Examination

In a psychopathically-patterned gray vacuum
Entirely drained of sanctity and desire
A frozen horizon symbolic of doom
A Concentration camp for wannabees
Congregants
Willing prisoners
Seated
Dead-like
Silence
Pregnant minds
Birth pangs
Pens and papers
Neuronal marathons
Rhythmic inscriptions
Three hours
One by one
They leave
Cheerless
An MBA examination

A Mob-Persuaded Adventurist

The probabilities are pretty good.
So finally I have persuaded myself to do it.
This weekend.
Mobbish group of friends are to blame.
This adventure sure to be nerve-whacking.
Already feeling the Adrenalin rush.
So here I hang my hormones on the ropes.
For I am going Bungee jumping.
Yahoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Shattering Assumptions With Femme Gravitas

A 3D mathematical oddity
Beautifully proportioned

Infinitely long legs
Disarmingly sweet-faced

When she spoke I almost sighed with delight

Here was a differential equation buff
The professorial kind
With grace and refreshingly endearing attitude

Defying all essential assumptions
That to be taken serious
A mathematician must be
Bald

Boring

Socially inept
Beyond comprehension
And possess the personality of a wet blanket

Jennifer Hudson on my Mind

On my way to work today, Radio 702 was playing Jennifer Hudson's Spotlight song.
It's been more than two hours now and I can't seem to bring myself from under Jennifer's spell.
After catching myself belting out the song the umpteenth time, I am beginning to wonder why there is such a strong cognitive itch with that particular song just a few days after my birthday?
Is there perhaps a relevant lesson hidden somewhere in the song for me today?
I wonder.

You Are Not Her Match!

It is said by those who really know their stuff that, a woman on an average day can spit out approximately 6000 words with ease.
This is a remarkable feat judging by the fact that most men can barely manage 2000 words in the same time span.
That means, in simple proportions, that for every word spoken by a guy, a woman is able to breathe out three effortlessly.
For most people this is a obvious fact of banal interest.
But it is a whole new ball game if you come to really grasp the implication of this gladiatorial advantage of the fairer sex.
The probability is: if your are a man, you will never be able to match your woman as far as the daily requirements for a healthy verbal self-expression is concerned. As quiet as she may appear on the surface to you, your woman's need for 'rich' conversations and communication is quite literally insatiable.
So it must become obvious to you that she will need verbal affairs.
So how do you make sure that this psychologically essential need of your woman is catered for? Simple. Introduce her to other women who are potential chatting mates.
Remember that, as a man, you are wired to meet only a third of her optimal need for interactive communication of the round, colourful and floral kind. And you know what? Your relationship will be better for it. That is a promise!

My Favourite Ghanaian

Times have changed and the world is a very different place today from what it used to be years ago but the ideals for which millions of Ghanaians have stood and died remain the same.
The dream of most Ghanaians is for our nation to stand on her feet and soar to the highest possible height. We do not desire to be called a dirt-poor third world country.
Ghanaians want to have access to good health care, excellent education and enough food on our tables. We want to live in decent houses in clean cities, towns and villages. We want clean drinking water in our homes 24/7. We want our families and communities to be safe. We want decent jobs. We want our built environment, our infrastructure, to be at par with the best of the world.
Alas for more than 52 years our dreams have just remain that. Dreams.
As a people, we have not been very successful at translating our collective aspirations into a set of tangible progress. It appears to me that we are barely coming into terms with what it takes to harness the forces of development.
One sure thing though.
Our finest hour will not come through the politicians; neither will it come through the sole effort of the government.
What will usher Ghanaians into the orbit of progress is a massive growth of a critical mass of well-trained enterprising individuals and innovative private businesses driven by science and technology.
Education, training and research are the essential ingredients of the menu of economic growth and development of any nation. Ghana is no different.
In this endeavour, the effort of one man stands tall.
Patrick Awuah is an ambitious young man with a noble dream.
Here is a man who has given up a lofty job at Microsoft and sacrificed a comfortable life in America to return to Ghana for the purpose of building a dream, planting a seed with the potential to set our nation on a winning path.
A man of visionary leadership.
An entrepreneur.
A dreamer.
A patriot.
An architect of continental renaissance.
An individual who is committed to carving a place for his people in the comity of nations.
Today Mr Awuah's dream, Ashesi, is already changing the face of Ghana and Africa.
Many of Ashesi's well-trained and enterprising graduates have entered the corporate world of Ghana and beyond. The fledgling well is already quenching the thirst of our emerging economy. With the construction of the new campus at Berekuso, the role of Ashesi in Ghana's future is about to be consolidated, and with it, the expectation is that more Ghanaians will have access to the quality education that Ashesi offers.
For the nation-transforming effort, Patrick Awuah is my favourite Ghanaian.

