot and they had been told to return to house immediately. I laughed my head off!

I fear this is what will happen if we ever tried for a revolution, we turn back scared at the very first opposition we meet. I’d like to point out that both relations in Egypt and Tunisia started with death. Also in Egypt, when they had gathered together in Tahrir square they stayed there besides the police harassing and wounding and killing them and today apparently there been pro Mubarak supporters causing havoc and death. That’s all I have to say. As always peace!!!!

PS: I read an interesting post on revolution on Diasporadical today by misternv. I suggest you go check it out. Again peace!!

Campus drama: the last part

2011-02-03T10:10:00.002+03:00

Continuing from here

I don’t like this dude, E. He looks shifty, dodgy. But then again that might have something to do with him knocking up my friend but not so much, I remember I met him when I went Greenpark (local around school), he didn’t seem to like me cutting in the way I did.

He seemed to look rather scared when Q asked that he clears the room of everyone, except me and W. Then she began to talk to E. She told him that she had gone to hospital to get tested, that the results were positive, she was pregnant. And guess what he asked?

He asked why she hadn’t called him when she was going for the test. She told him that she had tried to call him earlier, after she first informed him of her suspicions but his phone was very off so she couldn’t reach him. Then he asked why we-me and W-were there, why we took her to hospital. I was like WTF??? Is the nigga daft??? Ati why us and not him, nktesticles!!! She told him there was no way she was going to face this alone, so she need her friends, best ones in school around her.

Around this point, W, suggested that we leave to give them some privacy which was probably a superb idea because I was so very tempted to begin making snide comments. Outside, W who seemed to know these things really well, told me that he didn’t think that things were going to well. I don’t know what went on behind those closed doors but I know when that he didn’t take her, and by extension, our, word that she was paged and demanded another test. Only then would he help with her abortion.

So that’s it. That's all that happened. Unaltered or censored, except of course by the quality of my memory. Though this isn't something you forget is it? I mean it was my first experience of something like this and hopefully my last. By the way Q would've done the test again except that E disappeared after that and his phone either went answered or was off. There's another post tomorrow giving you a bit of my thoughts and opinions. Peace

Campus drama: Part3

2011-02-02T10:43:00.006+03:00

Continuing from here

“Hello, R?”

“Hey, how are you?”

“Fine, it’s cdohnio”

“Ahhh, cdohnio how are you? How’s school?”

“I’m cool, school’s fine, listen I have something rather delicate to ask you”

“Ask…”in serious and curious tone.

“First of all you have to promise to keep this secret, you can’t tell anyone, not my mum, not aunty, not your bro….(add several family members here)….no one!”

“Okay, what is it?”suspicion.

“I have a friend, a girl, she gotten herself in a delicate situation and she wandering the price of something. You know Hosithis, right?”

“Yes…”slight worry.

“How much is it to get an operation there?”

“A what? Abortion…?”definite worry.

“Well, yes”

“Ummm, about 8k”

“8?”

“Yeah. But we can do it for her at 4k at Hosithat. If she doesn’t mind it.”

“4, really?”

“Yes. Wait , cdohnio, she’s pregnant, right? And she has a baby? Your baby?” fear and anxiety

“No, not mine, do I look stupid? She’s just a friend I’m doing a favour for”

“ Oh, phewks, I thought…”major relief

“Nah, not me, I’m a good boy and very careful. By the way this is a really close friend of mine if anything happens to her I’ll kill you, you have to make sure she’ll be okay.”

“Don’t worry these things are done all the time”

“So how long will it take?”

“About 30mins and it’ll be done”

“Cool, I give you call when we get the cash together, cool?”

“Sure, anytime.”

“And R thanks a lot I really appreciate this, love you!!”

Click.

I asked Q if she had heard what I said, and also filled her, and W, in on the parts they may not have heard. So what was next? We decided to go to see someone who, should have been prominently featured but so far, nil. After Q called E, we head to his room.

Concludes tomorrow.

Campus drama: Part2

2011-02-01T08:51:00.005+03:00

Continued from here

I found out later, that I actually exclaimed, ’Whoops!!’. I can’t remember that. Q then took the results out of my hand to see for her self and after W also took a look he ripped the results into pieces. Dee began cursing how she couldn’t believe it as she fought hard-I could tell-not to cry though tear still leaked from the sides. She collapsed for a few seconds into Q arms and all I could do was rub her back. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that useless, or that confused or maybe lost is word, in my young life. I mean, what could I do? Or rather I didn’t know what I could, should do.
This may be the best place to mention the baby wasn’t mine.

No it belonged to some idiot I’m going to call E. He was someone before me and her got intimate.

After she had gathered herself enough to stop crying which didn’t take very long she began hysterically laughing at how ugly a baby of E would be and how she could never have it. All W and I could do is wait for her to get over it and stare at each other. E then sprung into action making us discuss her options.

“We need to now think of what to do next. Options. First of all are you keeping the baby?”

“No!”

“Good, then we have to consider where to abort it. I know Hosithis does it in town.”

“Do we know much it is?”

Me,” My cousin told me of that place I’m sure she knows of the price. I could call and ask her.”

Q,”Do you have credit now?”

Me,”No…”(Broke ass motherfuckerJ)

W,”First let’s organize stuff first we’ll do that stuff later. Okay so who do we need to call?”

Q,”E, you had better talk to me I can’t handle him right now. We’re already pissed at each other” (Unrelated with what’s going on btw, the being pissed)

W,”Cool . I’d rather do it in person though he may not take me seriously over phone”

We paused here and sat on the bench in complete silence, each to their own thoughts, though Q’s were rather obvious because of the way she kept sighing and laughing and shaking her head and other things. I was thinking that I wanted to break E for being so stupid.

At some point we decided to get back to school, where we met with some dude who couldn’t get the hint that he was welcome in our company but he insisted. He was one of those hangers-on of our group (I came and found him, though) the ones who no one really likes but can’t seem to get the hint?

We went to one of the bunches in school and sat, just me and Q.(W had gone with the hanger-on to some other dude’s(who was part of the group) room. I then explained to Q about my cousin and how she was trustworthy, knowledgeable, a doctor and best of all sure to be discreet .So when W joined us again I made the call from his phone.(Broke ass student remember?)

“Hello”

Continues tomorrow. Peace.

Campus drama: Part1

2011-01-31T09:20:00.012+03:00

I don’t really know how to start this. I’m scared. A girl I was intimate with is pregnant. Yes pregnant and I’m freaking out for her. Yes my only concern is her. I’m really worried how this will affect her mentally and psychologically. It’s just the first month of year one and already I’m in such a difficult situation. I’ll start at the beginning.

So I have this friend lets call her, Q, we had sex… She was the first on campus. The next week she tells me and some of our friends (we’re kind of a group, small) that she thinks she’s missed her ps. One of us, we’ll call him, W, asked how long it had been and she says 2 weeks. She then goes on to say that she wants us to take her to the clinic so she can get a pregnancy test.

Of course being the gentlemen we are, we said yes and a date was set for the next week. On the appointed date she got cold feet and cancelled. The next day, however, thanks to my skilful coaxing we went to the government clinic that is near our school. When we got there I took the lead, at the request of Q and asked whether they did pregnancy tests. The clinic, which was basically two small rooms, cubes really, seemed to be staffed with only elderly ladies. You know the mothering type that look at young people with judging eyes? The type you can be sure if they knew your mother she’d know 5 sec after you left that you were looking for a pregnancy test? Yes that type.

The lady then goes on to ask us why we don’t go to the school hospital, she could tell we were students and it was free treatment there. Obviously, I want to tell her that we really don’t want the school to have the records of this test, whether it was negative or positive. Wait I did tell her that. Only then did she tell us that them didn’t have a lab so they didn’t do those tests. Nkt!! But she did guide us to the private hospital jus outside one of the school gates.

We walked there, and paid for the pregnancy test, using a fake name, she was told to go pee in a cup and give it to the lab for the test. We had to wait for 10mins for the results.

While we waited, W tried, and failed, to comfort saying that she had options. I kept translating to her what he meant is that we’ll figure out things together. She appreciated both our efforts. I was holding her hands. At some point we tried to talk about anything else other than what if but somehow we kept drifting back to the test.

The doctor/lab technician came out with the results and, callously, holds out the results to our group and I took them. He had put them hidden under the receipt. I slide it to the side and looked at the result.

Shit, it was positive.

Part 2 tomorrow. Peace.

Posts this week

2011-01-30T10:02:00.002+03:00

Hey y'all! Starting tomorrow I'll be dropping a bunch of posts I wanted to put up last year but didn't have the chance or means to. There are 4 or 5 posts that were actually written as one but would have been too long for one sitting/post in my opinion. So I cut it up. I've done it such a way that it provides the most entertainment while still managing to convey what was happening. I hope you like it because I personally think I did a great job on them. Either way your thoughts on them would be much appreciated so stick around. Peace!!

