ktravula – a travelogue!

10 Reasons To Like the Last One Year

10. The nice new people I’ve met and loved.

9. The new foods I’ve learned to eat and cook.

8. The new places I’ve been. Boston, Providence, St. Louis, Principia, Carbondale, Chicago, Maryland, NY…

7. The number of pictures I’ve been able take of sites, strangers and structures.

6. The knowledge and experience I’ve gained in interacting with students, strangers and situations.

5. The bike trail, the school bus, the traffic lights, the metro.

4. Snow, Cougar Lake, thunderstorms, earplugs, snow boots

3. Voicemail, karaoke, free movies, iPod, invitations, basketball.

2. Electricity, internet, KTravula, twitter, poetry, books, prose.

1. Fulbright 🙂

10 Reasons To Like the Last One Year was published on April 29th, 2010, with the tags , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

10 Reasons to Lose Your Hard Drive At Least Once

10. If you’re a workaholic, you will get a few more hours of sleep afterwards.

9. You will have an excuse to be lazy and late on work deadlines.

8. You will have a reason to get new up-to-date softwares, sometimes free from the University.

7. You will get to know the workings of Dell’s (or your computer’s manufacturer’s) customer service.

6. You may get to know who loves you and who doesn’t. 😉

5. You will learn new lessons on how not to use a laptop (e.g. leaving it on all night playing music)

4. You will appreciate the value of $65.05 and five gruesome days of waiting.

3. You will be rid of all the junk in your computer that you have always wanted to delete but didn’t have the required gut, time or patience to delete.

2. You get to read more books.

1. You will get to spend more time with the rest of humanity for a little while.

10 Reasons to Lose Your Hard Drive At Least Once was published on March 30th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Soliloquy category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

10 Reasons to NEVER Lose Your Hard Drive

10. You may actually get sleepless nights and withdrawal symptoms.

9. You will miss a couple of important work deadlines.

8. New hard drives cost money, and you will have to wait for days, go through frustrating customer service phone responses, before you get it back.

7. You may not remember any/all of the things you’ve lost with it.

6. Everyone thinks it serves you right for not backing it all up when you had the chance. The rest don’t just give a damn. 😉

5. Your students’ grades, results and records might be in it, and you will have to work double hard to get them all back.

4. You will never get back poems, skits, writings, translations in their original forms again.

3. The Geek Squad at BestBuy and all of their good brains may not be able to recover any of your lost data.

2. The computer in your office may be occupied everytime you want to use it.

1. By losing Skype with your hard drive, you might miss your mum’s birthday party.

10 Reasons to NEVER Lose Your Hard Drive was published on March 30th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Soliloquy category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

10 Reasons Why Nigeria Might NOT Be Screwed Beyond Repair

The first part of this is 10 Reasons Why Nigeria Might Be Screwed Beyond Repair. But here goes this…

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10. We still have a constitution and a strong judiciary.

9. The economy is (being) deregulated; and even though progress towards this is slow, true federalism might eventually come to help bring the right foreign investment in alternative means of energy.

8. We still have the Nigerian football to unite us once every two years when there is a major tournament, just as long as there are no local coaches. Maybe we’ll win the World Cup someday. Surely it’s not in 2010.

7. We have a strong press that keeps the security agencies on their toes. It is a slow progress, but it helps.

6. Our greatest export is not just our natural and agricultural resources as it is our human resources. There are many Nigerians of repute making the country proud in areas of endeavour all over the world

5. We still have some sane people living in there.

4. In spite of occasional bursts of violence, it is actually not that bad. The probability of getting killed in ethnic violence is really very low. Most people are smart enough to know when to leave a place when a situation begins to look combustible.

3. We still have the power to vote out corrupt politicians and replace them with real hardworking people. As the situation in Lagos has shown, there are leaders who can get things done.

2. Those people who want to be politicians by all means are not in the majority.

1. I’m going back there, soon.

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This is my last post for this month, folks. Thank you for reading. Watch out for more interesting guest-posts in the coming weeks.

10 Reasons Why Nigeria Might NOT Be Screwed Beyond Repair was published on February 28th, 2010, with the tags , , under the Observations, Opinion, Soliloquy category. There are currently 18 comments on this article so far.

10 Reasons Why Nigeria Might Be Screwed Beyond Repair

10. Its very sickly president without a solid constitutional recognition at the moment still lives within the State House.

9. Electricity is comatose, even in 2010. Without stable electricity, nothing developmental can go on.

8. Tribalism still holds fort there as much we hope it doesn’t. Why should it matter where Goodluck is from? There still is no mutual trust among citizens of different, or even same ethnic groups, and citizens could not live peacefully anywhere in the country as they should. See Jos as a case study.

7. There is no adequate security for lives and property. Meeting a policeman on the street at 10pm is not always a good sign.

6. Dependence on oil has crippled other aspects of the economy that used to bring huge foreign exchange. E.g Agriculture.

5. We have produced at least one international terrorist.

4. In spite of much progress made in civil rule/democracy, current politicians still believe in the do-or-die doctrine, which would explain why more people have been assassinated during “democracy” than during military rule.

3. We have the worst culture of waste disposal I’ve ever seen: plastic bags, metals and other trash disposed anywhere without adequate recycling methods. (I’ve also been guilty of this)

2. Half of us want to become political office holders like the nation’s president or a state governor before they can contribute and effect change – and they’re ready to kill to get there – rather than starting small right at the door of our residences. “If everyone sweeps his backyard, the town will be clean,” the old quote reads.

1. Education is not given the priority it deserves in terms of funding or government attention.

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It’s going to be real hard to find a flipside to this argument, but I’ll try. That’d be tomorrow.

10 Reasons Why Nigeria Might Be Screwed Beyond Repair was published on February 27th, 2010, with the tags , , under the Observations, Opinion, Soliloquy category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.