This Is What I Am Hearing

Woe to the hopeless dreamer
Ever yearning for the future
Always clueless of the present
Never learning from the past
For the future never comes
The present is all you have
And the past is the teacher

What The Choker Taught Me

Life, it appears to me, has incredible, sometimes strange, ways of reminding us of the lessons hidden deep within our hearts and minds.
Years ago, a bosom school friend demonstrated the classic signs of a choker! The type who will brag exceedingly and talk about his incredible bravado in the presence of his mates but run for cover at the very first sign of a challenge.
The challenge in his case was the love of a girl: telling a girl that he really liked her. Lol.
The most popular girl in the neighbourhood had manifested an interest in him.
Obviously blown away by the charming beauty of the girl, the otherwise brilliant chap begun to act like a wimp. He was the classic case of an emotional retard in the company of girls.
Whenever we were in the company of this particular girl, he would chicken out and become helplessly dumbfounded not uttering a single word until the girl was gone.
The poor guy's behaviour was completely unexpected, unreasonable and perplexing in the utmost. We, his friends, were baffled by his strange fear.
As much as we tried to coach him to go for the kill, the poor chap could never bring himself to say anything meaningful to the girl.
Instead, he would brag about the blooming love between himself and the maiden to every one of us, his buddies, who cared to listen.
Even though the girl did everything possible to encourage him to step forth, he could simply not overcome his fears.
As is always the case, before he could muster the courage to open his mouth, another neighbourhood dude had stolen his thunder and his prey.

Last night, life brought me a 'sankofa' moment.
I was talking to another friend on the phone and he talked about this friend. And all of a sudden the events I have narrated above begun to flood my mind. Then I remembered something. The behaviour of this friend taught me a great lesson in life about the importance of taking risk.

Fear is the undoing of many people.
The fear of rejection, of ridicule, of failure, of the unfamiliar ... continue to keep many good souls by the way side far from the very best.
As much as is possible I will continue to live my life in such a way that I will be able to grab every opportunity and chance, that come my way, with both hands.

A belly full of regrets is not something I wish to entertain at any point in life.
So I am reminding myself again today to strike while the iron is hot.
And Whilst at it to do so with a good measure of a killer instinct .
That, I believe, is a promise worth keeping to oneself!

Malcolm Gladwell's BLINK is a Superb Read

I am in book mode like you won't believe it!
I love books, good books. But sometimes it becomes almost impossible to get quality time to indulge.
So early this week, I decided to make time and go on a date with two of the reads I was given some time ago. At present I am almost done reading ‘blink: the power of thinking without thinking’.
The author, Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote also ‘The Tipping Point’-a phenomenal bestseller.
Born in London to a black Jamaican ( Denise's compatriot) mother and an English maths teacher, he grew up in Canada. ‘Blink’ is an fabulously good read. It is a book that helps to develop one’s intuitive capabilities and teaches how to trust one's gut especially in moments when one needs to make a decision on the spur.
If you see this book, get it like you would a bullion of gold. If there are any good reads you care to recommend, please, do so.
Got to go. The books are calling.

