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STAY CALM AND PLAN YOUR WEDDING

This is for all the would be brides out there who are planning what is usually billed as the most important day of a woman's life. forget childbirth, forget graduations or even the day your man proposed to you, this is THE most momentous occasion a woman will ever experience and the right sort of planning is necessary to ensure that there are no tears.

Prior to planning my own wedding I always wondered what the whole 'bridezilla' thing was all about. Ladies who were once the sweetest thing ever suddenly morph into downright monsters simply because the flowers they ordered came in the wrong shade of ivory or their groom refuses to agree to the first-dance song of their choice. I have to confess that this fabled bridezilla was me, in fact I am forever indebted to my close friends and family who put up with my downright unpleasant personality from the period of 4 months before to 1 day before my wedding day. If I could do things over, here's what I would have done slightly differently.

1. Take several deep breaths like 100 times a day. I remember feeling so tightly strung, needing to have everything my way, needing to control every aspect of the wedding. well guess what, on that day you're probably only going to care about your dress, your make-up, how comfortable your shoes are, your loved one's being present and the look on people's faces showing that they are having as much fun as you are!

2. Allow other people to contribute to your wedding, whether it be ideas, recommendations or even goods. Like it or not, a Nigerian wedding is largely a 'community' affair. Your parents, in-laws and even friends will have an opinion or two about what your dress should look like, about how expensive caterers are in Abuja and about what a reasonable distance is between the church and the reception venue. No, they do not think its their wedding, they are simply trying to help. so before you go snapping at people talking about 'I know what I am doing' remember that they are excited for you and simply want to share in the joys of planning your big day.

3 . This should really be number 1. Draw up a budget. Not just for the wedding, but for the post-wedding period stretching up to one year into the future. it does not make sense to spend all your money on the wedding and have nothing to live on afterwards. also make sure you have sorted out essentials such as where to live and. Car (if you do not already have these) , sort out the honeymoon too or at least a honeymoon suite for the first two days after the wedding so that you can feel pampered and rested in the next couple of days following the wedding and not have to worry about domestics such as cooking and cleaning at this point.

4.Reach out and thank your bridal train, parent-in-law , uncles and aunts and friends who contributed in any way to the wedding and planning of it. it is the right thing to do regardless of whether you feel up to it or not.Also try to go through your gifts and thank all your gifters. it shows appreciation and thoughtfulness also bear I mind that you are now duty-bound to return the favour and atleast attempt to attend the weddings of those who came for yours and/or send a present.

Finally , note that the fights with your fiancée will be inevitable. I used to scoff at people who said that the stress would be a lot around this period but believe me it will be and it always feels worse when you think you're the only person going through this. You're not! It's very usual but just remember not to sweat the small stuff, compromise a little and allow your fiancée's personality to come through in your decoration, cake, food options or whatever else he has in mind and do not be unnecessarily territorial, it's not only your wedding it's his too!

The Love Doctor Series: Part 1 THE OLD FASHIONED GIRL’S GUIDE TO BEING DESIRABLE.

This guide is for old-fashioned girls (such as yours truly) trying to attract an old-fashioned guy. The reason I make this distinction is that with guys of the new school, the rules are different because there are none. My definition of a guy from the ‘new-school’ is one who expects a woman to make the first move or to go dutch on the first date(more on this later) Any woman who professes to be cool with the above instances, I can’t help. Ask Kim Kardashian.

These are tips on how to make yourself more desirable to the opposite sex, i.e. make them wonder what it is about you and keep them coming back. This is about emanating a certain aura where, as Neyo says, you want a guy but you don’t need him. Don’t get me wrong I appreciate that boy-girl issues are very angsty sometimes and it’s okay to feel the angst in your head and analyse things with your girlfriends and check up a guy’s profile on Facebook and all those things that we girls do when we are considering a guy who’s trying to get to know us; but it’s not okay for him to know. Are we together so far? Good.

Okay, so here are some common scenarios that come up and here’s what I would suggest. Not in any particular order:


Why is he not calling? Everyone who has watched the movie ‘He’s just not that into you’ or read the book ‘Think like a man’ should know the answer to this one by now. But for those who don’t, here it is- he either doesn’t want to call or he’s a Rules man. If it’s the first don’t worry about it, he’s not for you. If it’s the second and he’s a man that plays by the rules then you’ve gotta be a rules chick too. A rules man is definitely an old-fashioned man. He doesn’t expect you to request his number or ask him on a date first. If he took your number wait for him to call because if you jump the gun you will be disqualified from the race. When he does call, trust me your confidence will come from knowing that he made the first move, and his appreciation will grow from knowing that this chick has been so busy that she forgot all about him.


I’m so tired of being single. I’ve heard this one before, even from 18-year olds and I think to myself calm down! Yes it’s a big, lonely world out there and you want someone to hold your hand and tell you you’re beautiful but trust me a guy can smell a desperate girl from a mile away. See singledom as a chance to be free and explore your options. Take up a hobby, enrol in a course, go to church, or to the mosque or a synagogue or something. Go to parties. You will meet people and broaden your horizons so that when you finally land a guy you will have something interesting to tell him about your life and hobbies. Make your social calendar so full that you will genuinely have a reason to say to your toaster ‘Sorry, I’m busy right now, can I call you back?’ and he knows that indeed you have other things to do.