I wish I was asexual

2011-01-25T08:53:00.003+03:00

And aromantic too! I really do! Life would be so so much simpler like that, atleast for me! I could be friends with anyone without becoming confused with destructive feelings and my pride bruised. If you don’t know much about asexuality you might wanna read this post here or google it. (I’d prefer you read it here thoughJ). Now let me go on.

I’m great with people and make friends easily. Most of these are of the female variety and I don’t mind that one bit. I’m friendly, charismatic and charming. And I believe I’m quite handsome (my mum tells me this too and she never lies). I have the gift to draw people to me. I like being the center of attention.

So I guess you’re wondering why, with all that, I would want to be asexual. As you should have read by now asexy people don’t feel any sexually attraction. I can just imagine it; I could look at any girl and not feel any sexual attraction to her! And if I was aromantic won’t I have any romantic feelings. Trust me when you have as many girl friends as I do you’re bound to get confused. Being asexy and aromantic would mean I wouldn’t have to think my sexual and romantic feelings when I become friends with a girl!

Yeah I know what you’re thinking but right now I’d really sacrifice all the “pleasure” gotten from romantic and sexual relationships for the peace of mind that must come from not being able to confuse how you feel about someone! Shifting through those emotions is stress and you might make the wrong decision anyway. Friends are for life girlfriends for but a time. Before I sign off any one else thinks the word asexy rolls off the tongue nicely? Say it with me “Asexy!!!” JPeace!

Hey! I'm back!!!

2011-01-24T12:52:00.001+03:00

Hey guys! Did you miss me? I missed you. Really I have. This should technically be a new years message but it's already so late in the month there's barely any point of talking about it except perhaps to say" I hope you new year has gone well so far. How are the resolutions coming along long? I mean are you still sticking to them?"
I personally don't do new year resolutions. I think it's because I've usually have made my long term decisions long before the new year checks in. And also because I'm awesome. I mean why wait for new years to take a look at your life and make decisions about it? Anyway before I go rambling on for too long without saying much of value. I just wanted to do this post to let yáll know that I should be posting more regularly now.

Why? Well...after you guys ignored my passionate plea to donate a laptop so I could keep blogging I went home and begged my dad to get me one. He refused. Fortunately for me(and you) my room-mate recently(a couple of days ago) got one of his own. I should be jealous but I'm not. This means I can post stuff almost as soon as it comes to me. YAY! It's awesome, I know! Anyway thanks for reading:) Peace!!!
*By the way if you're wondering about how frequently I plan to post, I'm hoping for at least one a week more when I'm feeling particularly inspired or when I break down a really long post. Peace! Again!!*

The sides of my Ego

2010-12-17T09:27:00.001+03:00

I feel like writing and all I can seem to think about right now is my ego...more on why in a bit. So I'll talk about the sides of my ego.

I don't know about y'all but I don't have an ego, I have about 3. Yeah, 3. While all separate entities, each with their own pulse and reason for being, they're interconnected. So what egos are these?

Well the first, and most prominent of them all, the one you'll probably notice first if you hang around me or my blog is the one that I'm going to call Game. Game is the one that fills me with the belief that I have the skill to talk anyone...and have them charmed, liking me or very impressed with me. Oh, and believe I can do it better than anyone, anywhere.

I really can't tell you where this one came from, I just know it's been there for a long time, though not for ever. Maybe it comes from the fact I've always had the ability to make friends easily. I don't know. But I do know what contributed it. The schools I've attended, my friends, my mum, and lesser extent dad, and obviously me.

Lets analyze that. I sliced people in school and I was never sliced in school, no matter who tried. My friends are generally ego boosting people otherwise they'd be very poor friends, right? My mum always tells me how handsome I am and what a charmer I am. My dad, well, he has game, I've seen it in action so it always amazes me how he ended up picking my step-mum, anyway by virtue of being his son I inherited some of the skill through genes. And me should be self explanatory.

The second one and the third are more related to each other, I'll call them Genius and Ability. Genius is the one that makes me feel that if I apply myself to any field of knowledge in the world I can do it rather well, better than most. Meaning that I can learn anything I want and be good at it. Nothing is hard. Ability well I believe I can do anything. Really anything as long as I believe in it. Climb Mt.Everest? Sure why not? Fly a helicoptor? I'll be buying one in future. Juggling? Okay not this one. I'm one person who really hates being told I can't do that, because I believe I can do anything.

So why am I telling you all this? Well one of my ego's right know is feeling rather deflated and I need to get it back to it usual, exorbidant, levels. Actually it's more of waiting because it will get back to "normal" levels. Some chic is toying with my emotions and I don't like it. It's making me doubt myself a bit and question the level of my game. But never fear, I usually bounce back better than before. After all I have a near infallible belief in myself. Anyway peace!!!

MAN ON THE MOON II: THE LEGEND OF MR. RAGER

2010-12-13T09:17:00.010+03:00

So this is another guest post by another firend of mine! Actually the girl I told you about here and here. Yeah Mich, that awesome awesome girl I told you about. Well she wrote this for my a long time ago and I was supposed to put it up back then but I've been busy and lazy! So anyway here it is now...

So I'm sure that not many of us know that this is Kid Cudi's 2nd LP that is to be released later this year. I'm sure someone knows what Man on the Moon means, and I used to at a point, but since I've forgotten, pardon the meaning I'll give it today.
We all know our brains have two sides, just like the moon, a bright side and a dark side. So taking the brain to be a moon, we'd say that there's a man on my moon right now, and his story is quite like Kid Cudi's, so its the legend of Mr. Rager.
In the dark side of my brain, Mr. Rager is a guy who's gone through quite so much in his life, he should be as dark as the universe without stars, but in the bright side, he's just reflecting sunlight off him to everyone who cares to get warm.
But there's something about this guy, he's just sticking on the moon, without any plans of getting down to earth, he's getting comfortable on the moon, because its like he's forgotten that even though people will always disappoint him, he'll run out of oxygen one day....
Now that I'm running out of metaphors... I guess I'll stop there, because this is not my kinda thing, and I'm not wont to say things just like that...so I shall talk about man on the moon 2...
He's the guy who constantly runs around the moon, trying to stay in the light, as the moon rotates alot, and he's always there to brighten up my nights. I've gone to the extent of building castles in the air for this guy, hoping that he'll find it, because he's trying to get off the moon, and I wouldn't want him to get hurt on his way to earth. Soon enough, he'll catch his flight on Cloud Nine, and he'll become real to me....because he's just a figment of my imagination. But I'd have him anyday over my first man on the moon...who for now is the only man on the brain.
I don't know if that will make sense to anyone but me,but everyone should get a copy of The Legend of Mr. Rager, and actually listen to what he has to say, because I think there's a lot going on beneath his cheesy smile.

Personally I didn't get it all but atleast some of it was understandable. What did y'all think of it? Share your thoughts in the comments below and I'll let my friend konw what you think.

Question week:the End

2010-12-12T09:51:00.006+03:00

So I couldn't do a whole week of posts. I'm sorry but I ran out of things to question, I don't know why. Maybe I have nothing else to question or I just haven't figured out what else I'm questioning in my life yet but when I do you'll be some of the first to know.

So this is the official end of questioning week. I like to think I tried my best and I really hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. So what was your favourite post? Let me know? Until next time, peace!!!

Questioning week:Dating

2010-12-11T08:30:00.002+03:00

So this is the like the 4th day of questioning week and so far so good. I've been able to post something each day so far. Today we talk about dating and perhaps at the end you'll help me answer questions I have.

A coffee date

A date is an appointment or engagement, especially a social one with a member of the opposite sex. That's what my phone dictionary tells me, and I quite agree, anyone with a different interpretation feel free to share it in the comments. It’s a simple enough definition and we can begin with that. NOTE: This will be told from my point of view so it’ll be biased to what might be "the guy" side.

The purpose of a date is to get to know the other person and find out if you're compatible. You might as well call it an interview. The first is usually nervous and strained with awkward silences. You sit across from each other staring at each other wondering why you even decided to do it in the first place ‘till one of you (usually the dude) gets the balls to talk and depending, on if you’re as skilled as meJ, a conversation gets started. Topics are mainly superficial. Depending on just how well the first date went the second date is more relaxed than the last and you delve deeper into each others lives. This is the one where it is decided if they’ll be another or not. And so you if date for long enough, and well enough, you just may end up girlfriend and boyfriend.

Based on what I’ve just said the most important things when on a date are to get your date comfortable, entertained and engaged. All these things I know I can do but there’s a part that I’ve not yet mentioned. The part that bothers me the most, one of the reasons I don’t date. In a bid to impress said chic I’ll obviously pay for the first few dates also I’ll have to take her to place that has the right atmosphere. Unfortunately the right atmosphere is bloody expensive! The food there is well beyond what someone my age can afford.

Then there’s the fact that the part you’re seeing of the other person and of yourself isn’t exactly the honest truth or rather the best of you. The ugly part remains cleverly hidden or cloaked in endearing words. That’s why you find people getting married and then saying (s)he’s no longer like the (wo)man I used to date.

