Intricately Me

I know i havent blogged for a while, and it really isnt for lack of trying.. i just haven’t felt up to it. I have wanted to, things happen to me and i write paragraphs out in my head, i just dont go and type them out. I have a few blog entries that i wrote previously but they almost sound like they were written out for someone else… they lack personality you know, almost like they were generic journal entries so im not posting them i figured i would just come have coffee and ramble on about… well… STUFF!

I went and watched Terminator today… [dont laugh i know im a tad bit late, i know you watched it a while back but im in Africa give me a break... Men here dont think movies are a cool date trick, they take you for drinks instead that has better results.] I think it was quite cool. I was on the edge of my seat for the most part and i kept covering my face and peeking through my fingers but it was cool. I don’t like that my hero dies but such is life right… It got me thinking though, do we like movies like terminator because they are cool action movies or because they represent an extreme view of how things could be worse?

I went for grown and sexy last Friday and i was surprised at how many cute guy/girls there are in Nairobi. I felt like i was clubbing in the states all over again… you would too! i mean i walked in and everyone had designer clothes on… I was under dressed! different perfumes no B.O.. it didn’t feel or smell like Kenya at all! Its nice to see that things are changing the moral fiber of the country at least.

The smell of rain makes coming back home worth it… but other than the small little things that i love this country for, im frustrated! I don’t like how Kenya runs. I mean why do i have to know someone to get a job? why do i get into places without being stopped while my friends get stopped because of my lighter skin? Why do men in this country put prices on a womans’ head? why do people here have the misconception that being serious is shown in the way you dress? Why do people lie so much?

see!!! i knew it!

Its raining and i am all alone, hmmm things should have changed by now! I should have a fiancee, i should have my son back, i should have a job, i should be in school, i should be well on the way to greatness by now right? nope… not for me…and since i havent blogged for a while, i wanna blog about everything all at once and im chewing mind lock… Its my best friends birthday but he is in Cali and i think that friendship is onesided…and my girl is in town but im broke… im still jobless… well i dont have my ideal job, I got a job writing articles for a magazine and they want me to write on women with interesting careers, but women here are shy! so i seem to be hitting walls with that one. Things are basically not working out for me. Someone said to me today that ‘the darkest hour comes before dawn’ really? its been dark for a while now…im not sure KPLC are gonna fix those lights… not sure God is listening… not sure at all…

today is under construction dont mess with today...you could come back tomorrow, but wait! maybe we wont have finished constructing today so tomorrow... will never come!

Im back in Kenya and who would have thought that it would take me this long or perhaps even longer to readjust… I cant seem to fit back in, maybe its all in my mind but the system here is so alien to me. Some days I cant even understand how this place runs through all the chaos. I don’t know what or who to take seriously.

There are a few things that I think this country really needs, basic general education on things like credit… Free health care, no let me rephrase that free good health care….More opportunities need to be created for the poor… Ngo’s need to shift their stance from providing aid to providing people with solutions to help themselves. People need to be educated on their rights and on taxes and on retirement options, life insurance, pensions, auto insurance… Someone needs to map out this city so that people can have individual addresses… there is just a whole lot that needs to be put in place so that people can be more efficient.

The media could shift their sights from gossip and pay more attention to educating people on some of these things…In fact the media perhaps could help point out areas that need improving and then point some of the companies that could be instrumental in changing some of these things in that general direction… call it public police-ing.

I love this country but it can be very frustrating… Hopefully I will find a place where I too can be useful lets cross our fingers J

I have been on a blogging sabbatical for a while now but that has been quickly changed by my annoying travel agent. This guy reserved a flight for me months ago for Wednesday the 6th of august… so on Monday i decide to check on my flight find out how many bags i can take and so on…and there is no reservation under my name!! now you can imagine my shock! i almost had a freaking heart attack… I call my travel agent but its late and he does not pick up so i leave him a dozen messages and call it a night. The next day he tells me that he had in fact made a reservation but the airline canceled it because they didn’t have a copy of my passport…i call bullshit!! but i dont say that, i just accept his explanation and ask him to re-book the flight… he re-books it for earlier on Wednesday and he makes my layovers two whole days… I mean like my flight is going from San Francisco to JFK/Newyork to Dubai to Kenya but his ticket has me in Newyork for 26 hours!!! Im tempted to curse but im going to restrain myself… then after that it has me in the Dubai airport for 24 hours and then i get home Saturday afternoon… That guy is a amazing!