Charge Him For Refusing To Think

Desperate times, they say, call for desperate measures.
Bob Mugabe has been conned and scorned. Big time.
A woman by the local name of Nomatter Takira, a fetish priestess( an ancestral medium) of a sort needed money, a lot of it, in cash-strapped Zimbabwe. Like everybody, she knew where the money was in the land- under the mattresses and in the pockets of the ZANU-PF apparatchiks.
So. She devised a plan of action to get what she wanted.
And got it she did- a solid million dollars, Obama dollars I mean!
So what was her plot?
She got for herself a can of diesel(fuel), a hosepipe, a hungry and desperate young man and set off for one of the huge boulders that adorn the environs of the provincial town, Chinhoyi.
Once there, she dispatched the young man with the can to a hideout somewhere on the boulder away from the prying eyes of people .
The nozzle of the hosepipe was dragged to the top of the boulder. The other end was inserted in the can of diesel. Pretty soon precious diesel was gushing on top of 'magic' boulder when the pipe was opened. That done, she retreats to town to announce her magical conjugations to lieutenants of the strongman. This 'Good News' shortly after reaches Mugabe's ear, himself a son of the province, and he quickly sends senior members of his cabal for first hand evidence of the magical prowess of this new 'Ambuya Nehanda'.
With the young man in place 'the experiment' is repeated and Bob's envoys are awed into stupor as they see refined diesel gushing from the top of the said boulder. They return to Bob with the news that Zimbabwe's diesel woes are eternally over.
Days later, state house orders that Madam Takira be treated like a queen. And an amount of $1m is offloaded to treat her good on the finer things of life for her kindly helping Zimbabwe in her hour of need.
However the fact that diesel can only be obtained through a refinery process only began to dawn on some of the inner cycle of the Mugabe regime days later and another team was secretly sent to make a thorough check of the 'discovery'.
This week Mbuya Takira was charged for defrauding the state.
The question on many people's mind however is how could a whole state, including the presidency, be doped by something so obviously questionable.
My conclusion is that Mugabe and his cabal are clinically and criminally stupid.
Methinks Mugabe and his cabal should be charged in place of Nomatter Takira for gross stupidity.

An Ode from My Childhood

In the shower last night, I found myself waltzing lyrical, reciting a poem I read ages ago in the pages of a nondescript English language comprehension textbook at primary school.

Who has seen the wind?
neither I nor you:
but when the leaves hang trembling
the wind is passing thro'

Who has seen the wind?
neither you nor I:
but when the trees bow down their heads
the wind is passing by

---Christina Rossetti

Whatever precipitated that cognitive itch I don’t really know.
But that got me thinking.
What self-respecting man recites a poem learnt at primary school in the shower, a poem probably now reserved for the exclusive use of children with special needs at a grade F crèche?
Why is my brain taking me back to primary school anyway?
Maybe I have not really learnt anything worth my brain’s while since my primary school days. Perhaps my pitiful cognitive play list is made up of that solo number and my brain is trying hard to preempt from carrying on like that.
Be it as it may, thanks to months of exposure to NY’s cookery of poetic classics, I am beginning to discover the enchanting, beautiful and colorful landscape of poetry. Now I see poetry all around me. And who knows?

Perhaps, reciting that poem under the shower was the awakening of a unfulfilled need within myself or the beginning of a literary adventure of a lifetime.
Whatever it is, I can’t wait any longer!

PS: Check my second blog here

My Creative Corner @ Home

Forget the study room. And also the dining room.
Sitting in front of the TV does not do it for me either.
The bedroom, hmmm, is for other essential services.
What does it for me is the shower.
I am talking about the particular spot at home where I am at my peak when it comes to generating creative ideas!
My time under the shower, under the torrents of precious warm water, is also the time when I am most imaginative, most creative and most artistic. Shower time tickles my creative fancy like nothing else.
You simply cannot believe some of the serious out-of–the-box thinking that goes on there. Many are the breathtaking speeches, the applause-inducing oratories, the award-winning performances, the fantastic presentations, the grandiose business ideas, the spectacular solutions to complex global mathematical formulations, the angelic melodies and other einsteinian discoveries that have taken place right under the shower.
The problem is: the creative juices quickly dry up as soon as I get out of the shower.
Why is that the case?

Square Root Day!

Today, 3/3/09, is square root day!
This is an exclusive holiday for math-buffs. For those of you who are not that into the lovely lady, mathematics, three is the square root of nine. Even though I do not count myself as a 'square', nor a lover of roots, I think there is something beautiful in the way numbers and their roots pair up for this math tango.
In every century, square root day occurs only nine times. Because of its acute rarity, the celebrants of this nerdish festival design fetish spreadsheets of dates, hours, minutes and seconds for the sole purpose of enjoying what they see as super days.
Some people celebrate the day by cutting root vegetables and tubers into squares of different sizes, others make food in the shape of the square root symbol served in square plates.
The previous square root day was five years ago, 2 February 2004. The next one is seven long years away, on 4 April 2016.
Let us hope that by then the square root of the problems of Africa would have been found and the prosperity of Africa squared.
A very happy square root day to you all!!!!

A New Day

I have paused enough.
Now is the time to restart this business of speaking my mind, of finding my voice.
I have analysed enough.
Here is the hour to retrace the verdict of my heart, of stringing together portions fed upon.
I have taken in enough.
Now is the moment to release the streams of sacred tastes, of singing texts never hymned.
I have seen enough.
Here is the time to restate the visions of my expectations, of fondling dreams long desired.