If you’re lucky enough not to be affected by these there’s always the chance that you’ll be cheated not once or twice but severally! I’ve seen it happen even with some of my friends. Faithfulness is fast becoming the stuff you read about in story books and in fast fading myths. All these and my own personal issues with life in general make me think twice about dating anyone.

So why is it I feel some kind of pressure from my friends and society to date? While I’ve since learnt to ignore that pressure I still think about it from time to time. Why chic’s standards are so high? What’s the point of it all anyway? Is it a form of materialism? Or am I just broke and bitter about it? Either way I’m not going to be dating for a long while. Peace!

Questioning Week: God

2010-12-10T10:19:00.000+03:00

Today I ask questions about God but before i do a little background would be good. My parents divorced some nearly 5 years ago. Since then things haven't been exactly easy for my mum. She's always been short on cash and can't seen to be able to do much. She's a very strong Christian. My dad has had smooth sail as far as I can tell, very well paying top job and new wife. He has lives quite comfortably. I've never seen him in a church or praying in all my life.

My mum believes that my dad will one day pay for the sins he has committed, and believe me they're not small ones, that God will have the last word, that her blessing is coming. Well that last word is taking its sweet time to arrive! I'm not trying to be blasphmas or anything but there's only so much time someone can wait.

When I was in my last year school I believed that God had told me that sometime soon after I left school that things were going to change, that I'd find things changed. I prayed that year, a lot. I remember telling God that if that didn't happen I was gone, for good, that I'd stop caring about obeying His laws and begin to live life on my own rules.

It's been nearly two years since I told Him that.

Nothing has changed as far as I can see and the status quo remains the same. So what does that mean for me? Well I left God and all that behind for a time. I stopped praying at all, didn't read the bible and scorned anything said in church(I still went because it'd've hurt my mum so if I stopped). There was even I time I would get so angry at the sermon that I wanted to scream at the pastor! I'd leave church those times.

But I couldn't remain impartial to what I saw and I have a brian. I thought about it long and hard and decided that there was a God somewhere after all this a round us had to have been created by someone or something. Its all too neatly arranged too perfectly formed. But what i ahven't decided on is if he cares? Or he just look down and think look about what a poor disappointment we turned out to be? If he hasn't turned his back on us, why aren't the murderer, liars, cheats and rapists been punished? But far more importantly why keep some one so faithful to him like my Mum waiting for His justice? After all that he's not done do you really blame me for asking does God give a damn? Peace.

Questioning Week: Religion

2010-12-09T14:18:00.000+03:00

Today I'm going to talk about religion. I'm not so sure how long I can write about it so we'll see how far I go. I'm a Christian and to be more specific Seventh Day Adventist. I go to church on Saturday while most other Christians do this on Sunday.

There probably several hundred devisions of Christianity in the world. We have Catholic, Pentecostal, Baptist, Protestant, Angilcan and our very own home bred, Finger of God church just to mention a few. I personally belive my church is the right one and you probably believe yours is the right one so how can you ever be sure?

More than that we also have several religions. How can anyone be sure that theirs is the right one? Anyway all major religions have serious skeltons in their back ground. Christians had the crusades in which million of "barbarian" people were killed, Muslims have a more mordern version of this in which they bomb theyselves and others in the name of God. Both owned slaves. With all this how can anyone be sure about anything?

Anyway almost all mordern religions are less than 3000 years ago and if you believe like I do that we where created atleast 7000years ago whom did we worship back then? How did we do it? Why did we stop? And what about indiginous communities on Africa before importation? These are matters of faith I agree but still when you doubt you ask these same questions. And couldn't religion just be some sort of control(like in the Matrix) to keep society and human being spiralling out of control? And when does faith have to stop and logic keep in? Peace!

Questioning Week: Love and Friendship

2010-12-08T08:17:00.003+03:00

I promised I'd do a post a day and I'm trying to do my best to do so. Today we actually start the very first topic of my questioning week, love. This seemly complex thing that we all seek after in one way or another.

My dictionary describes love as an intense feeling of deep affection or a deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone. But when ever most of use use it we're talking about out boyfriends or girlfriends and the second description. Even then its not a word we use casually.

It's something of a big deal to say something like "I love you" to someone we're dating. Peoople send a lot of time trying to discover whether they really love someone. Others obsess over when they'll final hear these three words, "I love you", from their significant other.

A long while back me and my best girl friend were talking aboout how freely I use the words "I love you". I told her that I could tell any chic I know that loved her. By know here I meant my friends. And she said I can't love them all and that I was lying to them but I asked her, "You and me are close, right? And you do you think I have great love for you?" She answered yes "Doesn't that mean I love you? And you love me back? So if I said I love you, I'm not lying am I? It's not my fault if the girl chooses to interpret that any other way or if she doesn't bother to clearify because she's scared of the answer. What you should ask be asking your boyfriend is 'Are you in love with me?' Anyway" I explained to her, "I have different levels of love for everyone"

I have a group of friends that I grew up with. And I really mean grew up with. We played hide and seek, had water fights and rode bikes together. As we grew older we somehow began clam down and mellow out until a point where we did nothing but hang out at our spot in the estate we called "the Bench" and just talked and laughed and argued and fought. We may not all still live in the same estate, we've scattered, others out of the country, but we still hang out when ever we can. I have lots of love for these guys, they've individually and collectively taken me through a lot.

These friends of mine have been with me for over 7 years! Surely they mean more to me than a relationship I've been in 6 months? My very best friend and I have known each other most of our lives. This is one friendship that has survived several long separations, 5 countries and 2 continents. Is this love anymore less serious than the one I'd feel for my girlfriend? So why is it we seem to send so much more time concentrating and working on the love we have for our gfs/bfs?

Why is it the words "I love you" seem to mean so much? Hasn't the use of this phrase distorted and diluted the true meaning of love? Is it wrong that I feel love for all my friends and choose to tell them using those words? Or am I confusing my feelings? Why isn't the word love used more often, to describe things like friendships. Why is it such a big deal when used within a relationship? Have you ever thought of this? Let me know...comment. Peace!!

Questioning Week

2010-12-07T07:58:00.002+03:00

I'd been reading a blog(Rainbow Amoeba's Petri Dish) that had something she called Questioning Week. She had just moved her blog to a new site and was also celebrating the 4th Anniversary since the evening in her own words
"during which I realized I needed to reconsider my assumed and never questioned heterosexuality, I thought I might as well tell the story of what exactly happened then."

I encourage you all to go read the 7 posts she did because in my opinion they're great pieces that I might even one day feature here.(If she allows that is)

So what am I saying with all this? Well I was inspired to question several things that confuse me and see if I could get honest answers about what I think and feel about various things that I've always taken for granted. This whole week starting today, until when I run out of things to question, hopefully 7 days from now, I'll be questioning something different each day. I'll try to be as honest as possible. I don't want to say what they all are now because I want you to check in tomorrow and the day after but I will say that the first will be love. See you tomorrow for what I think will be a rather interesting post(If i may say so myself:)). Peace!

I know I've been gone...

2010-11-12T00:54:00.003+03:00

But as you may have realised... or not, the post I put up a few minutes ago was one of sometimes back, I think almost 2 months. So just to make it clear I haven't quit blogging, y'all would miss me too much anyway! So where I have I been the last two months?

In school obviously living life and watching other people live it. I've done a few things that I'm dying to tell you about and also seen other people do stuff I wanna tell you about(keeping their anonmity intact as mush as possiple, ofcourse).

The reason I've not been updating the blog much is that our school has free wi-fi. Yes. That's a bad thing because it makes spend cash at a cyber cafe all the more painful to do! I mean why pay for something you can have for free right? I can't access this free wi-fi to do post for you because I don't have a wi-fi enabled laptop, or a laptop for that matter. My dad is refusing to get my one. I might tell you why someday.

I can't borrow one because people here are generally mean with their laptops and on top of that so few people have them anyway. You'd think it'd be a pretty standard thing for a university student but not in my uni. It may be a Kenya thing but I really can't speak for other universities. Also it's rather hard to maintain any anonmity if people are as looking over your shoulder as you work on their laptops. I like my selectivve anonmity.

*Announcement: If you'd like to see me back blogging sooner I'm accepting any and all donations of old(or new) wi-fi enabled laptops, functioning or otherwise. If you'd like to donate please contact me-details on the contact cdohnio page- and you'll became my new favourite person in the world and first sponsor if this blog!!! Any extras will be given to charity! I'm serious. Donate!*

Don't worry though I'm still writing for you-with pen and paper-because I always have stuff I wanna write or tell you. It's kinda weird though, that I forgot all about pen and paper until my new friend, @Randomshing, riminded me of it:-D. I guess I'm too computer focused!