Where is this going? Ladies erase this very string of words from your vocabulary. Never utter these words in any way, shape or form please. I’m not talking about after you’ve dated for 2 years and want to know the final destination. I’m talking about a guy you met at a party two Saturdays ago, exchanged BB pins with and after 10 days you wanna know what you are to him. I’ll tell you what you are. Acquaintances. And if he wants to change your status trust me he will not stutter in letting you know either directly or indirectly. Men are jealous and territorial creatures, if they want you to be their lady, trust me, they don’t want any other guy to come within a hair’s breadth of you. If you do ask, you’re not going to like what you hear because surely he wasn’t waiting for you to ask him before he tells you that you are his girlfriend, right? Right.


He has to be tall, dark and handsome. Ladies please know thyselves. Not to have a laugh or anything but please play in your own league. If you want a man with movie star looks then I’m afraid you’re going to have to get to scrubbing. Yourself. Yes, I said it. It goes without saying that being groomed and presentable probably is more likely to get you attention from a groomed and attractive man. There’s no need to aspire to Naomi Campbell standards though so if you’re a baggy jeans sort of girl as least keep the hem from looking 50 shades of brown. Eat right, take care of your face and I’d be surprised if you didn’t keep heads turning along the street. That’s a start!


What about sex on the first date? This was a popular one and the answer is no. If you’re an old-fashioned girl you’re going to want an old-fashioned guy and trust me regardless of what his physical apparatus is saying, in his mind he really doesn’t want you to give in that easily. Besides how would you feel if you slept together and he never called you again? If you’re okay with this, stop reading now. You need to have some principles, any principles. Set a timescale for yourself before which he will not see the inside of your drawers. This means no extended talk about your sexual history and preferences and definitely no sleepovers in his bed. It doesn’t matter how many days/weeks/months you set, just knowing that you have rules within which you live your life will let him know that you are a serious minded girl with standards which you can’t compromise.


If I find a guy I really like, does that mean I can cut off the rest? No, it means the opposite actually. Never, ever put your eggs in one basket at such an early stage because as quickly as they materialise, these guys can vanish too. Just as we ladies are sampling the market, our male counterparts are talking to many different girls as ‘friends’ too until they find the one. So if he has not said he wants to be exclusive with you I don’t see why you’re clearing out your diary and pencilling him in for an appointment every day of the week. As soon as he finds a suitable partner, if it’s not you, you won’t hear from Mr Man again so imagine how this would make you feel if you have already made him your only option. Enough said.


What if I’m at my last bus stop? Please, there is no such thing. I don’t care if you’re 39 and overweight, you must never appear desperate, it’s not a good look. Trust me men can spot a woman who believes ‘it’ is a do or die affair from a mile away. At this toaster stage, you are friends, you don’t owe each other anything and please do not tax the poor man’s time. If he says he will call at 10 am and he calls at 10.45, I don’t believe this is a capital offence afterall if your girlfriend says she’ll call you aren’t staring at your phone for hours willing it to ring. When you start to make extraneous demands on a man’s time before he has indicated that he is willing to commit to a relationship you will chase him away. Very far away. It will seem like you do not have anybody else calling you and he is your last hope. A much better situation is: he tries to call you, he gets your ‘call waiting’ he clocks that if he doesn’t call when he says he will someone else will make your phone busy. However it’s not acceptable for a man to totally disrespect your time, showing up for a date an hour late does not even begin to be acceptable and I trust that a self-respecting female won’t be waiting around for that long. He can call you and explain to you (whilst you’re at home watching TV) how come he had to pick his nephew up from playschool, the traffic was so bad and he had a flat tyre whilst you sound all distracted and drowned out by the sound of the TV.


Finally ladies, please don’t have a chip on your shoulder. If your last boyfriend broke your heart, that’s no reason to be rude and unpleasant. After all, all the men in the world didn’t collude and decide to treat you like rubbish. Move on with a clean slate and assess each new guy on his merits. Be calm, polite, flirty, laugh when needed and keep things really light. Always maintain an air of mystery, he doesn’t need to know all your secrets before he commits to being in your life, actually he doesn’t want to.

DISCLAIMER!!!
This is not a thesis- don’t ask me for references/sources!
This is not a manual- it works for me.
This is my point of view; please share your thoughts and comments. xxxxxxx

The confession: Part I

Writing is my therapy, it's the way I relax.It soothes me and the paper is my shrink and the pen is my anti-depressant. The only way I can organize my thoughts is to let them flow in perfect harmony through the keyboard to form words for me to express myself. The paper doesn't judge me, the keyboard won't argue with me. I don't have to answer endless questions of who? what? when? and why? I don't need to get up on a podium and clear my throat. Instead I soliloquize and pour out my feelings in one long note, with no interruptions or interjections and no need to respond to feedback.


