ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Fun category.

Buzzing News

Here are a few new things buzzing in ktravula’s universe at the moment.

A Travula Interview

Last week, I sat down for an e-interview with a Nigerian-based literary blog Bookaholic for questions ranging from my influences to opinions on matters of literacy in Nigeria as well as my impressions about the Fulbright FLTA programme. If you ask me those same questions tomorrow, there is no doubt that I might answer them a little differently. When I was asked about my most treasured possession, my first choice of response was “My brain, then my laptop, iPod, camera, and bicycle – in that order.” Check out the interview here, and please leave comments if you can..

PosterFrank Warren at SIUE

What would a man once referred to as “The Most Trusted Stranger in America”, Frank Warren of PostSecret.com and Postsecret.blogspot.com be coming to do at SIUE as a guest speaker on the 29th September? That’s the big secret (no pun intended). “PostSecret is a sight that originated from a community art project based on a simple concept: asking people to anonymously send a secret on a decorated postcard. Since November 2004, Warren has received more than 400,000 postcards, with secrets spanning from sexual taboos and criminal activity to confessions of secret beliefs, hidden acts of kindness, shocking habits and fears.” I have been the website, and seen some really weird, quirky, funny and revealing secrets of people pasted anonymously there. What drives a man that handles such a project that encourages people to tell it all? How does he sleep at night?  He’s surely gonna be an intriguing person to hear, and I look forward to the programme. Is there something particularly you want to know about him and about PostSecret? Send them to me.

A Birthday Wish

It’s my birthday on Tuesday the 22nd, and I’m trying my hands on selflessness. I’ve made a little birthday wish: to help raise money for cancer research. There are too many causalities for a disease that should by now have got a cure. Check out the donations page on Facebook Causes here, where you can donate whatever you can afford to the Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

For my birthday, I intend to spend the evening at Rudy’s place in company of a few international students as well as some American friends. I don’t have recollection of many personal birthday party celebrations while I was growing up, but I do have a few pictures though that show evidence of such a time when I was allowed to have child moments with my young friends and playmates, eating cakes and candy and being generally jolly, but I don’t remember any of those times. I was too young to remember. Birthday was synonymous with partying, and cakes, and it was always called “the Birthday” (or “Baiday/byeday,” depending on how many tooth gaps are in the mouth of the little kids doing the pronunciation). Rudy has promised cakes, food and drinks. Oh well, I can’t complain. One day in the future, I’d look back at the very few birthday pictures I have, and say: “Oh yes indeed, I was young and fun once.”

Buzzing News was published on September 20th, 2009, with the tags , , , , , , under the Fun, News category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Fun Saturday

“Freedom isn’t free. Neither are refills.”
– Seen at a local coffee shop in downtown Edwardsville.

These are pictures from the weekend, taken mostly at an outdoor picnic that took place at the Cougar Lake Area, where there was line dancing, boat/kayak riding and volleyball. Enjoy.

Fun Saturday was published on September 15th, 2009, with the tags , , , , , under the adventures, Fun, Observations category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

Back On the Grind

The traveller is not dead, and neither has he run out of ideas to blog about. America is not such a place where a day passes by without something interesting, something memorable. My reason for a little silence is to adjust to my new domain, allow readers to do so as well, and – you can’t blame me for this one – give Maya Angelou more than a day’s space on my first page. It’s not all the time that one gets to meet a Poet Laureate. You are officially allowed to feel a little jealous of me.

Now that I’ve got that little explanation out of the way, let me tell you a few things that happened to me in the past couple of days, starting with the most recent. I will follow up in the next posts about the other interesting things I encountered, especially one in particular that made me so livid with rage.

#1.

Popcorn

I went out on a date. I did tell you about a painter I met in church who gave me a few of her paintings. Well, she has turned out to be quite a fascinating an interesting personality. Saturday was (almost) totally free on my schedule so we went out to the cinema in downtown Edwardsville. First we stopped by Starbucks to have some coffee and some nice conversation, then by 9.3opm or so, we headed out to Showplace Cinema. One thing was obvious, nightlife thrives in Edwardsville, as well as the other parts of America that I’ve visited. The painter grew up in Mississipi but has lived in many parts of the country, most notably, Portland Oregon where she had just recently returned.

The movie we saw was “All About Steve” featuring Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper. It was a movie that made me laugh a  lot, and it turned out that she enjoyed herself too. Now, I admit that all I would have loved to see was “Inglourious Basterds” by Tarantino, but since we got there late, we could not. The other option was “District 9”, and upon my life, there was no way I was going to pay money to see a film that so denigrated my country and people, especially when I was on a nice-going date with an American woman. No. I come from a place that frowns so much on voluntary suicide. No can do! And now, back home, when my itchy fingers began to do a little search online for the source of that totally insensitive movie “District 9”, it was to my amazement to discover that the movie was produced by Sony, the same company behind the infamous PS3 ad that referenced internet scams/rumours as being Nigerian. This begs a question: What does Sony have to gain by pissing off about 130 million people not once, but twice?

The other movie on show was Sorority Row, feauturing an (almost) all girls cast, as well as I Can Do Bad All By Myself, featuring Tyler Perry and Taraji P. Henson, my new screen crush. Then there was Julie and Julia featuring Meryl Streep, a wonderful actor of “Mamma Mia” fame. I have rescheduled a re-match to go back and watch all these ones. I have nothing but time, and nine months is a whole lot of time to waste without having as much American fun. Talking about nine months, if I impregnate someone today, does it mean that I’ll actually get to see my kid before I return home? Don’t mind me, I’d sworn to keep my mind off all dirty matters until a close friend decided to ask me, out of the blue while I was chatting with her yesterday, whom I’d been kissing. All I asked her was to tell me why I seemed to have a sore throat, and a mild fever.

Now, speaking of sore throat and a mild fever. If you’re thinking what I thinkk you’re thinking, please stop it now. It is not the flu. I repeat. It is not the flu. However, to put all doubts to rest, I am going to the University Health Centre as early as possible on Monday morning, to do a thorough check-up. I didn’t fly all the way to America only to get infected with a flu that doesn’t yet exist on my country’s map. Meanwhile, I am eating well, drinking well, and resting well. The popcorn from the movie, I should tell you, is one of the best I’ve had. And unlike the one in “some Nigerian cinema” which is filled with so much sugar, this one was salted, and it tasted like a real movie popcorn that everyone can enjoy.

The traveller’s adventures continue.

Back On the Grind was published on September 13th, 2009, with the tags , , , under the Fun, Opinion category. There are currently 3 comments on this article so far.