ktravula - a travelogue! » Random

The Whole Picture

Kola — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:20:14 +0000

The last couple of days has brought a record number of new visitors to this blog. That brings with it a certain kind of delight. (Welcome people!) I may yet resume a regular dump of my thoughts on you once again as I have been doing for the past two years. Sitting here for the past few hours has brought me into a few ideas none of which have furthered the work into my thesis beyond a few sentences. On one screen is my twitter feed that shows me diverse opinions of trending topics, from the Golden Globes to the Fuel Subsidy fights in Nigeria (in which my heart absolutely resides), and the Republican Primary fight in which another video has shown up with frontrunner Mitt Romney offering an unbelievably cold response to a sick man who had asked for his opinion on medical marijuana.

As I have discovered many times over, coming back to the empty page of a new blogpost always brought words back to my fingertips, bringing me back to a required level head to continue my work. In any case, here is what I thought: a solution to an old puzzle. All the (about three thousand) pictures that I have taken since this travelogue began need to go somewhere. As from today, I will be putting one (or two) of them per week out on the blog’s Facebook page with a little back story. If I never eventually make it to writing/completing that travel book of all those experiences, pictures and short back stories would have to do. Of course, you would be missing out on this if you are not already following the page.

Alright, that is out. Back to wondering how to successfully measure the progress of second language tonal acquisition, and communicate same to a thesis committee.

Saturday Night, and Time

Kola — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 06:47:25 +0000

Sometimes before dawn between tonight and tomorrow, we’re going to lose one hour of sleep. Don’t ask me. It’s America’s way of reminding us of the vanity in predestination. Give me determinism. Heaven helps those who help themselves. Time waits for no man, except s/he that changes it at least twice a year. It’s common sense. It’s business. It’s the economy, stupid. Who cares for one more hour of sleep when we can add it to the productive part of the day and get more out of it. If you don’t like it, move to Canada, or Nigeria.

The spunk of America amazes, and delights. Nothing is, until human intervention makes it so. Spring break, for instance is what is it because of the attitude, general acceptance of its relevance, and the stories passed down from generations of the need to travel. In a few more weeks, it will be the break after school semester and another season will be gone. Culture. Acceptance. Season. Relaxation. My Italian colleague in the department has a different perception of time and enjoyment, of course, but having lived in the United States for many decades, I’m sure he has by now settled into the rote of American living.

Movies. Conversations. Fun, the usual. Monday will come and life will be back on the track of its brutish, interminable self. I will oil the wheels of my bicycle and plan for more days on the bike path to school rather than burn the gas whose price has skyrocketed since Gadaffi started slaughtering his citizens in Libya. But then there is Japan, now suffering from a horrible earthquake. It is easy to relax in the pattern of life that never seems to shake in turbulence. In other parts of the world are some of the most frightening indices of instability. Where is the safety, the peace of mind. The crises in Japan resulting in the explosion of one of their nuclear reactors yesterday night is a reminder of how precarious all existence as we know it is. This is to the little moments. Praying love and healing to Japan and the world. Libya too.

Scheduling a Semester

Kola — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 22:14:32 +0000

One of the more challenging parts of the beginning of a semester is figuring out a right schedule so as to prevent a case when each day is spent trying to catch up with the previous one. A graduate student who is also a graduate assistant faces the challenge of being able to balance his time in order to satisfy both his employers and his academic sponsors. It makes no sense to be a stellar employee and then become a poor student. I’ve always wondered how people who do more than one job (and have families, children etc) cope with being graduate students at the same time. Imagine having two young children, two or three jobs, and three classes a semester. But it’s America. Being resilient might just be the most important trait to possess.

I taught the first Foreign Language Yoruba class yesterday. It was mainly introductory, and it lasted an hour. In my experience, the first class is always the most crucial, especially for students hoping to see if the class is worth taking at all or not. The pattern is also always the same: the strange man walks in to a full class of staring students. They’re all silent and wait for him to break the ice. He stands there for a moment, thinks of the first words to say, and then walks back to the blackboard to write out a list of key words that they would need to remember – Yoruba, Nigeria, West Africa, 30 million speakers, Wole Soyinka, Hakeem Olajuwon, Sade Adu, Adewale Akinnuoye Agbaje… – and then returns, by which time the words would come by themselves. “Hi. I’m Nigerian. Last year was my first time in the United States…”. From experience I know that it always helps to be seen first as the outsider.

I also attended my first class for the semester yesterday. It’s called “Discourse Analysis”, and I’m looking forward to all I can learn about how to analyse conversations and classify them on the basis of content, use, participants, context and many other variables. In the absence of a new commitment to the International Institute, I’m hoping that my class and work schedules will give me enough time to gain as much as possible knowledge from class interactions in a new course whose content looks promising so far.

Random Sights of Signs and Lights

Kola — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 20:12:40 +0000

Hope you had a nice weekend.