Writing is my drug, it soothes my sores and heals my wounds, it's the single dose remedy to my frustrations. It covers my insecurities and assuages my doubts.I don't need to wince in disgust as a fat pill is flushed down by tepid water into my throat before my headaches are gone. I simply take out my laptop, open up a page and pour it out. There, and it's better.


Writing is my addiction, even though I'm not the substance-dependent type, I sometimes feel that if all the books and pens were taken away from this world then I would simply have to curl up and die because how then can I go on.No matter how long I stay away from writing, I always come back. To write a shopping list, to write a to-do list for the day, to write a letter of encouragement to myself.It makes everything better.


Writing is my gift. Everyone has one.I don't do sports, I don't sing, I don't play any instruments. I lie in bed, fingers to the keyboard, eyes fixed on the screen, brows furrowed in concentration and I reach into my mind and write whatever comes to me. Half the time, I don't know what I'm going to write till I write my first word, and then it becomes a sentence then that becomes a paragraph and it becomes a page filled with ideas not always coherent but always honest. Not always intelligent but always the truth.



Writing is my vice.Some stay up to do drugs,others hit the bottle, I stay up all night to write, it takes a while for me to reach my cruising altitude but when I do, I can't stop until every words paints a precise picture, until every meaning is succinct.It exposes me and leaves me vulnerable- for you can tell from my words what I'm going through. You can feel the emotions which my rants evoke and it can speak the truth to you, a truth which you tried so hard to avoid but it's now staring you in the face.


Writing is my thing.

Got till it's gone

As promised, I'm here delivering my weekly dose of wisdom and reflection to you all. Unfortunately, today's post will be tinged with a shot of sadness and grief. They say you never miss a good thing till it's gone. A lot of the time we take a lot of good things for granted- we don't realise that there could ever be a time when that thing will not be right where we left it. We procrastinate about other things forgetting that time waits for no man and it only takes a second for someone to close their eyes and be taken away from us and from this world.

Last week it was Fabrice Muamba who I had never heard of until I noticed several updates on my Blackberry with various incarnations of 'pray for Muamba'. I couldn't stand being the odd one out anymore and a quick survey on Google and my trusty Wiki revealed to me that this young man(only 23)collapsed on the pitch during a game of football supposedly from a heart attack. The sub plot was that he had a 1 year old son and a fiancee whom he had betrothed just on Valentine's day. My heart skipped a beat. Not because I particularly care whether any footballer departs from this earth any more than I care whether a footballer is born, but because on sober reflection, I realised that it was possible that Muamba's fiancee had a fight with him that morning.She might even have uttered the two deadly words: 'drop dead!' in a fit of vexed passion, not meaning a word of it but as is usually the case when one is filled with blind fury saying the first hurtful thing that comes to mind. The alternative scenario is that there wasn't any fight.Maybe she embraced him as he departed for London from Paris, uttering one or two words of encouragement about his upcoming game against Tottenham Hotspur assuming that he would return, of course, after the game back to her and their son Joshua.He's in critical condition, they say, but he's not gone.

I also remember many years ago when I lost one of my best friends, it was and still is the most sobering experience that I've had in my 20 something years on earth, to date. I could not reconcile the news that she had died in a car accident with the fresh memories of parties we escaped to in secondary school right after classes and right after we sloped home claiming to be at after school lessons. Memories of our many conversations of which guy was hot and which wasn't from the measly selection we had at school those days. Memories of our joint attempt to master the lyrics to 'Candy Rain' and 'The boy is mine' in thirty minutes flat. A friend who I'd known from the first day of the first year in secondary school, I simply could not process the news. But I just saw her a couple of months ago, I thought.It was a few months after I'd relocated to London from Nigeria and we kept making plans to meet up and postponing them, assuming of course that there would always be tomorrow. Well, tomorrow never came and when I thought about the silly arguments we'd had in the past over complete and utter inconsequentials, it made my heart break. I would give up every one of those fights just to bring her back to this earth. All the times I wished she'd disappear from the face of the earth- well, she did, and I couldn't wish her back.

The phrase taken for granted literally means to assume that a thing will always be there just like the air that we breathe.We only have to be alive and the air fills our lungs automatically- granted.Some people take their jobs for granted- phoning up sick in order to go and watch the tennis at Wimbledon,cursing the day they took the job because the workload is too heavy and they've missed their lunchbreak, again. And then the recession happened and they were out of jobs. Who gets to watch Wimbledon all day now? And whose bank balance is in double barrel zeros? That's right.

