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10 Reasons To Like the Last One Year

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Fulbright 🙂

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

Re: Poisson D’Avril

Only one of the following is an April fool joke.

  1. Cougar Village will kick me out of my residence after the 7th of May and I’ll have to find somewhere else to live.
  2. Mafoya has got himself a car.
  3. Ben has moved out to downtown Edwardsville leaving the whole apartment to me alone.
  4. I have lost my wallet with all its cash and cards on campus, and got it back.  Here it is. I have never lost my wallet, and I doubt that I’ll get it back if I do. I have however lost my gloves and winter hat. I lost it on campus and have never got it back!
  5. One of my host parents will undergo surgery sometime later this month.
  6. I have plans to visit Chicago for one more time before I leave this region.
  7. I have books by four Nobel Prize for Literature winners in my room at the moment.
  8. I shot a one minute video for CNN on the 20th March, here.
  9. A new friend of mine – an American – on Sunday referred to Iran as Irania.
  10. In response to my letter, Western Union will offer 50% discount for two days in April to any part of the world.

As per #10, Western Union will indeed be offering a 50% discount to everywhere in the world on the 6th and 7th. From what I’ve heard from their representative, this is perhaps the most they can bend. Therefore, anyone – Nigerians or not – who want to send money to their loved ones anywhere can do so at a 50% off for two days in April. There is already a hint on their Facebook page. I’m guessing that a detailed announcement will come soon.

Gotcha! Thanks for participating.

Re: Poisson D’Avril was published on April 1st, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Fun category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

Poisson D’Avril!

Only one of the following is an April fool joke.

  1. Cougar Village will kick me out of my residence after the 7th of May and I’ll have to find somewhere else to live.
  2. Mafoya has got himself a car.
  3. Ben has moved out to downtown Edwardsville leaving the whole apartment to me alone.
  4. I have lost my wallet with all its cash and cards on campus, and got it back.
  5. One of my host parents will undergo surgery sometime later this month.
  6. I have plans to visit Chicago for one more time before I leave this region.
  7. I have books by four Nobel Prize for Literature winners in my room at the moment.
  8. I shot a one minute video for CNN on the 20th March.
  9. A new friend of mine – an American – on Sunday referred to Iran as Irania.
  10. In response to my letter, Western Union will offer 50% discount for two days in April to any part of the world.

Can you pick it out? You get something if you do 😉 Answers coming later today.

Poisson D’Avril! was published on April 1st, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Fun category. There are currently 19 comments on this article so far.

St. Patrick’s Day

And so today March 17 marks the anual St. Patrick’s Holiday in the United States. St. Patrick (AD 387–461) was the missionary who brought Christianity to Ireland and converted them from their “pagan” ways. The holiday which began as a catholic holiday is now very secular and, like the Mardi Gras, has become a day of revelry and celebration of Irish culture. In Ireland, it is a public holiday. In the United States, it is just a day where people wear green, where the fountain in front of the White House and the Chicago River among many waters in the country are dyed green.

It doesn’t however mean that everyone who wears green or gets drunk on Guinness on this day in the US is of Irish descent or knows anything about Ireland. More often than not, it is just the chance to belong. There was a St. Patrick’s day parade last weekend in Chicago, and I’m sure in many other American cities but I couldn’t attend. I asked one of my students to name five famous Irish citizens. He didn’t know. The ones I can remember are John F. Kennedy, George Carlin, George Bernard Shaw, WB Yeats, Conan O’ Brien, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde and Jonathan Swift, among others.

And he was impressed with my ability to come up with those names spontaneously, much to my surprise.

St. Patrick’s Day was published on March 17th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Academic, Soliloquy category. There are currently 10 comments on this article so far.

More from the Mardi Gras

Here are some more pictures from the Mardi Gras, St. Louis that ended on Tuesday. Here’re are also a few of my observations from the event.

A disorientatingly large crowd.
Unexplainably expensive drinks.
(Eventually) drunk boys and girls from all over the world.
ATM machines that charged $8 on every transaction. Absence of any topless black girls. A heavy police presence, most of who came out of the state of Missouri. One of the cops we spoke to said he had come from Chicago. A confusing labyrinth of alleys at the Soulard Street where the event took place.
Rude, drunk and aggressive boys.
Liberal Brazilian girls with names written on all part of their clothing.
Colourful beautiful  costumes, and beads.
Delicious turkey legs.
Somebody that looked so much like Prof Wole Soyinka.
Loud music. A long unending carnival of different kinds.
ID required for all drinks bought even if said ID belonged to someone else. Patriotism: the crowd yelled “USA. USA!”  when the parade of American military men marched past.
A lively carnival atmosphere. Thousands and thousands of beads thrown into the crowd.

In New Orleans, Louisiana where the celebration has its largest following in the United States, as in St. Louis Missouri where on this day private transportation was suspended for reason of order and ease of movement of scheduled large buses and the numerous visitors,  the Mardi Gras is always a colourful carnival featuring a series of activities during the days preceding the so called Fat Tuesday. Before the fasting of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, it is the belief that all indulgence are in order, and that believers (since it started as a religious festival) should eat all they could. This explains the amount of drunkenness and liberal behaviour that has defined the event as a cultural identity for the season, and for the cities in which they take place annually in the United States and all over the world.

Update (Friday February 19th 2010): There is an article in today’s  NEXT newspaper about the event. I wonder who wrote it.

More from the Mardi Gras was published on February 18th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the adventures, Art, Fun, Observations category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.