Ionizing the Creative Juices

The best way to predict the future, they say, is to create it.
It is really amazing how unbelievably creative some people are.
I have always considered myself pretty creative. In my own mind, at least, I comforted myself that I was a cool chap with a solid top. All that self-induced legerdemain came crashing down when I sat to be assessed for the sole purpose of finding my spot on the scale of creativity.
Gee whiz, have I deceived myself! Where have I been hiding!
The encounters of the past few weeks have birthed a radical hunger in me.
It is a pursuit for creative excellence.
I have certainly come to a firm conclusion that I need to be adroit at keeping the creative juices flowing at appreciable levels far beyond personal comfort. On supercharging the brain check this.

Well, talking of the seminar that started it all, I learnt a few things. These are:

1. The brain and the heart have similar properties to the soil. They are centres of monumental creative potential. Their productive capacities cannot be compared to that of any other part of the human being. Whereas the womb can be barren, there is no such thing as a barren brain or a barren heart. Whatever is sown in them and carefully tendered will eventually yield a massive harvest. Most people have taught themselves to follow either the heart or the mind, the secret is both must to be employed to create synergy.
2. It is extremely important to develop a persona that focuses on finding solutions as opposed to finding faults. Where there are problems, one needs to go beyond them in a cool and deliberate manner and begin to imagine the opportunities, ideas and solutions that are possible. The more time spent on thinking creatively about issues, the greater the capacity that is unleashed to find solutions. There is always a bigger picture behind what we are confronted with and one creative thought will induce more creative thoughts. This is particularly important for entrepreneurs and budding businesspeople.
3. The ability to make good decisions consistently is an art that can be mastered and employed in every situation. The critical question to ask always is "what opportunities and ideas can be created out of this situation?" Even out of the most difficult and painful situations, very profoundly creative solutions can be found. A quality decision to make a good choice will unleash a stream of good outcomes and induce the Multiplier Effect in our lives.

Thanks for reading. Wishing you all a super November!

Awakenings

I am beginning to awaken to the fact (to me at least) that there are certain concepts, principles, ideas or buzz words that broadly define, accentuate and encapsulate every one of the 52 weeks, and by extension the 12 months, in the year!
Whilst I frankly can not produce a thesis to back up this whimsical 'discovery' in my mind, I suspect that it can help simplify and perhaps improve life considerably. So I am beginning to subject it to evidential analyses to determine its reliability and efficacy.
Will you join me in doing this for yourself? This is what we will do:

1. From Sunday to Saturday write down all the recurring principles, ideas, concepts and buzz words that invade your space uncontrollably. The dorminant or most recurrent of them is the focus of the next week.
2. Proactively challenge yourself to practice the attributes of the buzz word throughout the week that follows.
3. Jot down the changes you witness in your life as well as the remarks of those around you.
4. We will all then post our verdicts in the first week of 2009 on our respective blogs!

Last week, for instance, my ears were extraordinarily opened to the concept of "Thanksgiving". There was a heightened attention in my heart as well as mind towards the need to be more thankful and appreciative of the life around me. It was clearly the buzz word for the whole week.
So I will be expressing lots of gratitude and thankfulness throughout this week.
So far the prevailing principle for this week is "Creativity".
This probably is due to the fact that on Saturday I attended a superb seminar on the topic of "unleashing the creative potential in you" and have been bombarded by the word literally every day ever since. More on the the concept of creativity in the next post.

Thank you all for reading!

Learning to Follow the Subconscoius Mind

I have caught myself contemplating on the question of leadership subconsciously over the past few weeks.
I am amazed as to how my mind has a mind of its own. Sometimes I have been able to intrude on these internal discourses by chance! I wish I really knew how to train myself to track all what the subconscious mind is doing. That, I believe, is the secret of creative thinking.
Let me say that I am not an expert on leadership by any stretch of imagination nor am I reading any book on the subject at present.
However judging by the frequency with which my subconscious mind has been trekking to the subject, I have decided to make time to study the subject myself. I am even planning to pursue a Master of Business Leadership degree to help me unearth what I am missing .
Who knows I might become a better me by simply following the pioneering spirit of my mind.

If any of you have mustered the art of following your subconscious mind let me know the secret.