Laughing at Myself

Kola — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 05:37:51 +0000

It’s been long since I last laughed at myself on this blog. I should remedy that, I thought this evening. Should I tell you the story of my one of many first encounters with a duvet (often also called the “comforter”), or how I finally became friends with Boo the cat while his owners were far away out of the country? How about my recent reunion with winterboots from last year in very unexpected circumstances, or about how I had been unpleasantly surprised about the absence of roadside cobblers in the US to fix my sandals when the buckles gave way? I also felt I’d talk about my surprise in finding my blog listed yesterday on the BBC website featuring a few Nigerian blogs talking about the nation’s independent anniversary celebration. But I felt that that won’t be funny enough.

Then I thought I could tell you about how I lost my keys last week in town and had the police call my mobile phone just to return it to me. They had obviously traced it with a special number coded on the keys. But that wasn’t funny at all becuase a new set of keys would have cost me a lot of money that I don’t have. Then I resolved to tell you about the private pranks I’ve been playing on the GPS machine these days. I would put in a particular destination in the machine, and deliberately go to a different place through a different route and watching the machine run mad with instructions: “Please turn right in .5 miles… Please make a legal U-turn as soon as possible… Re-calculating route…” etc. As you would see, I’ve been very busy. In another world a long time ago, I’d call two different people with a hidden number, connect them in a conference call and listen to them fall in love after a few false starts and them eventually believing that the lines jammed into each other by some random error in the system and the gods actually want them together. That used to be much fun, just like calling the fire service station while we were young, and telling them that there’s a fire somewhere and watch them laugh at our fake attempts at seriousness, then threaten to tell our parents. Oh the days.

Then I felt that by the time I told you all of this, you’d have at least let out a smile, and I’d be forgiven for not having blogged for as much last month, and for the fact that I would blog less and less as school progresses and my life gets more interesting.

Taking Pictures of People Taking Pictures (i)

Kola — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:03:52 +0000

Pictures taken over a long period of people taking pictures of other people, or getting their pictures taken.

Summer People (III)

Kola — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:33:42 +0000

In response to a memory of faces and places, here is the (I hope) last installment of my summer people posts. Or not.

There’s Ayo, Prof. Banjo, Benson, Aunt Grace, Nikola, Niyi, Dr. Oha, Rahman, Sola, Yemi, and Yomi .

Summer People (II)

Kola — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:32:42 +0000

More.

Here we have, in alphabetical order, Adunni, Ayo, Bimbo, Bukkie, Damilola, Nikita, Olga, Olo, Peter, Rayo, Shaban, and Zainab.

Best of luck matching the names to the photos .

And what is it with the hands under the chin? There must be something on my face that elicits this kind of “wondering” reaction. Hmm.

Summer People (I)

Kola — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 14:28:25 +0000

Random images of people I met and interacted with during the summer.

Includes Anja, Rotji, Yun Hsin, Nneoma, Laitan, Ron, Jolaade, Papa Rudy, Chiedu, and Elizabeth in no particular order. One of those light-skinned beautiful women is my sister. Go figure.

Farewell to a Good Year

Kola — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 16:10:55 +0000

Never getting a chance at the end of 2009 to make the usual resolutions and contrite restitutions meant for the last moments before the year slips by, let me pretend that this is the last night of the year, a few hours before the countdown into a new year. On December 2009, I was in that faraway place with the shadow of an errant Nigerian panty bomber lurking just around in hush conversations. A better scenery than sitting in a church service amidst noises and supplications to the deity of the new year, I was floating in an imaginary continent of my dreamland; just one of those instances I can remember in my short life where the momentary passage of one day did not live to its expectation of being super grand. A few hours later, dozens of text messages from everywhere told me that another year had passed by, at least in our time zone. As the sun moved westwards, so did the day, and very soon we were all satiated in the ordinariness of such a significant passage, far less ordinary than December 31, 1999, just a decade earlier, spent in the throes of questions and skepticisms.

Tonight could be a more significant eve, who knows, perhaps because if this blog does not continue after today, we can at least say that it lived as fully as it could over twelve interesting moons. And if it does, we can say that the first year was good, and that the second should be better. In any case, there is cause for celebration. Now, in the style of the specialists of such occasions, there should be drinks and clinking glasses. Yes, yes, I remember when men were boys, and a good time meant plenty suya and a pleasant conversation amidst howling dogs and a quiet, or soft music-infested, environment. A bottle of Ponche spread around on cold soda drinks produced what has now become the legendary KT Martini. No, I don’t recommend that now. Get a bottle of yogurt along with a box of Don Simon. Get a mix in the right proportion, read a good poem (I’ll put one up shortly, the last post for this “year”) and drink to health, long life, and many more interesting adventures. Call it KTramarula, a drink on me.

ktravula - a travelogue! » Random

The Whole Picture

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