For others, it's their cars. I remember during a particularly barren period of fuel scarcity in Abuja once when I could not buy fuel to drive my car-queuing up to buy petrol was literally a contact sport- and I'd literally glare at the redundant,bright blue thing parked in front of the house that couldn't do a thing for me because it was juice-less. This was a car that I'd just hop in and out of previously expecting that when the little wand dipped below a quarter tank I'd just pop down to my local AP petrol station, pop the lever and have them refill the juice. I took that automobile for granted. It was only when the fuel scarcity began,persisted and lasted that I realised that car was indeed a luxury. After being alternately beaten by the sun and pelted by the rain in the name of waiting for taxis; having had to endure the indignity of pleading for rides from semi-strangers and then watching the nairas deflate in my wallet all in the name of transport in Abuja, I began to appreciate the convenience and comfort that bright blue thing afforded which I never thought about because it was just there whenever I wanted it-granted.

To take something for granted or much more someone, is to assume that they will always be there,like the birds in the sky or like a new morning when we wake up. It is to assume that the person owes you their time and resources. It is to assume that nobody else has any use for that thing but you. It is to presume that the thing only has one home. The only constant thing is change and even birds migrate when they find more comfortable trees to build their nests.

This post is dedicated to my dear uncle who passed away this morning.May his soul rest in peace.

Oh, Nigeria

I've been told by my good friend Dax www.thirdworldprofashional.com that sporadic blogging is not cool, you lose your audience- her words. Thus, from this day forward I'm going to endeavour to be somewhat regular in my posts and updates, at least once a week....sounds doable...as long as I'm inspired. It's really not so easy writing about my thoughts. It would have been so much easier to be regular if I was blogging about current affairs, or gossip or fashion or hair or make up. But I'm not, I'm just a girl who has long thoughts once in a while and instead of kick-starting the first stage of madness by talking to myself in the mirror, I pour them out here...once in a while.

What are my latest thoughts?Moving back to Nigeria has been foremost on my mind ever since I went there over the Christmas period for 4 weeks. I swear to you I did not want to come back. The thought of the bleak cold weather, over-subscribed trains, monotonous work, people who are ever too busy to socialize and just the thought of leaving the cocoon that was Nigeria at Christmas was seriously depressing.

They say home is where the heart is and never did that saying ring so true as it did as I boarded my flight from Abuja to London on the 24th of January. It was with a heavy heart that I checked in and let the customs officers run their grubby hands through my nice clean clothes not even bothered to be offended that they made me lift two suitcases weighing over 20kg onto a counter as high as my waist. Surely there must be some aviation technology the Federal Airport Authority can acquire that does the searching and lifting without us having to endure silly questions as 'where are you going with this indomie and yam?' and 'what are these things?' gesturing at what are clearly panties and bras. But I digress.

I truly believe that Nigeria is the best place for a Nigerian to get to the top, firstly and more obviously because you have the home advantage. When they are not too busy adhering to federal character requirements and filling up the Niger-Delta quota. Secondly, because good business booms in Nigeria. You really need not have any sort of business plan whatsoever to start with, just bright ideas, determination and maybe a wealthy and supportive uncle. The late entrepreneur MKO Abiola always spoke of how he used to hawk goods for his mother when he was younger and rose to become a businessman,publisher, politician and aristocrat. Not overnight,mind you, but ultimately before his death he became one of the richest and most successful businessmen in Nigeria.

Where is all this patriotism coming from, some might wonder? Having lived in the UK for close to 9 years on and off I'm slowly becoming disenchanted with the supposed glitz and the non-existent streets paved in gold. No matter how much you earn over here its just a vicious cycle of bill-paying and catching up. Very few people- and I mean the Mohammed Al-Fayeds, David Beckhams and the Royal family can truly boast of wealth and comfort. Everybody else is a hustler. Admittedly there are different hustles- some people work at fast food restaurants and others work at investment banks, but the story is the same. You work all hours of the day, you think your pay is going to be decent but after the tax man has swallowed a ridiculous chunk of it, you're left with just enough to pay the bills and go to the pub.

Its all well and good when you're a student and relying on the merchant bank of mum and dad, there's no tax, there aren't any real bills, there isn't any real responsibility. However reality bites when you're suddenly unleashed into the pool of job seekers and later admitted into the club of the employed. Time and money are suddenly very scarce or perhaps one or the other. This is not to say that jobs in Nigeria are not demanding or there is no tax. Nigeria has a whole different set of issues. For instance, the lack of power/electricity is so ingrained in our heads that a lot of the time nobody bats an eyelid when the lights go off at the airport during boarding or at the bank when the cashier is counting out your 1 million naira deposit. We don't even notice the hum of generators when they come on, I suspect that a lot of Nigerians have lost at least 20% of their optimum hearing because of the kind of sound pollution we are exposed to from generators at every corner.

I have to say that my main issue with Nigeria is not to do with infrastructure, or even the advent of a new kind of oppressor- the Boko- no, it is the people that work in government. What do I mean by this? I mean the average policeman on the street, the average lecturer at a 'higher institution' and the very worst of the lot- the NYSC official. These people operate on a very different wavelength from the average other person in Nigeria who is just happy that they are alive and have something to eat. This lot are frustrated, oppressive and act like they are doing you a favour by sitting behind their desks and discharging the duties for which they are paid. Yes, I know that the paychecks are as sporadic in these jobs as rain in the Sahara desert however that is no excuse to treat people the way they do. The average police officer at a checkpoint believes that he deserves a tip for stopping you randomly at a dangerous intersection and asking you to show him your fire-extinguisher, despite the fact that the non-possession of same is not a crime however because he has 'let you off' he truly deserves your money.

