KENYAN AND CRAZY

Someone asked me the other day whether I am ever reminded of past events using scents. Well the truth is that , and I am sure I am not alone in this but I reminisce through all five senses.  Sometimes through a sixth sense, I am definitely not alone in that one. On a serious note though, today I shall elaborate on a few things that I use to self stimulate reminiscent  thoughts.  My most useful tool so far has been soul music. Do you remember the times in your life that you were truly happy. I'm not talking about some short instance where you got a new toy and you were happy but you got bored of it the next day thing , I mean a state of complete surrender to joy. I am pretty much not happy anymore, unhappy job, unhappy town and not being constantly able to spend a day with a loved one at will takes a toll on you. In order to keep myself from jumping over the deep end I try to take my mind back to those joyful moments in my past.  I do it by listening to music, sound

Ever seen that guy who sits in his car and screams out load? Yeah he is stressed and  needs an outlet thus he screams. There are people out there who let stress eat them from the inside out and I tell you now, you won't wish away the burning feeling inside you. You have to let it out. Buy a baseball bat and start beating some walls or go for a 2 km swim after work. Anything to release some pressure.  If you honestly don't do that then you end up that guy talking to himself..... Don't let stress eat you up, get a coping mechanism

Loneliness has always been a a friend of mine, way back when my thoughts were my own and very few people knew of my very existence.  Today the loneliness is back and it's back with a vengeance. "So what you upto tonight?" Asked John knocking me out of my deep thoughts. "Nothing much , got some writing to do and the words are at my finger tips and I don't want to lose them." I replied. John has always wanted the best for me, sort of like the big brother I never had. He opened up his doors to me this time when Mary threw me out for the first time. Who is Mary you ask. Where to start about Mary, well she was my first love and the first person who knew me behind the curtain I raised for most people. What did I do to get kicked out...  "STOP DAYDREAMING DUDE!!!" John screamed while shaking me. I hadn't noticed I had just wondered off. "Okay Bro,  since you are determined to stray my thoughts what do you have in mind?" I said hoping he

Expensive drinks and high cover charges, that's the price I pay for a hassle free night in a club with great ambience. A great night to me is rated against some distinct markers. Company,  choice of beverage and location.  Company ,if it's not your usual crew, has to be put together systematically to ensure you don't end up with troublemakers but with more fun loving and well behaved people.  The choice of beverage is just dictated by location and company. House parties should have more hard liquor than beers while the club scene requires more portability with regards to cans and bottles for the more agile of this generation. The last and usually most important, location location location. What goes into a location; distance,  cost, ratio of the sexes,  neighborhood and the music. If you are already used to certain clubs then the only variable present is the sexes and music.  Unless you are bringing your own company then the ratio doesn't bother you much but the music

All movie fanatics have watched what I would refer to as a great work of art starring Leonardo Di Caprio called "The Aviator". The film gives a look into the ups and downs of inventor, movie director, billionare etc Howard Hughes. At 22 years old and having inherited his parents fortune, he started directing a movie known as Hells angels. Most movie buffs know that it usually takes an average of one year for a movie from filming to release, Howard took over 3 years and almost 4 million dollars( which according to dollartimes.com translates to almost 52 million dollars in 2014). This doesn't sound like much when you factor in that most blockbusters today are made with a budget of at least 100 million dollars but bear in mind he financed this from his own money and was part of every decision that was made. That kind of budget was actually unheard of in those days. One of the most interesting decisions that he made during filming was waiting almost 8 months for the right se

You know that moment that you spent 10 minutes on hold during a customer care call and the music was annoying? Yeah, that moment when for some reason your internet isn't working fine and you need someone to fix it. After what felt to you like an eternity someone finally picks up and you at that moment realized your trials are far from over,you can't understand half the words coming through the receiver. I am sure I am not alone when I say shit like that happens. It's not like the person isn't speaking English but he may be speaking out if his nose..... So what do I mean by accent correction, well customer care is a service that is present in any and all companies. In order to be in business you need customers and to ensure they stay your customers then you have to give them the best care. Sometimes all a customer needs is someone to guide them through something or someone to vent to. Ones tones, pitch and even body language on the phone can change the message you want

Money power respect, that's what we need in life. Sounds like the chorus for a song done by the lox over ten years ago right. Well it is and it does ring true everyday. Let's have a social experiment, look at where you are sitting right now reading this. I'm sitting at a coffee shop draining the free WiFi and spending the lowest amount I can on a drink. You could be sitting in a bus reading this on your way home or lounging in your living room.Anywhere we are ,we either have or wish we had the trifecta that is "MONEY POWER RESPECT". I cant teach you how to get any of the things above but i can try to look at the negative effects of the most sort out one of the three. Cold heart cash. When I look around this coffee shop today, i see a couple of people tired from work and in no hurry to get home. I see some people who just might have more money than sense and have just come here as a stop over to the next place as their party night starts up. We all