Btw did I tell you guys I'm now part of a group blog? How cool is that? I actually got invited to write there!!! I'm even what you could call a founder member. I so totally syked and super jazzed!! I mean some one asked me to be part of thier team! So you may see my post there once in a while. I've already put up one. You can check it out here, it very similar to the just before this one because they're the same topic. The blog is called The Alternative Focus, be sure to check it out! Let them know I sent you:-D

So in short, I'm sorry I've been gone for so long. I'm also sorry I'll still be away for a while. But I'll be thinking of you and writing still so when I come back to more frequent posting be prepared for some more insights into my life and thoughts and maybe me flossing a new laptop!! Peace!!

I'm quitting blogging (&Why I blog)

2010-11-12T00:19:00.002+03:00

Yesterday I had a security breach on the laptop I use to write the posts I put up for you. No, my posts for you aren’t so important that someone would spend their time trying to hack my laptop trying to steal them as creative secrets(Though to me they are) and anyway the laptop is never connected to any network.

BREACH!!!!

Yeah, a friend of mine found one of the posts I had written for posting some day. The way she found it was kinda suspicious. She asked if she come to my room and use my laptop for 5 minutes. I, at the time clueless, just thought she wanted to use it for programming or something. You see, not many of my classmates have laptops yet despite being computer science students but I suspect next semester most will.

When she got to my room she sat at the table, laptop turned away from me. Then I noticed that she wasn’t really typing anything but rather seemed to be looking for something. Three minutes later she was done and she didn’t look too amused, she looked sad and rather angry (I can read faces really well…I think) She left my room without saying much.

I had suspected she knew that the post was there and a little checking I confirmed that she did (She tried to hide the evidence but I found a relatively simple way to see what she was looking at) She doesn’t know it’s a post or that it was going on the web. What I didn’t, and still don’t, know is how she knew it was there. I’m not in the habit of lending out the laptop, though I have, and I thought my roomie wouldn’t allow just anyone to do what ever on it. Obviously someone had access to my stuff.

Thing that bugs me is that I don’t know who told her. Yeah, its probably my fault for being so lax with security of my documents but still WTF??!!!! Who goes around reading randomly lettered documents? It had a name like lkjh. I only have this laptop on loan from my cuzo so I can’t just install whatever on it. So in that light I’m quitting blogging.


Yeah, that right! I quit blogging!

So that this isn’t a doom and gloom type post I’m adding a post I should have done a long time ago: Why I started blogging and why I do it

I started blogging first of all to prove that I could. A friend of mine started a blog and flossed about it to me, how he was “ahead” in these things. I told him starting a blog ain’t really a big deal and immediately went out to prove it. My first blog was on Opera (No you can’t read it and I ported all the posts here anyway. The first post is here). I’m rather proud to note that my friend doesn’t blog anymore while I still do.

I started blogging because I wanted to be in the paper. You know for the celebrity. The first blog I saw, or rather noticed, was @savvykenya’s Dairy of a Kenyan Campus Girl. I saw her blog featured in the only of our Friday magazines and thought”I wanna be here too” While my work has been featured in the paper(the same one) my blog hasn’t yet.

I blog because I have something to say. I write about anything and everything I feel about. I use this blog as part diary, part soap box, part venting spot and part noise making joint. I write about the stuff I hear and see, that I feel and experience. Some things maybe stupid, nonsensical or just plain boring but I always feel that you need, or may want, to know about it.

I blog to entertain. I don’t know if I’m a writer, I don’t think I am. Calling myself that feels like being a pretender to the throne or something. You know like a wannabe. While I may not be a writer I always try my best to write stuff in a way that makes it worth your while reading, in a way that entertains, keeps you at the edge of your seat and all that. I do think that I’m getting better with each post. I read on writing skills and stuff when ever I can. I also read other people’s blogs to get a better feel for writing.

I blog because it’s fun. I like writing. I never thought that I could write stuff, didn’t like composition much in high school, but here I am one like my 50th post or something. I like that you read what I write. Every time I go check stats on my posts I see digits, not high ones but digits non the less, and that gives me massive high, a thrill that you care enough to check out what ever I decide to write for you( Btw since I started this blog, about 10 months, I’ve had over 5000 hits and about 1000 visitors, yay me!!)

I blog because you care. Really there’s once I asked if you really gave a damn about what I said(among other stuff) and the resounding answer was yes. You comment on my posts. Because you care and I don’t want to disappoint you I blog.

I blog to learn. Really I’ve learnt so much from here it’s staggering. Just read this and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I blog to meet new people. While this may be more because of twitter than this blog I doubt that I’d know half the people I do know there if it wasn’t for this blog. I’ve made several new friends because of it.

I blog because it enables me to do awesome stuff. I can’t really explain this one but I’ve done some things I wouldn’t have been able to with out this blog. Really.

There several other reasons I can’t really think of now but are still there. There was time a while back that if someone asked my profession I’d probably think, not say never say, blogger because of all the time I spent thinking about it and writing.

So, my friends this is the last post you’ll be seeing from me. At least for a very long time (I love blogging too much to go for my own good) until I get my own laptop I can do whatever with and never have to worry if it’ll be here next week. A laptop I can be selfish with. One that I can blog from in peace. One which I don’t have to sit with posts forever because I can’t add them to the drafts. So can’t even tell you when I’ll be back because I don’t know when I get a laptop but when I do you’ll know there’ll be posts galore, because while I’m stopping posting, I won’t stop writing(I’ll be more cautious). I still be around, I may drop a post here, there and elsewhere and I can always be found on twitter(@cdohnio). But for now, peace!!!

Busted!!!

2010-09-23T13:39:00.000+03:00

Hey y'all! Yes, I already have another post for you already! I don't know how long this momentum will maintain but recently I keep finding more and more stuff to write about. Also I really don't have to much to do in the evenings because well the assignments haven't really kicked in. So for now I have much to write.

The other weekend my cousin, yes the one featuring in the last post and one before it, invited his girlfriend from home to school,with her sis, who he was trying to hook me up with.

They came just after 2 and since they had not had lunch we decided to take the to the school mess, which due to the 'late' hour had already shut down. So we had to take them to one of the many places that have names like Hill hotel and Hotel but really they're just cafes.

So we went to the closest one, I wanted us all to sit at the same table but my cousin insisted that we sit at separate tables couple-couple. Idiot!!(You'll see why soon)

So while we were eating, things with ummm lets call her L were going very well btw, I noticed that L's attention was shifting between the counter and her sister so I looked over my shoulder towards the counter and who do I see there? Previously mentioned papped fresha and Leon, who looked to be trying to explain to her what was going on, and failing! I glanced at L's sis and she was also looking suspiciously at them. It was all I could do from laughing.

Of course, I didn't pay them too much attention. If he was going to get away with this he didn't need my attention otherwise he's girlfriends, the both of them, would've know something was up.

I don't know how he explained his way out of it but somehow he emerged relatively unscathed though visibly shaken from the ordeal. I just laughed at him, hard. I personally find it funny that he actually cheated and then got caught, I mean why do it anyway? It's just an unnecessary risk. You already know some of my thoughts on unfaithfulness. This is just something I found so hilarious. And I tried to tell him it'd be better to sit together but he insisted, right? Idiot, just like I said:-D Peace!

Fresha papped!!

2010-09-22T16:17:00.001+03:00

I wrote this a while back but my phone mem-card decided it's misbehaving and got a virus or bug of some sort and I had to format it. And this post was on it so I had to write it again which I'm sure it'll not be as awesome as when I first penned it but know I'll try my best.

So my cuzo came to room about a week ago with what I saw as both shocking and awesome news! The girl he was aiming for, the one I told you about before, had ingia'd box(That's to say she was really feeling his vybe, hey half my audience is actually from the US). Yup she had been papped!!:-D Of course I was happy and proud because as far as I could tell at the time he was setting pace for all freshas. Most freshas are still keeping to themselves looking as confused and lost as ever.

But he went on to tell me something even far more interesting than her ingia'ing box. That things with her were going to well she was going to wash his clad the next day. I was like WTF!!!!!!!??? When!? How? He even goes on to add that it was her who suggested it.

To say I was shocked would be an slight understatement. But it got me thinking of something I've noticed here on campus. I was come back from one of my lesson and I notice the guy two doors down from me, his room door is wide open and loud music, Westlife, booming through it but what was interesting was who was listening to them and what she was doing.

She was hard at work scrubbing and mopping the floor of the room. Get this: my hostel is all boys, in fact the nearest girls hostel is almost 1km away(much to my annoyance). I didn't think much about it until the next day, I see another girl vigorously washing clothes outside another hostel and all the clothes were guy clothes. And then my cuzo comes and tells me this and it got me thinking.

All the girls I know, and I'd like to assure it's no small number, there's not a single one who I can imagine doing anything like washing her dude's clothes or cleaning his room. In fact most, like my sis, would laugh at you so hard for asking you'd never dare again.

So this brings me to the stuff I've been asking myself, where the fuck do these girls come from? I mean where have they been hiding all my life? And no it's not a village thing or something like that some of these girls live in the capital and other major cities and have gone to some of the better schools in our country. So really why would these girls do all this for relationships that probably won't last?