I think this is ridiculous and I can honestly say that I have never parted with money for these policemen except for the times when I have committed actual offences such as hitting a policeman's bike whist fleeing the scene of a crime i.e the red traffic light and driving with an expired driver's license. The second class of offenders are the lecturers, now I've heard stories of lecturers at Nigerian universities turning up to lectures as if these were their very own chieftaincy coronation ceremonies with students pleading for reversals of F grades in their wake,others begging to be registered for the class, sauntering in, hailing their fans and reading from prepared, time-constrained speeches.I have experienced for myself the lecturers at the Nigerian Law School addressing university graduates as if we were preschoolers who were recipients of a special fund for the hard-up and mentally handicapped.

The NYSC officials are simply in a class of their own. For the uninitiated, the NYSC scheme is the national Youth Service scheme which endeavours to unite Nigerians from various parts of the country for the purpose of voluntary(read:compulsory) service to our country. All the officials I encountered ranging from the so-called para-military camp, to the community development meetings to the liaison offices, bar none, are unanimously living in frustration. Now I don't know what they put in their water for them to sip on that renders them acutely frustrated and overbearing. This is a scheme that I don't believe any sane person would undertake were it not mandatory therefore it beats me why I would ask you to sign my discharge form- put pen to paper and make an endorsement- and you look me up and down as if I'm begging you for money. They treat you like an idiot, send you from pillar to post forgetting that you could be somebody tomorrow even if you're only a mere 'corper' today.

Okay let's leave the matter of a select few ill-mannered class of people. The majority of Nigerians are cheerful and just happy to be alive and well especially with all the life-threatening possibilities that could manifest at any time. If its not kidnappers it's armed robbers, if it's not ritualists its the latest cult in town- Boko Haram who I believe should abandon all pretext of being a religious group and announce what they really are- an anti-PDP/Goodluck Jonathan machinery of brute force and chaos. Seeing a new day in Nigeria is a cause for celebration in its own right. Despite all its shortfalls however, Nigeria has strength in numbers. Even only children have cousins, there is the advantage of neighbours, ex-primary school friends, work colleagues you actually have something in common with to socialise with at the end of a busy, frustrating day.

Weighing up all these advantages and disadvantages, you can probably see why its such a huge dilemma(or maybe not) deciding whether to pack my things and head back to my fatherland where I will be simultaneously in the bosom of my great Nigerian people and at risk of one or more threats from the afore mentioned evil Bokos or stay in the land of the free and independent and liberal and be at risk of fading into the background of the dull brick and mortar that is London most times having not made one single impact anywhere or left behind any sort of legacy. What are your thoughts?

Valentine's Day

It's amazing how some people can blow this one ordinary day into the most extraordinary day filled with so many expectations which their partner inevitably will fail to fulfill. There's a reason why February the 14th is not a public holiday- that's because there is no distinctive feature to it. Christ wasn't born on that day neither did any political figure get assassinated. Its just a pagan love festival that puts pressure on people to spend beyond their means and brave the subzero temperatures so that they won't be left out the day after when their girlfriends are gushing over what 5-star restaurant their better halves took them to or which country they visited in a chartered jet whilst under the impression they were only headed to the next city.

It would make for a very interesting thesis why one day should be singled out to prove to your partner that you love him/her. Surely this should be a gesture that is upheld everyday, or are the proponents of this Valentine's charade trying to say that one rose/chocolate/champagne-filled day makes up for several days of horrible treatment, staying out late and not paying your partner any attention whatsoever. If you really love your man or woman, they should be able to feel it constantly rather than have to wait till Valentine's day to be presented with the proof.

Okay, lets say that you are going to observe the non-public holiday that is 'vals day' as my fellow Nigerians refer to it, I don't see why the organization of the day has to carried out under a clandestine conditions. Er, what is wrong with actually making plans with your man because I guarantee you that close to 90 percent of men will not of their own volition go about making random reservations in restaurants or buying last minute tickets to Paris or the biggest expectation of all buy that engagement ring. Okay I recognize that I may have gone a step to far with that last one. Sorry, romantics, Febuary 14th may just be the day when that romantic proposal will arrive, I didn't mean to dash your hopes.

Surely it makes more sense to ask your man what he wants and he asks you what you want. Unless of course, he knows you so well that presenting that nuclear physics textbook he thought you needed wont be greeted by your eyes rolling into the back of your head then he can hazard an executive guess as to what sort of gift you would like. A lot of valentines days for women end in major disappointment when that Louis Vuitton bag does not materialize and they find themselves driving not towards the Michael Buble concert but to Mr Biggs/Macdonalds because of a lack of communication.