Creativity and talent, the kind of things that don’t get plucked off trees but have to be nurtured to grow like trees. Talent is usually spread out the same way as a planter tosses seed, it can land on anyone. Your friend may have the talent to paint and the creativity to create a never before seen or thought of piece of art and you may have the talent to reproduce it but no creativity to make something new of your own. That should never bring you down. So ever heard stories of great people who were supposedly so good at what they did, people claimed that the devil gave them that talent in exchange for their souls. Jimi Hendrix, one of the greatest electric guitar players of all time, once supposedly played his guitar until his fingers bled. He was a very driven and talented guitar player but people claimed sold his soul in exchange for his great talent. I would say that isn’t true because I believe in talent, I may not have the talent that I want but I do have the talent

Ever been told that,  im sure you have because we as the slaves to the new world order aren’t allowed to express how we feel. Woke up in the morning and the rain was pounding away, trudged through the mud and spent two hours in public transport traffic. Got to the office and the first piece of mail I receive is a note from the bank stating that my house will be foreclosed on. Got reamed by my supervisor for being late and he wouldn’t listen to my reasons. Keep smiling old boy, we must not drop the office mood. Some clients bring complaints about a product and the people in charge of it are being defensive and thus I am stuck between an angry client and unreasonable colleagues. Smile and wave old boy just smile and let it melt away. Afternoon drags on, i see what’s out the window. A green well manicured lawn. The feeling in the office is causing a headache and a tight knot in my belly,  how do I face my family tonight.  It wasn’t any fault of theirs that I couldn’t plan for a bad fin

I was born in a period where music was slowly moving from being an art form to a commercial vehicle. For those not familiar with the term, it basically means that people stopped doing what the popuation loved to doing what made the most money.  Frankly speaking the music that everyone loves should be the same as the music that pays right? Not really, beautiful music is not commercially successful in the short term but people will listen to it for decades to come. So what am I saying with regards to the music we have today, it's noise. Every now and then you can get a beautiful sound that gets you feeling great about your day but nonetheless they are usually lost in all the noise.  The younger generation, cant believe I'm not in that group anymore, would beg to differ with my characterization of their favorite music. Let me break down using something they are told to do when they grow up, you are better off working smart than working hard. Here is a perfect example, in the

I'd like first to start by saying that I have not studied political science or any other humanity that would give me the required credentials to lecture anyone on this subject. I am, however, a human being who has lived among people both rich and poor and thus the opinions I have here are purely due to observation and a love for change. A day in the life of one with very little usually means a day of hard labor and disappointment. For those with great perseverance then have the upper hand but for those who do not have strong backs, quick minds or even the spirit to wake up in the morning then it is hell on earth. They say that there are only 24 hours in a day and this is no different between the rich and the poor. They however do not factor in how many man hours the rich can buy and the rate in which they are buying it at. That should be the actual difference between the two categories of people. No one and I mean absolutely no one is free from selling their time, the president

A little fault with our generation today is, we don't read as much as we should. I know the story of romeo and juliet but I have never read the play, I know of someone who was called Confucios but I cannot recall a single word of wisdom.  Its with this premise i point out a sentence from a famous Nicholas Cage Movie (Lord Of War). 'Evil prevails when good men fail to Act. Poetic as these words are, I cannot base my life or career behind them. Most of us give ourselves the title of good men but we probably wouldn't quit our jobs because the company we work for employs slave labour in harvesting its crops, we wouldn't boycott the purchase of a product because some kids in china are in sweatshops making them for meagre wages etc.  Don't think, not for one second that a person in authority would like the status quo to change. This is simply because it's either profitable or more comfortable for them. How many politicians have been elected to lead certain areas and l

When a new television series comes out the guys producing it want to know whether its a hit or they perform what they call test screenings. Simple enough they put together people representing different demographics and get their feedback. Well I did the exact same thing with the topic of today and It was a unanimous scream of disgust and disbelief. Simply put ,it caught the attention of all the people I tested it on. Just to give my topic a little background i will start by explaining a simple known theory known as "Butterfly effect". If you have watched the movie then you know what i mean. If you haven't watched it or run into it at some point then  , In  chaos theory , the  butterfly effect is the sensitive dependency on initial conditions in which a small change at one place in a deterministic  nonlinear system  can result in large differences in a later state. In a nutshell, a butterfly could flap its wings in one part of the world and this small action could trigge