I asked around and it's not just on this campus, apparently elsewhere they cook and wash dishes. And I actually have a friend who expects everything to be split half half. If she cooks, you're cutting the tomatoes and onions. Uh and you'll probably wash that plate you ate on. The main question here is, what makes these girls so different? And is all the equality and independent, strong willed women thing a load of crap blown way out of proportion? Let me know in the comments and on twitter because for real, I'm confused. Peace!!!

Guest post: Sunset

2010-09-16T16:50:00.000+03:00

This is a short story written by one of my best friends. It's my very first guest post so I look at it as part of the growth of my blog. You know showing that other people don't mind their work appearing here and actually might appreciate it being put up. Look out for another guest post soon!!

Sunsets always brought out the beauty I wanted to see. Every day, the sunset looked different to me. That day, I had been looking at the sunset for a really long time. As the sun continued to set, I saw everything in a new light. It was the most beautiful blend of colors ranging from orange to pink and just the lightest touch of purple. It reminded me of him and what he meant to my life.

I looked into his eyes and all I could see was my life. And in a few moments that is all that I would have. His grip on my hand was tighter than anything I had ever felt before. My heart felt much tighter but the pressure on my hand came as a welcome distraction. Here, before my eyes, was our life flashing past, clip after clip after endless clip. It was over. There was nothing I could do to change it.

The doctor walked into the room, with his stethoscope hanging across his neck. My husband’s chart was in his hands. I feared raising my eyes to meet his. It seemed like my fate was sealed. If I had enough courage to look at him, I could have seen the small furrows on his forehead as he looked at the chart. I tried to ignore him but there was this elephant in the room that neither of us was talking about.

My husband held my hand tighter. I look down at him. A thin film of perspiration had formed on his skin. His eyes were shouting for attention. I brushed away his hair from his forehead and planted a light kiss on it. My arms wanted to go around him. I wanted to feel that sure embrace. I wanted the assurance that he was still strong enough to make love to me. I wanted this to be over.

The doctor called for my attention. He asked me to meet him in the hallway. I stepped out of the room into the well lit bright hallway. The doctor turned to me. We had made a promise that he would tell me the truth from the get go.

He laid the cards on the table. The heart was slowly giving way. The next few hours were all I had left. All we had left.

My eyes rose to me face as the tears rolled down in two steady streams. My shoulders shook from the sob that raked my body from the tips of my toes to the ends of my hair. I felt my knees give way. I was lying on the floor. My mouth moved and out came words that even I could not understand. The only thought that went through my brain is this could not be happening. It could not be over. Not like that. Not that simply. No. It couldn’t be.

I had to get myself together. His last moments had to be memorable. His last breath had to be peaceful. He could not see me like this. I felt the last tears as they drained out of my eyes. I felt the doctor’s strong arm help me up. He handed me his handkerchief. I passed the white square piece of cloth across my eyes. I blew my nose so hard, it didn’t feel like mine anymore. One last breath for composure found me opening the door to the room.

This room had been my home for one week but I felt like I had been here for eternity. The tubes running all over the floor, the machines beeping, the windows constantly shut and the smell of clean. My husband held out his hand as he saw me enter. I clasped his hand in mine and raised our hands to my lips. The love I felt for him was growing deeper and deeper. We weren’t done yet.

All our life had been spent moving from one thing to another. Before the wedding was our careers, after the wedding was the children. After the children were the weddings. After the weddings were grand children. Now, here we were, chasing time we had spent. We had spent our lives but at this moment in time, I was looking back. I wish we had spent more time smelling the roses along the path.

He took my face in his hands and looked deep into my eyes. His mouth started moving. He told me of his deep love and how he knew I was his from the first moment we met. He told me that he was honored to have brought life into this world with me, that he had been honored to stand by my side through the mountains and the valleys. He did not have to tell me he loved me. I could feel it from every moment we spent together.

My tears started to roll down my cheeks. I told him that I loved him more than life itself. Though I had felt unworthy of his love when we had begun, he had showered me with it day after day. I told him that the sun rose and set on him. He was my violin, my rose, my better half. All of him was more than enough for all of me. I held his hand and bent down to place that last kiss on his lips. I felt him use the last of his strength to kiss me back. I had to savor this moment.

The machines came alive. There was beeping left and right. The nurse stormed into the room and gave me the look that said “move away”. She went straight to the machine and tried to make sense out of it. She then ran out to call the doctor. The doctor came in and placed his fingers at my husband’s throat. He looked at his watch and declared the time of death.

I knew I wanted to cry. He was gone. Then it dawned on me. Life was better because he had been at my side. All the memories of the years gone by were enough to sustain me in the days I had left to lead. It was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. It was in that moment that I knew that I was at the right place. This was where I was meant to be.

The End

I hope you liked it! If you did, or didn't, let me know in the comments. I, and I'm sure my friend, would love to know your thoughts. Peace!!

Campus and music

2010-09-02T16:30:00.000+03:00

Too soon to be doing another post? Have you even fully digested the last one? It's okay you can read both of them! Right? Anyway I'm in my room at about 10.30pm, not really trying to sleep but in bed none the less, phone in my hand and it hits me there's a lot of noise in the background.

I pause to listen and I hear about 4 different sources of music and sound all seemly competing to overpower the rest.
The dude across from my room is listening to traditional Luyha Christian choir songs, some dude up the hall is booming his favourite rhumba and lingala tracks while his neighbour watches an action movie at max volume. Two doors down from me is some playing what seems to be a Hip hop mix and further down opposite some is listening to reggae/ragga.

What is unfortunate is that some of this music is headache inducing for me, especially the Luhya Christian songs from my closest neighbour! Someone, please kill me now! I feel like committing suicide!*Pulls out sumarai sword and stabs himself in the heart and twists, honourable like*

Why, you might ask, am I not booming my own music? Well all I carried, electronics-wise, when coming was my phone. But wait, just wait, when I finally set up my noise making devices they'll rue the day they inadvertently declared war on my poor ears. Hard and metal rock until they come and beg me to stop! I can tell that they won't like it, so few people do. I can't wait *rubs hands in glee*

I can't wait until I can launch this on everyone on campus. MAX VOLUME!!

All this ranting actually brings me to the point of this post. While I may hate the music being played it made my realise something; I had previously assumed that most people my age listen to certain types of music; hip hop, locals, reggae and ragga & similar styles while the rest was old people music but it seems the taste of my generation is as diverse as the people of the world.

Some of us are tall, short, fat, thin, black, blue, yellow, red, white, brown-eyed, blue-eyed, gay, sraight or bi and others yet asexual but somehow we learn to live together just as I'm learning to live with the noise of other people's horrible taste in music:). Learn to live with your brother's(and sister's) choices and tastes! Peace!

The first campus post!:)

2010-09-01T16:47:00.000+03:00

Okay ladies and gentlemen! This is the very first post coming direct from my campus!! The first campus-post! Yeah I joined campus, finally, in Maseno! It's written in two parts, the first were the thing's written on the first day I arrived in the morning and mostly on the registration line. Everything else was after! This is not conclusive, I'm still organising my thoughts, but it'll have to do until I can give you something more solid. Hopefully this means a return to more regular blogging for me!*Fingers crossed*

Part1
The next 4 years of my life began with a bodaboda ride into the Siriba compus. Only to join the reegistration line. Note that it's about 7.30, I can't believe the line is this long! Crap!

Still on the line, I've noticed the line for the girls is far shorter than that of the boys at least for the faculty of science.

Standing here in the line, still, I'm noticing that the sun is about to rise above the trees that are protecting us for it and looking at the speed at which the line is moving I'm going to be cooked, well-done, scratch that I'm going to be burnt, before I register.:(

Another thing to be noticed from here is the girls in the faculty of Arts look so so much hotter than those in Science.

Shock! There a girl here report who's already preggas! The hell!?? I always thought that people'd wait for the last year of school. But I guess a head start isn't bad
Part2
So I've now spent almost 2 weeks on campus and what do I have to report?

Not much really, life really just goes on I guess. I can tell you though school can be rather boring if you have nothing to do or something to entertain you. Infact the first week has been like that boring because the continuing students hadn't reported yet.

My random acts of kindness count has enjoyed a dramatic climb! So many continuing students have been crashing in my room(my room mate was late) or leaving their bags with me for safe keeping and shit.

Also they told me stories of how continuing students scramble for the fresha girls(What me and my cuzo call Fresha Pap!!*snap fingers*) and the tactics they use. Apparently game has very little to do with anything. What matters is the music system in your room, laptops and other physical posessions. I personally wouldn't like to be with a girl just coz she likes what I have (bought with daddy's money), would you?

Still on that I meet this girl here, but just before we reported so atleast I had a slight head start against the rest of my year. She's not really my type, she seems the type to be papped!*snapping fingers* But she's an in to one of the girls hostels and through her I've met several, far more interesting, chics. Yes I'm selfish like that.