Anyway since im now at the San Francisco airport and my flight is delayed and i have to pay to get on the net i decided this might be a cool pastime… blogging about my trip that is. So i get to the airport and i go to the wrong terminal and i dont have any change so i cant buy a luggage cart so i struggle with my two huge suitcases and my two carry ons and ignore the stares from people in the airport…i go to the wrong terminal and im told that i will have to lug my luggage across to domestics [im going to Kenya dammit does that sound like a domestic flight?] and im told to hurry because the gates are about to close. I run across the airport all frazzled… my bags keep toppling over and hurting my hands…they are heavy and bulky and i have too many of them it impairs my movement. At this point i dont even care about the stares, i know what i look like and i dont care.. i just want to make it for my flight. I get to the United airlines counter and the chick asks me for my boarding pass…hmmm thats what i forgot… she makes me line up behind a thousand other people. I give up, there is no way im going to make that flight but maybe just maybe i can make it onto the next one on standby. I finally get to the counter and she checks my bags in, here i am thinking that i wont see those huge cumbersome bags again till Nairobi until she says ‘please remember to pick up your luggage at JFK’ IM SO PISSED AT THIS POINT… i try and tell her my travel agent story but she wont have it so i give up, i figure i will catch customer service and talk to them… this hater mama can just take a chill pill. She gestures vaguely and shows me where security should be. I move on.

I get to security and im still annoyed about that chick and the bags, im trying to calm down.. they check my boarding pass once and i begin to line up… there are a thousand people in front of me…so i focus on the wall follow the person in from of me methodically. i get to the second boardingpasscheckingguy and he flags me!!! what!!! im thinking racial profiling or maybe i should have put some make up on or this guys is just a plain freakin ^$%*^^#E$%^@!!!! i swear it was racial profiling. They pull me aside take all my stuff…they put my stuff in brown tubs as opposed to the usual grey ones, then they make me take of my jacket and walk into some sort of x-ray air machine which xrays you and pats you down with air, then they make me sit down….Im am seeing and breathing red at this point. Then they make me sit down in a corner between an Asian lady and a Cuban guy and they start checking my bags. They empty my laptop bag and im tempted to yell ‘be careful with that!’ then they empty my carry on… ‘i shouldnt have put that in there!’ i think, as the lady picks up an object and looks at it… the asian and the cuban turn and look at me and i almost want to laugh because i can only imagine what they are thinking hehehe… they do a drug screen of my bag get the big dog to sniff at it and then they finally let me go. Phew… Now i have to worry about my flight. Its already 11.23 so i dont think im going to be on that flight it must have left already… so i rush to the customer service counter and i ask the guy POLITELY [coz im thinking maybe i looked at someone badly and to punish me they flagged me for that freaking security check] and i tell him im late for my flight… He tells me the plane is delayed… i wanna punch him lol hehehe what a morning… Now i have to go deal with emirates The saga shall continue

So my mum is reading the secret apparently its a great book and it will change my life. It basically tells you what the ’secret’ to life is and it gives you pointers on how positivitely will influence your day to day life and make an impact on your future. Then a friend of mine is reading ‘A new earth’ this book apparently explains why people are the way they are, and it helps you understand yourself in order to change, she is also reading or rather she has also read ‘why men love bitches, from doormat to dream girl’this book is actually quite interesting, it gives you insight into how men think and it helps you learn how to act in order to keep a man.

Here is my two cents on self help books, i think that if you are going to read a self help book you need to realize that its not set in stone, i mean the concepts might be great and all but you shouldn’t close your mind off to everything else… Take a little from it and move on but don’t try one self help book decide it doesn’t work for you and then jump to the next one and forget all about the last one. I don’t think life has a formula, if it did then there would be one large self help book/encyclopedia and not the thousands that are on Amazon right now. These days self help books are almost like a religion… i mean i called my mum to complain about my immigration issues and she said ‘Njeri dont say negative things, say positive things and positive things will come to you… you should read ‘the secret’ Now maybe its just me but that sounded alot like ‘Njeri you should read your bible… pray to God and everything will come to you’… A few months later the secret was long forgotten and my mother had shifted her focus to a new book, so you will have to excuse me for being wary of self help books but from watching people who read them they couldn’t possibly have all the answers.

I do think that there are some very well written self help books out there like my personal favorite for years has been ‘48 rules of power’ by Robert Greene... In this book he gives you 48 rules and he details them and gives you real life instances of where successful entrepreneurs used these rules and made millions… perhaps i like this book because it describes how people rose from rags to riches and perhaps i like it because he talks about the Rockerfellers, Donald Trump and how they rose from nothing… Either way its an involving read. Another book i like, which i think encompasses all the rules of governance out there is ‘The Art of War’ by Sun Tzu, I would do this book a disservice if i tried to describe it…get it, read it! That is if you haven’t already..

I like Autobiographies but a friend of mine told me the other day that i have a particular kind of genre that i like reading and i assume everybody else does too… perhaps thats true in fact it probably is so i will give you some of the best books that i have read in this particular genre… ‘Sowing the mustard seed’ by Museveni…hmm thats weird this is the first book i haven’t been able to find on Amazon, i wonder why that is…‘Freedom at midnight’ by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins this is about how India and Pakistan got divided and how they achieved their independence, it sheds a lot of light on how the English influenced their colonies. ‘The long walk to Freedom’ by Nelson Mandela i think everyone has read this book, if you haven’t get it and read it. Thats all i can think of for right now but i will rack my brain trying to think of more books till then Adios!