Come on girls, be proactive if it means that much to you. If your man has told you that he is not 'into' Vals, please believe him for the sake of maintaining a normal blood pressure. Because once the clock strikes 12.01 am on 15th February then if you haven't already got your dream gift then it doesn't really qualify as a Valentine's day present the next day or the day after if/when something resembling a gift finally arrives. Therefore if you really want to go to that afore-mentioned concert do yourself a favour and book those tickets way in advance when they are still at a reasonable price and do mention it to your boyfriend way in advance because it is not unknown for Man Utd and Chelsea to be playing on Valentines day and no he will not miss that match for you.

Also, if you know that you suffer internal bleeding if you simply do not receive a befitting gift on vals day, I suggest that you drop clear hints(read= specifications and dimensions) of the sort of present you want so that you don't become the pathetic and desperate self-purchaser of your own Valentine's gift in a bid to safe face! This is a true story by the way, a friend of a friend was said to have gone to a lot of trouble to fully stock up a hamper with chocolates, lingerie,wine, perfume, a teddy bear and a strongly-worded card just so she could watch her girlfriends turn green in envy when her package was delivered and subsequently start 'flashing/missed-calling' their toasters to call them back so they too could be seen to be not without a suitor. Now I'm not holding this against anyone at all, everyone has their own thresholds when it comes to public displays of appreciation so if you have to send yourself presents so that you can walk a little bit taller on February 15th then why not?

It would be so much easier though just to drop heavy hints about how important vals days is to you though. If the man really cares, he will file this is his medula and set 5 or 6 reminders on his phone for the days leading up to vals and deliver the goods. If not,despair not, it doesn't mean that he doesn't love you, it just means you can take back that expensive watch you bought for him and use the money to buy yourself a hamper and send to yourself at work. Problem solved!

Calling all girls!

What do men really want? How to please your man? How to look your best for your man? 5 secrets for snagging Mr Right. These are the sorts of headlines that scream at us from our so-called women's magazines on a daily,weekly and monthly basis. Its not like getting advice on how to get the best value-for-money mortgage or how to take care of your car to get the best mileage out of it. Men are not toys, pets or aliens. They are human beings, every girl has at least one in her life be it her father, brother or friend. They grew up on the same planet as us, were fed the same food as us, taught by the same teachers in school and slept on the same sorts of mattresses as we girls did. Why are the two sexes so different then and why do we need a virtual manual to ensure the best relationship with our men?

Even with all the manuals that we pore over trying to understand why men think and behave a certain way, we girls are still pushed to our wits end trying to crack the matrix which is the mind of a man.

Now here is the thing- women grow up wanting attention and affection whilst men are bred to seek reassurance and boosts to their egos. These might sound like two very similar concepts but I assure you they are different. In the case of women, we just need to feel wanted and needed just for the sake of it which is why a girl will happily keep 5 or 6 'toasters' running at the same time even though she isn't interested in any single one of them. Men on the other hand need reassurance that they are the man, that they know everything; they are pleased when we appear not to be able to change a 'simple' flat tyre or a light bulb so that their macho sides can come through to the rescue.

Where am I going with this? I, along with 49.9% of the female population on this planet, have given up trying to understand what goes on in men's heads let alone mould ourselves into what men want us to be. We have given up trying to understand why men are the way they are. The other 50.1% are still teenagers and don't really care.Why do they refuse to understand the importance of affection and attention in the life of a woman whether she be their grandmother, sister or wife?

Men are so quick to point out when a woman is nagging but what they fail to realize is that it would not be nagging if they went ahead and took directions the first time around. Okay, I will narrow down this write up to the specific context of boy-girl relations. A girl would typically call her man just because she wants to have a chat/hear his voice/vent about her day. When she finds that she's the one responsible for most of the outgoing calls between her and her man she will typically request that he try and call her regularly. Maybe, everyday. Hence, this man is forced to call her out of duty, he is merely fulfilling an obligation. Meaning he has no desire to actually speak to her everyday, he is only doing it because she asked him.Why is this always so?

Second case in point is the busy man. Statistics have claimed that women are better at multi-tasking than men. Be it the more general multi-tasking involving holding down a career, raising kids and keeping the home spotless or the more specific multi-tasking involving painting our toenails, talking on the phone and dancing to music. This is what I've read over and over again anyway. Why is it that when men get busy, you suddenly cannot find them anywhere with a torch light, they don't call their women for days on end and when you finally find their brake lights, they say 'I've been so busy, I haven't had the time to call you'. This is one excuse that I will never ever understand. How busy is busy, really?

Thirdly and finally, before this sounds like the post of a crazy blogger with relationship issues, why is it that men find it so hard to say what is on their minds? The most articulate and eloquent men suddenly go all taciturn in the middle of personal drama in their lives. They call you with a rough edge in their tone, sounding like you owe them money. When you ask what the matter is, you must have faulty psychic powers because he is fine and that edge you thought you heard in his voice is just a figment of your imagination. Weeks later when the problem has blown over, they insist that you should have been more patient and gentle in getting the problem out of them.