While on the topic of chics I'm on a no ulterior motives vybe, been on it for several months. I no longer vybe chics with the goal of being more than friends with them. I find it makes for much less stress.

The first years have some in all types of dressing styles but I'm more interested in the people who dress in some seriously shady styles. There's this one girl in my class who wore a skirt(length: past the kness), sports shoes and socks written USA! I swear I almost colapsed! Who does that? I'm sure if @nanciellah saw her she'd have died! But I'll keep an eye on her to see how school might influence her clothing choices in the future.

Well all in all I can say that school looks like it'll be one of my more interesting experiences! Stay tuned for more campus tales and others, soon! Peace!

Overheard:
Ng'arisha maisha na fresha
90 freshas in 90 days
Jikonect na fresha

Feel free to add anything else you've heard, peace!!

I'm seeing a shrink

2010-08-21T23:58:00.000+03:00

So remember my weird really pissed of post, the one I wouldn't allow y'all to comment on? And remember I said I wanted to see a psychiatrist but couldn't seem to get to it? Well at the pressing of one of my dearest friends I finally got round to doing it.

Yeah, some weeks back I went to see one in a very informal type meeting. Her phone kept ringing and I also kept tweeting. My friend was there also I guess for moral support and its was in a public place not I some office where you lie down and talk incessantly about yourself and your feelings.

Infect the shrink did lot of talking and asking me questions that I sometimes couldn't properly answer. Well it was merely an evaluative session, And at the end of it she told me what she thought was going on with me also she had some tests for me to take. I can't remember their proper names but one was called the Heart test.

So from this session I can finally tell you what's been up with me. My shrink tells me that I'm very angry. She told me that I need to find a way to deal with the anger and stop bottling all my feelings and stuff or I'll explode sooner or later. She also said it was a good thing I saw a shrink before I could explode.

It almost happened once in church one day. I wanted to shout at the pastor because I was so angry at what he was saying. Weird, right? I had to leave the church for a few minutes before I could sit calmly again. What's so scary is that the church was packed! What could posses me to even want to shout at anyone like that?

Also after the shrink gave me the test she deduced that I was also mildly depressed, which kind of shocked her. I guess the anger must have been more prominent. Do you guys those of you who've meet me think or see the anger?

I'm to see her again soon. She said that I need to change my mind set and she could help with that. I hope she can I really don't like feeling this way, it can't be health! Don't worry on this one you can comment. I want to hear what you have say so pleased do. O and for those of you who've been missing me on twitter I think I'm making my come back today! Peace!

I was fifth!!!:)

2010-08-20T00:18:00.000+03:00

Hey guys! It's been a minute hasn't it? I'm sorry I've been dealing with some issues so I wasn't doing much of anything. Did you guys notice that the Kenyan Blog contest ended recently?(Okay not so recently! I've been gone for quite a while and I'm not even quite sure if I'm coming back yet, sorry?) Well it is and you'll never guess where I placed! I was fifth that isn't bad for a relatively new blog is it?

So I had envisioned a whole acceptance speech dancing around my head from the very minute I heard of the contest. I thought I'd place better than 5, I guess that was my arrogance and pride there, I told you before that I believe that I'm the best in everything I do, anyway since I placed fifth and that my "opponents" where far more experienced and mature than me I'm still very proud of myself and will regal and probably bore you with a thank you speech.

----------------------------------------------------Speech begins-----------------------------------------------------
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I, cdohnio, have placed fifth in the inaugural Kenya Blog Contest and the Action category. As young as I am at blogging. you my distinguished readers have dimmed me fit to place so highly in this prestigious competition.

By ranking me so high, so soon, you have shown me that you value what I have to say to you here. That my writing do serve some purpose. That you like my writing. You have, and you may not realise it, put upon my young shoulders certain expectations that I feel the need to live up to. I now have to live up to your expectations and I promise to do so to the best of my ability.

I can't leave without saying yes I voted for myself, so maybe this ranking isn't as well deserved, but I feel no shame about it. Also I could have rigged the poll but I thought better of it and instead asked you to do it for me. *Smile and wait for laughter to die*I can't tell if you did or not but if you did you didn't really do a good job of it! If you need help maybe you should have come to me for advice next time.

Finally I'd like to thank the following people for all their help; @dealy_halo, my friend, first follower and blogger for his continual support of this blog, @savvykenya my sometimes muse, role model and friend, @joliea probably the most frequent commentor here, I doubt you could find a post where she has commented and for that I'm eternally grateful.*Tear up here* I'd like to thank each and every one of my readers!*more tears, go Chris Brown on them* I love you all!! *Blow kisses while leaving the stage*
------------------------------------------------------Speech ends-----------------------------------------------------

That was fun, even though it's for the 5th place! But still 5th place is awesome! I really never thought I'd place that well without rigging the polls myself:) Catch y'all next post. Peace!!!

Someone, @greatrnk, actually took the time to come up with a list. I've added it so you can really get the perspective of my awesomeness! It turns out I managed to also get top 10 overall!!! I was number 9! YAAAYYYY!!!! I feel another speech coming on! But let me spare you!:) so here it is, congrats to all those who did better than me and for those who came after me :-P suck one it!! You do better hext time!

Top 10 Blogs as Voted by You:

1. The Greatrnk

2. RaymondChepkwony

3. Wamathai

4. MgangaGenge

5. DiaspoRadical

6. The Diary of a Kenyan Campus Girl

7. The Fashion Notebook

8. The Lily Review

9. Private Thoughts of a Young Kenyan

10. Diary

Again, peace!!!

The girl called Mich

2010-08-06T16:23:00.001+03:00

This post is for a girl called Mich. She's someone extremely special to me and since she's so special she gets a post all for herself! One of my very first posts was about her, back then I called her M but now I have her permission to use her name.

So why is Mich so special? Well first of all she's one of the one of the few people I know to consciously decide not to be affected by my charm. I found that intriguing and went out of my way to make friends with her. After I changed her mind about being charmed by me I found out a lot about her. I always thank God that she refused to be charmed by me otherwise we may never have become the great friends we are now.

She's a smart, funny, easy to talk to and she gets me. Somehow when I'm with her I don't feel the need to carry the conversation. She always has something cool to say about everything and she reads! Yes I mean novels. So few people read anything anymore! I don't know why because books are just awesome! And even though she's like 4 years younger than me I find her more mature than some girls my age.

Did I mention she's beautiful too? But that really is secondary hen it comes to her the primary thing with her is her intellect; you must always have your wit about you when talking to her. I love her:) Really I do, she's one of my closest friends!

Btw sorry to all my regular readers I haven't been updating this blog as regularly as I should! But I think I'm back now:) Look out for another post later today... I think. Peace!

Another fashion rant

2010-07-22T13:34:00.001+03:00

Okay it's been a while that I've done a post on fashion so today I'm taking the time out of very empty schedule to bless you all with my knowledge. Before we go on, I have no idea why my fashion posts never get any comments even though I'm usually telling you guys the truth as I see it. And I'm always right.:) So know on to the rant.

POINTLESS

Big ass handbags. Yes I've talked about them before and I'm going to do so again. I don't really like them. I don't see the point of someone carrying around a handbag bigger than my bagpack. What is y'all carry in there? As in when I leave the house all I have on me is a wallet and my phone but y'all chuck with a massive hand bag filled with nothing and that time I ask you whether you sleep over somewhere(or planning to be chips'd, apparently they're also called chip funga bags. You might wanna read @savvykenya's post for an explanation) and you say no. SO WHAT THE FUCK YOU NEED A BAG THAT BIG FOR!!

UGLIEST shoes ever

Doll shoes of the plastic variaty. I think they're called sandaks. Okay can anyone honestly tell me if there's an uglier pair of shoes you could wear? As in damn, these shoes go past the blandness of normal doll shoes and take it to another level I doubt any pair other of shoes will ever, in the history of mankind, surpass. as in apart for being generally yawn, they do nothing for your feet (fashion-wise that is). Infact I'll go on to say they positively make your feet look ugly. Some of y'all have ugly feet or rather these shoes make them seem so. I have several reason I hate these shoes but I won't go into them. Just DON'T WEAR THESE SHOES, THEY'RE UGLY!! Wear sandals or slipper if you want to wear comfortable shoes. But in fairness you can go read @Kawiria's defense of these lame ass shoes here.

DO NOT carry these in public

Finally the big one, something that has been bothering me for the better part of this year. Coloured plastic water bottles. Many months ago I was walking through town and noticed this chic walking around with one of these bottles in her hands. I saw also that she had a big ass handbag on the other side and I thought isn't that stupid? Why not put it in the big ass handbag? To make it worse she was carrying it, the water bottle in such a way to show it in prominence like she was showing it off. Cool I let it good as her own stupidity or vanity or what ever. Fast forward to three weeks later and everyone was doing the same thing. Come on why would anyway want to floss something so tacky and cheap? Swinging them around as if to announce to the whole world look I'm healthy I drink water! And it's in such a pretty bottle! Nkt! Idiots, the bloody bottle cost only 300 bob! Stop it! I swear if any of you come to meet me swinging of of these I'll ripped into you so bad you'll question your fashion sense for the rest of your life. Really I DARE YOU! Put it in your big ass handbag, let it have some use and spare me the agony.