PJ O’Rourke - “If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.”

Jungfrau is this book i was reading… Its a compilation of short stories for the Caine prize for African writing and its one of the best books i have read in a while. I would suggest that anyone who is inspired by great writing should read it… I love African writing… from the days of ‘Things fall apart’ by Chinua Achebe and the ‘ The river between’ by Ngugi wa Thiongo to things more recent such as ‘Half of a Yellow Sun‘ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and ‘The infidel’ by Ayan Hirsi Ali which i have mentioned several times before, African writing inspires me. I remember when i was still in Kenya i liked talking about the intellectual societies in Africa [here is an instance] and i was always emphasizing on how well people spoke and wrote, of course back then i was very naive and i had no idea what i was talking about, but looking back its great works like these that made me think that an intellectual societies had to exist, after all with so many great minds in Africa there had to be some sort of outlet or channel through which they would get to express their ideas.

Now maybe its just me but doesn’t it seem like the best writing or perhaps the most outstanding books come from every where but America? I have always wondered about that… is it perhaps that school systems in third world countries are more rigorous than school systems here? Is it because we read more? Is it because our native languages have more expression so that challenges us to string words together more fluidly? Im sure alot of people will not agree with me, but to me it seems to me like this is true… Look at books like ‘Brother im dying’ by Edwidge Danticat from Cuba or ‘Kiffe Kiffe tomorrow’ by Faiza Guene from France… all these are exemplary examples of contemporary, well written books from elsewhere [not America]…but then again i am biased when you stay here for long enough you start looking for anything that reminds you of Africa…

I am seriously considering writing a book but i have no idea where to start so if you guys have any ideas let me know… Otherwise feel free to show me Examples of good writing from America, i am talking about fiction here of course but along the lines of the books mentioned above…I beg you to challenge me! Of course, if you have any other great reads that you would like to share let me know, Im always a sucker for a good read…

So this weekend i wanted to do something different, a friend of mine who is incidentally from Zimbabwe stumbled on this house music party… We decided it would probably be interesting to go see and we assumed that it would be chilled….It was not chilled but it was definitely fun…
A night filled with good music and continuous break-dancing…it was different and very interesting… My pictures may leave alot to be desired but they were the best i could do…

Did i mention how much i love this show…I think you should watch it. Take a minute out of your busy schedule and have a giggle…or rather roll on the floor laughing

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

I wanted to go for the Gay parade this weekend and take pictures but i didn’t get to it so im sorry guys… This year’s parade would have been Particularly interesting because they legalized gay marriage in California…However here are some popular images from San Fran…

The courthouse…



This is one of the coldest cities in the world. Im not joking…. In the summer you still have to wear a jacket. But it is one of the most amazing cities i have been to. As i mentioned before i live in Oakland but Oakland is only a stone throw away from San Francisco. To be more precise; its a 15 minute drive. Here are some of the images that i will miss… I love this bridge… This is the bay bridge… It joins the East Bay [oakland and other places] With San francisco…

This is the Golden gate Bridge…

This is San Fran at night… it beautiful…

Now its final, i am actually leaving the States and going back home. So i thought i would share some of the places i have been. I’m going to start with Oakland because i lived here for a year before i moved to New York and i am back here now. Thats actually quite the cliche. Oakland is 15 minutes east from San Francisco… Its a lovely town, spanning across 78 miles or so, Oakland is one of the oldest towns in the states. Its known for its particularly good weather, i beg to differ though because having come from Africa nothing beats our weather but Oakland seems to have a balance, its not too hot in the summer and not too cold in the winter as compared to other states. They have a little gentrification project, the mayor is trying to get more people to move to Oakland and since Oakland has one of the higher crime rates in the country, he has been trying to do this by tearing down bad neighborhoods and building condos in their place. I dont agree with that approach either, because now where do the poor people go?

The Zoo… The San Francisco zoo is better though but this one is nice too…

Jack London Square… This is in downtown Oakland… Absolutely lovely…
The skyline at night, i love that tribune building it light Oakland up…
The lake… we walk around this lake all winter trying to look really hot in the summer….
The movie theater… I know it looks old and it is, It dates back to 1926, its one of the oldest building in Oakland, Its very well preserved and the screens are fine. If you ever move to Oakland, these guys have $6 matinée movies on Sunday…

The lake again…

Thats the court house…Many buildings in Oakland date back to the 1900’s thats what gives it its charm….

I like this picture…I love the Oakland Skyline

This is a the beginning of a series… I’m going to do another post on San Francisco and then one with both… I intend to do a compilation of my favorite places from restaurants to stores to just …places…If you have any ideas or pictures please let me know… And if there is anything you think i could do to improve this blog just drop me a comment or an email…