Sigh.....men are baffling and sometimes I really do think that they are from Mars. perhaps if we women started to act more like men then we would have peace of mind because they don't seem to have the same sorts of heartaches that we have concerning all the petty stuff. Just get busy and don't pick up your phone because it really is impossible to walk and talk at the same time isn't it. And next time something or someone really annoys us at work or at school or even in our father's houses, pick up the phone and call your man and mumble a word or two without telling him the REAL reason why we are angry.

NEVER HAD TO LOOK FOR LOVE

I have been reading a lot about girl-boy relationships lately, even written a couple of posts on the subject myself. The material on this topic will never run out and I will never get tired of reading about relationships, and issues concerning it nor writing about it. Now I don’t want to get too personal and write about my issues here but I would like to say a few things concerning a few things.

I do not think there is anything wrong with a woman going after a man. Notice I did not use the word ‘chasing’. If a man has indicated that he is not interested in you, as a grown- ass woman you swallow the rejection and move on. The way I see it, it’s like being turned down after a job interview. As a matter of fact, I intensely admire women who go after the man of their dreams- it shows great organizational skills and burning ambition to know what you want, identify it amidst a sea of prospects and pursue it. Yes, we all 'know'(read: have been told) that all men like the thrill of the chase but I don’t think any man would disqualify a woman as a potential simply because she called him first or responded to his text within 30 seconds. The key is subtlety.

Now I’m no relationship expert, neither do I have any qualifications in psychology or what not, but I am a woman and you don’t get to my age without learning a thing or two about boys, girls and chemistry. As far as I am concerned, we usually know within 5 minutes of close contact with another person whether they are someone who we can ever see ourselves being with or admit to being in a relationship with. Yes, just five minutes. For some people it’s the voice- a person’s voice speaks volumes about them. Some people claim that a deep, booming voice in a man indicates that he’s a natural leader and able to influence people and wield a position of authority. Hence any squeaky-voiced contenders may as well fall back.

I was reading a recent post by my good friend at http://thirdworldprofashional.blogspot.com, which sort of inspired my current post. She was talking about men who string you along but do not want to marry you; I had so much to comment on that I decided to simply consolidate all my comments here because a lot of it is not directly related.
A friend of mine was telling me about this amazing man who she ‘dated’ for 7 months but never introduced to any one as her boyfriend. The reason being that he did not embody those values which she believed her significant other should possess as standard. This had nothing to do with religion, ethnicity, looks or even financial standing. It had a lot to do with the fact that, she came from a family of strong, commanding men and this guy, ‘M’ was the complete opposite of these things. He was a bit too sensitive, obedient and forthcoming. A little bit too adoring, reverential and had a bit too much time for her. She was used to the man wearing the trousers in the relationship and the woman having to seek the man’s face and beg for his time. It wasn’t that M did not have a job, quite the contrary he was a manager in his workplace and oversaw 12 staff- why did he have to time to spend 4 hours of his working day speaking to her on the telephone?

Another friend of mine told me how she met this gorgeous tottie at a house party and decided that he was exactly her type. He had the rugged good looks, the quirky individual style that involved the wearing of a lot of peg-leg trousers and bowler hats as well as being a music producer of techno and electro in his spare time. Let no one ever call him the typical Nigerian boy. She set about trying to present herself in the most girl friend-ly way possible- no foul language in his presence, cooking 5-course meals, confiding her deepest darkest secrets to make him do the same. This guy being the non-typical Nigerian boy, told her straight up that he had decided within 5 minutes of meeting her that she was not girlfriend material. Ouch, some of you may say, but this isn’t the most tragic thing on earth. It just confirms my theory that if a guy wants to ’wife’ you or ‘girlfriend’ you, even an infinite number of burnt meals prepared for him, him being 22 years old and unemployed or how many small, petite and light skinned girls he’s dated in the past even though you are a tall Amazon goddess with hips to rival Oprah Winfrey will not change his mind( and vice versa).I do not know the rhyme or reason for this.

Seeing is believing they say and I had to move back to Nigeria for two and a half years to confirm for myself the heights which to which some women will go in order to secure a band around their finger. This particular point is inspired by a post on a blog I just recently started following- http://www.miafarradaily.blogspot.com/- where the author was ranting about thirsty women and market spoilers, laugh out loud funny but it did get me thinking. Thinking about women who simply do not want to be alone, the thought of singledom is as severe as a sentence of life imprisonment with hard labour. Now I am not here to preach all that nonsense about being secure in your own company and enjoying being single as I believe everybody has their own threshold for loneliness . Some people rely on affection and attention and would simply expire if they didn’t have a steady stream of pingers on their case( where did I read that men don’t bother to actually call women nowadays except you’re their girlfriend) whilst others are happy to chat with men one at a time until they make that connection. I won’t tell you which category I fall into!