Anyway after all that I couldn't just leave you without what I think you should be wearing right? It wouldn't be fair. So here they are: 1. Stockings; these are for me one of the sexiest things you could wear. 2. Platform shoes; I have no idea why these are taking so long to catch on. 3. Three quarter shorts; these are just awesome and edgy. 4. Dresses, the flowing out kind; I don't see many of these around sure way to stand out out and still remain classy.

Doesn't this look lovely?

I'm sorry male readers but I have nothing to tell you this time but feel free to suggest to these tips and rants to your wifes(?), girlfriends and sisters, it'll do them a world of good. Anyway I'm done for today, peace!!

(Photo credits google images and @Kawiria's blog. Oh and I couldn't spell check it for some reason, sorry:()

My depression

2010-07-20T21:16:00.001+03:00

There's something horribly wrong with me, I've not been feeling good at all emotionally and I'm not sure what it is. For the past one week or so I've been having really weird mood swings. And it's gotten so bad I actually slapped my sis today morning. Yes, she was being unusually unreasonable but still thinking back at it, there where better ways to deal with the situation. Though this isn't exactly the first time I've felt like this this particular bout feels particularly worse.

The last few days I've been have serious variations of my mood. I could start out the day in rather high spirits but at the slightest thing my mood would immediately plunge to severe lows. Sometimes it would be nothing at all just out of no where I'd just feel down.

But today morning my baby sis was being unreasonable when preparing to go to school; crying and shouting and refusing to dress. I was still asleep but I woke up and told her to behave when she didn't I slapped her once rather hard into submission. She cried but still got dressed with out further hustle. But I was shocked at myself I could've, should've handled it differently.

I'm not sure what's wrong but I think I might be suffering from clinical depression or bipolarism. I don't feel like going into a description of what those might be so I'll leave you to google them. I actually stumbled upon the terms thanks to @sgyreju.(I've learnt a lot from/because of her)

My mum, who of course doesn't know the full extent of this "depression" I told her about because she isn't staying with me told me I should go see a psychologist, or is it psychiatrist or counsellor, at the hospital near my place. She like the only person who knows me better than me.:) & :( Corny, cliché but so very true. The hospital would do the thing free but I've been avoiding it for the last so many months and I'm not so sure why. Maybe I don't want to talk to strangers about what I'm feeling, just pure laziness or I don't want to go alone.

Anyway I'm still haven't decided if I'm going but if this thing, this feeling goes on any longer I'm going to have go give it a try. I really don't like feeling like this and if it's going to be affect my baby sis I'll need to do something soon. I'm sorry for the weird posts, it's just the way I feel and I want to be honest with you guys. I'm not going to tweet out this post like I usually would and I'm turning off the comments; I don't really want to hear what you have to say. Peace.

Vote for me!

2010-07-15T12:17:00.002+03:00

@eGichomo recently launched his Kenya Blog Contest asking people to vote for their favourite Kenyan blog. Voting is currently on going and as of the time of writing this post this blog was leading with 33 votes. Thanks guys! However polls will close on 30th of this month after which the winner will be announced. There are three categories:
Art Award: Recognition and appreciation of poetry. Creativity, choice of words, originality and show of talent.
Beauty Award: Best layout, design, cool features, attractiveness and finest integration of themes and magnificence.
Action Award: Pursuit of ingenuity. Most interactive and frequent in content update.

We're only under the Action Award category(I don't know why I'm not in the beauty award. I really worked hard on the design and layout of this blog*sulking*) So this is an appeal, an appeal for you to vote for me! Please? I like winning, and I'm sure with your help I can do it! You can vote by clicking on the image now competing for attention with the blog title at top of this page, the vote for me image above or just clicking here. Also be sure to vote for people in the other categories, but only after you've voted for me:). If you know how to rig do so, after all this is Kenya:-D (I just couldn't resist) 30th is a long way away let's hope we still winning then. Here's to me winning. Peace!!

(Image credit: Google Images)

Drug Addiction

2010-07-14T11:01:00.002+03:00

Image via Wikipedia

Today I'm in a weird mood and as always when that happens I do an unusual post. I've been thinking about addiction a lot recently. I'll let you know why in a moment. First definition:
Drug addiction is a state of periodic or chronic intoxication produced by the repeated consumption of a drug (natural or synthetic). Its characteristics include: (i) an overpowering desire or need (compulsion) to continue taking the drug and to obtain it by any means; (ii) a tendency to increase the dose; (iii) a psychic (psychological) and generally a physical dependence on the effects of the drug; and (iv) detrimental effects on the individual and on society. (Wikipedia)

Recently, I was very sick with the flu on some very powerful meds which would cause me to fall asleep within 10 minutes. Yeah, powerful stuff. After a few days on them, it was probably 4 days, I became quite used to to the feeling it gave me when I took it: it was like a comfortable sleepy feeling, it made me feel content and sent me into a rather restful dreamless sleep. I actually began to look forward to taking my meds at the end of the day. When my dose was finally over I actually wanted to continue taking them.:)

But the real shocker for me came when something pissed me off one day at home and I became rather depressed because of it. I had finished my dose of cough syrup but some of the medicine still remained. I walked into my room thinking how the buzz the medicine gave me would be perfect right now. I looked at the bottle, and it hit me that that was probably the way most drug addictions began wanting to go back to a time when you felt a certain way under its influence. Or maybe just to escape what you are feeling at that particular moment.

Until then I had found drug addiction something mildly interesting or rather amusing. I had never given it much thought but I thought only a fool would allow something that destructive to get control of him but now I'm not so sure. I think I'm only now beginning to understand why drug addictions start. Of course there's always those influenced by peer pressure but others may just be doing it to escape their reality, their feelings, trying to get to a place where they're comfortable.

Even as I realised all this I still consider taking a dose of the medicine. The buzz was calling and I longer for the feeling it could give. I picked up the bottle stared at it for a few minutes, realised how stupid it would be to do it. I put down the bottle and laughed aloud at my thoughts. But later I noticed I still carve it a little bit, other time I just felt like have a drink and realised that this might be more serious than I thought. And I began to ponder it and came up with the thoughts I shared with you already.

While coming up with this post and reading wikipedia for minor research I saw a description that best describes what I felt and what it could have become:
Drug habituation (habit) is a condition resulting from the repeated consumption of a drug. Its characteristics include (i) a desire (but not a compulsion) to continue taking the drug for the sense of improved well-being which it engenders; (ii) little or no tendency to increase the dose; (iii) some degree of psychic dependence on the effect of the drug, but absence of physical dependence and hence of an abstinence syndrome [withdrawal], and (iv) detrimental effects, if any, primarily on the individual.(Wikipedia)
ALSO
Psychic dependence is defined as a state in which "there is a feeling of satisfaction and psychic drive that requires periodic or continuous administration of the drug to produce pleasure or to avoid discomfort.(Wikipedia)

Anyway don't freak out...too much. I just wanted to share this with you to see what you think. Have you really thought about addiction and how it starts? Ever fought some form of it? Or do you know of anyway who has? Let me know what you're thinking in the comments. And remember those in society suffering from drug and substance addiction, pray for them. Peace!

Drop the world...

2010-07-09T15:47:00.002+03:00

Lil' Wayne via last.fm

I've got ice my veins
Blood in my eyes
Hate in my heart
Love on mind
I've seen nights full of pain
Days are the same
You keep the sunshine
Save me the rain
I search but never find
Hurt but never cry
I work and forever try
But I'm cursed so never mind
And its worse but better times seem further and beyond
The top gets higher the more I climb
The spot gets smaller and I get bigger
Trying to get in where I fit in no room for a nigga
But soon for a nigga it'll be on mother fucker
Coz all this bullshit makes me strong mother fucker

These are the lyrics constituiting the first verse of Lil' Wayne's song Drop the World ft Eminem. Lil Wayne is one of my favourite artists and Eminem is my favourite artist. I like this particular song because I feel it describes me perfectly past, present and hopefully future.

So what do I mean by this let me give you an example:

Hate in my heart
Love on mynd
For real I have hate in my heart for my dad, step mum and life. I tired of all their bullshit. I think its a big part of me now. There was a time it actually consumed me. It made my think dark murderous thoughts. It made me think of slow painful revenge. Of power and using it to punish people. Don't worry its mostly gone now!:)

I think about love alot. A while back I could feel it all around me, or atleast I believved I did. I felt it from my family, friends and even people I met. These days I don't feel it as much. Only the really "strong" one, you know the type that come from direct family - brother, sisters, mother and one of my grandmas. From anyone else I don't feel it anymore. Don't get me wrong, I know its there I just don't feel it anymore. Anyway I find it ironic that the love is in my mind not my heart.