I watched a documentary some time ago by a member of the Johnson and Johnson family called "Born Rich", if you are fascinated by how the top 1% lives then you should definitely check it out. Coming from wealthy family, Jamie Johnson , wanted to understand how wealth affects the children of the billionaires and millionaires of today. He interviewed his fellow wealthy friends and other ordinary people to get a feel of it all. I won't regal you with the details but the common theme that I personally gleaned from the whole documentary is that rich people do not like talking about their money. The group of wealthy individuals who have passed down their wealth from one generation to the next especially do not like discussing money seem overly offended when the subject is brought up.  So what does that have to do with daily life, well the top 1% exist everywhere and a better way to explain those stats is comparison of wealthy people. It's a simple truth that the United State

I just got a new job that is sales in nature , my previous job was an I.T. position which gave me a chance to compare the differences between humans and machines. A machine is supposed to be predictable ,with a particular set of inputs you get a particular set of outputs. A human is supposed to be unpredictable where one group wants to go left there is this guy who always wants to go right. However, I realized that machines can be at some point unpredictable while the humans vice versa. A human will be predictable in that every little situation you bring to him will only flow with your idea if and only if it is of some benefit to them. That brings me to the basis of this topic today, number in is you and your immediate interests and issues if importance. With that being said, I would love to burst the bubbles of certain individuals who seem to rely too much on other people. If you are an adult and probably approaching middle age, you are of three different levels of life : accomplis

Ever watched the movie sarafina, well my mum and I watched it 3 times in cinema when I was barely 5 years old. Since then I have either kept a VHS tape or DVD nearby just in case I want to watch it. For those who know all the lines by heart, remember the day that Miss Masumbuga's ( Whoopie Goldberg's character) class needed to come up with an idea for the school show and she walked in late, she screamed ' Better late than never'. That question came in an exam that I hadn't read for when I was just a kid and I remembered the answer. Who gave you the talk? You know, about the birds and the bees etc. Well I don't exactly remember the actual show but I did learn quite a bit from 7nth heaven. I didn't have to go through the traumatic experience of getting the talk from my parents. Who taught you how to tie a tie? My father tried to teach me but I kept tying fat notes. Remember that scene in true lies where Arnold Schwarzenegger was tying his tie in the mirror

I am visibly shocked that I had to drive 500 kilometers away from my beloved city to realize this. Most people speak the term ' Mombasa Raha' but in reality  Nairobi people have more fun. Just to put everything in context, it's the middle of the night and I'm sitting on the beach at a 5 star hotel facing the ocean. I am here on business but the last 2 hours have been the most fun I have had in weeks. I stated that nairobians have more fun and coast is the most fun. This is primariy because nairobians are a set of hardworking individuals, the ones that I relate myself with anyway, and those that work hard play hard too.  I heard a story today from a friend of a friend that I realized would help in understanding this stuff, the gentleman in question would be fondly known as Mark. Mark was in school in a Nairobi university but one day took a trip to Mombasa. While here he juts fell in love with the place and decided to transfer his credits here. He has thus been here f

A nairobians life is never easy, we don't have trees where we can just pluck fruits. No river nearby where you can just bathe and fetch drinking water, everything is for sale so the lazy don't make it. Someone once told me that I couldn't hack it in the rural area and I said he couldn't hack it in the city.   I ain't going to pretend that rural life is a cake walk as long as no one chastises me when I'm out blowing off steam. I found these lemons when I was born, so lemonade me bitch.  Back to the matter at hand, there are a few million people in Nairobi and a good number of them are not gainfully employed. This basically means that they live extra stressful lives for below average pay. When an object is compressed (stressed) without an avenue to release then it explodes. Thus I present to you the concept that nairobians know all too well " work hard play hard". With that concept in mind I would like to introduce to you an ideal nairobians week.

People say that there are only two groups of people, the haves and the have nots. Everyone wants to be the former but most eventually land on the latter. I today found myself among the haves who had closed out a road to showcase their mega beast bikes. The have nots on matatus or on foot are trying to get to their various destinations but are inconvenienced by the large number of haves who seem oblivious of all this. It's a story so old that people try as much as possible not to scream it in public. This is my story from the nairobian perspective and it all started about 80 years ago.  In those times the haves consisted of the white colonialists and their pets, home guards. The have nots on the other hand consisted of the illiterate, don't want to be bothered towing the line Africans who had their land stolen from them. Amongst these illiterate people some wisdom sprouted, this wisdom was either forced out in the form of forcing at least one child from the homestead to go