The first category of women are those that always have a pot boiling on the back burner so they never run out of samples to pick from if push comes to shove. The second category of women are more laid back leaving everything to fate knowing that the more you look the less you see and sometimes you cannot really engineer these things. I do know one thing for sure and it is that our resumes cannot be carbon copies of each other’s. Different men are attracted to different things and it is not necessarily the fact that you don’t wear short and tight dresses and have never stepped into a nightclub in your life nor that you are an almost-Michelin-starred chef and can whip up a three course meal with a blindfold on and one hand in your pocket that will make a man take you seriously. Sometimes these things are just your luck(destiny/fate/God's will/karma- delete according to your faith).
PS: I’m no saint but I’ve never had to look for love.

10 years older

I remember when my mum was 45 and I said to her 'mum wow you look so good even though you're almost 50', meaning this as a compliment.She turned to me with a look of steel and said 'even 49 is very far from 50'.And today,12 years later I myself have come to realise that this is the gospel. Last September I returned to the UK to start my masters programme in International law. For some reason, I imagined that I was going to have an identical experience to my crazy 3 years as an undergraduate in London.Nothing could be further from the truth!
Back in those days, I was known as a party-rider, and this was before the expression was patented by 9ce in his song. I was partying 2 weeks before my exams,the night before a 9am shift at work. My middle initial was S for spontaneous. I had no idea what the notion of planning entailed.Schedules were a foreign word, I never experienced tiredness and if anyone's swagger needed to be gingered, I was the go-to person. The library was a social spot for us in our first and second years, in fact it was so bad that my friend Adanna used to wear a disguise in the library just so I could not find her and come and distract her.
Fast forward to 3 years after my graduation from university, and 18 months after I wrote my last examination at the Nigerian law school.I am a post graduate student and even 24 year olds are positively new borns as far as I'm concerned.I'm consumed with a burning ambition like I have never had in my life. I curse my laid back attitude whilst I was at uni and I really wish I'd done better in my 1st and 2nd years.
If only I could get into a time machine, I would go back to my summers of lounging at home, channel surfing and party hopping and do an internship. I would have devoted more time to developing my writing, penning that novel that I've dreamt about authoring since I was 10 years old.I would have sought out and read all the literary classics from Jane Eyre to Things Fall Apart to Wuthering Heights.I would have done more travelling and explored this big wide world around me which I only started doing in 2007.I'm proud to say I now have 7 countries under my belt!
My little cousin who's 17, started university in Ghana last September and the last time I went out clubbing with my flatmate in Nottingham, I was easily 8 years older than everybody on the dance floor. I could not get myself to move my body, it was a parody. Whenever someone calls me to go out, I look first at my warm bed and then at my delicious half-read novel and I answer negative. I have outgrown those days of grooving left right and centre. I am a job-seeker,I am one-half of an adult relationship, I am an invitee to the 10 year reunion at my High school and I am currently receiving queries from my grandparents about whether they will be alive when I walk down the aisle.
I think it's important to recognize that life comes in stages though. I enjoyed my youth, I tried everything at least once, I discovered myself, I changed my ideology oh at least 5 times, I made some friends, fought some and lost some. I lived on my own, then moved in with my parents. I lived abroad then lived in Nigeria, made my own money and then taxed my parents. I met the wrong boy and then met the right man.Life is a metamorphosis, we just have to embrace the next stage.

Love is all around us...or not?

Nobody has ever successfully defined love to the satisfaction and agreement of the world at large. Someone once said it is a feeling that you feel that you've never felt before. That could be any number of other emotions though...even hate.

People 'fall out of' love too. This, I've never particularly understood. If love is the emotion felt by a mother towards her child then love is unconditional and pure, right? There isn't any one thing the child does to earn the love. A child can earn his mother's trust or respect by conducting himself in a certain way but apparently you do not get to experience what a mother's love feels like until you become a mother yourself.I guess this automatically expels all the men in the world from experiencing this particular brand of love. And all the women who never have children.

The other kind of love that I am aware of is between a man and a woman. The one between Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic that made him risk his life in the face of certain death by drowning to go and rescue her from her flooded cabin. Or was it the other way around? This kind of love is fierce( I've been told), it literally burns a hole through your soul and has a lot to do with the physical too. How then can we tell the difference between love and lust? Is lust a certain kind of love?

Then there's this other theory about 'love grows'. Back in the days, our grandparents and some people's parents said to them, there was nothing like dating or getting to know someone. It was really about finding a suitable man or woman and getting married. The love was sure to follow if the woman cooked the food in the right way and gave him kids of the right sex. Conversely if the man had a sustainable source of income and paid the brideprice upfront (no credit), all the boxes were ticked.The rationale behind this was that you do not stay with a person for 10, 20 years and not find something to love about them. We modern people today call this convenience. The last resort for the people who get to a certain age and think: 'that's it, the search is over'. See 'tick tock , now is the time' post.

Is love an emotional or a physical feeling? We're all familiar with pain but that too, it seems, is psychological. If you stick a pair of scissors into the leg of a paralysed person 5 times they do not feel it. Is there still pain but they don't feel it? Or is there actually no pain at all? I wonder if love is a bit like that, you close your eyes, put up a wall, disqualify the person but it's still there...only that you can't feel it.