The rest of the lyrics also apply to me in other ways but I just wanted to talk about those two lines. Yes I feel broken. So what? Don't worry too much. Anyways as always peace!!!

(Bloody claim token: SRCVE9X49GNE don't pay much attention to it)

Dear cdohnio... (letter to my 13 year old self)

2010-07-07T14:16:00.005+03:00

Yesterday @Chiira tagged me in one of his posts, "To thirteen year old me", and that tasked me to write a letter to the thirteen year old me. Wow, 13 years old, that was a good year. It was a handful of years back. Hmmm...so what would I say to myself?

Hey young padawan!

How you doing? Yeah, I know it's a little weird to be reading a letter from yourself but think of this: I know what's going to happen to you and how you can avoid it;)

This year you joined form 1, good for you! You did well in your exams! You only failed Kiswahili, and yes I know you expected that but if you plan to do any better KSCE get your shit together! Don’t worry you that didn't get the highest in maths, you only missed it by two, you're still a genius and in the coming years you'll prove it severally.

It’s unfortunate I'm the one to tell you this but you are currently in the eye of the storm, everything seems so calm right now but the force of it is still coming. What I’m talking about? Well for starts you go to a crappy boarding school! Yeah, you don’t think it happens but it does. But that isn’t the worst; your parents will get divorced and that comes with it own problems but as always you’ll deal with the best you can. So why am I tell you this? Apart from preparing you for what’s to come, I need you to try enjoy the coming years as much as possible you’ll thank yourself later!

Yeah still on enjoyment can you go out and vybe the ladies! Even when you change schools (You took a year’s break, what the hell?) I know you’ve got game!(I mean you’re me, how can you not?) And by that I mean stop with the charming of all girls and get a bloody girlfriend!!! How can I be my age and not have been in a relationship yet? Dude!!! Come on! So how about instead of spreading the love you focus on one?

Probably the last thing, you and Debbie are getting really close, right? If not you will! Dude that chick is HOT!!!!(Even here in my time) Can you get with her already? She likes you, you know it and you don’t do shit?!?! What the fuck?? I know you’re telling yourself that your bidding your time but you lost her because of it! GROW SOME BALLS AND TELL HER HOW YOU FEEL! Do it today! Or rather as soon as you start getting really close! Because if you don’t she’ll taunt you every week with her beauty.

Don’t worry about it too much though because if you fail for some unknown reason –I can’t see why though, you’re me, we don’t fail…much- you’ll discover something about her that will effectively put you off her for good! Blame Vic, he put thoughts in your head that just changed your perspective on her. Idiot!!

I know I said last thing way back but you’ll soon realize when you actually sit down to write in the future you just don’t know where to stop. I remember I wrote (you haven’t done it yet, though) a seven paged letter to some one! You just went on and on! Good lord I shudder looking back at that because it was sent to someone who didn’t appreciate that you taken time to write to her.

You and Vic are going to have plenty of fun times in the years coming, charming girls, dreaming of the future, rumour starting, fighting and dissing people almost to tears! Cherish those times because you’ll lose him sooner than you know. I missing him right nowL. Don’t worry he didn’t die so don’t start flipping!

Anyway I should stop now, I have a lot to say you but I don’t really have time or the words to so this is the end. Remember: Do Debbie, have as much fun as possible, keep taking risks and continue to laugh at yourself because it’s the only way you’ll get through what’s coming. You’re awesome!

Cheers, (Would’ve used love but we both know how much we love ourselves)

P.S: You know you started a blog? Yeah, it’s awesome, so if you could get a head start on it that would be super!

P.S.2: Get started on the extra curricular activities now because the time you’ve planned for them gets disrupted by boarding! Yeah, it sucks ass!

P.S.3: Some idiots in your class in the beginning of the year some idiots will laugh at you saying they’re cleverer than you for getting higher K.C.P.E scores but you’ll silence them with the first exam and your crappy Kiswahili scores(really you should work on this)

Continuing in the tradition I here by tag : @Sgyreju of Rainbow Amoeba's Petri Dish , nobodyouknow of

Everything About Nothing and finally @deadly_halo of Life within my Halo. Mad shout out to @chiira for tagging this young one in his post! Got something you wanna say? Do it in the comments. Peace!!

Looks are deceiving (Random Acts of Kindness pt2)

2010-07-06T13:16:00.000+03:00

This is the follow up post on Random Acts of Kindness in which I promised to say something more about this incident:
Once I was walking down the steps of the brigde at Posta City Square when this old lady, some way a head of me, dropped her bag and it rolled down the steps. I watched expecting someone to give her a hand and pick it up for her but no one did. I waited for a bit but nothing. I had to get ahead of her and picked it up for her. She was already carrying a lot and if she had bent to pick up that bag she might have dropped a lot more.

So a few days after this happened I happened to catch a conversation on radio about how women dress and whether that should be the thing that attracts people most to a girl. Whether a girl should judged on what she's wearing. One person said that he doesn't care what's on the outside only the inside. And I thought what bullshit! Let me explain.

I'm a looker. What does that mean? It means that while I'm walking on the street I'm constantly letting my eyes wander (not that way, keep you thoughts clean) looking at everyone who I pass on the street. I do this for fun and to appreciate the beauty thats around me, there's a lot to be seen btw, and on the rare times I see a well dressed mamasita (most girls dress well but I'm talking of stunning here) I notice that I immediately get assumptions about her, where she stays, her voice and what it'd be like to know her.

My point being is that we always form opinions based first on what we see so to say that you only judge someone based on what's inside is just bullshit to me.

Anyway back to this lady and her fallen bag. I picked it up for her and as I handed it back to her I noticed that she was dressed rather shabbily and her odd assortment of bags she was carrying were rather dirty. I didn't think much about it until I saw her the next day sitted some place on the bridge, begging. That's when it hit me thats why no one helped her because she was a begger and shabbily dressed. I was disgusted at Kenyans (at least the ones on the bridge that day) These are the same people who will tell you that "I don't look on the outside what's inside is what matters" BULLSHIT!!!

Maybe I'm assuming wrong, perhaps there were other reasons that people just passed the lady but I can't find a valid one for not taking 5 BLOODY SECONDS to pick up her fucking bag and give it back to her! NKT!! I'm even getting angry writing this so I'm going to stop. Remember to always take time to help someone! Comments always welcome. Peace

(Image credit: Google images)

Random Acts of Kindness

2010-07-05T10:38:00.001+03:00

Today's post is a simple one. As the title suggests its all about acts of kindness that I've seen and or done in this great nation of ours, Kenya. I've had the opportunity to interact with several people in my still young life and I hope to interact with several more. One thing I've realised is that the way we treat the people can and probably will affect us and the person for some time to come.

While this post is about kindness, I feel it would be unfair not to include this; the way one person in an institution treats a person may determine how someone feels about it for the rest of their lives. I'll forever take this to heart as I go through life and when I start my own company.

Anyway onto the random acts of kindness:

I'm travelling on a KBS with my boy N, randomly the conductor came and started talking to us, then he let me play with his ticket thing. He was cool, funny and probably high but I'll always remember him when ever I choose to get on to a KBS rather than a Citi Hoppa (which has horrible customer service)

Once I was walking down the steps of the brigde at Posta City Square when this old lady, some way a head of me, dropped her bag and it rolled down the steps. I watched expecting some one to give her a hand and pick it up for her but no one did. I had to get ahead of her and pick it up for her. She was already carrying a lot and if she had bent to pick up that bag she might have dropped a lot more. (More on this on a post tomorrow)

I've been to a few government offices and other private ones this year, JAB, Helb, some public unis and the City Hall just to mention a few. And at most of them I've been treated so well I've been left with a deep respect for the whoole institution. Every time I've been treated with respect I've left the office smiling because it always feels good (and kind of shocking) to be treated so well. Mad props to Maseno Uni, JAB and more recently City Hall. JKUAT has had the most pathetic relations so far.

When was the last time you gave blood? I did recently and was informed that I had helped save three lives. I've donated blood about 4 times so that comes to a total of 12 lives. How many lives can you say you've saved? Donating blood is something that takes only about 30 mins max. And you get a card that shows you did a good deed and that you don't pay for blood if ever (God forbid) you should need it. I have no idea why so few people donate blood.

Anyway this list isn't exhaustive of the acts of kindness that I've witnessed or taken part in but I felt I needed to put this shortlist to remind you, my readers, that we should all be on the look out to take part in these simple acts of kindness. Help that lady find her way somewhere (did that recently) you never know where that might one day take you. Even if it doesn't give you any direct benefit isn't it enough to know that you might have single handedly brightened someone's day?

So have you witnessed or taken part in a random act of kindness? Let me know in the comments and if I get enough of them I'll do a follow up post on this, featuring your acts of kindness! Oh, and don't forget there's a part2 tomorrow! Peace!!