Yearly Archives: 2019

Creative Writing, Photography, Travel

Memories of New Orleans.

New Orleans, or NOLA or ‘The Big Easy’ is the home of Jazz.

After leaving New York, I visited Atlanta, Houston and Dallas. I have homeboys in those cities and looked forward to some R&R. I had planned on visiting the Johnson Space Center in Houston, it being the 50th anniversary of mankind’s visit to the moon. But I was sidetracked by a few Naija owambes. Truth be told, it was nice to eat some Naija food after weeks of oyinbo food. But photography-wise none of those three cities were particularly interesting to me.

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Photography, Travel

Memories of New York.

So, right. To Uncle Sam.

After junketing through Europe, I flitted across the Atlantic to Gotham. The first city on my US jaunt.

New York may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but I absolutely love it in the city. Unpretentious, vibrant and doesn’t give a rat’s ass (which is ironic, given the huge number of rats in the city). New York wasn’t created for tourists; tourists were created for New York. In Gotham, everyone has places to be and things to do, and if you get in their way, well, you’re gonna know about it.

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Creative Writing, Travel

My Europe waka.

Sometime last year, I watched Christiane Amanpour interview Ronen Bergman on his book, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations. In the interview,Bergman talked about how the Mossad (Israel’s CIA), the Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security organ) and AMAN (Israel’s military intelligence) went about aiding perceived enemies of Israel cash in their chips early.

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Creative Writing, Travel

My Europe waka – Amsterdam.

So, lets talk about Amsterdam. 

If you are reading this blogpost, chances are you probably read the earlier post that led to it. However, if you didn’t or haven’t, it might be a good idea to. The link is here. 

Amsterdam was the first point of call on my European jaunt. I had never been to Amsterdam although I had flown KLM severally. I was therefore looking forward to seeing the city.

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Creative Writing, Travel

My Europe waka – Berlin.

So, here we are. Berlin.

The second city on my European jaunt. The first was Amsterdam. You can read about that here.

After spending two middling days in Amsterdam, I took the Deutsche Bahn IC train from the Amsterdam Centraal station to Hannover, where I changed unto the ultra-modern ICE Sprinter train to Berlin Hauptbanhof. Comfortable and fleet those ICE Sprinter trains. The whole journey took about 6hr 40m.

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Creative Writing, Travel

My Europe waka – Munich.

Guard post at Dachau Concentration Camp.

So Munich was the third city I was visiting on my 9-day, 5-city Jewish-persecution-in-Europe jaunt. You can read about my visit to Berlin here and the visit to Amsterdam here. 

My chariot from Berlin Hauptbanhof to Munich Hauptbanhof was again the ultra-fast ICE Sprinter service. I clocked that train doing over 200km/hr at periods. We got to Munich in just under four hours. 

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Creative Writing, Travel

My Europe waka – Budapest.

So, on to Central Europe. To Budapest.

Just so you know, Hungarians hate it when you refer to Hungary as being in Eastern Europe. They are in C-E-N-T-R-A-L-E-U-R-O-P-E!

My train from Munich to Budapest was the Euronight sleeper train Kalman Imre. It leaves Munich Hbf at 23:00pm to arrive Budapest Keleti station at about 9 am. I’d booked a berth in a 4-bed couchette for a comfortable night sleep. Myself and a pleasant Swiss guy turned out to be the only residents of the cabin.

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Creativity, Innovation

Talent: if you haven’t got it, you haven’t got it.

Maths is a fraud. Centuries of exaltation and glorification are misplaced. Or why has a discipline that underpins all calculations been unable to come up with the formula for success? The equation to be oprah-rich? What’s the use of Chaos Theory, Euler’s Polyhedra Formula or the Fibonacci Sequence if it can’t tell you how to get some moolah into your pocket? We’ve been had by the likes of Archimedes, John Nash and señor Pythagoras. 

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Creativity, Photography

The amazing places passion takes you.

 

Bros for life. Farouk and Ibro.

Howdy good folks! Trust January hasn’t met you in penury.

Oh, I like the sound of that! ‘January and penury.’ “ Save ye for the days to come lest reproach come upon thee like penury in January.” It’s a corny rhyme but I don’t care. It came in the moment, a gift from the Muse. I expect the expression to start making the rounds around pulpits and podiums soon. Remember you heard it first from moi!

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Uncategorized

Sweethearts, if you keep your pants on, no one is going to be nicking them.

On my way home yesterday, I was listening to Classic FM. I heard, a rather preposterous report: an epidemic of female underpants theft in Nigeria. Grand theft of what we call pata or p-a-i-n-t in Yoruba.
 
Yup. Female pants are being purloined, shanghaied, abducted and misappropriated all over the land. This making away with underpants are sometimes surreptitious. At other times it is brazen and at gunpoint: “your pant or your life!”

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